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Title: The Catholic World, Volume 7
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Catholic World, Volume 7" ***
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{i}
The Catholic World.
A Monthly Magazine
of
General Literature and Science.
------------
Vol. VII.
April To September, 1868.
------------
New York:
The Catholic Publication Society,
126 Nassau Street.
1868.
{ii}
John A. Gray & Green,
Printers,
16 and 18 Jacob St., New York.
{iii}
Contents.
A Heroine of Conjugal Love, 781.
A New Face on an Old Question, 577.
Anecdotical Memoirs of Emperor Nicholas I., 683.
A Sister's Story, 707.
Ancient Irish Church, 764.
Abyssinia and King Theodore, 265.
Baltimore, Second Plenary Council of, 618.
Breton Legend of St. Christopher, 710.
Bretons, Faith and Poetry of, 567.
Bible and the Catholic Church, 657.
Bishop Doyle, 44.
Bound with Paul, 389.
Catacombs, Children's Graves in, 401.
Campion, Edmund, 289.
Catholics in England, Condition and Prospects of, 487.
Catholic Church and the Bible, 657.
Catholic Sunday-School Union, 300.
Children's Graves in the Catacombs, 401.
Crisis, The Episcopalian, 37.
Christopher, St., Breton Legend of, 710.
Constantinople, Harem Life in, 407.
Conscience, Plea for Liberty of, 433.
Condition and Prospects of Catholics in England, 487.
Confessional, Episcopalian, 372.
Conscript, Story of a, 26.
Colony of the Insane, Gheel, 824.
Conjugal Love, Heroine of, 781.
Council of Baltimore, Second Plenary, 618.
Cowper, 347.
Country Church, a Plan for, 135.
Cousin, Victor, and the Church Review, 95.
Cross, The, 21.
Count Ladislas Zamoyski, 650.
Church, Ancient Irish, 764.
Church, Catholic, and the Bible, 657.
Church Review, and Victor Cousin, 95.
Churches, United, of England and Ireland, 200.
Church, Early Irish, 336.
Draper, Professor, Books of, 155.
De Garaison, Notre Dame, 644.
Doyle, Bishop, 44.
Duties, Household, 700.
Early Irish Church, 356.
England and Ireland, United Churches of, 200.
England, Catholics of, Condition and Prospects, 487.
Episcopalian Crisis, 37.
Episcopalian Confessional, 372.
Education, Popular, 228.
Edmund Campion, 289.
European Prison Discipline, 772.
Egypt, Harem Life in, 407.
Face, New, on an Old Question, 577.
Faith and Science, 338, 464.
Flaminia, 795.
Faith and Poetry of the Bretons, 567.
Flight of Spiders, 414.
Florence Athern's Trial, 213.
Garaison, Notre Dame de, 644.
Graves, Children's, in the Catacombs, 401.
Gathering, Roman, 191.
Glastonbury, Legend of, 517.
Gheel, Colony of the Insane, 824.
Girl, Italian, of our Day, 364, 343, 626.
Glimpses of Tuscany--
The Duomo, 479;
The Boboli Gardens, 679.
Good Works, Merit of, 125.
Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople, 407.
Heroine of Conjugal Love, 781.
History, How told in the Year 3000, 130.
Holy Shepherdess of Pibrac, 753.
Holy Week in Jerusalem, 77.
How our History will be told in the Year 3000, 130.
Insane, Colony of, at Gheel, 824.
Italian Girl of our Day, 364, 543, 626.
Irish Church, Early, 356.
Irish Church, Ancient, 764.
"Is it Honest?" 239.
Ireland, Protestant Church of, 200.
Jerusalem, Holy Week in, 77.
John Sterling, 811.
John Tauler, 422.
King Theodore of Abyssinia, 265.
Keeble, 347.
La Fayette, Madame de, 781.
Legend of Glastonbury, 317.
Liberty of Conscience, Plea for, 433.
Life of St. Paula, sketches of, 380, 508, 670.
Life, Harem, in Egypt and Constantinople, 407.
Life's Charity, 839.
Last Gasp of the Anti-Catholic Faction, 850.
Madame de La Fayette, 731.
Magas; or, Long Ago, 39, 256.
Miscellany, 139.
Merit of Good Works, 125.
Memoirs of Count Segur, 633.
Monks of the West, i.
New Face on an Old Question, 577.
Newgate, 772.
Newman's Poems, 609.
Nellie Netterville, 82, 173, 307, 445, 589, 736.
New York City, Sanitary and Moral Condition of, 553, 712
Nicholas, Emperor, Memoirs of, 683.
Notre Dame de Garaison, 644.
O'Neil and O'Donnell in Exile, 11.
Quietist Poetry, 347.
Race, The Human, Unity of, 67.
Rights of Catholic Women, 846.
Roman Gathering, 191.
{iv}
St. Paula, Sketches of her Life, 380, 508, 670.
St. Christopher, Breton Legend of, 710.
Sayings of the Fathers of the Desert, 76, 227, 572.
Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City, 553, 712.
Segur, Count, Memoirs of, 633.
Shepherdess of Pibrac, 753.
Sterling, John, 811.
Science and Faith, 338, 464.
Sketches of the Life of St. Paula, 380, 508, 670.
Sister Simplicia, 115.
Sister's Story, 707.
Spiders, Flight of, 414.
Story of a Conscript, 26.
Story, a Sister's, 707.
Tauler, John, 422.
The Cross, 21.
The Church Review and Victor Cousin, 95.
The Episcopalian Crisis, 37.
The Rights of Catholic Women, 846.
The Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, 618.
The Story of a Conscript, 26.
Theodore, King of Abyssinia, 265.
Tennyson in his Catholic Aspects, 145.
Unity of the Human Race, 67.
United Churches of England and Ireland, 200.
Veneration of Saints and Holy Images, 721.
Wordsworth, 347.
Women, Catholic, Rights of 846.
Zamoyski, Count Ladislas, 650.
------
Poetry.
All-Souls' Day--1867, 236.
Benediction, 444.
Elegy of St. Prudentius, 761.
Full of Grace, 129.
Iona to Erin, 57.
Love's Burden, 212.
Morning at Spring Park, 174.
My Angel, 363.
One Fold, 336.
Poland, 154.
St. Columba, 823.
Sonnet on "Le Récit d'une Soeur," 306.
St. Mary Magdalen, 476.
Sonnet, 617.
Tears of Jesus, 113.
To the Count de Montalembert, 516.
Wild Flowers, 566.
------
New Publications.
Assemblée Générale des Catholiques en Belge, 431.
Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia for 1867, 574.
Appleton's Short Trip to France, 717.
Book of Moses, 142.
Campbell's Works, 720.
Catholic Sunday-School Library, 431.
Catholic Crusoe, 719.
Chandler's New Fourth Reader, 575.
Chemical Change in the Eucharist, 285.
Count Lucanor, 140,
De Costa's Lake George, 718.
Discussions in Theology, Skinner, 573.
Elinor Johnson, 576.
Folks and Fairies, 144.
Great Day, 288.
Gillet's Democracy, 719.
Hints on the Formation of Religious Opinions, 573.
Histoire de France, 719.
House Painting, 720.
Infant Bridal, by Aubrey de Vere, 143.
Imitation of Christ, Spiritual Combat, etc., 575.
Irish Homes and Irish Hearts, 576.
Life of St. Catharine of Sienna, 142.
Life in the West, 287.
Memoirs and Letters of Jennie C. White--Del Bal, 858.
Moses, Book of, 142.
Mozart, 288.
Margaret, a Story of Prairie Life, 576.
Newman's Parochial Sermons, 716.
Notes on the Rubrics of the Roman Missal, 574.
Northcote's Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Madonna, 574.
Ozanam's Civilization, 430.
O'Kane's Notes on the Rubrics, 574,
O'Shea's Juvenile Library, 719.
On the Heights, 284.
Palmer's Hints on the Formation of Religions Opinions, 573.
Prayer the Key of Salvation, 143.
Peter Claver, 142.
Problems of the Age, 715.
Queen's Daughter, 720.
Red Cross, 575.
Reforme en Italic, 143.
Rossignoli's Choice of a State of Life, 576.
Rhymes of the Poets, 718.
St. Catharine of Sienna, Life of, 143.
St. Colomba, Apostle of Caledonia, 281.
Sanctuaries of the Madonna, 720.
Tales from the Diary of a Sister, 288.
The Catholic Crusoe, 719.
The Queen's Daughter, 720.
The Vickers and Purcell Controversy, 856.
The Woman Blessed by all Generations, 860.
--------
{1}
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
Vol. VII., No. 37.--April, 1868.
--------
The Monks Of The West.[Footnote 1]
By The Count De Montalembert.
[Footnote 1: _The Monks of tie West, from St. Benedict to
St. Bernard._ By the Count de Montalembert, Member of the
French Academy. 5 vols. 8vo. For sale at the Catholic
Publication House, 126 Nassau Street, New York.]
In the galaxy of illustrious men whom God has given to France in
this century, there is one whom history will place in the first
rank. We mean the author of the _Monks of the West_, the
Count de Montalembert. There has not been since the seventeenth
century till now such an assemblage of men of genius and lofty
character gathered round the standard of the church, combating
for her and leaving behind them works that will never die.
Attacked on all sides at once, the church has found magnanimous
soldiers to bear the brunt of the battle, and meet her enemies in
every quarter. Even though the victory has not yet been
completely won, with such defenders she cannot doubt of final
success and future triumph. How great are the names of
Montalembert, Lacordaire, Ravignan, Dupanloup, Ozanam, Augustin
Co-chin, the Prince de Broglie, de Falloux, Cauchy, and of so
many others! The natural sciences, history, political economy,
controversy, parliamentary debates, pulpit eloquence, have been
studied and honored by these men; superior in all those sciences
on account of the truth which they defend, and equal in talent to
their most renowned rivals.
The figure of the Count de Montalembert stands conspicuous in
that group of giant intellects by the universality of his eminent
gifts. A historian full of erudition, an incomparable orator, and
a writer combining the classic purity of the seventeenth century
with the energy and fire of the nineteenth, an indefatigable
polemic, a man of the world, yet an orthodox churchman, but above
all a practical and fervent Christian; this great defender of
Catholic truth has merited immortal praise from his
contemporaries and from posterity.
Among all the works of this energetic champion of the faith. The
_Monks of the West_ holds indisputably the first place.
{2}
It is the work of Montalembert's entire life. He has put into it
his Benedictine erudition, his passionate love for truth, the
charming and dramatic power of his style in the narration of
events, his inimitable talent for painting in words the portraits
of those famous characters whom he wishes to present to the eye
of the reader; and their traits remain ineffaceably stamped on
the mind. Especially does the soul of the true Christian breathe
on every page of the volumes. For more than forty years their
author bent piously over those austere forms of the Benedictine
monks of the early ages to ask them the secret of their lives, of
their virtues, of their influence on their country and their age.
He has studied them with that infallible instinct of faith which
had disclosed to him a hidden treasure in those old monastic
ruins, and in those dusty and unexplored monuments of their
contemporary literature; the treasure, namely, of the influence
of the church acting on the barbarians through the monks. This is
the leading idea of the whole work. It would be a mistake to
expect, under the title of _Monks of the West_, a history of
mere asceticism, or a species of continuation of the _Lives of
the Fathers of the Desert_. Writers no longer treat, as that
work does, the lives of the saints. Readers are not satisfied
with the simple account of the virtues practised or the number of
miracles performed by the canonized children of the church.
Modern men want to look into the depths of a saint's soul; to
know what kind of a human heart throbbed in his bosom, and how
far he participated in the thoughts and feelings of ordinary
human nature. The circumstances in which he lived and studied,
the opinions formed of him by his contemporaries, are weighed,
and the traces left by his sanctity or genius on the manners and
institutions of his country are closely considered.
The history of _The Monks of the West_ is nothing else than
a history of civilization through monastic causes. The third,
fourth, and fifth volumes just published contain a complete,
profound, exact, and beautiful account of the conversion of Great
Britain to Catholicity. No work could be more interesting, not
only to Englishmen, but to all who speak the English tongue.
Hence, but a few months after the French edition of these bulky
volumes, an English translation of them was given to the public,
and is now well known and becoming justly wide-spread in the
United States.
Irish and Anglo-Saxons, Americans by birth or by adoption,
Catholics and Protestants, there is not one of us who is not
interested in a work which tells us from whom, and how, we have
inherited our Christian faith. Even Germans will learn in the
perusal of these volumes their religious origin; for it was from
the British isles that the apostles of Germany went forth to
their labors. The English language is the most universally spoken
to-day; the sceptre of Britain rules an empire greater than that
of Alexander or of any of the Caesars. The latest statistics tell
us that there are one hundred and seventy-four millions of
British subjects or vassals. The two Indies, vast Australia, and
the islands of the Pacific Ocean belong mostly to the Anglo-Saxon
race, and feel its influence. But what are all those great
conquests compared to these once British colonies, now called
North America? Who can foresee the height to which may reach this
vigorous graft, cut from the old oak, invigorated by the virgin
soil of the new world, and which already spreads its shade over
immense latitudes, and which promises to be the largest and most
powerful country ever seen?
{3}
Is it not therefore useful and interesting to study the religious
origin of this extraordinary race? Is there an American in heart,
or by birth, who is not bound to know the history of those to
whom this privileged race owes its having received in so large a
measure the three fundamental bases of all grandeur and stability
in nations: the spirit of liberty, the family spirit, and the
spirit of religion?
The history of the conversion of England by the monks answers all
these questions. It comprises the apostleship of the Irish, and
of the Roman and Anglo-Saxon elements during the sixth and
seventh centuries. The Irish or Celtic portion of the history
centres in St. Columba, whose majestic form towers above his age,
illustrated by his virtues and influenced by his genius. The
Roman element is represented by the monk Augustine, the first
apostle of the Anglo-Saxons. Lastly, this race itself enters on
the missionary career, and sends out as its first apostle a great
man and a great saint, the monk Wilfrid, whose moral beauty of
character rivals that of St. Columba. Shortly after these, as it
were following in their shadow, walks the admirable and gentle
Venerable Bede, the first English historian, the learned
encyclopedist, alike the honor and glory of his countrymen, and
of the learned of all nations.
We cannot resist the pleasure of giving, though it be but very
incomplete and pale, a sketch of the great monk of Clonard, the
apostle of Caledonia, St. Columba.[Footnote 2] Sprung from the
noble race of O'Niall, which ruled Ireland during six centuries,
educated at Clonard, in one of those immense monasteries which
recalled the memory of the monastic cities of the Thebaid, he was
the chief founder, though hardly twenty-nine years old, of a
multitude of religious houses. More than thirty-seven in Ireland
claim him as their founder. He was a poet of great renown, and a
musician skilled in singing that national poetry of Erin, which
so intimately harmonizes with Catholic faith. He lived in
fraternal union with the other poets of his country, with those
famous bards, whom he was afterward to protect and save from
their enemies. Besides being a great traveller, like the most of
the Irish saints and monks whose memory has been preserved by
history, he had another passion for manuscripts. This passion had
results which decided his destiny. Having shut himself up at
night in a church, where he discovered the psalter of the Abbot
Finnian, Columba found means to make a clandestine copy of it.
Finnian complained of it as a theft. The case was brought to the
chief monarch of Ireland, who decided against Columba. The
copyist protested; anathematized the king, and raised against him
in revolt the north and west of Hibernia. Columba's party
conquered, and the recovered psalter, called the _Psalter of
Battles_, became the national relic of the clan O'Donnell.
This psalter still exists, to the great joy of the erudite
patriots of Ireland.
[Footnote 2: The Catholic Publication Society will soon
publish _The Life of St. Columba_, as given in the third
volume of _The Monks of the West_.]
Nevertheless, as Christian blood had flowed for a comparative
trifle, and through the fault of a monk, a synod was convened and
Columba was excommunicated. He succeeded in having the sentence
cancelled; but he was commanded to gain to God, by his preaching,
as many souls as he had destroyed Christians in the battle of
Cooldrewny. To this injunction his confessor added the hardest of
penances for a soul so passionately attached, as was that of
Columba, to his country and his friends.
{4}
The penitent was compelled to exile himself from Ireland for
ever. Columba submitted. Twelve of his disciples refused to leave
him, and embarking with them on one of those large osier,
hide-covered boats which the Celtic peoples were accustomed to
use in navigation, he landed on an island called Oronsay. He
ascended a hill near the shore, and looking toward the south,
perceived that he could still see the Irish coast. He reëmbarked
immediately, and sailed in quest of a more distant isle, from
which his native land should be no longer visible. He at last
touched the small desert island of Iona, and chose for his abode
this unknown rock, which he has made a partaker of his own
immortality.
We should read in M. de Montalembert's work the eloquent
description of the Hebrides, and of that sandy and sterile shore
of Iona, rendered glorious by so many virtues. "'We were now
treading,' wrote Dr. Johnson, the great moralist of the
eighteenth century, 'that illustrious island which was once the
luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and
roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the
blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local
emotion would be impossible if it were endeavored, and would be
foolish if it were possible.'[Footnote 3] And he recited with
enthusiasm those verses from Goldsmith's _Traveller_:
'Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state,
With daring aims irregularly great.
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by;
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band.
By forms unfashioned, fresh from nature's hand.
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul.
True to imagined right, above control,
While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan,
And learns to venerate himself as man.' [Footnote 4]
[Footnote 3: _Journey to the Western Islands of
Scotland_. By Dr. Johnson,]
[Footnote 4: _The Monks of the West_, vol. iv. book xi.
ch. 3.]
Grace had accomplished its work. Arrived at Iona, Columba, one of
the most high-spirited and passionate of the Gaels of Hibernia,
became a most humble penitent, a pattern of mortification to the
monks, the most gentle of friends, and a most tender father.
Having no other cell than a log cabin for seventy-six years, he
slept in it on the bare ground, with a stone for his pillow. This
hut was his oratory and library, into which, after working all
day in the fields like the lowest of the brothers, he entered to
meditate on the Holy Scripture and multiply copies of the sacred
text. He is supposed to have transcribed with his own hand three
hundred copies of the gospels. Devoted to his expiatory mission,
he commenced by evangelizing the Dalriadian Scots, an Irish
colony formed between the Picts of the north and the Britons of
the south. This colony was on the western coast of Caledonia and
in the neighboring islands, at the north of the mouth of the
Clyde, in that tract of country afterward known by the name of
Argyle. But these colonists were his countrymen. Soon he was
called to lay hands on the head of their chief, thus inaugurating
not only a new royalty, but also a new rite, which afterward
became the most august solemnity in the life of Christian
nations. This consecration of the Scot Aidan as King, by Columba,
is the first authentic instance of the kind in the west. Later,
crossing the Grampian hills, at the foot of which the victorious
legions of Agricola stopped, and venturing in a frail skiff on
Loch-Ness and the river which flows from it, he confronted those
terrible Picts, the most depraved and ferocious of the
barbarians, disputing, through an interpreter, with the Druids,
thus attacked in their last retreat.
{5}
He returned often to these savages, so that he finished, before
his death, the conversion of the whole nation, dotting with
churches and sanctuaries their forests, defiles, inaccessible
mountains, their wild fens and their sparsely peopled isles. The
vestiges of fifty-three of those churches are still traceable in
modern Scotland, and even the most enlightened Protestant judges
of the Scottish bench attribute the very ancient division of
parishes in Scotland to the missionary monk of sacred Iona.
He never forgot, in the midst of his labors, his beloved Ireland.
He had for her all the tender passion of the exile; a passion
which let itself out in his songs, full of a charming melancholy.
"Better to die in pure Ireland, than to live for ever here in
Albania." [Footnote 5]
[Footnote 5: Vol. iii. book xi. ch. 2.]
To this cry of despair succeed more plaintive notes breathing
resignation. In one of his elegies, he regrets not being able to
sail once more on the lakes and gulfs of his fatherland, nor to
listen to the song of the swans with his friend Comgall. He
mourns especially his having to leave Erin through his own fault,
on account of the blood shed in the battles which he had
provoked. He envies his friend Cormac, who can return to his dear
monastery of Durrow, to hearken there to the murmur of the winds
among the oaks, and drink in the song of the blackbird and the
cuckoo. As for him, Columba, everything in Ireland is dear to
him, _except the rulers that govern it!_ In another poem
still more characteristic, he exclaims: "Oh! what delight to
glide over the foam-crested waves of the sea, and see the
breakers roll on the sandy beaches of Ireland! Oh! how swiftly my
bark would bound over the waters, if its prow were turned toward
my grove of oaks in Ireland! But the noble sea must only bear me
for ever toward Albania, the gloomy land of the raven. My feet
repose in my skiff, but my sad heart ever bleeds.
...
From the deck of my boat I cast my eyes over the billows, and the
big tears stand in my moistened gray eyes, when I look toward
Erin; toward Erin, where the birds sing so melodiously, and where
the priests sing like the birds; where the young men are so
gentle, and the old so wise; the nobles so illustrious and
handsome, and the women so fair to wed. ... Young navigator,
carry with thee my woes, bear them to Comgall the immortal. Bear
with thee, noble youth, my prayer and my blessing: one half for
Ireland; that she may receive seven-fold blessings! and the other
half for Albania. Carry my benediction across the sea; carry it
toward the west. My heart is broken within my bosom; if sudden
death should befall me, it would be through my great love for the
Gaels." [Footnote 6]
[Footnote 6: Vol. iii. book xi. ch. 2.]
An opportunity was afforded him of seeing once more this beloved
land of which he sang with such ardent enthusiasm. He had to
accompany the king of the Dalriadians, whom he had just
consecrated, to meet the supreme monarch of Ireland and other
Irish princes and chiefs assembled in parliament at Drumkeath.
There was question of recognizing the independence of the new
Scottish royalty, hitherto the vassal and tributary of Erin. But
as the exile had made a vow never again in this life to behold
the men and women of Erin, he appeared in the national assembly
with his eyes blindfolded, and his monk's cowl drawn over the
bandage. Columba was listened to as an oracle in the parliament
of Drumkeath. He not only obtained the complete emancipation of
the Dalriadian colony, but he also saved the order of the bards,
whose proscription had been demanded by the king of Ireland.
{6}
They were for ever won over to Christianity by the holy monk,
and, transformed into minstrels, continued for the future to be
the most efficacious propagators of the spirit of patriotism, the
indomitable prophets of national independence, and the faithful
champions of catholic faith.
Arrived at the term of his career, the servant of God spent
himself in vigils, fastings, and formidable macerations of the
flesh. He knew in advance and predicted with certainty the day
and the very hour when he should pass to a better life; and he
made all things ready for his departure. He went to take leave of
the monks who worked in the fields, in the only fertile portion
of the island of Iona, on the western coast. He wished to visit
and bless the granary of the community. He blessed the old white
horse which used to carry from the sheep-fold of the monastery
the milk which was consumed daily by the brothers. Having done
this, he was barely able to ascend an eminence from which the
whole island and monastery were visible, and from this elevated
position he extended his hands and pronounced on the sanctuary
which he had founded a prophetic benediction. "This little spot,
so low and so narrow, will be greatly honored, not only by the
kings and people of Scotland, but also by foreign chiefs and
barbarous nations; it will be even venerated by the saints of
other churches." He then descended to the monastery, entered his
cell, and applied himself to his work for the last time. He was
at that time busied in transcribing the psalter. At the
thirty-third psalm, and the verse, "_Inquirentes autem Dominum
non deficient omni bono,_" [Footnote 7] he ceased and said:
"Here I must finish; Baithan will write the rest." After this he
went to the church to assist at the vigils of Sunday; then
returning to his cell, he sat down on the cold stones which had
been his bed and pillow for over seventy years. There he
entrusted his solitary companion with a last message for the
community. This done, he never spoke more. But no sooner had the
midnight bell tolled for matins, than he ran faster than the
other monks to the church. His companion found him lying before
the altar, and raising his head, placed it on his knees. The
whole community soon arrived with lights. At the sight of their
father dying, all wept. The abbot opened his eyes once more,
looking around on all with a serene and joyous expression. Then,
assisted by his companion, Columba lifted as well as he could his
right hand, and silently blessed the whole choir of monks. His
hands fell powerless to his sides, and he breathed his last.
[Footnote 7: "They that seek the Lord shall not be deprived
of any good." Ps. xxxiii. 11.]
What a scene! Such were the life and death of this great man and
great saint. After having loved Ireland so much, he could repose
nowhere more appropriately than in her sacred soil. His body was
transported thither to the monastery of Down, and buried between
the mortal remains of St. Patrick and St. Bridget. Thus those
three names, for the future inseparable, became interwoven with
the history and traditions, and engraved in the worship and on
the memory, of the Irish people.
Such were the men to whom Ireland owed not only her
indestructible faith, but also her intellectual and moral
civilization.
{7}
It is not sufficiently known that Ireland in the seventh century
was regarded by all Europe as the principal focus of science and
piety.
There, more than anywhere else, every monastery was a school, and
every school a studio of calligraphy, where the artists were not
confined to copying the Holy Scriptures alone; but where even the
Greek and Latin authors were reproduced, sometimes in Celtic
characters, with gloss and commentary in Irish, like that copy of
Horace which contemporary erudition has discovered in the library
of Berne. Besides, in all those monasteries, exact annals of
passing events were recorded; and these annals still constitute
the chief source of Irish history. We recognize in them a vast
and continual development of serious literary and religious
studies, far superior to anything found in any other European
nation. Certain arts even, such as architecture, carving,
metallurgy applied to the objects of public worship, were
cultivated with success; not to speak of music, a knowledge of
which was a common accomplishment not exclusively possessed by
the learned, but also by the common people. The classic
languages, not only the Latin, but even in an especial manner the
Greek, were spoken, written, and studied with a sort of passion,
which shows the sway which intellectual preoccupations held over
those ardent Celtic minds.
But whatever may have been the influence of Columba on the Picts
and Scots, neither he nor his successors could exercise any
direct or efficacious action on the Anglo-Saxons, who became
daily more redoubtable, and whose ferocious incursions menaced
not only the Caledonian clans, but also the Britons. Other
missionaries were therefore needed. Whence were they to come?
From that ever-burning centre of faith and charity from which the
light of Christianity had already been brought to the Irish by
Patrick; to the Bretons and Scots by Palladius, Ninian, and
Germain--from Rome!
"Who then were the Anglo-Saxons, upon whom so many efforts were
concentrated, and whose conquest is ranked, not without reason,
among the most fruitful and most happy that the church has ever
accomplished? Of all the Germanic tribes the most stubborn,
intrepid, and independent, this people seem to have
transplanted with themselves into the great island which owes
to them its name, the genius of the Germanic race, in order
that it might bear on this predestined soil its richest and
most abundant fruits. The Saxons brought with them a language,
a character, and institutions stamped with a strong and
invincible originality. Language, character, institutions, have
triumphed, in their essential features, over the vicissitudes
of time and fortune--have outlived all ulterior conquests, as
well as all foreign influences, and, plunging their vigorous
roots into the primitive soil of Celtic Britain, still exist at
the indestructible foundation of the social edifice of England.
...
Keeping intact and untamable their old Germanic
spirit, their old morals, their stern independence,
they gave from that moment to
the free and proud genius of their race a
vigorous upward impulse which nothing has
been able to bear down." [Footnote 8]
[Footnote 8: Vol. iv. book xii. ch. 1.]
Every one knows how and by whom those Anglo-Saxons were
evangelized and converted; every one knows the scene of Gregory,
afterward pope, with the young slaves in the Roman forum, and the
dialogue related by Bede from the traditions of his Northumbrian
ancestors. Every one knows that, at the sight of those young
slaves, struck by the beauty of their countenances, the dazzling
whiteness of their complexion, the length of their flaxen locks,
a probable sign of their aristocratic extraction, Gregory
inquired about their country and their religion.
{8}
The merchant, answered him that they came from the island of
Britain, where all had the same fresh color, and that they were
pagans. Then, heaving a deep sigh, "what evil luck," he
exclaimed, "that the prince of darkness should possess beings
with an aspect so radiant, and that the grace of these
countenances should reflect a soul void of inward grace! But what
nation are they of?" "They are Angles?" "They are well named, for
these Angles have the faces of angels; and they must become the
brethren of the angels in heaven. From what province have they
been brought?" "From Deïra," (one of the two kingdoms of
Northumbria.) "Still good," answered he. "_De ira
eruti_--they shall be snatched from the ire of God, and called
to the mercy of Christ. And how name they the king of their
country?" "Alle or AElla." "So be it; he is right well named, for
they shall soon sing the Alleluia in his kingdom." [Footnote 9]
[Footnote 9: Vol. iii book xii. ch. 1, p. 347.]
We will not follow the apostolate of the monk Augustine in his
pacific conquests, nor the touching solicitude of the Pope St.
Gregory for his dear favorites. Not because this history lacks
interest--we know none more attractive, or in which the glory of
the Roman Church shines forth more brilliantly--but it is better
known than that of the monk Columba, which has delayed us longer.
"We may simply remark that, unlike the churches of Italy, Gaul,
and Spain, in all of which the baptism of blood had either
preceded or accompanied the conversion of the inhabitants, in
England there were neither martyrs nor persecutors from the first
day of Augustine's preaching, during the entire existence of the
Anglo-Saxon Church. Placed in the presence of the pure,
resplendent light of Christianity, even before they understood or
accepted it, those fierce Saxons, so pitiless to their enemies,
displayed, in the presence of truth, a humanity and a docility
which we seek in vain among the learned and civilized citizens of
imperial Rome. Not a drop of blood spilled in the name of
religion stained the English ground. And this prodigy is
witnessed at a period when human gore flowed in torrents for any
or every pretext, no matter how trivial. What a contrast between
those times and later ages, when, in the very same island, so
many pyres were lighted, so many gibbets raised on which to
immolate the English who remained steadfast in the faith of
Gregory and Augustine!"
The second volume of _The Monks of the West_ comprises a
thorough and varied account of the conversion of the
Anglo-Saxons, not only by the missionaries sent from Rome, but
also by those of England herself The great figure of St. Wilfrid
looms up in this epoch. As we cannot analyze his noble and holy
life, we will resume, at least, some of his traits, as drawn by
the pen of M. de Montalembert.
"In Wilfrid began that great line of prelates, by turns apostolic
and political, eloquent and warlike, brave champions of Roman
unity and ecclesiastical independence, magnanimous
representatives of the rights of conscience, the liberties of the
soul, the spiritual powers of man, and the laws of God--a line to
which history presents no equal out of the Catholic Church of
England; a lineage of saints, heroes, confessors, and martyrs,
which produced St. Dunstan, St. Lanfranc, St. Anselm, St. Thomas
a Becket, Stephen Langton, St. Edmund, the exile of Pontigny, and
which ended in Reginald Pole." [Footnote 10]
. . .
[Footnote 10: Vol. iv. ch. 4, p. 368.]
{9}
"In addition to all this, Wilfrid was the precursor of the great
prelates, the great monks, the princely abbots of the middle
ages, the heads and oracles of national councils, the ministers
and lieutenants, and often the equals and rivals of kings. When
duty called, no suffering alarmed, no privation deterred, and no
danger stopped his course. Four times in his life he made the
journey to Rome, then ten times more laborious and a hundred
times more dangerous than the voyage to Australia is now. But,
left to himself, he loved pomp, luxury, magnificence, and power.
He could be humble and mild when it was necessary; but it was
more congenial to him to confront kings, princes, nobles,
bishops, councils, and lay assemblies in harsh and inflexible
defence of his patrimony, his power, his authority, and his
cause." [Footnote 11]
...
[Footnote 11: Ibidem, p. 369.]
"His influence is explained by the rare qualities, which more
than redeemed all his faults. His was, before all else, a great
soul, manly and resolute, ardent and enthusiastic, full of
unconquerable energy, able to wait or to act, but incapable of
discouragement or fear, born to live upon those heights which
attract at once the thunderbolt and the eyes of the crowd. His
eloquence, superior to anything yet known in England, his keen
and penetrating intelligence, his eager zeal for literary studies
and public education, his knowledge and love of those wonders of
architecture which dazzled the Christian nation, and to which his
voice attracted such crowds, his constancy in trial, his ardent
love of justice--all contributed to make of him one of those
personages who sway and move the spirits of their contemporaries,
and who master the attention and imagination even of those whom
they cannot convince. Something generous, ardent, and magnanimous
in his nature commended him always to the sympathy of lofty
hearts; and when adverse fortune and triumphant violence and
ingratitude came in, to put upon his life the seal of adversity,
nobly and piously borne, the rising tide of emotion and sympathy
carried all before it, sweeping away all traces of those errors
of conduct which might have seemed to us less attractive or
comprehensible." [Footnote 12]
[Footnote 12: Ibidem, pp. 371-2.]
The fifth and last volume ends with an elaborate essay of great
interest on the Anglo-Saxon nunneries. It is certain that women
have taken an active part in the civilization of modern nations,
more particularly among the German tribes, whose purity of morals
astonished the old Romans of the empire. The Germanic races
considered woman as a person, not as a thing. No sooner was the
light of the gospel received among them than their women began to
distinguish themselves by the ardor of their faith and the
generosity of their devotion. If monasteries cover the land,
convents of women rival them in number, regularity, and religious
fervor. It was the kings and nobles of the Heptarchy who first
set the example of a cloistered life for men; it was also the
queens and princesses who founded the first convents and became
their earliest abbesses. Nothing is more interesting in the whole
book, and nowhere is the author more successful, than in his
portrayal of those primitive natures, still tinctured with
barbarism, passing through a complete transformation under the
law of light and charity; to see those nuns devote themselves to
as earnest a study of Greek and Latin as to that of the Holy
Scriptures; quote Virgil, compose verses during the intervals of
their religious duties and the singing of the office.
{10}
Another remarkable trait is their profound and obstinate
attachment to one or other of the parties who disputed the
possession of supreme power in those troubled times--an
attachment which is explained by the high rank of the abbesses
who governed those numerous communities. A single one of those
houses, the Abbey of Winbourne, contained five hundred nuns who
sang the office day and night. Nothing is better calculated to
give us a just appreciation of the manners of those times than
the faithful description of the interior life of those great
convents; the narration of their customs, of their lively faith,
their enthusiasm for science, of their works, their literary
correspondence, and of all the details of their existence.
Whatever may be the charm which the author has infused into the
rest of his book, that part of it, in our opinion, which excites
most the curiosity of the reader by the novelty of its incidents,
its charming legends, and which will be read with most avidity,
is the last chapter on the Anglo-Saxon nuns.
May this rapid sketch inspire our readers with the desire of
becoming better acquainted with this great and magnificent work!
In all ages, remarkable books have been scarce, and, by a sad
infirmity of the human mind, they have not always been properly
appreciated during the lifetime of their authors. Almost all have
been obliged to await the judgment of time and posterity to
consecrate their glory. Let this not be the fate of _The Monks
of the West_. Let us read and study this book. We shall find
in it the history of the conversion of England in the sixth and
seventh centuries; one of the most powerful arguments in support
of the great thesis--_that the world has been civilized by the
Catholic Church_. This point is the high aim, the noble
thought, the idea and soul of Montalembert's master-piece. By it
he has rendered an immense service to the Catholic cause, and on
this account he deserves the undying gratitude of all Christians.
--------
O'Neill And O'Donnell In Exile. [Footnote 13]
[Footnote 13: _The Fate and Fortunes of Hugh O'Neill, Earl
of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnel: Their
Flight from Ireland; Their Vicissitudes Abroad, and their
Death in Exile._ By the Rev. C. Meehan, M.R.I.A. Dublin:
James Duffy. New York: Catholic Publication House. Pp. 383.
1868.]
The history of the Irish race presents certain features quite
exceptional, and without parallel either in the ancient or in the
modern world. For example, during these last two and a half
centuries that strange history has been dual or double--half of
it in Ireland and the other half in foreign lands. There were the
Irish in Ireland undergoing the emaciating process of
confiscations and plunder, writhing under their penal laws for
religion, with occasional gallant efforts at resistance, either
in support of a dynasty (the Stuarts) or by way of fierce
insurrection, as in 1798. And there were the Irish abroad in many
lands, refugees, exiles, emigrants, who were always plotting and
preparing a descent from France or from Spain to redeem their
countrymen from British oppression, or else giving their service
as military adventurers to any power at war with England, hoping
to deal their enemy somewhere, anywhere, a mortal blow.
{11}
But their thought was ever Ireland, _Ireland_. What country
on this earth has ever inspired its children with so deep, so
passionate, so enduring love?
These side-scenes in the drama of Irish life have duly repeated
themselves from generation to generation, down to the present
day. We see one of them in the United States this moment. Always,
alongside of the transactions in the island itself--the
confiscations, and ejectments, and famines, and packed
juries--there is a parallel series of transactions outside among
the exiles, all bearing reference to the "fate and fortunes" of
the Irish at home; all moved and inspired by that insatiable
craving to liberate the land of their fathers, and make good
their own footing among the green hills where they were born. Of
this collateral or episodical history, Fr. Meehan has selected
one of the most striking and touching scenes, has thoroughly
investigated it in all its aspects, and in this volume presented
us with a very complete _monograph_ of the outside life of
O'Neill and O'Donnell, with their followers, from the moment when
those chiefs suddenly dropped out of the large space they had so
long filled in Ireland proper, and became a part of the external
Irish world.
For this task, Fr. Meehan had unusual qualifications and
advantages. He had long lived in Rome, where the last years of
the illustrious chiefs were passed, and where, in the Church of
S. Pietro Montorio, their bones lie buried under a simple
inscription. More than thirty years ago, the sight of this
inscription (_D.O.M. Hic quiescunt Ugonis Principis O'Neill
ossa--_"Here rest the bones of Hugh the Prince O'Neill")
excited within his mind an ardent curiosity to explore the
mystery which has so long surrounded that sad flight of the
"earls," and their short, feverish life afterward. Since that day
the author never lost sight of his object. Though devoted to his
sacred duties, and occasionally occupied in illustrating some
other page of the history of his country, as in his excellent
narrative of the "Confederation of Kilkenny," (_see Library of
Ireland,_) yet he was always adding to his store of materials
for the illumination of this one dark passage in the fortunes of
those most illustrious of Irish exiles. At length we have the
result; and it leaves nothing to be desired. Yet we feel inclined
at the outset to reproach the learned author for entitling his
heroes Earl of Tyrone and Earl of Tyrconnel. Why has he done this
when O'Neill's own epitaph has no allusion to such a title,
which, indeed, was, in his eyes, a mark of disgrace and a badge
of servitude? He had, it is true, submitted to sink for a short
time formally from a high chief into an earl when he was in
England, and had an object to gain by pleasing and flattering
Queen Elizabeth; but in his own Ulster his name and title was The
O'Neill; "in comparison of which," says Camden, "the very title
of Caesar is contemptible in Ireland." [Footnote 14]
[Footnote 14: Camden: Queen Elizabeth.]
Moreover, it was not until his long and desperate resistance was
at length subdued, not till most of his warriors lay dead amidst
the smoking ruins of Ulster, and he had made his submission to
Mountjoy at Mellifont Abbey, that he consented to wear with shame
the coronet of an earl before his own clansmen and kinsmen.
{12}
It was a condition of the queen's "pardon" that he should so
abase himself. When he quitted Ireland, however, he flung down
his coronet and golden chain, and never called himself Earl of
Tyrone again. Fr. Meehan himself tells us (p. 161) while
describing the honors paid to the chiefs upon the continent:
"Wherever there was an Irish seminary or conventual
establishment, alumni and superiors vied with each other in
congratulating the _illustrious princes_, for such was the
designation by which they were recognized in Belgium, Italy,
and all over the continent."
But on this subject it may be remarked that the policy of the
British government in thus forcing the coronets of feudal
nobility upon the unwilling brows of Celtic chieftains, whether
in Scotland or in Ireland, has never yet been sufficiently
understood. It was an essential part of the invariable British
system of forcing its own form of social polity upon every part
of the three kingdoms, as each part fell successively under
English dominion. It was necessary, as Sir John Davies,
Attorney-General for Ireland under James the First, declares, to
abolish what he calls the "scambling possession" which Irish
chiefs and clansmen had in their lands, and compel them to hold
those lands by "English tenure;" in other words, that the chiefs
should become _landlords_ or proprietors of those districts
which had formed the tribe-lands of their clans, and that their
clansmen should become tenants subject to _rent_, which, in
the seventeenth century, had grown to be a commutation for all
feudal services. In short, the problem to be solved was to force
in the already corrupt and oppressive feudal polity (which had
long lost its true uses and significance) upon the free system of
clanship, the ancient and natural social arrangement of the Irish
and Scottish Gaël. Neither did that plan, of obliging chiefs to
become noblemen--and therefore both vassals and
landlords--originate with Elizabeth and James, nor with Sir John
Davies. King Henry the Eighth, a century earlier, offered to Con
O'Neill, the chief of that day, the dignity of earl, which Con
accepted as a delicate attention from a foreign monarch, but took
care to be a chief in Tyrone--no vassals, no tenants, no "English
tenure" _there_. The O'Brien of Thomond, however, upon that
earlier occasion, did lay down at King Henry's feet his dignity
of Chief _Dalcais_, and arose Earl of Thomond; his son was
made Baron of Inchiquin; and the MacGilla Phadruig consented to
become "Fitzpatrick" and Baron of Upper Ossory. For their
compliance, they were rewarded with the spoils of the suppressed
monasteries of their respective countries--places which their own
fathers had founded and endowed for pious uses.
The process in Scotland was nearly analogous, after the accession
of James to the throne of England. The Mac Callum More (Campbell)
was created Duke of Argyll, and invited to consider himself
proprietor of all Argyllshire--by English tenure--and landlord
of all the Campbells. Mac Kenzie was dubbed Earl of Cromarty on
the same terms; and so with the rest: but at home those Highland
nobles were never regarded as anything but chiefs; and it was
only by very slow degrees, and not perfectly until after 1745,
that the old clan spirit and usages disappeared. Thus, in forcing
conformity with English land-laws, and gradually bringing the
soil of the two islands into immediate dependence upon the
English sovereign, every step in advance is marked by some chief
submitting to be made earl or baron, and reducing his free
kinsmen to serfdom.
{13}
Those peerages, accordingly, are monuments of subjugation and
badges of dishonor. Hugh O'Neill certainly did not value his
title, flung it from him with impatience, quitted earldom and
country to get rid of it, and protested against it on his
tombstone. For these reasons, many readers of Fr. Meehan's book
will wish that the author had given to his heroes the titles by
which they themselves desired to be remembered.
Having thus vented our only censure, upon a matter rather
technical and formal, the more agreeable task remains, of making
our readers acquainted with all the merits and perfections of
this charming book. Fr. Meehan does not undertake to narrate the
earlier life and long and bloody wars against the best generals
of England, but takes up the story where the chief was
desperately maintaining himself, and still keeping his Red Hand
aloft in the woody fastness of Glanconkeine, on the side of
Slieve Gallen, and by the banks of Moyola water, awaiting the
return from Spain of his brother-chief, Hugh Roe O'Donnell, with
the promised succors from King Philip. But in those very same
days, that famous Hugh Roe had lain down to die in Spain, and
succor came none to the sorely pressed Prince of Ulster. His
great enemy, Elizabeth, too, was on her death-bed, almost ready
to breathe her last curse. But in her agonies she by no means
forgot O'Neill. Father Meehan says:
"It is a curious and perhaps suggestive fact, that Queen
Elizabeth, while gasping on her cushions at Richmond, and
tortured by remembrances of her latest victim, Essex, often
directed her thoughts to that Ulster fastness, where her great
rebel, Tyrone, was still defying her, and disputing her title
to supremacy on Irish soil. But of this, however, there can be
no doubt; for in February, while she was gazing on the haggard
features of death, and vainly striving to penetrate the opaque
void of the future, she commanded Secretary Cecil to charge
Mountjoy to entrap Tyrone into a submission on diminished
title, such as Baron of Dungannon, and with lessened territory,
or, if possible, to have his head before engaging the royal
word. It was to accomplish any of these objects that Mountjoy
marched to the frontier of the north; but finding it impossible
to procure the assassination of 'the sacred person of O'Neill,
who had so many eyes of jealousy about him,' he wrote to Cecil,
from Drogheda, that nothing prevented Tyrone from making his
submission but mistrust of his personal safety, and guarantee
for maintenance commensurate to his princely rank. The granting
of these conditions, Mountjoy concluded, would bring about the
pacification of Ireland, and Tyrone, being converted into a
good subject, would rid her majesty of the apprehension of
another Spanish landing on the Irish shore. It is possible that
this proposed solution of the Irish difficulty may have reached
Richmond at a moment when Elizabeth was more intent on the
talisman sent her by the old Welsh woman, or the arcane virtues
of the card fastened to the seat of her chair, than on matters
of statecraft; but be that as it may, the lords of her privy
council empowered Mountjoy to treat with Tyrone, and bring
about his submission with the least possible delay."
The author next carries us through the imposing scene of the
chief's submission and surrender at Mellifont Abbey, and gives a
vivid account of that illustrious religious house, and the lovely
vale of the Mattock in which it stands; of his gloomy resignation
to his hated earldom; of the organization of Ulster into shires
or counties, (never before heard of in those parts;) of the new
"earl's" journey to London, along with Rory O'Donnell, the other
"earl," and Lord Mountjoy, with a guard of horse:
"Nor was this precaution unnecessary; for whenever the latter
was recognized, in city or hamlet, the populace,
notwithstanding their respect for Mountjoy, the hero of the
hour, could not be restrained from stoning Tyrone, and flinging
bitter insults at him. Indeed, throughout the whole journey,
the Welsh and English women were unsparing of their invectives
against the Irish chief. Nor are we to wonder at this; for
there was not one among them but could name some friend or
kinsman whose bones lay buried far away in some wild pass or
glen of Ulster, where the object of their maledictions was more
often victor than vanquished."
{14}
The new king, James the First, was very desirous to see O'Neill,
who had, after his victory at the Yellow Ford, sent an ambassador
to James at Holyrood, offering, if supplied with some money and
munitions, to march upon Dublin, and proclaim _him_ King of
Ireland; but the Scottish king had been too timid to close with
this offer. One may imagine with what mingled feelings O'Neill
once more revisited that London, and Greenwich Palace, where in
his younger days he had been a favored courtier, had talked on
affairs of state with Burleigh, and disported himself with Sir
Christopher Hatton, "the dancing chancellor." The author
describes his reception at court:
"Nothing, indeed, could have been more gracious than the
reception which the king gave those distinguished Irishmen; and
so marked was the royal courtesy to both, that it stirred the
bile of Sir John Harington, who speaks of it thus: 'I have
lived to see that damnable rebel, Tyrone, brought to England
honored and well-liked. 'Oh! what is there that does not prove
the inconstancy of worldly matters? How I did labor after that
knave's destruction! I adventured perils by sea and land, was
near starving, eat horse-flesh in Munster, and all to quell
that man, who now smileth in peace at those who did hazard
their lives to destroy him. And now doth Tyrone dare us, old
commanders, with his presence and protection!'"
Returning to Ireland, "restored in blood," O'Neill lived as he
best could, in his new and strange character of an earl, infested
by spies upon all his movements. "Notice is taken," says
Attorney-General Davies, "of every person that is able to do
either good or hurt. It is known not only how they live and what
they do, but it is foreseen what they purpose or intend to do;
insomuch, as Tyrone has been heard to complain that he had so
many eyes over him, that he could not drink a full carouse of
sack, but the state was advertised thereof a few hours
thereafter." [Footnote 15]
[Footnote 15: Sir John Davies's Historical Tracts.]
The author has taken great pains to ascertain the real nature of
those dark intrigues against O'Neill and O'Donnell, which
resulted four or five years after in the timely escape of those
two "earls" from the toils of their enemies--the only measure
that could save them from the fate of Sir William Wallace and of
Shane O'Neill. O'Neill found himself embroiled in endless
law-suits; with Montgomery, Bishop of Derry; with Usher,
Archbishop of Armagh, who each claimed a large slice of his
estates; with the traitor O'Cahan, his own former Uriaght, or
sub-chief, who entered into the conspiracy against him, seduced
by the promises of Montgomery and the Lord-Deputy Chichester. The
truth was, that the "undertaking" English of the north coveted
his wide domains, and could not comprehend how a rebellious
O'Neill could possibly be allowed to possess broad lands in fee,
which they wanted for themselves. Fr. Meehan has cast more light
upon these wicked machinations than any previous writer had the
means and authorities for; and it now appears plain that the
chief agent of these base plots was Christopher St. Laurence, the
twenty-second baron of Howth, and one of the ancestors of the
noble house of that title, now gloriously flourishing amongst the
Irish nobility.
{15}
Fr. Meehan's researches have brought home to this noble caitiff
the famous anonymous letter dropped in the Castle-Yard of Dublin,
and also a detailed deposition, shamelessly setting forth his own
long-continued espionage, and on the faith of conversations with
several persons, charging Tyrone, Lord Mountgarrett, Sir Theobald
Burke, and others, with a plot to bring in the Spaniards, and to
take by surprise the Castle of Dublin. O'Neill knew nothing, at
the time, of the conspiracy against him; but had a very shrewd
suspicion that the Lord-Deputy Chichester and the northern
Anglican bishops were resolved to have his blood, in order to get
his estate confiscated. One of the McGuires, who was himself in
danger from these machinations, escaped to the continent. The
author says:
"Meanwhile, Cuconnaught Maguire, growing weary of his
impoverished condition, and longing to be rid of vexations he
could no longer bear, contrived, about the middle of May, 1607,
to make his escape from one of the northern ports to Ostend,
whence he lost no time in proceeding to Brussels, where Lord
Henry O'Neill was then quartered with his Irish regiment. The
latter presented him at the court of the archdukes, who
received him kindly, and evinced deep sympathy for their Irish
coreligionists, and especially the northern earls, with whose
wrongs they were thoroughly conversant, through Florence Conry,
fathers Cusack and Stanihurst. Father Conry, it would appear,
informed Maguire that King James would certainly arrest Tyrone,
if he went to London; and Maguire, on hearing this, despatched
a trusty messenger to the earls to put them on their guard, and
then set about providing means for carrying them off the Irish
shores. The influence of Lord Henry with the archdukes procured
him a donation of 7000 crowns, [Footnote 16] with which he
purchased, at Rouen, a vessel of fourscore tons, mounting
sixteen cast pieces of ordnance, manned by marines in disguise,
and freighted with a cargo of salt. From Rouen the vessel
proceeded to Dunkirk, under command of one John Bath, a
merchant of Drogheda, and lay there, waiting instructions from
Ireland."
[Footnote 16: The archdukes were greatly indebted to O'Neill,
who gave ample employment to the queen's troops in Ireland
during the war in the Netherlands, and thus prevented the
English from aiding, as they wished, the revolted provinces.]
This Bath, on his arrival in Ireland, at once sought both O'Neill
and O'Donnell, and informed them, on sure information procured by
Lord Henry O'Neill, Hugh's son, that they would both be certainly
arrested, and at the same time placed at their service McGuire's
ship, which he commanded. It needed great tact and coolness on
the part of O'Neill to conceal from the Lord-Deputy his intention
of departure. But at last--
"At midnight, on that ever-memorable 14th of September, 1607,
they spread all sail, and made for the open sea, intending,
however, to land on the island of Aran, off the coast of
Donegal, to provide themselves with more water and fuel.
"Those who were now sailing away from their ancient patrimonies
were, Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, with his countess, Catharina, and
their three sons, Hugh, John, and Bernard. With them also went
Art Oge, 'young Arthur,' son of Cormac, Tyrone's brother;
Fadorcha, son of Con, the earl's nephew; Hugh Oge, son of
Brian, brother of Tyrone, and many more of their faithful
clansmen. Those accompanying Earl Rory were Cathbar, or Caffar,
his brother; Nuala, his sister, wife of the traitor, Nial
Garve; Hugh, the earl's son, wanting three weeks of being one
year old; Rosa, daughter of Sir John O'Doherty, sister of Sir
Cahir, and wife of Cathbar, with her son, Hugh, aged two years
and three months; the son of his brother, Donel Oge; Naghtan,
son of Calvagh, or Charles O'Donel, with many others of their
trusted friends and followers. 'A distinguished crew,' observe
the four masters, 'was this for one ship; for it is certain
that the sea never carried, and that the winds never wafted,
from the Irish shores, individuals more illustrious or noble in
genealogy, or more renowned for deeds of valor, prowess, and
high achievements.' Ah! with what tearful eyes and torn hearts
did they gaze on the fast receding shores, from which they were
forced to fly for the sake of all they held dearest! 'The
entire number of souls on board this small vessel,' says
O'Keenan, in his narrative, 'was ninety-nine, having little
sea-store, and being otherwise miserably accommodated.' It was,
indeed, the first great exodus of the Irish nobles and gentry,
to be followed, alas! by many another, caused, in great
measure, by a similar system of cruel and exceptional
legislation."
{16}
There is a most interesting account of their stormy voyage in
that small vessel; but after much hardship and danger, they made
the port of Havre, and went up the River Seine to the ancient
city of Rouen. The English ambassador at the court of Henry the
Fourth of France, had the assurance to demand of the French
government to arrest the refugees, but received a short answer:
"Writing to Lord Shrewsbury, October 12th, 1607, Salisbury
alludes to O'Neill's voyage thus: 'He was shrewdly tossed at sea,
and met contrary winds for Spain. The English ambassador wishing
Henry to stay them, had for his answer, _France is free_.'"
(P. 123.)
From Normandy the party proceeded to Flanders, where they were
received by the archdukes with the highest distinction ever shown
to sovereign princes and their _suite_. At Brussels O'Neill
met his son, the Lord Henry, then commanding a regiment of Irish
for the archdukes, and also another young O'Neill, destined to do
great things in his generation, namely, Hugh's nephew, Owen Roe.
Our author thus introduces him:
"Even at the risk of interrupting O'Keenan's narrative, we may
observe that none of these Irish exiles could have foreseen
that a little boy, with auburn ringlets, then in their company,
would one day win renown by defending that same city of Arras
against two of the ablest marshals of France. Nevertheless,
such was the case; for, thirty-three years afterward, Owen Roe
O'Neill, son of Art, and nephew to the Earl of Tyrone, with his
regiment of Irish, maintained the place against Chatillon and
Meillarie, till he had to make a most honorable capitulation."
[Footnote 17]
[Footnote 17: August, 1640. See Hericourt's Sieges d'Arras.]
And the same Owen Roe, still later, in the Irish wars of King
Charles's day, fought and won the bloody battle of Benburb
against the Scottish Presbyterian army, and trampled their blue
banner on the banks of that same Blackwater which had seen the
glorious victories of the Red Hand. From Brussels the fugitives
had an intention of proceeding to Spain, but were diverted from
that purpose by the archdukes, and they finally set out for Rome.
The narrative of their journey across the Alps is exceedingly
interesting; and on their arrival at Milan, they were welcomed
with high honors by the Spanish governor, the Conde de Fuentes,
and by the nobility of the province; but it need hardly be said
that, in all their movements, they were closely watched by
British spies; and every attention shown to them was the subject
of violent remonstrance on the part of English ambassadors.
Father Meehan gives us the letter of Lord Cornwallis, then
ambassador at Madrid, to the lords of the privy council,
expressing his loyal disgust at the splendid hospitalities of the
Governor of Milan:
"'_To the lords of the privy council_.
"'Having lately gathered, amongst the Irish here, that the
fugitive earls have been in Milan, and _there much
feasted_ by the Conde _de Fuentes_, I expostulated it
with the secretary of state, who answered that they had not yet
had any understanding of their being there; that the Conde de
Fuentes was not a man disposed to such largess as to entertain
strangers in any costly manner at his own charge; and that sure
he was he could not expect any allowance from hence where there
was intended no _receipt, countenance,_ or _comfort_
to any of that condition. I sent sithence by Cottington, my
secretary, concerning one _Mack Ogg_, lately come hither,
as I have been advised, to solicit for these people; which was,
that as I hoped they would have no participation with the
principals, whose crimes had now been made so notorious in
their own countries, being both, upon public trial, condemned,
and he of _Tyrone_, as I heard, _of thirteen several
murders_; so I likewise assured myself that, in their own
wisdoms, they would not hold it fit his majesty here should
give harbor or ear to any of their ministers, and especially to
that of Mack Ogg, who could not be supposed but to have had a
hand in their traitorous purposes; _having been the man and
the means, in person,_ to withdraw them by sea out of their
own countries, in such undutiful and suspicious manner. That
myself was, in a matter of that nature, solicitous only in
regard of my own earnest desire that nothing might escape this
state whereby their intentions might be held different from
their professions. That for these fugitives, being now out of
their retreats, _weak in purse_, and _people condemned
and contemned_ by those of their own nation, and such as
could not but daily expect the heavy hand of God's justice for
their so many unnatural and detestable crimes, both of late and
heretofore committed, for _my own particular I made no more
account of them than of so many fleas_; neither did the
king, my master, otherwise esteem them than as men reprobated
both of God and the world, for their _fa??norous actions_
toward others, and inexcusable ingratitude to himself."
[Transcriber's Note: The word "fa??norous" is illegible.]
{17}
The author gives a minute and graphic narrative of the journey of
the "earls" through Italy, and their entrance into the Eternal
City, where they were affectionately received by Pope Paul V.,
who assigned them a palace for their dwelling:
"The time at which the Irish princes entered Rome was one of
more than usual festivity; for, on the Thursday preceding
Trinity Sunday, the pope solemnly canonized Sa Francesca
Romana, in the basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican. Rome was
then crowded by distinguished strangers from all parts of the
known world, each vieing with the other to secure fitting
places to witness the grand ceremonial. But of them all, none
were so honored as O'Neill, O'Donel, their ladies and
followers; for the pope gave orders that tribunes, especially
reserved for them, should be erected right under the dome.
This, indeed, was a signal mark of his Holiness's respect for
his guests, greater than which he could not exhibit. Among the
spectators were many English; and we can readily conceive how
much they were piqued at seeing O'Neill [Footnote 18] and the
earl thus honored by the supreme head of the church."
[Footnote 18: Throughout his narrative, O'Keenan styles
O'Neill according to his Gaelic title, and calls O'Donel
_the earl_. O'Keenan was not sufficiently anglicized in
accent or otherwise to respect the law which forbade the
assumption of the old Irish designation peculiar to the
Prince of Tyrone.]
And now began the long series of negotiations with the King of
Spain and the other Catholic powers, which were to enable the
"earls" to make a descent upon Ireland, reconquer their heritage,
and liberate their unfortunate people from the bondage and
oppression they were now enduring at the hands of King James's
"undertaking" planters. O'Neill had written a formal diplomatic
letter to King James, recounting the various plots and treasons
which had been practised against him by His Majesty's servants in
Ireland, demanding back his ancient inheritance, and announcing
that, in default of compliance, he would hold himself at liberty
to go back to Ireland, with a sufficient force to free his
country. This _ultimatum_ took no effect. The pope and the
King of Spain, though they treated him with high respect, and
awarded him a handsome pension, were slow to give the material
aid that was needed; and in the year 1608, his comrade Rory
(Rudraigh): O'Donnell, called Earl of Tyrconnell, died. Says
Father Meehan:
"During his illness he was piously tended by Rosa, daughter of
O'Dogherty, his brother's wife, the Princess O'Neill, and
Florence Conry, who had performed the same kind offices for
Hugh Roe O'Donel in Simancas. On the 27th July, 1608, he
received the last sacraments, and on the morning following
surrendered his soul to God. 'Sorrowful it was,' say the
Donegal, annalists, 'to contemplate his early eclipse, for he
was a generous and hospitable lord, to whom the patrimony of
his ancestors seemed nothing for his feasting and spending.'"
Soon after died O'Neill's son Hugh, whom the English called Baron
of Dungannon. O'Donnell's brother Caffar (Cathbar) died about the
same time, and the old chieftain was now left nearly alone to
carry on his almost hopeless negotiations.
{18}
The Irish exiles in Spain, when they heard of the death of the
two O'Donnells and young O'Neill, wore mourning publicly, to the
utter disgust of Lord Cornwallis, the English ambassador. He
remonstrated with the King of Spain against suffering so indecent
an exhibition, but received no satisfaction in that quarter; and
he wrote thereon, says Father Meehan:
"'The agent of the Irish fugitives in this city has presumed to
walk its streets, followed by two pages, and four others of his
countrymen, in black weeds--a sign that they are no unwelcome
guests here.' This was bad enough; but the news he supplied in
another letter was still worse, for he says: 'The Spanish court
had become the staple of the fugitive ware, since it allows
Tyrone a pension of six hundred crowns a month; Tyrconnel's
brother's widow, one of two hundred crowns a month; and his
brother's wife, one of the same sum.'"
If the British government could only have got hold of those
mourners in their "black weeds," within its own jurisdiction,
they would undoubtedly have been prosecuted and punished, like
the men who lately attended a funeral in Dublin. Nothing can be
more provoking to a government, sometimes, than public mourning
for its victims. Indeed, the Russian authorities in Warsaw have
been several times so exasperated by the sight of the citizens
all clothed in black, mourning for a crowd of innocent people,
cut down and ridden over by the cavalry in the streets, as to
feel compelled to issue instructions to the police to drag every
vestige of black apparel from every man, and every woman, and
child in the public thoroughfares, and to close up every shop or
store which should dare to keep any black fabric for sale. But in
cases where this kind of provocation is perpetrated in some
foreign country, and under the protection of its laws, then your
insulted government must only bear the affront as it best can.
The author next proceeds, with the aid of letters in the State
Paper Office, to narrate the various projects and speculations of
O'Neill and his friends, with a view to the invasion of their
native country; with all which projects and speculations the
British government was made fully acquainted by means of its
spies and diplomatic agents. England and Spain were just then at
peace, and one main hope of the exiles was that a breach might
take place between them. Our author says:
"Withal, it would appear that England had not then a very firm
reliance on the good faith of Spain. Indeed, Turnbull's
despatches show this to have been the case; and as for O'Neill,
there is every reason to suppose that he calculated on some
such lucky rupture, and that Philip would then have an
opportunity of retrieving the disaster of Kinsale, by sending a
flotilla to the coast of Ulster, where the native population
would rally to the standard of their attainted chieftain, and
drive the new settlers back to England or Scotland--anywhere
from off the face of his ancient patrimony. Yielding to these
apprehensions, James instructed his minister at the court of
the archdukes to redouble his vigilance, and make frequent
reports of the movements of the Irish troops in their
Highnesses' pay, and, above all, to certify to him the names of
the Irish officers on whom the court of Spain bestowed special
marks of its consideration. In fact, from the middle of 1614
till the close of the following year, Turnbull's correspondence
is wholly devoted to these points, so much so, that the English
cabinet had not only intelligence of Tyrone's designs, but
ample information concerning all those who were suspected of
countenancing them. Nothing could surpass the minister's
susceptibility on this subject; for if we were to believe
himself, no Catholic functionary visited the court of Brussels
without impressing on their Highnesses the expediency, as well
as duty, of aiding the banished earl and his coreligionists in
Ireland."
{19}
At last, in January, 1615, O'Neill resolved to undertake the
enterprise himself, some Catholic noblemen in Italy and Belgium
engaging to furnish him with funds. He was to quit Rome by a
certain day; but, like all his other projects, this was speedily
communicated to Trumbull, who lost no time in making it known to
the English cabinet. He did not leave Rome as he intended; but
two months later:
"The Belgian agent sent another dispatch to the king, informing
him 'that O'Neill hath sent from Rome two of his instruments
into Ireland, called Crone and Conor, with order to stir up
factions and seditions in that kingdom, where, in Waterford
alone, there are no less than thirty-six Jesuits.'"
Next we find the same vigilant English minister apprising his
government that O'Neill was about "to have some of his countrymen
employed at sea in ships of war, _as pirates_, with
commission to take all vessels," etc. In truth, it was for
England a genuine "Fenian" alarm, this constantly menacing
attitude of the veteran warrior of the Blackwater; a "Fenian"
alarm, alas! of two hundred and fifty years ago. And how many
there have been since! There was also the same eager impatience
for action, the same maddening thought that the work must be done
at once or Ireland was lost for ever. A certain physician, who
attended O'Neill in this year, 1615, writes to a friend in
London, giving him, as a sample of his patient's conversation and
manner, the following anecdote:
"Though a man would think that he is an old man by sight--no,
he is lusty and strong, and well able to travel; for a month
ago, at evening, when his frere [Footnote 19] and his gentlemen
were all with him, they were talking of England and Ireland,
and he drew out his sword. 'His majesty,' said he, 'thinks that
I am not strong. I would he that hates me most in England were
with me to see whether I am strong or no.' Those that were by
said, 'We would we were with forty thousand pounds of money in
Ireland, to see what we should do.' Whereon Tyrone remarked,
'If I be not in Ireland within these two years, _I will never
desire more to look for it._'"
[Footnote 19: F. Chamberlaine, O.S.F.]
So thought Sarsfield when he fled with the "Wild-geese" almost a
century later--if they could not return with a reenforcement of
French within one year, within two years, there was an end of
Ireland. So thought Wolfe Tone, after still another century, as
he was gnawing his own heart in Paris at the fatal delay, and
crying, "Hell! hell! If _that_ expedition did not sail at
that moment, Ireland was subdued and lost for ever and ever." It
is natural that the eager spirits of each generation of Irishmen
should be in haste to see the great work done in their own day.
But divine Providence is in no haste, and will not be hurried.
Beyond all doubt, there is a destiny and a work in store for this
Irish race, so wonderfully preserved through sore trials, and in
spite of repeated persistent efforts to extirpate it utterly. It
has a strong hold upon life, and a potent individual character.
It will neither perish from the face of the earth nor forget a
single tradition or aspiration, nor part with its ancient
religious faith. It not only does not _attorn_ to the
dominant English sentiment and character, but seems, on the
contrary, to become more antagonistic, and to cherish that
antagonism.
And it is very notable that this desperate mutual repulsion
between England and Ireland does not date from the "Reformation,"
nor does it altogether depend upon religious differences. It is
true that the acceptance of the new religion by England and its
rejection by the Irish furnished the former with a new pretext
and a convenient machinery for oppression and plunder. But two
centuries before this, Hugh O'Neill's time--and when the English
were as Catholic as the Irish--we find his ancestor, Donal
O'Neill, in his famous letter to Pope John XXII., describing the
relations of the two races in language which is still appropriate
at this day: "All hope of peace between us is completely
destroyed; for such is their pride, such is their excessive lust
of dominion, such our ardent desire to shake off this
insupportable yoke, and recover the inheritance which they have
so unjustly usurped, that as there never was, so there never will
be, any sincere coalition between them and us; nor is it possible
there should in this life; for we entertain a certain natural
enmity against each other, flowing from mutual malignity,
descending by inheritance from father to son, and spreading from
generation to generation."
{20}
The aged Prince of Ulster never saw his native land again. In the
following year, 1616, he became blind and, some weeks after,
having received the last rites of the church, he died at the
Salviati palace at Rome.
His history from first to last is a striking and remarkable one.
In the "religious" wars of the period, he was a conspicuous
figure; and Henry the Fourth of France called him the third
soldier of his age--he, Henry, being the first. But English
historians of the past and present century have made it a rule to
say nothing of him and of his great battles. They seem to desire
that the name of the Yellow Ford should be blotted out of
history. But once upon a time O'Neill occupied some attention in
England. Spenser and Bacon wrote anxious treatises to suggest the
best method of crushing him. Shakespeare delighted his audience
at the "Globe" theatre by triumphant anticipations of the return
of Lord Essex after destroying the abhorred O'Neill--
"Were now the general of our gracious empress (As, in good
time, he may) from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broached
on his sword. How many would the peaceful city quit. To welcome
him?"
Camden, in his _Queen Elizabeth_, has given to the Irish war
at least its due rank in the events of the time; and Fynes
Moryson tells us that "the general voyce was of Tyrone amongst
the English after the defeat of Blackwater, as of Hannibal among
the Romans after the defeat of Cannae." Mr. Hume, though he tells
us nothing of O'Neill's splendid victories over the English, yet
incidentally mentions that "in the year 1599 the queen spent six
hundred thousand pounds in six months in the service of Ireland;
and Sir Robert Cecil affirmed that in ten years Ireland cost her
three million four hundred thousand pounds," which would be about
sixty millions of pounds sterling in money of the present day. So
well, however, has the memory of all this been suppressed, that
even an educated Englishman at this time, if you mentioned to him
the great battle of the Yellow Ford would not at all understand
to what event you were alluding; so that one is not at all
astonished to find that Mr. Motley, in his voluminous book
expressly devoted to the religious wars of Europe in those days,
and especially the reign of Elizabeth, not only ignores that
transaction altogether, but does not so much as know O'Neill's
name. When he does once undertake to name him, he calls him not
Hugh O'Neill, but "Shanes MacNeil." (_History of United
Netherlands_, vol. iv. p. 94.)
{21}
The Irish, however, still cherish his name and keep his memory
green. The peasantry yet tell that strange legend of a troop of
the great chiefs lancers all lying in tranced sleep in a cave
under the royal hill of Aileagh, each holding his horse's bridle
in his hand, and waiting for the spell to be removed that will
set them free to strike a blow for their country; and when a man
once penetrated into the cave, and saw the sleepers in their
ancient mail, one of them lifted his head and asked. _Is the
time come?_ To the educated and reflective Irish, also, that
cardinal epoch of Irish history, in which O'Neill was the chief
figure, has of late become a subject of more zealous study than
it ever was before; and these will heartily thank the
accomplished author of the present work for the clear light he
has thrown upon one strange and painful episode in his country's
annals.
--------
The Cross.
In all ages, and among all nations, important events have been
commemorated and transmitted to future generations by significant
symbols. These mute symbols have served to represent the great
leading ideas and characteristics of nations, communities,
societies, and schools of religion, philosophy, morals, and
politics. Entire histories have been treasured up for ages in
these simple and inanimate emblems. In thousands of instances
they have served to call to mind the stirring events of a
generation, the glories of a great nation, epochs in human
progress, or the rise and fall of false religions, false
philosophies, and false systems of all descriptions. Each symbol
comprises a language and a history of its own, which can be
comprehended at a glance by the most ignorant of those whom it
addresses. As the ideas which they represent pertain, for the
most part, to affairs of the highest magnitude, they have always
been regarded with respect and veneration.
When the legions of the Caesars were achieving the conquest of a
world, their emblem of nationality and glory, and their
inspiration in battle, was the Roman flag emblazoned with the
Roman eagles. In the midst of the fiercest contests, a simple
glance at the national symbol would fire the heart of the soldier
with patrotic ardor, and often turn the tide of battle in his
favor. As he looked upon his flag, the Roman soldier beheld the
greatness and glory of his country, with himself as a constituent
element of all this greatness, and his heart and hand were nerved
with Herculean strength to meet the foe. In the eagles which
floated amid the din of battle, he read the history of the
empire, with her conquests, her riches, her power, her grandeur,
and her Caesar; and he cheerfully gave his life for the ideas
thus evoked.
The Saracen, as he marched out to battle, beheld the crescent of
his prophet, and was willing to die for his cause. As the
crescent waves before him, his imagination pictures the prophet
beckoning him on to battle, to conquest, to proselytism, and to
the sensual joys of paradise, and his courage rises, his blood
boils, and his cimeter leaps from its scabbard. No danger, no
fatigue, no privation daunts or deters him so long as he beholds
the emblem of his religion and his race. He loves and venerates
the silent symbol for the associations it calls to mind.
{22}
Napoleon I., with his battalions, traversed the continent of
Europe, dictating terms to kings and emperors; and finally
marshalled his victorious forces around the pyramids of Egypt.
During this triumphal march, his most potent auxiliaries were the
eagles of France draped in their tri-colored plumage. At the
bridge of Lodi, when the French hosts shrank back appalled from
the carnage caused by the terrific fire of the Austrian, Napoleon
raised aloft the emblem of France before the eyes of his
panic-stricken veterans. In an instant every heart was nerved,
and amidst storms of balls and the shrieks of the wounded and
dying, the bridge was carried and the day was won. The eagles of
the first Caesars seemed to have alighted upon the tri-colored
flags of the modern Caesar. Whether in the midst of the deadly
snows of Russia, or of the burning sands of Egypt, or of the
towering summits of the Alps, the great talisman which led the
way and gave inspiration to the soldier, was the national symbol.
It spoke to them of home, of kindred, friends, and of the glory
of France; and they were willing to risk all for the ideas thus
inspired.
How often has the tide of battle been turned in favor of England,
both on land and sea, by raising the symbol of England, and the
war-cry of St. George and the Dragon, in the thickest of the
fight! How often, in the midst of battle and slaughter, has the
drooping spirit of the Celt been roused to fierce enthusiasm and
determination by a sight of his loved national emblem, the
shamrock!
What true American can regard his own national symbol without
emotion, love, and veneration! Whether he beholds it unfurled
upon the battle-field, upon the ocean, or in a foreign land, he
reads in every star and every stripe a history of his native
land--of her struggles, her glories, and her future destiny.
Under its shadow the soldier is a braver man, the statesman a
better patriot, the citizen a truer loyalist, and the American
traveller in foreign lands more proud of his nationality.
We might cite instances _ad infinitum_; but we have adduced
a sufficient number for illustration. What is the signification
and the utility of these symbols? At the birth of nations, it has
always been the custom to devise some common symbol around which
the people could rally as a type of nationality. On all important
occasions, both in peace and in war, this common emblem is always
in the midst of the people, to remind them of the past, to
inspire them in the present, and to render them hopeful in the
future. It is associated with all their public events, their
victories, their defeats, their joys, their sorrows, their
glories, their progress, their power and greatness. Is it, then,
strange that it should be regarded with love, respect, and
veneration? Is it strange that a sight of their mute talisman in
the midst of battle should stir the soul of the soldier to its
very depths, or that the heart of the patriot should swell with
emotion and stern resolve when the honor or welfare of his
country is in danger, or that the citizen should have a higher
appreciation of the dignity and destiny of man, or that the
individual should always associate it with his love of country,
his pride of the past, his aspirations of the present, his hopes
of the future, in a word, with his nationality?
{23}
The man who has no love of father-land in his soul, who does not
love and respect the emblem of his country's glory, is fit only
for stratagems, conspiracies, and bloody tumults and disorders.
Such a man can only be regarded as an enemy of his race; and will
be frowned upon by the wise, the good, and the humane.
The emblems we have thus far alluded to refer to the worldly
affairs of men, to matters of state, of government, and national
prosperity. We now propose to refer briefly to the highest of all
symbols--the symbol of symbols--the emblem of emblems--to one
which relates to the temporal and eternal welfare of the entire
human race, the holy cross. What is its signification and
utility? What associations does it call to mind? It tells us of
the Incarnate God sent to earth to give mankind a new law, to set
them an example of a perfect life, to teach them those higher
virtues and graces which fit them for happiness here and
hereafter, and then to suffer and to die an ignominious death to
atone for the sins of man. It calls up all the dread
circumstances connected with the last days of our blessed Saviour
when on earth. It brings to mind his betrayal by Judas, his
arraignment before Pontius Pilate, his condemnation, his march to
the place of execution with the cross upon his blessed shoulders,
amidst the insults, the scoffs, the scourgings, the crowning with
thorns, and other indignities of a Jewish and pagan rabble. It
presents before us his ascent to the scaffold, his bloody
transfixion between two thieves, his dreadful agony, his bloody
sweat, his wounds, his slow and agonizing death. For whom, and
for what, has the omnipotent Redeemer suffered these ignominies,
these agonies, this cruel death? For all mankind, as an atonement
of their sins. With his almighty power he could have summoned
around him legions of destroying angels, who could have crushed
to powder his persecutors; or with his mighty breath he could
have consigned them to instant annihilation. But his love and
tenderness for man was infinite; and he mercifully refrained from
employing the power which he possessed to their injury. How vast
this condescension, this love, this devotion to mortals under
such provocations!
Since the date of the crucifixion, the cross, with the image of
our blessed Lord attached thereto, has been universally
recognized as the chief symbol of Christianity. In the days of
the apostles and their immediate successors it was their
ever-present memento, friend, solace, badge, and emblem of faith.
Recent discoveries in the catacombs of Rome have brought to light
the rude altars of the first Christians, always stamped with and
designated by the sign of the cross. When these early Christians
were hunted down like wild beasts, and driven by the sanguinary
pagans into the most secret recesses of the earth to escape
martyrdom, the holy cross ever accompanied them, ever symbolized
their faith, ever served as a beacon of light, and a
rallying-point for the persecuted followers of Jesus of Nazareth.
Whenever the missionaries of the church have abandoned country
and friends, taken their lives in their hands, and penetrated
into the remotest wilds of the savage, in order to "preach the
Gospel to every creature," the holy cross, with its divine
associations, has always led the way, beckoning them on in their
great life-work of love, mercy, and Christianity.
{24}
Often have these devoted men met the martyr's fate; but they have
died in holy triumph, with smiles and prayers on their lips, with
their eyes fixed on the sacred cross, and their souls on heaven.
If a nation's flag has been able to stir the soul of the soldier
to deeds of noble daring amid the excitement of battle, the cross
of Christ has been able, not less often, to fire the soul of the
lone missionary with holy love and zeal in the midst of the
savage wilderness. If, with flag in hand, the soldier has rushed
to the cannon's mouth, and laid down his life to win a battle, no
less frequently has the missionary, holding aloft the sacred
cross, rushed to the desert places of the earth, where barbarism,
pestilence, famine, cruelties, sufferings, and danger of
martyrdom encompass him on every side. The soldier fights his
battles under the eyes of his countrymen, cheered on by
applauding comrades, by martial music, and by hopes of speedy
preferment; but the Christian missionary fights alone, surrounded
by wild foes, far from home and friends, with no hope of temporal
reward, and where, if he is killed or dies a natural death, he
may be devoured by wild beasts, or remain uncoffined, unburied,
and unrecognized.
Statesmen, philosophers, warriors, and citizens of all ranks love
and respect their national symbols because they call to mind the
events and circumstances connected with their nationalities.
These sentiments are commended by the whole world. The true
Christian also loves and respects the symbol which calls up
before him the facts and incidents connected with the passion and
crucifixion of the Saviour. Let no one delude himself with the
absurd idea that it is the _material_ of the flag, or of the
cross, which calls forth these powerful emotions, and these high
resolutions. Let no one suppose that _idolatry_ can spring
from the contemplation and reverence of objects which place
before the mind's eye in the form of symbols the important events
of a nation, or the sufferings and death of a God. Let no one
question the motives or the propriety of his fellow man who bows
down in tears, in love, in gratitude and devotion before the
recognized emblems and mementos of great nations, and of godlike
achievements.
The cross of Christ! How vast and solemn the associations
connected with it! How significant its mute appeals to the hearts
of mortals! How eloquent its reference to a Redeemer's love for
sinful man! How glorious its history, and how prolific of
heavenly aspirations!
The cross of Christ! How beautiful, how sublime, how
soul-inspiring the ideas which encompass thee as with a halo of
light and glory! In ages past and gone, in all the lands of
earth, as it has silently ministered to the souls and thoughts of
men, and carried them back to Calvary, what an infinity of
blessings it has conferred! As we gaze at the Lamb of God, nailed
to the cross, how sad and tender the memories which pass before
the mind! Every wound of the precious body, every expression of
the godlike features, calls up some act of divine love and mercy!
Silently, sadly, solemnly, the holy cross has borne its sacred
burden to all nations, through long ages of culture and light, of
darkness and ignorance, of civilization and barbarism--a pioneer
and potent agent in all good works--a talisman and solace for the
poor and oppressed, as well as for the rich and powerful, a
beacon of heavenly light, and a rallying-point for all
Christendom!
{25}
In the dark ages, when Christianity and barbarism struggled for
the mastery of Europe, the latter achieved a physical triumph;
but spiritually the cross of Christ prevailed, and the barbarian
conquerors became Christian converts. When nations, communities,
or individuals have been bowed down with calamities and sorrows,
rays of hope and comfort have always shone from the holy cross.
However poor, unfortunate, wicked, degraded, and despised an
individual may be, the cross of Christ still beams upon him with
compassion and mercy.
Languages may be oral or printed, or pictorial or symbolical. By
the two first, ideas are conveyed _seriatim_ and slowly; by
the last _en masse_, and instantaneously. Through the first
the mind gradually grasps historical events; through the last
they are presented like a living tableaux, complete in all their
details. In the latter category stands the holy cross. It speaks
a language to the Christian which appeals instantly to every
faculty of his mind and soul. It strikes those chords of memory
which take him back to Calvary, to the jeering rabble of Pilate,
to the mocking minions of Caiphas, to the spectacle of a
scourged, tortured, and crucified Redeemer.
Who can look upon this blessed emblem unmoved? Who can regard
this mute memento of the Son of God in behalf of fallen man
without sentiments of love, respect, and veneration? May God in
his mercy grant that every one may properly appreciate this great
emblem of Christianity--the symbol of symbols. The likeness of a
crucified Redeemer sanctifies and hallows it. Not only at the
name, but at the semblance of Jesus, let every knee bend in
adoration.
--------
{26}
The Story of a Conscript.
Translated From The French.
XIX.
In the midst of such thoughts, day broke. Nothing was stirring
yet, and Zébédé said:
"What a chance for us, if the enemy should fear to attack us!"
The officers spoke of an armistice; but suddenly about nine
o'clock, our couriers came galloping in, crying that the enemy
was moving his whole line down upon us, and directly after we
heard cannon on our right, along the Elster. We were already
under arms, and set out across the fields toward the Partha to
return to Schoenfeld. The battle had begun.
On the hills overlooking the river, two or three divisions, with
batteries in the intervals, and cannon at the flanks, awaited the
enemy's approach; beyond, over the points of their bayonets, we
could see the Prussians, the Swedes, and the Russians, advancing
on all sides in deep, never-ending masses. Shortly after, we took
our place in line, between two hills, and then we saw five or six
thousand Prussians crossing the river, and all together shouting,
"_Vaterland! Vaterland!_" This caused a tremendous tumult,
like that of clouds of rooks flying north.
At the same instant the musketry opened from both sides of the
river. The valley through which the Partha flows was filled with
smoke; the Prussians were already upon us--we could see their
furious eyes and wild looks; they seemed like savage beasts
rushing down on us. Then but one shout of "_Vive
l'Empereur!_" smote the sky and we dashed forward. The shock
was terrible; thousands of bayonets crossed; we drove them back,
were ourselves driven back; muskets were clubbed; the opposing
ranks were confounded and mingled in one mass; the fallen were
trampled upon, while the thunder of artillery, the whistling of
bullets, and the thick white smoke enclosing all, made the valley
seem the pit of hell, peopled by contending demons.
Despair urged us, and the wish to revenge our deaths before
yielding up our lives. The pride of boasting that they once
defeated Napoleon incited the Prussians; for they are the
proudest of men, and their victories at Gross-Beeren and Katzbach
had made them fools. But the river swept away them and their
pride! Three times they crossed and rushed at us. We were indeed
forced back by the shock of their numbers, and how they shouted
then! They seemed to wish to devour us. Their officers, waving
their swords in the air, cried, "_Vorwärtz! Vorwärtz!_" and
all advanced like a wall with the greatest courage--that we
cannot deny. Our cannon opened huge gaps in their lines, still
they pressed on; but at the top of the hill we charged again, and
drove them to the river. We would have massacred them to a man,
were it not for one of their batteries before Mockern, which
enfiladed us and forced us to give up the pursuit.
{27}
This lasted until two o'clock; half our officers were killed or
wounded; the Colonel, Lorain, was among the first, and the
Commandant, Gémeau, the latter; all along the river side were
heaps of dead, or wounded men crawling away from the struggle.
Some, furious, would rise to their knees to fire a last shot or
deliver a final bayonet-thrust. The river was almost choked with
dead, but no one thought of the bodies as they swept by in the
current. The lines contending in the fight reached from
Schoenfeld to Grossdorf.
At length the Swedes and Prussians ceased their attacks, and
started farther up the river to turn our position, and masses of
Russians came to occupy the places they had left.
The Russians formed in two columns, and descended to the valley,
with shouldered arms, in admirable order. Twice they assailed us
with the greatest bravery, but without uttering wild beasts'
cries, like the Prussians. Their calvary attempted to carry the
old bridge above Schoenfeld, and the cannonade increased. On all
sides, as far as sight could reach, we saw only the enemy massing
their forces, and when we had repulsed one of their columns,
another of fresh men took its place. The fight had ever to be
fought over again.
Between two and three o'clock, we learned that the Swedes and the
Prussian cavalry had crossed the river above Grossdorf, and were
about to take us in the rear, a mode which pleased them much
better than fighting face to face. Marshal Ney immediately
changed front, throwing his right wing to the rear. Our division
still remained supported on Schoenfeld, but all the others
retired from the Partha, to stretch along the plain, and the
entire army formed but one line around Leipsic.
The Russians, behind the road to Mockern, prepared for a third
attack toward three o'clock; our officers were making new
dispositions to receive them; when a sort of shudder ran from one
end of our lines to the other, and in a few moments all knew that
the sixteen thousand Saxons and the Wurtemberg calvary, in our
very centre, had passed over to the enemy, and that on their way
they had the infamy to turn the forty guns they carried with
them, on their old brothers-in-arms of Durutte's division.
This treason, instead of discouraging us, so added to our fury,
that if we had been allowed, we would have crossed the river to
massacre them. They say that they were defending their country.
It is false! They had only to have left us on the Duben road; why
did they not go then! They might have done like the Bavarians and
quitted us before the battle; they might have remained
neutral--might have refused to serve; but they deserted us only
because fortune was against us. If they knew we were going to
win, they would have continued our very good friends, so that
they might have their share of the spoil or glory--as after Jena
and Friedland. This is what every one thought, and it is why
those Saxons are, and will ever remain, traitors; not only did
they abandon their friends in distress, but they murdered them,
to make a welcome with the enemy. God is just, and so great was
their new allies' scorn of them, that they divided half Saxony
between themselves after the battle. The French might well laugh
at Prussian, Austrian, and Russian gratitude.
From the time of this desertion until evening, it was a war of
vengeance that we carried on; the allies might crush us by
numbers, but they should pay dearly for their victory!
{28}
At nightfall, while two thousand pieces of artillery were
thundering together, we were attacked for the seventh time in
Schoenfeld. The Russians on one side and the Prussians on the
other poured in upon us. We defended every house. In every lane
the walls crumbled beneath the bullets, and roofs fell in on
every side. There were now no shouts as at the beginning of the
battle; all were cool and pale with rage. The officers had
collected scattered muskets and cartridge-boxes, and now loaded
and fired like the men. We defended the gardens, too, and the
cemetery, where we had bivouacked, until there were more dead
above than beneath the soil. Every inch of earth cost a life.
It was night when Marshal Ney brought up a reenforcement--whence
I knew not. It was what remained of Ricard's division and
Sonham's second. The _débris_ of our regiments united, and
hurled the Russians to the other side of the old bridge, which no
longer had a rail, that having been swept away by the shot. Six
twelve-pounders were posted on the bridge, and maintained a fire
for one hour longer. The remainder of the battalion, and of some
others in our rear, supported the guns; and I remember how their
flashes lit up the forms of men and horses, heaped beneath the
dark arches. The sight lasted only a moment, but it was a
horrible moment indeed.
At half-past seven, masses of cavalry advanced on our left, and
we saw them whirling about two large squares, which slowly
retired. Then we received orders to retreat. Not more than two or
three thousand men remained at Schoenfeld with the six pieces of
artillery. We reached Kohlgarten without being pursued, and were
to bivouac around Rendnitz. Zébédé was yet living, and unwounded;
and, as we marched on, listening to the cannonade, which
continued, despite the darkness, along the Elster, he said
suddenly:
"How is it that we are here, Joseph, when so many others that
stood by our side are dead? It seems as if we bore charmed lives,
and could not die."
I made no reply.
"Think you there was ever before such a battle?" he asked. "No,
it cannot be. It is impossible."
It was indeed a battle of giants. From six in the morning until
seven in the evening we had held our own against three hundred
and sixty thousand men, without, at night, having lost an inch;
and, nevertheless, we were but a hundred and thirty thousand. God
keep me from speaking ill of the Germans. They were fighting for
the independence of their country. But they might do better than
celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic every year.
There is not much to boast of in fighting an enemy three to one.
Approaching Rendnitz, we marched over heaps of dead. At every
step we encountered dismounted cannon, broken caissons, and trees
cut down by shot. There a division of the Young Guard and the
_grenadiers-à-cheval_, led by Napoleon himself, had repulsed
the Swedes who were advancing into the breach made by the
treachery of the Saxons. Two or three burning houses lit up the
scene. The _grenadiers-à-cheval_ were yet at Rendnitz, but
crowds of disbanded troops were passing up and down the street.
No rations had been distributed, and all were seeking something
to eat and drink.
As we defiled by a large house, we saw behind the wall of a court
two _cantinières_, who were giving the soldiers drink from
their wagons.
{29}
There were there chasseurs, cuirassiers, lancers, hussars,
infantry of the line and of the guard, all mingled together, with
torn uniforms, broken shakos, and plumeless helmets, and all
seemingly famished.
Two or three dragoons stood on the wall, near a pot of burning
pitch, their arms crossed on their long white cloaks, covered
from head to foot with blood.
Zébédé, without speaking, pushed me with his elbow, and we
entered the court, while the others pursued their way. It took us
full a quarter of an hour to reach one of the wagons. I held up a
crown of six livres, and the _cantinières_, kneeling behind
her cask, handed me a great glass of brandy and a piece of white
bread, at the same time taking my money. I drank, and passed the
glass to Zébédé, who emptied it. We had as much difficulty in
getting out of the crowd as in entering. Hard, famished faces and
cavernous eyes were on all sides of us. No one moved willingly.
Each thought only of himself, and cared not for his neighbor.
They had escaped a thousand deaths to-day only to dare a thousand
more to-morrow. Well might they mutter, "Every one for himself,
and God £or all."
As we went through the village street, Zébédé said, "You have
bread?"
"Yes."
I broke it in two, and gave him half. We began to eat, at the
same time hastening on, and had taken our places in the ranks
before any one noticed our absence. The firing yet continued at a
distance. At midnight we arrived at the long promenades which
border the Pleisse, and halted under the old leafless lindens,
and stacked arms. A long line of fires flickered in the fog as
far as Randstadt; and, when the flames burnt high, they threw a
glare on groups of Polish lancers, lines of horses, cannon, and
wagons, while, at intervals beyond, sentinels stood like statues
in the mist. A heavy, hollow sound arose from the city, and
mingled with the rolling of our trains over the bridge at
Lindenau. It was the beginning of the retreat.
XX.
What occurred until daybreak I know not. Baggage, wounded, and
prisoners doubtless continued to crowd across the bridge. But
then a terrific shock woke us all. We started up, thinking the
enemy were on us, when two officers of hussars came galloping in
with the news that a powder-wagon had exploded by accident in the
grand avenue of Randstadt, at the river-side. The dark, red smoke
rolled to the sky, and slowly disappeared, while the old houses
continued to shake as if an earthquake were rolling by.
Quiet was soon restored. Some lay down again to sleep; but it was
growing lighter every minute; and, glancing toward the river, I
saw our troops extending until lost in distance along the five
bridges of the Elster and Pleisse, which follow one after the
other, and make, so to speak, but one. Thousands of men must
defile over this bridge, and, of necessity, take time in doing
so. And the idea struck every one that it would have been much
better to have thrown several bridges across the two rivers; for
at any instant the enemy might attack us, and then retreat would
become difficult indeed. But the emperor had forgotten to give
the order, and no one dared do anything without orders. Not a
marshal of France would have dared to take it upon himself to say
that two bridges were better than one. To such a point had the
terrible discipline of Napoleon reduced those old captains!
{30}
They obeyed like machines, and disturbed themselves about
nothing. Such was their fear of displeasing their master. As I
gazed at the thousands of artillerymen and baggage-guards
swarming over the bridge, and saw the tall bear-skin shakos of
the Old Guard, immovable on the hill of Lindenau, on the other
side of the river--as I thought they were fairly on the way to
France, how I longed to be in their place!
But I felt bitterly, indeed, when, about seven o'clock, three
wagons came to distribute provisions and ammunition among us, and
it became evident that we were to be the rear-guard. In spite of
my hunger, I felt like throwing my bread into the river. A few
moments after, two squadrons of Polish lancers appeared coming up
the bank, and behind them five or six generals, Poniatowski among
the number. He was a man of about fifty, tall, slight, and with a
melancholy expression. He passed without looking at us. General
Fournier, who now commanded our brigade, spurred from among his
staff, and cried:
"By file left!"
I never so felt my heart sink. I would have sold my life for two
farthings; but nevertheless, we had to move on, and turn our
backs to the bridge.
We soon arrived at a place called Hinterthor--an old gate on the
road to Caunewitz. To the right and left stretched ancient
ramparts, and behind rows of houses. We were posted in covered
roads, near this gate, which the sappers had strongly barricaded.
A few worm-eaten palisades served us for intrenchments, and, on
all the roads before us, the enemy were advancing. This time they
wore white coats and flat caps, with a raised piece in front, on
which we could see the two-headed eagle of the _kreutzers_.
Old Pinto, who recognized them at once, cried:
"Those fellows are the _Kaiserliks_! We have beaten them
fifty times since 1793; but if the father of Marie Louise had a
heart, they would be with us now instead of against us."
For some moments a cannonade had been going on at the other side
of the city, where Blücher was attacking the faubourg of Halle.
Soon after, the firing stretched along to the right; it was
Bernadotte attacking the faubourg of Kohlgartenthor, and at the
same time the first shells of the Austrians fell among us. They
formed their columns of attack on the Caunewitz road, and poured
down on us from all sides. Nevertheless, we held our own until
about ten o'clock, and then were forced back to the old ramparts,
through the breaches of which the Kaiserliks pursued us under the
cross-fire of the fourteenth and twenty-ninth of the line. The
poor Austrians were not inspired with the fury of the Prussians,
but nevertheless, showed a true courage; for, in half an hour,
they had won the ramparts, and although, from all the neighboring
windows, we kept up a deadly fire, we could not force them back.
Six months before, it would have horrified me to think of men
being thus slaughtered, but now I was as insensible as any old
soldier, and the death of one man or of a hundred would not cost
me a thought.
Until this time all had gone well, but how were we to get out of
the houses? The enemy held every avenue, and it seemed that we
would be caught like foxes in their holes, and I thought it not
unlikely that the Austrians, in revenge for the loss we had
inflicted upon them, might put us to the point of the bayonet.
{31}
Meditating thus, I ran back to a room, where a dozen of us yet
remained, and there I saw Sergeant Pinto leaning against the
wall, his arms hanging by his sides, and his face white as paper.
He had just received a bullet in the breast; but the old man's
warrior soul was still strong within him, as he cried:
"Defend yourselves, conscripts! Defend yourselves! Show the
Kaiserliks that a French soldier is yet worth four of them! Ah!
the villains!"
We heard the sound of blows on the door below thundering like
cannon-shots. We still kept up our fire, but hopelessly, when we
heard the clatter of hoofs without. The firing ceased, and we saw
through the smoke four squadrons of lancers dashing like a troop
of lions through the midst of the Austrians. All yielded before
them. The Kaiserliks fled, but the long, blue lancers, with their
red pennons, were swifter than they, and many a white coat was
pierced from behind. The lancers were Poles--the most terrible
warriors I have ever seen, and, to speak truth, our friends and
our brothers. _They_ never turned from us in our hour of
need; they gave us the last drop of their blood. And what have we
done for their unhappy country? When I think of our ingratitude,
my heart bleeds.
The Poles rescued us. Seeing them so proud and brave, we rushed
out, attacking the Austrians with the bayonet, and driving them
into the trenches. We were for the time victorious, but it was
time to beat a retreat, for the enemy were already filling
Leipsic; the gates of Halle and Grimma were forced, and that of
Peters-Thau delivered up by our friends the Badeners and our
other friends the Saxons. Soldiers, citizens, and students kept
up a fire from the windows on our retiring troops.
We had only time to re-form and take the road along the Pleisse;
the lancers awaited us there; we defiled behind them, and, as the
Austrians again pressed around us, they charged once more to
drive them back. What brave fellows and magnificent horsemen were
those Poles!
The division, reduced from fifteen to eight thousand men, retired
step by step before fifty thousand foes, and not without often
turning and replying to the Austrian fire.
We neared the bridge--with what joy, I need not say. But it was
no easy task to reach it, for infantry and horse crowded the
whole width of the avenue, and arrived from all the neighboring
roads, until the crowd formed an impenetrable mass, which
advanced slowly, with groans and smothered cries, which might be
heard at a distance of half a mile, despite the rattling of
musketry. Woe to those upon the other side of the bridge! they
were forced into the water and no one stretched a hand to save
them. In the middle, men and even horses were carried along with
the crowd; they had no need of making any exertion of their own.
But how were we to get there? The enemy were advancing nearer and
nearer every moment. It is true we had stationed a few cannon so
as to sweep the principal approaches, and some troops yet
remained in line to repulse their attacks; but they had guns to
sweep the bridge, and those who remained behind must receive
their whole fire. This accounted for the press on the bridge.
At two or three hundred paces from the crowd, the idea of rushing
forward and throwing myself into the midst entered my mind; but
Captain Vidal, Lieutenant Bretonville, and other old officers
said:
"Shoot down the first man that leaves the ranks!"
{32}
It was horrible to be so near safety, and yet unable to escape.
This was between eleven and twelve o'clock. The fusilade grew
nearer on the right and left, and a few bullets began to whistle
over our heads. From the side of Halle we saw the Prussians rush
out pell-mell with our own soldiers. Terrible cries now arose
from the bridge. Cavalry, to make way for themselves, sabred the
infantry, who replied with the bayonet. It was a general _sauve
qui peut_. At every step of the crowd, some one fell from the
bridge, and, trying to regain his place, dragged five or six with
him into the water.
In the midst of this horrible confusion, this pandemonium of
shouts, cries, groans, musket-shots, and sabre-strokes, a crash
like a peal of thunder was heard, and the first arch of the
bridge rose upward into the air with all upon it. Hundreds of
wretches were torn to pieces, and hundreds of others crushed
beneath the falling ruins.
A sapper had blown up the arch!
At this sight, the cry of treason rang from mouth to mouth. "We
are lost--betrayed!" was now the cry on all sides. The tumult was
fearful. Some, in the rage of despair, turned upon the enemy like
wild beasts at bay, thinking only of vengeance; others broke
their arms, cursing heaven and earth for their misfortunes.
Mounted officers and generals dashed into the river to cross it
by swimming, and many soldiers followed them without taking time
to throw off their knapsacks. The thought that the last hope of
safety was gone, and nothing now remained but to be massacred,
made men mad. I had seen the Partha choked with dead bodies the
day before, but this scene was a thousand times more horrible;
drowning wretches dragging down those who happened to be near
them; shrieks and yells of rage, or for help; a broad river
concealed by a mass of heads and struggling arms.
Captain Vidal, who, by his coolness and steady eye, had hitherto
kept us to our duty, even Captain Vidal now appeared discouraged.
He thrust his sabre into the scabbard, and cried, with a strange
laugh:
"The game is up! Let us be gone!"
I touched his arm; he looked sadly and kindly at me.
"What do you wish, my child?" he asked.
"Captain," said I, "I was four months in the hospital at Leipsic;
I have bathed in the Elster, and I know a ford."
"Where?"
"Ten minutes' march above the bridge."
He drew his sabre at once from its sheath, and shouted:
"Follow me, _mes enfants!_ and you, Bertha, lead."
The entire battalion, which did not now number more than two
hundred men, followed; a hundred others, who saw us start
confidently forward, joined us. I recognized the road which
Zunnier and I had traversed so often in July, when the ground was
covered with flowers. The enemy fired on us, but we did not
reply. I entered the water first; Captain Vidal next, then the
others, two abreast. It reached our shoulders, for the river was
swollen by the autumn rains; but we crossed, notwithstanding,
without the loss of a man. We pressed onward across the fields,
and soon reached the little wooden bridge at Schleissig, and
thence turned to Lindenau.
We marched silently, turning from time to time to gaze on the
other side of the Elster, where the battle still raged in the
streets of Leipsic.
{33}
The furious shouts, and the deep boom of cannon still reached our
ears; and it was only when, about two o'clock, we overtook the
long column which stretched, till lost in distance, on the road
to Erfurt, that the sounds of conflict were lost in the roll of
wagons and artillery trains.
XXI.
Hitherto I have described the grandeur of war--battles glorious
to France, notwithstanding our mistakes and misfortunes. When we
were fighting all Europe alone, always one against two, and often
one to three; when we finally succumbed, not through the courage
of our foes, but borne down by treason and the weight of numbers,
we had no reason to blush for our defeat, and the victors have
little reason to exult in it. It is not numbers that makes the
glory of a people or an army--it is virtue and bravery.
But now I must relate the horrors of retreat. It is said that
confidence gives strength, and this is especially true of the
French. While they advanced in full hope of victory, they were
united; the will of their chiefs was their only law; they knew
that they could succeed only by strict observance of discipline.
But when driven back, no one had confidence save in himself, and
commands were forgotten. Then these men--once so brave and so
proud, who marched so gayly to the fight--scattered to right and
left; sometimes fleeing alone, sometimes in groups. Then those
who, a little while before trembled at their approach, grew bold;
they came on, first timidly, but, meeting no resistance, became
insolent. Then they would swoop down and carry off three or four
laggards at a time, as I have seen crows swoop upon a fallen
horse, which they did not dare approach while he could yet remain
on his feet.
I have seen miserable Cossacks--very beggars, with nothing but
old rags hanging around them; an old cap of tattered skin over
their ears; unshorn beards, covered with vermin; mounted on old
worn-out horses, without saddles, and with only a piece of rope
by way of stirrups, an old rusty pistol all their fire-arms, and
a nail at the end of a pole for a lance; I have seen these
wretches, who resembled sallow and decrepit Jews more than
soldiers, stop ten, fifteen, twenty of our men, and lead them off
like sheep.
And the tall, lank peasants, who, a few months before, trembled
if we only looked at them--I have seen them arrogantly repulse
old soldiers--cuirassiers, artillerymen, dragoons who had fought
through the Spanish war, men who could have crushed them with a
blow of their fist; I have seen these peasants insist that they
had no bread to sell, while the odor of the oven arose on all
sides of us; that they had no wine, no beer, when we heard
glasses clinking to right and left. And no one dared punish them;
no one dared take what he wanted from the wretches who laughed to
see us in such straits, for each one was retreating on his own
account; we had no leaders, no discipline, and they could easily
out-number us.
And to hunger, misery, weariness, and fever, the horrors of an
approaching winter were added. The rain never ceased falling from
the gray sky, and the winds pierced us to the bones. How could
poor beardless conscripts, mere shadows, fleshless and worn out,
endure all this? They perished by thousands; their bodies covered
the roads. The terrible _typhus_ pursued us.
{34}
Some said it was a plague, engendered by the dead not being
buried deep enough; others, that it was the consequence of
sufferings that required more than human strength to bear. I know
not how this may be, but the villages of Alsace and Lorraine, to
which we brought it, will long remember their sufferings; of a
hundred attacked by it, not more than ten or twelve, at the most,
recovered.
At length, on the evening of the nineteenth, we bivouacked at
Lutzen, where our regiments re-formed as best they might. The
next day we skirmished with the Westphalians, and at Erfurt we
received new shoes and uniforms. Five or six disbanded companies
joined our battalion--nearly all conscripts. Our new coats and
shoes were miles too large for us; but they were warm. The
Cossacks reconnoitred us from a distance. Our hussars would drive
them off; but they returned the moment pursuit was relaxed. Many
of our men went pillaging in the night, and were absent at
roll-call, and the sentries received orders to shoot all who
attempted to leave their bivouacs.
I had had the fever ever since we left Leipsic; it increased day
by day, and I became so weak that I could scarcely rise in the
mornings to follow the march. Zébédé looked sadly at me, and
sometimes said:
"Courage, Joseph! We will soon be at home!"
These words reanimated me; I felt my face flush.
"Yes, yes!" I said; "we will soon be home; I must see home once
more!"
The tears forced themselves to my eyes. Zébédé carried my
knapsack when I was tired, and continued:
"Lean on my arm. We are getting nearer every day, now, Joseph. A
few dozen leagues are nothing."
My heart beat more bravely, but my strength was gone. I could no
longer carry my musket; it was heavy as lead. I could not eat; my
knees trembled beneath me; still I did not despair, but kept
murmuring to myself: "This is nothing. When you see the spire of
Phalsbourg, your fever will leave you. You will have good air,
and Catharine will nurse you. All will yet be well!"
Others, no worse than I, fell by the roadside, but still I toiled
on; when, near Folde, we learned that fifty thousand Bavarians
were posted in the forests through which we were to pass, for the
purpose of cutting off our retreat. This was my finishing stroke,
for I knew I could no longer load, fire, or defend myself with
the bayonet. I felt that all my sufferings to get so far toward
home were useless. Nevertheless, I made an effort when we were
ordered to march, and tried to rise.
"Come, come, Joseph!" said Zébédé; "courage!"
But I could not move, and lay sobbing like a child.
"Come! stand up!" he said.
"I cannot. O God! I cannot!"
I clutched his arm. Tears streamed down his face. He tried to
lift me, but he was too weak. I held fast to him, crying:
"Zébédé, do not abandon me!"
Captain Vidal approached, and gazed sadly on me:
"Cheer up, my lad," said he; "the ambulances will be along in
half an hour."
But I knew what that meant, and I drew Zébédé closer to me. He
embraced me, and I whispered in his ear:
"Kiss Catharine for me--for my last farewell. Tell her that I
died thinking of God's holy mother and of her."
"Yes, yes!" he sobbed. "My poor Joseph!"
{35}
I could cling to him no longer. He placed me on the ground, and
ran away without turning his head. The column departed, and I
gazed at it as one who sees his last hope fading from his eyes.
The last of the battalion disappeared over the ridge of a hill. I
closed my eyes. An hour passed, or perhaps a longer time, when
the boom of cannon startled me, and I saw a division of the guard
pass at a quick step with artillery and wagons. Seeing some sick
in the wagons, I cried wistfully:
"Take me! Take me!"
But no one listened; still they kept on, while the thunder of
artillery grew louder and louder. More than ten thousand men,
calvary and infantry, passed me, but I had no longer strength to
call out to them.
At last the long line ended; I saw knapsacks and shakos disappear
behind the hill, and I lay down to sleep for ever, when once more
I was aroused by the rolling of five or six pieces of artillery
along the road. The cannoneers sat sabre in hand, and behind came
the caissons. I hoped no more from these than from the others,
when suddenly I perceived a tall, lean, red-bearded veteran
mounted beside one of the pieces, and bearing the cross upon his
breast. It was my old friend Zunnier, my old comrade of Leipsic.
He was passing without seeing me, when I cried, with all the
strength that remained to me:
"Christian! Christian!"
He heard me in spite of the noise of the guns; stopped, and
turned round.
"Christian!" I cried, "take pity on me!"
He saw me lying at the foot of a tree, and came to me with a pale
face and staring eyes:
"What! Is it you, my poor Joseph?" cried he, springing from his
horse.
He lifted me in his arms as if I were an infant, and shouted to
the men who were driving the last wagon:
"Halt!"
Then embracing me, he placed me in it, my head upon a knapsack. I
saw too that he wrapped great cavalry cloak around my feet, as he
cried:
"Forward! Forward! It is growing warm yonder!"
I remember no more, but I have a faint impression of hearing
again the sound of heavy guns and rattle of musketry, mingled
with shouts and commands. Branches of tall pines seemed to pass
between me and the sky through the night; but all this might have
been a dream. But that day, behind Solmunster, in the woods of
Hanau, we had a battle with the Bavarians, and routed them.
XXII.
On the fifteenth of January, 1814, two months and a half after
the battle of Hanau, I awoke in a good bed, and at the end of a
little, well-warmed room; and gazing at the rafters over my head,
then at the little windows, where the frost had spread its silver
sheen, I exclaimed, "It is winter!" At the same time I heard the
crash of artillery and the crackling of a fire, and turning over
on my bed in a few moments, I saw seated at its side a pale young
woman, with her arms folded, and I recognized--Catharine! I
recognized, too, the room where I had spent so many Sundays
before going to the wars. But the thunder of the cannon made me
think I was dreaming. I gazed for a long while at Catharine, who
seemed more beautiful than ever, and the question rose, "Where is
Aunt Grédel? am I at home once more? God grant that this be not a
dream!"
At last I took courage and called softly:
{36}
"Catharine!" And she, turning her head, cried:
"Joseph! Do you know me?"
"Yes," I replied, holding out my hand.
She approached, trembling and sobbing, when again and again the
cannon thundered.
"What are those shots I hear?" I cried.
"The guns of Phalsbourg," she answered. "The city is besieged."
"Phalsbourg besieged! The enemy in France!"
I could speak no more. Thus had so much suffering, so many tears,
so many thousands of lives gone for nothing--ay, worse than
nothing, for the foe was at our homes. For an hour I could think
of nothing else; and even now, old and gray-haired as I am, the
thought fills me with bitterness; Yes, we old men have seen the
German, the Russian, the Swede, the Spaniard, the Englishman,
masters of France, garrisoning our cities, taking whatever suited
them from our fortresses, insulting our soldiers, changing our
flag, and dividing among themselves, not only our conquests since
1804, but even those of the republic. These were the fruits of
ten years of glory!
But let us not speak of these things. They will tell us that
after Lutzen and Bautzen, the enemy offered to leave us Belgium,
part of Holland, all the left bank of the Rhine as far as Bâle,
with Savoy and the kingdom of Italy; and that the emperor refused
to accept these conditions, brilliant as they were, because he
placed the satisfaction of his own pride before the happiness of
France!
But to return to my story. For two weeks after the battle of
Hanau, thousands of wagons, filled with wounded, crowded the road
from Strasbourg to Nancy, and passed through Phalsbourg. Not one
in the sad _cortége_ escaped the eyes of Aunt Grédel and
Catharine, and thousands of fathers and mothers sought among them
for their children. The third day Catharine found me among a heap
of other wretches, with sunken cheeks and glaring eyes--dying of
hunger.
She knew me at once, but Aunt Grédel gazed long before she cried,
"Yes! it is he! It is Joseph!"
They took me home. Why should I describe my long illness, my
shrieks for water, my almost miraculous escape from what seemed
certain death? Let it suffice the kind reader to know that, six
months after, Catharine and I were married; that Monsieur Goulden
gave me half his business, and that we lived together as happy as
birds.
The wars were ended, but the Bourbons had been taught nothing by
their misfortunes, and the emperor only awaited the moment of
vengeance. But here let us rest. If people of sense tell me that
I have done well in relating my campaign of 1813--that my story
may show youth the vanity of military glory, and prove that no
man can gain happiness save by peace, liberty, and labor--then I
will take up my pen once more, and give you the story of
Waterloo!
-------
{37}
The Episcopalian Crisis.
In medical science, a _crisis_ is the change in a disease
which indicates its event, the recovery or death of the patient,
and is, therefore, the critical moment. Webster also defines
crisis to be "the decisive state of things, or the point of time
when an affair is arrived at its height, and must soon terminate,
or suffer a material change." No attentive observer of the
religious movements which are going on around us can fail to see
that the Episcopalians are, at this moment, in an interesting
condition. On the one hand, the ritualists are pushing ceremonial
and doctrine much further than even the elasticity of
Protestantism will permit, while, on the other, the
low-churchmen, alarmed at the demonstrations of their opponents,
are renewing the battle-cries of the Reformation, lest the labors
of Luther and Henry VIII, should be frustrated in their
communion. There will soon be the clashing of arms and the
interchange of active hostilities. As Catholics, we cannot but
take a deep interest in the result, and we hope that all the
combatants will, before going into battle, understand the cause
for which they are fighting, and then faithfully fight to victory
or death. An honest man should always stand by his colors, or at
least openly renounce them. The object of this article is, to
give a diagnosis of the present state of Episcopalianism, and, as
far as our abilities and kind intentions go, to prescribe a
remedy for the patient.
In the first place, we find that there is a feverish excitement
about the trial of the Rev. Mr. Tyng, who, in violation of a
canon, has had the hardihood to preach in a church of another
denomination than his own. The canon under which he is arraigned
seems to present a case against the reverend gentleman, and from
the complexion of the court appointed to try him he has little
chance of escaping conviction. But we imagine that even his
condemnation will be nominal, and appear more as the assertion of
a power than the exercise of it. The low-churchmen are quite
excited by the discussion of the points involved in the trial. A
writer in _The Episcopalian_ considers the affair as the
most important in the annals of American ecclesiastical history.
Whatever the verdict of the court may be, it is of little account
compared to the angry feelings and bitter divisions among
brethren which will flow from it, and become more or less
permanent. Certainly, there is more bitterness among the
different sections of Episcopalians, than there is between them
and other Protestants. Low-churchmen love their Protestant
brethren, with the one exception of high-churchmen, whom they
regard with a natural antipathy. High-churchmen love none but
themselves, not the sects whom they eschew, nor the Catholic
Church, which eschews them. The trial of Rev. Mr. Tyng is not the
cause of the angry feelings which are now manifested, but merely
the occasion for bringing them out. They exist before any
occasion, and are found in the very heart of the Episcopal
Church. If the Rev. Dr. Dix had preached in a Methodist place of
worship, it is quite possible that no one would have made
objection; but Mr. Tyng, being on the other side of the house,
cannot have the same liberty.
{38}
The truth is, that all rules have a wide interpretation, and are
to be explained by custom, and here the defendant in the exciting
trial has the advantage. Even if he should be condemned, he will
be likely to have nearly all the popular sympathy, and so will
become the greater man, as a kind of martyr for his principles.
The occasion, however, has brought out a bold manifesto from the
high-churchmen, which is to be understood as their platform,
around which they seek to rally their friends. Sixty-four
clergymen have joined together to form what they call "The
American Church Union," to which they invite all Episcopalians
who sympathize with them. They declare that the evils of the time
are fearful, "the young are growing up without education, the
community is familiarized with scenes of lewdness, the marriage
contract is made contemptible, the ordinances of the Gospel of
Christ are disused, and the public worship of God is neglected."
While thus the torrent of iniquity rages around them, they find
that an evil has arisen within the Episcopal fold, which
threatens the subversion of their whole system. It is nothing
less than the denial of the necessity of ordination of ministers
by bishops. "The right is claimed of preaching anywhere, at
pleasure; ministers of non-Episcopal communities are invited to
preach in our churches; and the intention is announced of
breaking down every barrier between our church and the religious
bodies around her." To counteract this destructive movement, they
associate themselves together, in a union offensive and
defensive. They promise to uphold the laws, the canons, and to
follow the "godly admonitions of the bishops," while they seek
"to maintain unimpaired principles which they have received from
their fathers, Seabury, White, Griswold, Hobart, Doane, and
Wainwright."
While we confess that our sympathies are with the signers of this
pastoral, we frankly avow that it is somewhat vague and, to our
minds, inconsistent. No doctrine whatever is clearly stated,
except that of the necessity of episcopal ordination. The creeds
are referred to, and the (undisputed?) general councils; but no
explanation of their teaching is given. And then, he will be a
_wise_ man who can follow, at the same time, in the steps of
the fathers whom they name. Seabury, Hobart, and Doane were
high-churchmen in various degrees of altitude; but White and
Griswold were quite on the other side of the fence; while Dr.
Wainwright was generally thought to have been on both sides at
the same time. To us, therefore, he seems the best and most
gentlemanly model for the rising generation of churchmen who
would be "all things to all men." Then, again, he who would
follow the godly admonitions of the bishops must be able to go to
the four points of the compass at the same time. Fancy an
adventurer who would obey the admonitions of Bishops McIlvaine
and Potter, or, at the same time, follow the counsels of Doctors
Coxe and Clark. The convulsions of Mazeppa would be nothing to
the agonies of his mind. No physician could prescribe a remedy
for such a patient. "No man can serve two masters; either he will
hate the one and love the other, or cleave to the one and despise
the other." Why, therefore, in this enlightened day, write
contradictions and talk nonsense?
{39}
Some time ago, twenty-eight bishops made a solemn declaration
against ritualism; "and," says the _Protestant Churchman_,
"one of the gentlemen who has signed this address of the American
Union not only soundly lectured, but held up to scorn and
derision" these prelates, and especially the Boanerges of Western
New York, who, smelling Romanism from afar, vaults like a beaked
bird upon his prey. "O shame!" says the writer we have quoted,
"where is thy blush?"
While thus the armies of the high-churchmen have begun to array
themselves for battle, the bugle sounds loudly from the opposing
camp, and the evangelicals are gathering together in earnest. A
church union is being formed among them, and a writer in the
_Episcopalian_ thus speaks the designs of his party: "Let
this evangelical church union be extended to every diocese and
parish in the land where its principles are approved. The
sacramental system is not the Gospel system, but its direct
antipodes, in which the sacraments are degraded from their true
position of sacred _emblems_, and made to serve as
pack-horses to carry lazy sinners to heaven. I hear hundreds of
ministers and thousands of laymen exclaim, 'Oh! that we had the
power to rescue the church from the hands of those who are
corrupting it!' These will be rejoiced to learn that nothing is
more simple and feasible. How? I reply by saying, what even
high-churchmen will hardly dare to deny, that the church of the
Reformation was eminently an evangelical church, and that the
evangelical portion of the present Episcopal Church constitutes
absolutely all of the real successors of the English Reformed
Church in this country. Ritualists and sacramentarians have no
more right in this communion than avowed Romanists." The
low-churchmen have the decided majority, and thus give letters
dimissory to their offending brethren. "God speed the Church
Union!" says a contributor to the _Protestant Churchman_;
"but let Mr. Hopkins and his friends beware lest they themselves
should be the very first upon whom this discipline shall fall.
Dr. _Guillotine_ experienced the beautiful operation of that
ingenious instrument of death invented by himself. This is a
precedent from which these gentlemen might learn a lesson."
The low-churchmen make a point that, while they prefer the
episcopal form as more scriptural and more conformed to the
primitive system, they do not unchurch other Christian
denominations, and that, in this respect, they follow the
teachings of the founders of the reformed English communion. They
also contend that the right of the church to amend or change its
laws and services is inalienable, and that the time has arrived
when some important changes should be made. Bishop Griswold,
whose "godly admonitions" the Church Union desires to follow,
thus expressed himself: "In the baptismal office are,
unfortunately, some few words which are well known to be more
injurious to the peace and growth of our church than any one
thing that can be named." "Allow me," says the Bishop of Chester,
"to omit or alter fifteen words, and I will reconcile fifteen
thousand dissenters to the church." It appears, also, that an
opinion was expressed by a late presiding bishop of the
Protestant Episcopal Church that the great body of Episcopalians
desire some change in the phraseology of their services, and that
the peace and prosperity of the church require it.
Here, then, the impartial observer can see how the ground lies.
The high-churchmen insist upon Episcopal ordination, and are
determined to resist all changes, while they are, many of them,
disposed to give a Catholic interpretation to the _articles_
and liturgy.
{40}
The low-churchmen oppose them on all these points, and insist
that a Protestant communion ought not to call itself Catholic, or
use words of doubtful meaning; and that the literal sense of the
articles which form their real confession of faith should be
imposed upon all Episcopalians. We have ventured to call this a
crisis because, if there be vitality in either party, there must
come a conflict from which one side must retire defeated, leaving
the field and the spoils of war to the victors. But as this is
not the first crisis which has occurred in the history of
Anglicanism, we opine that the battle will be fought with blank
cartridges, and that, after considerable smoke, it will be found
that nobody is hurt. Then from the unbloody field the combatants
will retire to war with words, and to be greater enemies than
ever. Individual soldiers will lay down their arms to sally in
the direction of Geneva or Rome; but the great Episcopal body
will quietly await another crisis. Yet this condition of a church
which claims (according to some of its members--the Pan-Anglican
Synod, for example) to be a _part_ of the Catholic Church,
is not healthy. In contradictories there cannot be accord, and
one is right and the other is certainly wrong. A careful
diagnosis of the malady of our patient leads us to the following
conclusions: No one is bound to impossibilities, and therefore,
before their own church, the low-churchmen are right on all
points of the controversy, while, before the Christian world,
their opponents are singularly isolated and unfortunate. The
Episcopal Church contains two opposing elements which must ever
war against each other, and, while there are inconsistencies in
both liturgy and articles, the low-churchmen stand upon the only
reasonable ground, and say with truth to their adversaries, that
they who would be sacramentarians ought to go where their system
properly belongs, and where all other things are in harmony with
it. Such, we are sure, will be the judgment of the impartial
observer.
1. The Episcopalians have a right to reform their services
whenever they choose, and are at perfect liberty to agitate the
question. By the constitution of their own church, they have the
power to alter, change, or modify both their liturgy and their
creeds. Did not the Church of England do this on several
occasions? Has not the American Episcopal Church done it also?
Did she not materially alter the prayer-book, leaving out, for
example, both the form of absolution, and also the Athanasian
Creed? That which has been done can surely be done again,
especially in a body which disclaims infallibility, and is,
therefore, sure of nothing, and is ever on all points open to
progress. Here it seems to us that the high-churchmen have no
ground on which to stand. They cannot assert that anything their
church teaches is the voice of God, because she expressly tells
them that she has no authority. They cannot hold any reasonable
theory of ecclesiastical pretensions, because, by doing so, they
would unchurch themselves. A church ought to know its own powers,
if it have any. They may have their own opinions, and press them
as such; but they have no right to lord it over the consciences
of their brethren who disagree with them, as if they (the actual
minority) were the church rather than their more numerous
opponents. Their fathers whose "godly admonitions" they seek to
follow, surely never meant to cast their "incomparable liturgy"
in an iron mould.
{41}
Besides, in sober common sense, all the extravagancies of the
low-churchmen are nothing compared to the doings of the extreme
ritualists, who have so metamorphosed the service that no
uninitiated Episcopalian could ever recognize it. Think of
changing every rubric, and engrafting upon the common prayer the
actual ceremonies and even the words of the Roman missal. We
understand that few of the signers of the union manifesto are
opposed to these advances of ritualism, and that many of them are
ready to hear confessions or celebrate Mass when a good occasion
is offered. With what face, then, can they find fault with their
brethren who exercise their liberty in another direction? And
inasmuch as there is a manifest inconsistency between various
parts of the prayer-book, it would be well for them and for truth
to have their code revised, that the world may know precisely
what they do mean.
2. On the vexed question of Episcopal ordination, we are
convinced that the high-churchmen are wrong, before their own
communion and before the world. The reformers under whose
inspirations the English Church was formed, never intended to
unchurch the religious bodies of the continent with whom they
were in sympathy. The words of the ordinal refer only to the rule
to be adopted in the Anglican body, and do not decide at all the
question of the validity of non-Episcopal orders. The
twenty-third of the thirty-nine articles is so expounded by
Burnet. He says that by common consent a company of Christians
may appoint one of their own members to minister to them in holy
things; for we are sure "that not only those who penned the
articles, but the body of this church for above half an age
after, did, notwithstanding irregularities, acknowledge the
foreign churches, so constituted, to be true churches as to all
the _essentials_ of a church. The article leaves the matter
open for such accidents as had happened, and such as might still
happen. Although their own church had been less forced to go out
of the beaten path than any other, yet they knew that all things
among themselves had not gone according to those rules that ought
to be sacred in regular times. Necessity has no law, and is a law
of itself."
The opinions of Cranmer, and of Barlow, the reported consecrator
of Archbishop Parker, were distinctly Erastian. At a conference
held at Windsor, 1547, Cranmer answers to the question, "Can a
bishop make a priest?" as follows: "A bishop may make a priest,
and so may princes and governors also, by the authority of God
committed to them." Barlow replies, "Bishops have no authority to
make priests without they be authorized by the Christian princes,
and that laymen have other whiles made priests."
To the question, "Whether in the New Testament be required any
consecration of a bishop or priest, or only appointing to the
office be sufficient?" Cranmer answers, "He that is appointed to
be a bishop or priest needeth no consecration by the Scriptures,
for election or appointing thereto is sufficient." Barlow also
expresses the same sentiment. (See Stillingfleet's
_Irenicum_, and Collier, vol. ii. appendix.)
The "judicious" Hooker undoubtedly maintains the true
Episcopalian belief, that ordination by bishops is preferable,
but not of absolute necessity to a church. A very able article in
this Magazine, published September, 1866, (Vol. III. No. 18,)
shows the truth of our view.
{42}
Passages are deduced from a work called _Vox Ecclesiae_,
which contain the high-church position, and admit that in case of
_necessity_ (which is left to the individual to determine)
"orthodox presbyters may ordain." As Archbishop Parker said,
"Extreme necessity in itself implieth dispensation from all
laws." The author of this article, to which we beg leave to refer
our readers, shows plainly that such a doctrine "overthrows the
very idea of apostolical succession, elevates human necessity
above divine law, and legitimates every form of error and
schism."
Before their own communion, therefore, the low-churchmen have
every advantage, as they are consistent with the principles of
the Reformation which brought their church into being. When
Protestants desert their own platform, on what ground can they
logically stand?
Secondly, before the Christian world the high-churchmen occupy a
very unfortunate position. They make assertions which unchurch
themselves, while they separate from their brethren, and aspire
to an ecclesiastical status which they have not, which the whole
world denies to them, and which they can never defend. If the
apostolical succession is necessary to the existence of a church,
then by the verdict of all who hold such a doctrine, they are no
church; for with all their pretensions, they have it not. It has
been shown over and over again, by arguments incontestable, that
the ordination of Archbishop Parker, if indeed it ever took
place, was wholly and entirely invalid. There is not satisfactory
evidence that any ceremony of consecration was observed; there is
no proof whatever that Barlow, the officiating prelate, was ever
ordained; and lastly, the form used (according to the theory of
the high-churchmen) was utterly inadequate to convey valid
orders. What need, then, to argue further with those who will not
see? If any Catholic bishop at this day should venture to
consecrate with the form which they tell us was used in Parker's
case, he would be subject to severe censure, and his act would be
considered totally null and valueless. One would naturally
suppose that the judgment of the Catholic Church on this question
would be held in respect. She has preserved the ancient rite, and
holds the absolute necessity of episcopal ordination; and while
she considers it a sacrilege to reiterate the sacrament of
orders, she reordains, without question and without condition,
every English minister who, coming into her fold, aspires to the
sacred priesthood. The same course has been adopted by what the
Pan-Angelican Synod calls the Eastern Orthodox Church, which no
more regards the Episcopalians as a church than she does the
Methodists or Presbyterians. Is any more evidence required by any
honest mind? If the opinion of the eastern churches is of any
weight, it has been more than once given. Dr. J. J. Overbeck, a
Russian priest, in a recent work on "Catholic Orthodoxy," treats
at some length of the English orders, which he pronounces to be
null. These are among his words:
"1. The _Anglo-Catholic_ fathers, on the point of
apostolical succession and its needfulness, held latitudinarian
views, subversive of the whole fabric of the church.
2. The boasted unity or concord of Anglicans even in essentials
is a specious _illusion_.
3. Anglo-Catholicism is _genuine Protestantism_ decked and
disfigured by Catholic spoils."
"As Parker's consecration was invalid, the apostolic line was
broken off, irremediably broken off."
{43}
"If Rome considered all ordinations by Parker and his
successors, namely, the whole present English episcopate and
clergy, to be invalid, null, and void, and consistently
reordained all those converts who wished and were fit for
orders; the Eastern Church can but imitate her proceedings, as
both, in this point, follow the very same principles. ... The
fact of the reordination is the final and conclusive verdict on
the invalidity of Anglican ordinations. By this fact all
further controversy is broken off and indisputably settled."
We fancy, then, the amusement which the pastoral of the late
Anglican Synod will produce in the Eastern churches, for whose
benefit it has been translated into the Greek language. We would
recommend to the great Patriarchs to send a commission of doctors
to the West, that they may see that _oneness of mind_ of
which the bishops so fervently speak. Then when they see it, we
would like to have them point it out to us, that we may see it
also, and rejoice with them.
It may perhaps appear to some of our readers that our sympathies
are with the low-churchmen and ultra-Protestants of the Episcopal
communion. This is, however, far from being the case. We admire
consistency and cannot accept logical contradictions. The
Protestant ground is something that our reason can comprehend,
though we believe it does away with all revelation and leads
directly to infidelity. But God has furnished us with no mental
powers by which to fathom a system which is neither one thing nor
the other, which wears a Catholic exterior over a Protestant
heart. Such will be the verdict of the world. How long
Anglicanism can last we know not. It has been a kind of half-way
house to the church, and it may occupy this position for a long
time. It seems to us that every honest high-churchman should
become a Catholic at once, when he will find what he wants, not
simply on paper but in life, not in imagination but in reality.
The movement called ritualism is an indication that the grace of
God is stirring up the dry bones; for Anglicanism in itself is
the most lifeless and unspiritual religion we know of. God grant
that the movement may bring forth its proper fruits. We only fear
that when it comes to "leaving all for Christ," to giving up
houses and lands, wives and children, position and preferment,
many will go back, (as we have seen with sorrow,) and be like the
young man in the gospel, who was, at one time, "not far from the
kingdom of heaven." Ritualism is only a yearning after the real
presence of the Incarnate God, for which the redeemed soul longs
even with anguish. "Tears were my meat, day and night, while they
said to me. _Where_ is thy God?" The true heart will find
its Lord only in that one body which is his fulness. Pray, then,
fellow-Catholics, pray for the sincere and true, that they may
have grace to forsake the land of shadows, and come where are the
bright beams of the morning; that ere the night of death overtake
them, they may, like the pure-minded Simeon, see the salvation of
God, and joyfully chant their "_Nunc dimittis_," "Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen
thy salvation."
--------
{44}
Bishop Doyle. [Footnote 20]
[Footnote 20: _The Life, Times, and Correspondence of the Rt.
Rev. Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin_. By W. J.
Fitzpatrick, J. P. 3 vols. 8vo. Boston: P. Donohoe.]
"What can you teach?" "Any thing from A, B, C, to the third book
of Canon Law." "Pray, young man, can you teach and practise
humility?" "I trust I have, at least, the humility to feel that
the more I read the more I see how ignorant I have been, and how
little can, at best, be known." Such were the pithy replies to
the equally condensed questions put by the venerable Dean
Staunton, of Carlow College, to a young Augustinian friar who had
been proposed as candidate for a professorship in that rising
institution. The friar was Father James Doyle, then in his
twenty-seventh year. Erect in stature, austere in features, the
candid earnestness of his mind beaming through his expressive
countenance, which bore the evident traces of studious habits,
and the freedom of his unpretentious manners--all these
qualities, combined in his looks and declared by his language,
immediately enlisted the sympathetic esteem of the dean. Nor was
his youth an obstacle to his acceptance. His appointment to the
position followed, and the six years spent by him in the college
served as a fit preparation for the public career of this eminent
man, the narrative of whose life forms an essential part of the
history of his country for at least fifteen years.
From the valuable work to which reference is made in the note to
this article, we find much to admire in the noble character who
forms the subject of Mr. Fitzpatrick's literary effort. There
must have been placed at his disposal a rich and abundant store
of material from which the biography was compiled. The work
itself, in a literary point of view, is creditable to the
diligence of the author; but at present we shall content
ourselves with an attempt to gather from its comprehensive pages,
and place before our readers, some of the most remarkable events
that distinguished the life and were influenced by the action of
the eminent prelate.
Of respectable and honorably rebellious ancestors, he was born in
New Ross, County of Wexford, in 1786. In an appendix to the work
before us there is a chronological article showing the descent of
the Doyle family from some ancient, royal sept--a portion of
Irish history by no means uncommon--to which we would refer those
who should doubt his original nobility of blood. For us it will
suffice to know that some of his immediate relatives had fallen
for their country and its faith, and that even as far back as
1691, there were few more distinguished than the bold Rapparee
chieftain, "Brigadier Doyle," who was sent from Limerick, by
Sarsfield, to collect men and horses for the Jacobite army.
{45}
Anne Warren, the mother of the future bishop, was a Catholic, but
of Quaker extraction, and the father had died before the child's
birth, so that young Doyle was brought into the world under
circumstances, though not of indigence, still not of superfluity
in worldly goods. But nature richly endowed him; and what
treasures can be sought more desirable than the intrinsic power
of soul which no external change can diminish, and which retains
its richness, independent of the uncertainties of variable
fortune! Nor was his childhood other than obscure, if we may
apply the term to that state which, though humble, was
illustrated by the tender care and enlightened piety of a
Christian mother. His boyhood was not remarkable for those
extraordinary manifestations of genius said to be discovered in
the younger days of great men. No phenomena indicative of unusual
fortune or success in life attended his boyish acts, although
there is a tale of some careless fortune-teller having
prognosticated the high position and distinguished labors which
afterward rendered his name so memorable. At the age of eleven he
ran the risk of being shot for his curiosity in observing, at a
distance, a battle fought between the patriots of the rebellion
and the English forces. His school-days commenced at Rathnavogue,
where a Mr. Grace was conducting a seminary of learning to whose
seats both Catholics and Protestants had equal access. Hitherto
his mother had been his instructor, and there are no impressions
so important or so lasting as those imparted to the infant mind
by the solicitous teaching of a parent. Under her guidance, the
youthful aspirations which inclined his developing reason to the
ecclesiastical state of life, were fostered and encouraged, as
she early perceived that the tendency of his mental faculties
directed in the path of a holy vocation. In the year 1800, she
placed him under the care of an Augustinian friar named Crane,
who soon discovered the talents of the boy through his eagerness
for knowledge, and his intensely studious habits. She died in
1802, leaving him an orphan, but with the prospect of his soon
becoming a member of the Augustinian order, which he entered
three years afterward. Notwithstanding that he entertained a
strong repugnance to the eleemosynary practices of religious
communities of begging from door to door--and this aversion he
ever retained--he still selected a conventual life in preference
to the more public and active labors of a missionary priest. His
respect for the dignity of the priestly office was a
characteristic trait in his life as bishop, and his ideas on the
subject seem to have originated from that natural good taste with
which he had been gifted from his infancy.
The ordeal of the novitiate passed through with fidelity, he made
his vows as member of the order in 1806, in the small thatched
chapel at Grantstown. The marked abilities displayed at this
period induced his superiors to select him to be sent with some
others to the college of their order at Coimbra, in Portugal, a
well-conducted institution, and connected with the celebrated
university of that place. As he was afforded all the ample
opportunities held out to those attending the university
lectures--a privilege accorded only to a few--his mind was
immensely enriched, and what is of still greater importance, his
ideas were enabled to attain a sturdiness of growth and
liberality of expansion which ever afterward distinguished his
writings and speeches. In his subsequent examination before a
committee of both houses of parliament, he testified to the
numerous advantages which were then, as now, derived from a
continental education for the priesthood. In his days, indeed, it
was no longer, as it had been in 1780, felony in a foreign
priest, and high-treason in a native, to teach or practise the
doctrines of the Catholic religion in Ireland. Still, the penal
laws, although relaxed, had left their evil traces long after
their name had ceased to excite terror, even if it occasioned a
thrill of hatred in the breasts of those who had so long been
subjected to the clanking of their fetters.
{46}
It seems somewhat of an anomaly for Protestantism, which was
inaugurated under the plea of freeing and enlightening the human
mind, to sanction the enactment and enforce the execution of laws
directly calculated to crush religious freedom, and make it
criminal to educate the children of the conquered Catholics. It
is, however, but one of the innumerable inconsistencies with
which the histories of nations and of creeds regale us at
intervals.
Whilst young Doyle was deeply engaged in drinking in from the
purest and deepest springs theologic lore, and treasuring up in
his capacious mind the classic and philosophic eloquence of
ancient times, the sound of war disturbed his retirement. A
French invasion overturned the independence of the country, and
so rapid was the advance of Junot that the vessel which bore away
in safety to Brazil the royal family was hastened in its
departure by some shots from the conquering army. The peninsular
war ensued, in which the Portuguese, aided by the English under
Wellington, drove out the irreligious soldiers of the empire. The
enthusiasm which inflamed the minds of the natives was taken up
by the young students, and among them Doyle shouldered his
musket, believing that the best way to prove one's fidelity to
truth and justice is to _act_ when action alone is
effective.
Mr. Fitzpatrick does not explain the short stay made by the
student in the college of Coimbra, as we find him in Ireland, in
1808, preparing for the reception of holy orders. He had
concluded a good course of study, and his natural abilities must
have rendered him fully competent to be admitted to the order of
priesthood, which he received in 1809, in the humble, thatched
chapel of his youthful days. But as there were then, to a greater
extent than at present, existing prejudices against religious
orders in Ireland, he was not only refused faculties, but even
the preparatory examination, by Dr. Ryan, Coadjutor Bishop of
Ferns. The young priest quietly remained in his convent until
called, upon the recommendation of some friends who admired his
talents, to the position of professor in Carlow College. Here he
rendered most important services. Within its walls he spent six
years most studiously occupied, both for his own advancement and
for the benefit of his pupils. The advantage of procuring
positions in seminaries or colleges for young priests of talent
and taste for prolonged study, is easily perceived when we
consider the necessity--more especially at the present day--of
fitting some for the higher duties of their order--the defence
and exposition of Catholic doctrines in a literary manner. Had
the talents of Dr. Doyle received no cultivation more than that
afforded by a superficial knowledge of theology in a rudimentary
course of three years, his life would have passed in obscurity,
and his eminent public services could never have been
successfully accomplished. The light of genius is, indeed, a gift
of nature, but the intensity of its brilliancy depends upon art
and culture. Besides this, his taste for literature excited the
enthusiasm, whilst it encouraged the efforts of the students. His
lectures on eloquence, which had, up to that time, been
considerably neglected among the Irish clergy, served as an
incentive to their ardor in pursuit of that noble science, at the
same time that it furnished his own mind with the inexhaustible
resources which he afterward wielded with such mighty effect.
{47}
We know of similar results having been attained by the late
eminent Cardinal Wiseman whilst rector of the English College at
Rome. The necessity of a learned clergy was scarcely ever felt as
much as at the present day, when men of abilities and cultivation
may be daily encountered, eager and earnest for the truth, but
not ready to admit it upon insufficient or superficial grounds.
This view, entertained by Dr. Doyle whilst in Carlow College, led
him to inculcate the same principles to those around him.
But the scene of his labors changes, and we now approach the
period of his life in which his publications procure for him that
general recognition of power and virtue, hitherto accorded him in
a humbler sphere of duty. By an unprecedented unanimity he was
elected, in 1819, to succeed Dr. Corcoran in the diocese of
Kildare and Leighlin. The selection was more remarkable, as in
those days there were feelings of strong dislike entertained
against members of religious communities, and the subject caused
no slight trouble at Rome. The wise regulations of the church for
the election of bishops were observed in Ireland then, as they
are now. Assembled together, the clergy received the Holy
Eucharist, prayed for light to direct their action, retired in
silence, strengthened and enlightened, to give their voice for
the most fitting subject; and the result showed in this case,
that, as they had the generosity to pass over the bounds of
prejudice, the Holy Ghost guided them in their deliberations. It
was not a little surprising that the choice had fallen upon an
Augustinian friar; but that the dignity should be conferred upon
one so young--he was only thirty-two years of age--and with
such universal satisfaction, went far to prove the high esteem in
which he must have been held. The custom of electing elderly
persons to the episcopal office is generally admitted to have
traditional usage in its favor, although we do not read of our
Lord having regarded age as a qualification in his apostles, and
St. John is believed to have been a mere youth. Innocent III.,
one of the most illustrious popes that ever reigned, was only
thirty-seven years of age when he ascended the chair of St.
Peter. And although the youthful appearance of the new bishop was
made the occasion of adverse criticism in some quarters, he
entered upon his office no less deeply impressed with the truth
of what St. Augustine said of the episcopate, "_Nomen sit
oneris, non honoris_," than if he were bowed down by age.
Mr. Fitzpatrick's work exposes to us many evils that had been
allowed to grow up in the diocese under the inactive government
of some of Bishop Doyle's predecessors. Incompetent persons are
found in every state of life, and many of the miseries by which
society is afflicted arise from faithlessness or incapacity in
incumbents of high positions. Energy and diligence were not
characteristic of those who had gone before him, and abuses that
had been tolerated by negligence, grew into evils which were
magnified by their proximity to the sanctuary. But Bishop Doyle
was one of those faithful ministers who felt the responsibilities
enjoined upon his office, "_quasi pro animabus reddituri
rationem_." Some customs common among the clergy were not much
in accordance with ecclesiastical propriety, and it is not easy
to eradicate what has been allowed to attain a long growth.
{48}
It is true that the penal times had but just ceased, and the
decadence in ecclesiastical discipline brought about by the
dreary night of persecution, was of such magnitude as not to be
quickly remedied. Still, the new bishop had brought with him into
the office a thorough knowledge of the laws of the church, and a
sense of the obligation of carrying these laws into execution
whenever possible. These were the two principal reasons to which
must be ascribed the successful issue of all his measures at
reform. He called the attention of his clergy to the decrees of
the twenty-fourth session of the Council of Trent, with regard to
the reformation of the church, and dwelt upon the penalties to
which he himself should be liable were he to neglect the
enforcement of those wise regulations.
For the decency of public worship, the ornaments and linens of
the altar, and everything connected with the sacred ceremonies of
religion, he had the most scrupulous regard. He instituted
regular visitations in his diocese, as he felt that he could not
be exempted from a sinful negligence in omitting to comply with
the decrees of Trent in this respect. In these visitations he
discovered the sad state to which ecclesiastical discipline had
fallen before his days. In one instance the vestments were found
to be in such an unbecoming state that he tore them asunder.
Returning next year to the same parish, he found the identical
old vestments sewn together and kept in a turf-basket. To prevent
a repetition, he consigned them to the flames, and as the parish
priest was by no means a poor man, the wretched taste displayed
by him was wholly unpardonable.
Hunting was not an unusual occupation with the clergy of those
days. Practices by no means tending to increase the respect of
the people for their pastors, had been allowed to accompany the
marriage and funeral services of country districts, and all these
claimed the diligent reformatory care of the active bishop. The
office of reformer--as the very sound has to some an odious
signification--is not the most envious one in the world, and it
acquires a peculiarly distasteful character from those whose
self-interested conduct may fall under its action. Hence the
young bishop was sometimes accused of rashness in his undertaking
to correct abuses of so long a standing, and the plea was set up
that good and wise men had tolerated them in the past. Nor was he
free from the receipt of letters of complaint, principally,
though not always, from old pastors who found great difficulty in
abandoning habits which their sense of right would not permit
them to justify. They remonstrated with him for carrying out laws
for the execution of which he was responsible. But he kindly
reasoned with them on the necessity which pressed him to be
faithful to his trust; and as he never urged his own feelings or
his own bias as the motive of his action, but always appealed to
the law of the church, he gradually effected the most beneficent
results. He never used harshness, even where it might appear, if
not necessary, at least justifiable, and never was he accused of
disregarding the reasonable explanations of the humblest of his
clergy. Law, not self; justice, not caprice, were the motives
that incited him; and, guided by such principles, he confided the
success of his efforts to God, and thus labored under the
inspiration of the church.
The sacrament of confirmation had been but rarely administered
before his time, and he frequently was affected to tears when,
instead of children to receive it, there were crowds of
gray-haired men and women.
{49}
The education of the young had been much neglected by many parish
priests, whose taste for agricultural pursuits led them to devote
more time to the cultivation of farms than to the instruction of
their people. One rural gentleman insisted that he could well
attend to his flocks of sheep without neglecting his spiritual
flock; but the bishop required that his time should be
exclusively devoted to his ministry. Many justified their
engagement with worldly occupations, or their inattention to
their duties, by pointing to the curate, and, loudly affirming
his energetic zeal, declared him fully competent to direct the
parish, whilst the old man should repose from his labors and
enjoy in ease the fruits of his past services in the vineyard of
the Lord. The persistent labors of the bishop at length produced
that good result ever to be expected from a faithful discharge of
duty. Visitations were regularly conducted throughout his
diocese, and the long-neglected canons of the church were
reestablished, to the great satisfaction of all good priests, as
well as with salutary consequences to the people.
Not less important in their results were the spiritual retreats
which he inaugurated amongst his clergy. The efficient means of
preserving and strengthening the spiritual life of the priesthood
had been long impossible in the times of persecution; but when
this obstacle was removed, his predecessors took no steps to
remedy the ill effects of their omission. One thousand priests
and almost every prelate in Ireland assembled at Carlow, in 1820,
to avail themselves of the advantages of silence and prayer under
the direction of the young bishop, who conducted the religious
exercises. He had been always known as an austere man to himself,
and most conscientiously attentive to even the minor duties of
his ecclesiastical state, and the brilliant manner in which he
guided his attentive hearers through this retreat deeply
impressed them. "These sermons," (he preached three times a day,)
writes Rev. Mr. Delany, "were of an extraordinarily impressive
character. We never heard anything to equal them before or since.
The duties of the ecclesiastical state were never so eloquently
or efficiently expounded. His frequent application and exposition
of the most intricate texts of Scripture amazed and delighted us;
We thought he was inspired. I saw the venerable Archbishop Troy
weep like a child, and raise his hands in thanksgiving. At the
conclusion of the retreat he wept again, and kissed his coadjutor
with more than a brother's affection."
Dr. O'Connell narrates that "for the ten days during which the
retreat lasted. Dr. Doyle knew no rest. His soul was on fire in
the sacred cause. He was determined to reform widely. His falcon
eye sparkled with zeal. The powers of his intellect were applied
to the good work with telling effect. At the close of one of his
most impassioned exhortations, he knelt down on a
_prie-dieu_ immediately before me. The vigorous workings of
his mind, and the intense earnestness of purpose within, affected
even the outward man. Big drops of perspiration stood upon his
neck, and his rochet was almost saturated." The fruits of these
labors were proportionate to their intensity, for the soil was
good, and needed but that cultivation, for want of which it had
long lain fallow. To reform the morals of the people, he knew
that the source of their moral teaching--the priesthood--must be
enlightened and elevated.
{50}
It seems that there can be nothing better calculated to effect a
cordial coöperation of ecclesiastical duties and responsibilities
than that a bishop should thus be willing and capable of teaching
his clergy in learning as well as in devotion; and of impressing,
by propriety of language and dignity of position, those sublime
truths that should be frequently proposed to their consideration.
Another great work undertaken by him was the revival of diocesan
conferences, which had long fallen into desuetude. He ordained
that they should be held regularly, and his own learning was a
safe guarantee of their practical utility. The many intricate
questions of moral theology, as well as local issues with which
the clergy of a well-conducted diocese should be conversant, were
usefully discussed in those assemblies with freedom and decorum.
The general non-observance of statutes and laws, arising
principally from the difficulties of the penal times, called for
more strenuous efforts than would have been otherwise needed. The
severity of penal laws against the practices of religion, or the
administration of the sacraments, diminished the number of
priests, who were obliged to hide themselves in the mountains,
and minister by stealth and under fear of death in solitary
places to the spiritual necessities of their flocks. This
accounts for the statute which was passed in a synod of Kildare
in 1614, allowing lay persons to administer the Blessed Eucharist
to each other in cases of necessity. But those times had passed,
and Dr. Doyle believed that what was then justifiably permitted
could be so no longer without sin on his part. Conscientious
fulfilment of duty alone directed him in these many salutary
reforms introduced by him for the welfare of his people; and we
dwell upon them with greater pleasure, as they evince the true
character of a bishop. These, and many other beneficent changes
introduced by Bishop Doyle, were but in accordance with the
improved condition in which the Catholics of his day found
themselves. After long and painful but finally triumphant
struggles to regain some of their lost freedom, they still felt
for a length of time the effects of that odious tyranny, by whose
means the proud, religious ascendency of a hostile sect had long
aimed at the complete subjection of the body and soul of the
Catholic population. It is pleasing to find that the first
relaxation of rigorous, repressive laws against the Catholic
Irish was owing to the influence exercised by the American
revolution upon English affairs. In 1778, Catholics were allowed
to hold property as well as their Protestant fellow-citizens;
and, although this was but a slight concession forced from the
justice of their rulers, the Irish people derived from it an
encouragement to persevere in asserting their further claims, so
often deceitfully promised and unjustly withheld. These claims of
his countrymen now assumed greater weight in the minds of
legislators, as they became more importunately urged upon their
notice by the powerful efforts of O'Connell. Bishop Doyle did not
hesitate to enter the arena, and throw the weight of his mighty
intellect and the no less important influence of his official
position, into the contest. A remarkably vigorous exposition of
the state of the question, and of the necessity of yielding to
the demands of justice, published in a letter signed J. K. L.,
inspired new hope into his friends, and drew upon him the hostile
attention of numerous opponents.
Polemics have, in our day, assumed a character quite different
from that which distinguished them in former times.
{51}
Much of the rancorous spirit, falsely called religious, which
disturbed society, and caused even domestic life sometimes to
bear an unchristian aspect, has passed away, and acerbity of
feeling which irritates, whilst it never convinces, is now less
frequently encountered than the milder tone of persuasive
argumentation. It may be that men were then more thoroughly in
earnest about religion than they are at present; but it would not
be easy to maintain that earnestness must be expressed in
language calculated to offend, and shown in acts intended to do
violence to brotherly love. It is more probable that, with the
progress of the age, men are learning more of the true spirit of
religion, and are leaving off much of that virulence which poor
human passion is likely to bring with it, even into the sanctuary
of divine faith. One thing is certain, that a change for the
better has come over the spirit which elicits religious
discussion at present; and the questions that excite our interest
and enlist our most serious consideration are agitated in a
milder manner than in the days of Bishop Doyle, when it was rare
that a religious dispute closed without abuse or vituperation,
and spiritual views were not unfrequently enforced by blows.
A discussion arose between the Bishop of Kildare and Magee, the
Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, and as both were able combatants
upon a field which afforded ample space for assault and defence,
the contest waged was long and fierce, drawing forth the wit and
sarcasm, the learning and eloquence undoubtedly possessed by both
disputants. Instead of cooling by time, it warmed as it advanced,
and increased in interest as it drew into its current many minor
warriors eager to join in the religious fray. A spirit of
domination which naturally arose from the relations between
Catholics and Protestants, determined Magee to assume a loftier
tone, with more pretentious, and, on that account, less tenable
grounds. These circumstances rendered the humiliation of his
defeat more irksome to his high position. The Marquis of
Wellesley must have been an impartial judge, and at the
conclusion of the politico-religious combat, he declared that
Magee "had evidently got the worst of it." Several other
opponents who successively assaulted "J. K. L.," were easily
disposed of by his mighty pen.
Influenced by his genius and eloquent writings, the movement led
by the great "Agitator" progressed toward its desired result. A
change was imperceptibly coming over the spirit of the times. To
retain a nation in bondage to a political or religious ascendency
not founded on the good-will of the subject, must, in the long
run, become impossible. As long as a people preserve unsubdued
their spirit of religious or national freedom, there is no power
on earth capable of frustrating their ultimate triumph. A great
writer observes that the war in which violence attempts to
oppress truth must be a strange and an arduous one. No matter how
doubtful may be the result for a time, no matter how obscure the
horizon of events, truth must in the end conquer, for it is
imperishable--it is eternal as God himself. Thus was it in the
struggle for emancipation in Ireland. The truth became at length
generally admitted, that no civil legislation, no state
authority, has a right to interfere with the sanctity of human
conscience; and that the power which attempts to violate the
natural gift of religious freedom transcends its limits, and is
guilty of a grievous crime against the established order of
Providence.
{52}
Before Dr. Doyle's entrance upon the public duties of his
episcopal office, the efforts made for their emancipation by the
Catholics had produced but little effect. Petitions crowded to
the parliament, but they were hastily and sometimes scornfully
rejected. Religious equality had been promised as a reward for
the parliamentary union of both countries in 1800; but the
insidious policy of Pitt proved the promise fallacious, and when
the nation found itself cheated out of its legislative power,
without even this slight recompense of religious freedom, deep
was the indignation felt. In the movements preceding Dr. Doyle's
efforts for the recovery of their rights, the Catholics were
unaided by the "higher order" of their countrymen, "who
sensitively shrank from participating in any appeal for redress."
(Vol. I. p. 156.) The people were thus abandoned by those whom
they regarded as their natural leaders, and, with some
exceptions, "the Catholic clergy not only held aloof, but
deprecated any attempt to disturb the general apathy." (Ibid.)
But Dr. Doyle brought new energy to the combat, and, although the
victory which crowned the labors of the great "Liberator" in 1829
was principally due to his own herculean powers and indomitable
spirit, still the assistance rendered by the Bishop of Kildare
was highly appreciated by O'Connell himself. Here it may be
remarked that the Duke of Wellington is sometimes lauded for
yielding to the claims of the Catholics. It is just to accord
praise wherever merited; but, as the hostility of Wellington to
the demands of his countrymen had been for years the greatest
obstacle to their being satisfied, and as he yielded at last
evidently through fear of revolution in case of refusal, it would
appear that a reluctant concession, rendered when it could not be
safely withheld, is but a slight groundwork upon which to erect a
monument to his generosity.
It would be a long though not an ungrateful task, to trace the
toilsome progress of the bishop through his many labors for the
temporal and eternal welfare of his people. Throughout every page
of the work before us we may perceive the deep solicitude with
which he continually watched over their moral and social
improvement. Wide-spread disaffection at long misgovernment had
evinced itself in various species of secret societies--Ribbonmen,
White-boys, Peep-o'-day men, etc.--formed either for purposes
hostile to the actual state of society, or, more frequently,
perhaps, for self-defence against the powerful and extensive
organization of Orange-men. The Ribbonmen promised "to be true
to, and assist each other in all things lawful;" but if even
justifiable in their origin and object, they not unfrequently
were guilty of acts which soon aroused the opposition of the
clergy. Bishop Doyle found his diocese extensively overrun by
numerous parties of these societies; but, as the people loved
him, his disapprobation was very effectual in checking their
progress. As most of the discontent arose from the collection of
tithes from Catholics for the support of Protestant ministers, he
reprobated the laws that were thus the cause of evils which it
was their office to remove. He himself counselled his people to
observe a negative opposition to the collection of these tithes,
by refusing to pay them, but never to resist with violence a
forcible execution of the law. To force obedience to this law was
frequently a dangerous experiment. The legal claims of the parson
were sometimes satisfied at the expense of the lives of his
unwilling supporters.
{53}
However incompatible with his character it might appear, yet it
was no uncommon occurrence to witness the meek parson at the head
of a military force, leading an assault on some undefended cabin
or directing their manoeuvres in order to possess himself of a
cow, an only pig, or even a wretched bed and bedding of a
destitute family. Goaded to fury, the people would sometimes
resist the soldiers, and the sacrifice of human life was often
the only fruit of a tithe-collecting expedition. It may be
interesting to read the following verbatim copy of a bill
announcing the sale by auction of the valuable spoil secured in a
successful foray by an evangelical gentleman in the neighborhood
of Ballymore:
"To be _soaled_ by Public Cout in the town of Ballymore on
the 15 Inst one _Cowe_ the property of James Scully one
new bed and one _gowne_ the property of John quinn seven
hanks of _yearn_ the property of the widow Scott one
_petty coate_ and one apron the property of the widow
Gallagher seized under and by virtue of leasing warrant for
tythe due the Rved. John Ugher. Dated this 12th day of May
1824."
In his celebrated examination before a committee of parliament in
1825, Dr. Doyle rendered ample testimony to the practical evils
of this system. Notwithstanding the merciless exposure to which
he subjected the entire tithe business, there was nothing done to
alleviate the misery or remedy the sufferings with which it is so
pregnant, and Ireland still labors under this, one of her most
harassing calamities--the cause of her discontent and the source
of her degradation. Not a little remarkable is the historical
fact, that before the time of the reformation the Irish nation
never consented to the system of tithes established in all other
countries by the law of the church. Before the invasion there was
no such thing known. After that lamentable period the English
conquerors attempted to establish it as in England, but "Giraldus
Cambrensis," says Doctor Doyle, "imputes it to the Irish as a
crime that they would not pay tithe, notwithstanding the laws
which enjoined such payment; and, now at the end of six hundred
years, they are found to persevere, with increased obstinacy, in
their struggles to cast off this most obnoxious impost."
A long letter addressed to his liberal friend. Sir H. Parnell, in
1831, is occupied in expounding his views on poor laws and church
property. His advocacy of laws to relieve the poor drew forth his
eloquent pleading in their behalf, whilst his extensive knowledge
of canon law made him familiar with the ancient legislations of
the church with respect to tithes. A short but characteristic
passage from this letter we cannot omit:
{54}
"I am a churchman; but I am unacquainted with avarice, and I
feel no worldly ambition. I am, perhaps, attached to my
profession; but I love Christianity more than its worldly
appendages. I am a Catholic from the fullest conviction; but
few will accuse me of bigotry. I am an Irishman hating
injustice, and abhorring, with my whole soul, the oppression of
my country; but I desire to heal her sores, not to aggravate
her sufferings. In decrying, as I do, the tithe-system, and the
whole church establishment in Ireland, I am actuated by no
dislike to the respectable body of men who, in the midst of
fear and hatred, gather its spoils; on the contrary, I esteem
those men, notwithstanding their past and perhaps still
existing hostility to the religious and civil rights of their
fellow-subjects and countrymen; I even lament the painful
position in which they are placed. What I aspire to is the
freedom of the people; what I most ardently desire is their
union--which can never be effected till injustice, or the
oppression of the many by the few, is taken away. And as to
religion, what I wish is to see her freed from the slavery of
the state and the bondage of mammon--to see her restored to
that liberty with which Christ hath made her free--her
ministers laboring and receiving their hire from those for whom
they labor--that thus religion may be restored to her empire,
which is not of this world, and men once more worship God in
spirit and in truth."
In this one paragraph we have a compendious exposition of his
views and aims with regard to the civil and religious freedom of
his country.
When the disfranchisement of the forty-shilling free-holders--a
disastrous piece of legislation--was effected in 1831, Dr. Doyle
undisguisedly expressed his liberal views of individual right and
liberty. One position maintained by him is somewhat remarkable,
and we record it, as it accords with the opinion of our
fellow-citizens.
"It is the natural right of man," he writes--"a right
interwoven with the essence of our constitution, and producing
as its necessary effect the House of Commons--that a man who
has life, liberty, and property, should have some share or
influence in the disposal of them by law. Take the elective
franchise from the Irish peasant, and you not only strip him of
the present reality or appearance of this right, but you
disable him and his posterity ever to acquire it. He is now
poor and oppressed--you then make him vile and contemptible; he
is now the image of a freeman--he will then be the very essence
of a slave. ... Like the Helot of Athens, he may go to the
forum and gaze at the election, and then return to hew his wood
and fetch his water to the freeman--an inhabitant, but not a
citizen, of the country which gave him birth."
Whilst thus battling with the injustice of the times, and
wielding with effect his powerful pen and eloquent
voice--expounding his views of human right, reproving insidious
politicians, reprobating the ungenerous legislation of the
government, and refuting the calumnies by which his religion was
assailed--he never lost sight of the humbler duties of his
pastoral office. From the turmoil and uncertain issues of public
discussion, he would revert with a sense of relief to the special
care of his own immediate flock. Great was the solicitude which
he so frequently expressed and always felt for the salvation of
his people. "Ah!" he would exclaim, "how awful to be made
responsible for even one soul! 'What then,' as St. Chrysostom
says, 'to be held answerable, not for one, but for the whole
population of an entire diocese!' '_Quid de illis sacerdotibus
dicendum, a quibus sunt omnium animae requirendae?_'" It will
tell, more than volumes, to know his character as bishop, the
exalted views he took of the value of a Christian soul. "And if
such," he proceeds to say, "be the value of one immortal soul
redeemed by the precious blood of an incarnate God, what must be
the value of thousands? And oh! what the responsibility of him
who has to answer not for one, but for multitudes--perhaps,
ultimately, for millions! How can he reasonably hope to enter
heaven, unless with his dying breath he can repeat with truth,
'Father, of those whom thou hast confided to my care, not one has
perished through my fault.'" In this spirit his efforts for the
education and moral improvement of his people were carried on to
a successful issue.
{55}
His wise restitution of the laws of the church to their proper
control over everything connected with his diocese, completely
removed the confusion which had long reigned. The statutes
decreed for the government of his clergy were rigorously
enforced. He placed upon a more intelligible basis the hitherto
unsettled relations of religious orders to regular diocesan
authority, and although a religious himself, he was never accused
of partiality toward such communities. In fact, he found it
necessary as it was difficult to induce them to undertake reforms
which he deemed very much needed in some points of discipline, in
order to render their services more efficient. He writes, (vol.
ii. p. 187,) "I have, from time to time, suggested to men of
various religious orders the necessity of some further
improvement, but in vain. They seem to me the bodies of men who
are profiting least by the lights of the age. I regret this
exceedingly," etc. In 1822, he wrote that "to suppress or
secularize half or most of the religious convents of men in
Portugal would be a good work." Thus his zeal for the cause of
truth and the benefit of the church led him, not only in this,
but in other instances, to express opinions which not many would
venture to publish. It is curious to notice his estimate of a
writer to whom but few would accord the same justice. In a letter
written to Mariana in 1830, he says, "You would like to know
something of Fleury. Well, he is the ablest historian the church
has produced; but he told truth sometimes without disguise, and
censured the views and conduct of many persons, who in return
gave him a bad name." As he loved, instead of fearing freedom of
thought, so, too, he boldly expressed his opinions; and with all
the power at his command endeavored to carry out his views. He
was no mere theorist, although he theorized extensively upon two
important subjects. One was upon the practicability of effecting
a union between the Anglican and Catholic churches, and the other
had reference to the formation of a patriarchate for Ireland. For
his action upon both of these questions, arising as they did from
the circumstances of his time, he has been made the object of
adverse, as well as favorable criticism. Of his theological
knowledge, and of the light which his own native genius threw
upon every topic he touched, there can be but one opinion, nor
will there be found any rash enough to doubt the honesty of his
intentions. This is sufficient to exonerate him from all
unbecoming charges in the minds of enlightened men, and it is
only the vicious and ignorant that stoop to the imputation of
evil motives. His view with regard to the union of the churches
appears to have been a doctrinal submission to the Catholic
Church, and a compromise in matters of discipline. The advantages
to be derived from having a patriarch in Ireland, were presented
by Dr. Doyle with his usual argumentative ability; and although
accused of having desired the office for himself, the charge is
an undoubted fabrication. Both of these projects fell through for
want of cooperation; but they show the extent to which his love
of truth, and love of peace, and love of increasing the power of
Christianity led him. Before concluding this notice of only a
small portion of his labors and of the events which attended his
career, we will transcribe the opinion formed of him by the Count
de Montalembert, who, in a tour through Ireland in 1832, visited
Dr. Doyle and Dr. Murray.
{56}
"They have inspired me," he writes, "with the greatest
veneration, not only for their piety and other apostolic virtues,
but for their eloquence and elegance of manners. Dr. Doyle is
well known to the Catholic world as one of the most solid pillars
of the true faith, and the three kingdoms will long remember his
appearance at the bar of the House of Lords, where, by his
eloquent exposition of Catholic doctrines, he confounded the
peers of England--the descendants of those men who signed the
great charter, but whose faith they have denied."
Wasted by his continual labors and incessant care for the welfare
of his people, he felt the gradual approach of the last great
combat to which all must ultimately yield. He might well exclaim
with Saint Paul, "I have fought the good fight. I have finished
my course. I have kept the faith, and now there is laid up for me
a crown of glory, which the Lord shall render to me, the just
Judge." "When exhausted nature apprised him that the last sad
struggle was approaching, he called for the viaticum. But
recollecting that his Master had expired on the hard bed of the
cross, and anxious to resemble him even in his end, he ordered
his mourning priests to lift him almost naked from his bed, and
stretch him upon the cold and rigid floor, and there, in
humiliation and penance and prayer, James of Kildare and Leighlin
accepted the last earthly embrace of his God." This was in 1834,
in the forty-eighth year of his age, and in the fifteenth of his
episcopate.
Mr. Fitzpatrick has rendered a valuable service to his country
and religion by writing the life of this eminent man. The next
thing to being a great man is to propose to our people the
example of great and good men, whom they should honor, and whose
memory should inspire those who come after them. Ireland has many
such men whose histories have not yet been written, and whose
lives would serve to raise in the souls of her sons a generous
emulation of their actions. An incident in the life of Dr. Doyle
will show that this was a principle with which he himself was
deeply impressed, and which he very emphatically expressed. A
foreign monk, dressed rather picturesquely, once approached him
with a very meek aspect, and said that he was a member of a
community from the continent just come to Ireland bearing the
relics of a man said to have been "beatified." At the same time
he offered to the bishop a considerable portion of the relics.
The bishop was somewhat ruffled in temper, and replied sternly:
"Sir, we need not the ashes of beatified foreigners while we see
the bones of our martyred forefathers whitening the soil around
us."
--------
{57}
Iona to Erin!
What Saint Columba Said To The Bird
Blown Over From Ireland To Iona. [Footnote 21]
[Footnote 21: This is a very ancient legend of the great
founder of Iona, and very characteristic of his exalted
patriotism and loving tenderness for all creatures, in which
he was an antitype of the seraphic St. Francis.]
I.
Cling to my breast, my Irish bird,
Poor storm-tost stranger, sore afraid!
How sadly is thy beauty blurred--
The wing whose hue was as the curd,
Rough as the seagull's pinion made!
II.
Lay close thy head, my Irish bird.
Upon this bosom, human still!
Nor fear the heart that still has stirred
To every tale of pity heard
From every shape of earthly ill.
III.
For you and I are exiles both;
Rest you, wanderer, rest you here!
Soon fair winds shall waft you forth
Back to our own beloved north--
Would God, I could go with you, dear!
IV.
Were I as you, then would they say,
Hermits and all in choir who join,
'Behold two doves upon their way;
The pilgrims of the air are they,
Birds from the Liffey or the Boyne!'
V.
But you will see what I am banned
No more, for my youth's sins, to see--
My Derry's oaks in council stand.
By Roseapenna's silver strand--
Or by Raphoe your flight may be.
{58}
VI.
The shrines of Meath are fair and far,
White-winged one! not too far for thee--
Emania, shining like a star,
(Bright brooch on Erin's breast you are!) [Footnote 22]
That I am never more to see.
[Footnote 22: It is said that Macha, the queen, traced out
the site of the royal rath of Emania, near Armagh, with the
pin of her golden brooch. _See Mrs. Ferguson's "Ireland
before the Conquest,"_ for this and other interesting
Celtic legends.]
VII.
You'll see the homes of holy men
Far west upon the shoreless main--
In sheltered vale, on cloudy Ben,
Where saints still pray, and scribes still pen
The sacred page, despising gain!
VIII.
Above the crofts of virgin saints.
There pause, my dove, and rest thy wing.
But tell them not our sad complaints!
For if they dreamt our spirit faints
There would be fruitless sorrowing.
IX.
Perch as you pass amid their trees,
At noon or eve, my travelled dove.
And blend with voices of their bees
In croft, or school, or on their knees--
They'll bind you with their hymns of love!
X.
Be thou to them, O dove! where'er
The men or women saints are found.
My hyssop flying through the air;
My seven-fold benedictions bear--
To them, and all on Irish ground.
XI.
Thou wilt return, my Irish bird--
I, Colum, do foretell it thee.
Would thou couldst speak as thou hast heard
To all I love--O happy bird!
At home in Eri soon to be!
--------
{59}
Magas; or, Long Ago.
A Tale Of The Early Times.
Chapter VII.
Are there any souls who can read the gospels as they would a
common history of an heroic being? Whose frames do not thrill at
the sublime words the anointed Saviour uttered? Whose hearts do
not glow with an unearthly warmth at the touching incidents which
mark the divine footsteps? Who see in the miracles only a
temporary relief from natural ailments? Who feel in the
tremendous agony of the passion only the ordinary tide of human
emotion in contemplating suffering? Such as these will not
sympathize with Lotis, as she rose from the cleansing waters with
one sole aspiration in her heart; one firm, unchangeable purpose
in her will; one object of interest for her intellect; one single
love to fill every affection she was conscious of. Long ago she
had sought the truth, the light, the life, the way. She possessed
them now; it remained for her to form herself upon the model, to
think his thoughts, to act his deeds, to live in his sight, and
be crucified in him; and all because she felt that here on earth
it was the only life worth having, the only love worth loving.
The perversion of the world had become to her the necessary
result of its having forsaken God; and because it has forsaken
God, and cannot recognize truth, it will ever persecute good; and
they that live godly in Jesus Christ must necessarily suffer
persecution--the persecution to which a blessing is promised. Day
and night did Lotis meditate on the words of God; nor was it long
ere she desired to bring them into action. After the example of
the Christians of Jerusalem, she had placed her resources at the
feet of the Bishop of Athens, and now she placed her services
under his direction. But there was one thought that haunted her,
and often she uttered one word in his presence; that word was
Chione.
"And what do you think can be done for Chione, my child?" asked
the good bishop one day.
"I do not know, father, (so let me call you, I beg;) I do not
know; but I understand her struggle now, which I did not when I
sat with her on the ruins; I see what she meant when she could
not give up Magas, or the applause of the world. She dreaded
slavery because she was not free in soul. Would I could win the
interior freedom for her by wearing the exterior chain. Father,
let me beg Chione's freedom, bodily freedom; hers is not a spirit
to be coerced into discipline. Surveillance only exasperates
her."
"I believe it, my child, when it is not of her own choosing.
Remember, however, she obeys Magas."
"Because he flatters her, fosters her pride, and maintains her in
her station; besides, she loves him, and a woman easily obeys
where she loves."
"She has bound herself to follow Christ."
"But she does not feel free to do it. Perhaps, were exterior
freedom granted to her, she might follow what she knows to be
truth. I shall never forget her appearance in the ruins of Tiryns
when first I accosted her. Chione has not lost her faith."
{60}
"Faith without works is dead," [Footnote 23] said the bishop;
"for works are the expression of our love, of that divine charity
without which we are nothing. [Footnote 24] Though we speak with
the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, we become
as sounding brass or tinkling cymbals."
[Footnote 23: James ii. 20.]
[Footnote 24: I Cor. xiii. I, 2.]
"Chione knows this," said Lotis; "she feels it intensely; it is
this feeling which occasions the struggle which she says is
destroying her."
"Well, she shall have her freedom, my daughter, though I doubt
its effecting a good result. It is scarcely in the redemptive
order. Our Lord cured those only whose souls were turned to him.
[Footnote 25]
[Footnote 25: "And he did not many mighty works there,
because of their unbelief." Matt. xiii. 58.]
Men try to penetrate the secrets of matter, and call their
guesses science. The action of mind they observe not, or they
would see that it obeys laws as unfalteringly as the insensate
stone. A soul perfectly united to God is endowed with power that
seems supernatural to those who know not that 'soul' is of divine
origin, and even in its primal attributes towers above matter.
The action of such a soul on one open to its influences is
miraculous, as all action of grace is; but it was once Adam's
privilege by conferred gift at creation; it is now the
Christian's right, purchased for him by Christ. The apostles, as
you know, heal those whom their shadow falls upon, not of their
own power, but by virtue of the Holy Spirit that dwells in them;
but the power of God thus manifests itself only when the
recipient has at least some degree of recipient power, obtained
by grace also. Christ is silent before his unbelieving judges,
works no miracle for Herod; yet he cannot exist without grace
flowing from him; but grace falling on souls who will not receive
it, but hardens them the more. [Footnote 26] This is why an
apostate is ever harder to reconvert than one who has never
received the faith; this is why we are forbidden to cast our
pearls before swine; this is why I tremble for Chione. Remorse
was busy at her heart when you left her. If she listens to the
voice of God thus speaking within her, she may yet be a saint; if
she rejects the proffered voice, I _fear_, I fear the effect
of grace rejected in such a mind as hers; it will demonstrate
itself with no ordinary power."
[Footnote 26: "And God hardened the heart of Pharao."
Exodus x. 27.]
"At the words she heard at Ephesus she fainted away," said Lotis.
"Better," answered the bishop, "better had she thrown herself at
the feet of the apostle, and said simply, 'I repent me of my
sin.' Of what service to her was her remorse? It stopped her
eloquence, paralyzed her tongue. She could no longer mystify her
hearers by vain terms of an unintelligible philosophy of which
she held the key in her hand, though she would not use it. From
what you have told me, it was remorse, and not repentance, she
felt."
"Oh! that she might be saved, though it were as by fire,"
fervently ejaculated Lotis.
The bishop looked at her face beaming with heavenly charity, and
the spirit of prophecy awoke within him.
"Lotis," said he, "all Christians are more or less sureties for
one another, and must bear each other's burdens, even as our
Master became surety for each one of us, and bore our sins upon
the cross. It is a fearful burden Chione has to endure, more
especially for one of her disposition. 'Twill be, indeed, a
saving as if by fire, when salvation comes to her.
{61}
Say, would you be willing to help her bear her burden? If the
flames are kindled, and she shrinks from them, will you pass
through them in her place?"
"To save her? Yes! Indeed I would! Father, I love Chione."
"Then offer yourself to God for her, my daughter, and strengthen
yourself by prayer for the suffering you must look forward to.
Chione will be granted to expiatory love."
......
Chapter VIII.
"Now, my Chione, we will go to Athens."
"No, not to Athens, Magas; anywhere rather than to Athens; I beg
of you not to take me to Athens."
"Why, what caprice is this? Where in all the world will you find
yourself likely to be appreciated so well as at Athens? What
audience more intelligent, more refined, more susceptible of
sublime emotions? I love Athens; you know I do, and you may judge
of the depth of my love for you, that, to ensure your freedom, I
have kept from it so long; but now, no one has a claim upon you
save myself; so we will go to Athens."
"I thought you had set your heart on going to Rome."
"That was only when I deemed Athens was out of the question. But
my--my Chione, you are free; we may go anywhere. My estates are
suffering from want of my presence; besides, I will settle some
of the revenues on you. You must come to Athens with me."
It was very unwillingly that Chione acceded; but what could she
do? Was she less a slave now than before? Sometimes she thought
she was more so; for had she gone to the Lady Damaris, resumed
the practice of her religion, which clung to her inner being,
although outwardly she gave no sign of faith, she knew she would
have been not only freed, but placed in a position to render her
independent of Magas. And why did she not do this now--why? Her
fame had preceded her to the city, and she resolved to prove
worthy of the reputation she had acquired. Poetry, art, mythic
types, and Christian dogmas, blended in euphonic union in the
discourses she delivered, while her impassioned verse thrilled
every heart; everywhere she was greeted as the modern Sappho,
everywhere honored as the tenth muse; and at last the
acclamations of her fellow-citizens called her to the very temple
of the muses in which we were first introduced to her, there to
receive the crown of music, eloquence, and poesy. How could she
refuse? How could she renounce the world? ... The throng was
immense; not only the _élite_ of Athens were there, but
strangers came in crowds to hear the celebrated Leontium. The
small temple had been somewhat injudiciously chosen, since not
one half of the crowding throng could enter. The festival had
been proposed as a private tribute of friendship from the most
exalted citizens of Athens to their adorable muse; but Leontium
(as her public name ran) was no longer a private person; it was
found impossible to distance the crowds; and hastily a platform
was erected outside the building in the sacred grove, that the
public might be accommodated and have a chance of hearing their
favorite sing the glories of Athens.
We will not attempt to describe the preparatory exercises; the
beautiful intertwinings and graceful wreathings of the various
myths represented on that day, when all the energies of the city
seemed exhausted to impart glory to the classical allegories that
were about to disappear from among mankind for ever.
{62}
There was an elegance, a chastity about the performance never
witnessed before, and an influence was felt impending that
belonged not to the types before them. To the superior taste of
Magas and Chione some of this atmosphere of exaltation was
doubtless due; yet the audience felt as if something more than
this was around them; as if the divinities themselves were
present, and insisting on receiving the homage that for so many
ages had been presented as their right.
But now it was nearly over. The walls of Thebes had risen to the
lyre of Amphion, while the slow but untiring Hours had followed
to its soft music the glorious chariot of Apollo; and so artfully
was all contrived that the spectators could not discover by what
magic the stones were moved, or the figures representing the
hours supported as they moved on the mists away.
Hermes, instructing Cadmus in the art of letters; Minerva,
introducing the distaff into the household; and Ceres, teaching
man to sow the corn; all these had followed with appropriate
poetry and music, with many others of a similar description. And
then, as if to heighten the effect by contrast, came a hush, a
calm, a silence; the stage was covered with clouds; the incense
rendered every object indistinct; low, melancholy tones uttered
at intervals, kept expectation on the stretch; then suddenly a
blast of trumpets seemed to clear away the mists; and the clouds
receding, disclosed Aurora opening the gates of the morning to
the music of the spheres, who then passed slowly out of sight as
a far more lovely vision broke upon the spectators--Venus
Urania, borne by the graces into the company of the muses,
descending from the skies to greet the votaries who, garlanded
and wreathed, were waiting to receive her in a burst of celestial
song. The illusion was complete; the daughter of Coelus and of
Light was on her first appearance greeted with a tumult of
applause; and as in wavy, measured movements, encircled by the
graces, she floated down to earth, scattering her bright
inspirations in sparks of fire upon the muses who were kindling
into enthusiasm at her approach, the whole assembly caught the
melody as it rose from the inspired sisterhood:
Beautiful daughter of Coelus and Light,
Coming in glory to gladden our sight.
Vision of loveliness! star of the day!
Grateful and glad is the homage we pay.
All girt by the graces, thou comest to earth;
With joy and with music we welcome thy birth.
Oh! stay, thou sweet goddess, to brighten our life,
To banish our sorrows, to still every strife.
O Venus Urania! we call upon thee,
Inspirer of gladness, of ecstasy!
The singers were the multitude; the sound of the voices of the
muses, or those who personified them, was lost in the thrilling
greeting which that multitude gave to their favorite--Chione.
Dressed in a dazzling robe spangled with gold, crowned with rays
so artificially disposed that they seemed to emit light as she
was descending, Chione came forward as the Venus Urania of the
Temple.
The throng hushed as she raised her arm to speak; among the
thousands there, scarce a sound was heard; the very breathing was
suppressed, for fear one tone of that eloquent voice should be
unheard. "My friends," she began.
Suddenly a low, piercing wail broke upon the throng, like the
moan of a distressed spirit, so unearthly was the sound. Again it
rang through the echoes, under ground, over head. Chione started,
and the throng was awed.
{63}
Then, in the fearful silence, these words were heard. Distinctly
they came forth, though uttered in a wild, unearthly cadence, as
if they were spoken by one of another world:
Once for silver, now for gold,
Is the Lord of glory sold!
Woe, deep woe!
Judas went to his own place;
Nor shall time the sin efface.
He must every joy forego!
For ever, woe! [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 27: It is on record that, at the first preaching of
the Gospel, numerous signs, sounds, and words were uttered in
the pagan temples, at the times of worship, to the confusion
of the multitudes therein assembled. I leave the fact as I
found it, to the construction of my readers, each one for
himself!]
Every heart was chilled; Chione paled and trembled. Magas sprang
to her relief. "It is but a trick of your own devising; you are
paid back in your own coin. Compose yourself, it is nothing." The
crowd was too dense to allow a search to be made. There was a
long pause, but at length Chione was called upon to proceed. Her
theme was, "The Glory of Athens--of Athens, the Civilizer of the
Nations."
The tremor which was still slightly apparent in the frame of the
Venus Urania when led forward by Magas, (now habited as Apollo,
that he might consistently bear a part in the scene, and watch
over any demonstration that should again affect the goddess he
worshipped with so intense a devotion,) gave an increased
interest to her appearance; the look of appeal she seemed to cast
over that mighty throng, as if to claim protection from some
invisible enemy of her peace, imparted an additional tenderness
to the sympathies of the audience. Chione regained her courage,
as she inhaled the moral atmosphere that surrounded her; she
forced back the unwelcome shades of thought that had been called
from their tombs, where she intended them to lie buried for ever.
She gazed around. The scene at the back of the stage had been
changed. The citadel of Athens had been introduced, and hovering
above it was Minerva, the tutelary divinity of the place. Chione
was evidently surprised; perhaps again she suspected an
interruption; but Magas whispered, "By my command," and she at
length made a gesture, as if to begin. There was, however, a
marked change in her inspiration; she was no longer the
commanding genius of the temple. It was evident to all that she
was under some irrepressible, some irresistible influence. Magas
looked anxious; his whole soul was bound up in Chione's success.
She was his pride, his glory, his Aspasia, his Sappho. Never yet
had he known her to fail; and he watched her words as if his very
life depended upon them. She commenced:
"Athenians, you have asked me to speak to you of the glory of our
city. Behold it! Wisdom is watching over its citadel. The
glorious Minerva, issuing from the head of the immortal father of
gods and men, presides over the welfare of Athens--has ever
presided over it! This is our crown, this our glory. The history
of this our Athens, is unlike the history of any other city in
the world; for it forms a chain of glory, a long-continued tissue
of renown. Her history is, a web of varied dyes, introducing
characters of every degree of virtue, talent, heroism, or
nobility.
"Time was, Athenians, that this beautiful land, now covered with
fertile fields and richly ornamented villas; now the splendid
resort of intelligence, philosophy, and science--time was, that
Athens, the enlightened, the refined, the artistic; Athens, whose
works of beauty will supply all time with models; Athens, whose
pathways throughout the whole region round, even to the Piraeus,
are adorned with statues of her illustrious sons--the poets,
painters, warriors, and statesmen she has produced; Athens,
within whose citadel arises the Parthenon, which would itself be
the wonder of the world, were not that wonder exhausted on
beholding the gigantic statue of our tutelary-goddess which it
contains; time was, that Athens was a drear and sandy waste, the
resort of savages who knew not the use of fire--who were clothed
in skins, and lived on roots and acorns. [Footnote 28]
{64}
But Minerva looked with complacency on the spot she had selected
for the dwelling-place of her chosen people. She sent Theseus to
Attica, to clear the land from the pirates that infested it; to
enact laws, and teach the uncultured men to submit to righteous
rule. It was first the law of force, though not unmixed; for men
unused to government must be coerced until their powers of mind
expand; until they feel what lawful government can effect; until
they know that lawlessness is not true liberty. But not long was
Athens ruled by one. Athenae, Queen, who loves this citadel, had
other views. Her chosen city was to bear the glorious palm of an
enlightened freedom.
"A deed unparalleled in the annals of nations occurred. Codrus,
her king, inspired by that sublime divinity who hath care of
Athens, devoted himself to destruction, that the favored city of
Minerva might be saved. Codrus died! more sublime in his death
than the loftiest monarch ever was in life. Who does not bow
before the shade of Codrus? Who does not feel that, by his
patriotism, his disinterestedness, his heroism, he laid the
foundation of his country's greatness?
His death--our life!
"Bear with me; I must pause a moment here."
Music filled up that pause; but music so solemn, so grand, that
the audience felt as if the spirit of the mighty dead were
hovering over them. Chione resumed:
"To so great a hero, it was impossible to find a worthy
successor! 'Man is not fit for irresponsible power. Too commonly
he uses it but to give the reign to his own passions, while he
represses in his subjects the development of those lofty
qualities of soul which distinguish man from the brutes that
scour our plains. No other king ever wielded the sceptre in
Athens; for Minerva intended that a people should be formed, and
not a single individual. She wished a body of men to rise to
greatness, not a crowned monarch to acquire renown by the
extirpation of millions.
"Athenae loved her children, and she gave them a law-giver whose
first act relieved the poor of their burdens; released them from
the oppression of the rich. Solon knew that the poor are the
sinews of a nation; he knew too, that there is a point in which
the crushing power of debt destroys the qualities that form the
man, the free-man so dear to wisdom; and Athens shook off this
oppression beneath his righteous sway. The laws of Solon shall be
honored as long as rectitude itself is honored, because they
recognize that principle of individual development which alone
can form a great people. Particular modes of bringing out this
principle may change, may pass into other modes; but the
principle itself is eternal, it is worthy of Solon, worthy of the
descendant of the immortal Codrus; it was a direct inspiration of
that wisdom which has so unweariedly watched over the formation
of the Athenian people.
{65}
"Such a principle was it to which we owe the sages and the heroes
that adorn our annals. What heart does not thrill on hearing the
name of Miltiades, of Themistocles, of Cimon, or Aristides? Who
does not glow with rapture at beholding the works of Phidias, of
Praxiteles, Apelles? Who can study with Anaxagoras, converse with
Socrates, or speculate with Plato and Aristotle, nor feel the
divine inspiration communicated to themselves? Who can read the
annals of Xenophon and Thucydides, without feeling proud that he
himself is a citizen of Athens; and which of us has not wept
tears of ecstatic emotion at beholding a tragedy of Euripides or
of Sophocles? What country in the world could ever boast of such
a galaxy of celebrated names?
"Tell me not that these men were not all of Athenian origin. What
if some few of them first saw the light in some other city than
that of Athens. Not the less to Athens do they owe their genius
and their fame; none the less from her did they receive their
inspiration, their culture, and development. The influence of
Athens is not limited to her own domain. Her great men live for
ever to kindle thoughts of greatness throughout the world. Many
far distant, both in time and space, will, to endless ages, love
to muse with Pericles on the banks of the Ilissus, while he is
planning those exquisite creations which have linked his name
with all that is sublime and beautiful in human art. Many will
rejoice with him as gently he sinks to rest, sustained by the
sublime consciousness that, during the whole of his long career,
he had never caused an Athenian to shed a tear.
"His career was for humanity, and in this he resembled Athens;
for unlike the vulgar glory that crowns the conqueror's arms, the
boast of Athens is that, although so many deeds of prowess attest
the heroic valor of her children, yet never, never did she enter
on an aggressive war for the mere sake of conquest, for the
vain-glorious motive of adding by injustice another territory to
her own. No, Athens has shed her benefits abroad; has made known
to the nations all the virtues of the earth. She has proved
herself capable of great acts, alike in war as in peace. Her
genius is godlike, it is diffusive. The very site Minerva chose
for her citadel betokens this destiny. Athens is compelled by
circumstance to seek by peaceful commerce the corn necessary for
her subsistence. The goddess gave her the honey of Hymettus, the
Pentelic marble, and the silver mines of Laurion, that her
eloquence might be sweet, her courage firm, and her commerce
gainful; but she denied her corn, that corn which is the
nutriment of the body, that, by fetching it from foreign lands,
she might, in doing so, communicate to the world those sublime
ideas which form the nobler nutriment of the soul.
"Thus is it that wisdom is the glory of Athens; it explains the
history of the past; it affords a key to our present position.
"The mighty genius of force now bestrides the nations; it keeps
down the surging emotions of half-savage men; itself, with its
stoical insensibility to beauty, with its gladiatorial
slaughters, betokening that it is hardly yet emerged from
barbarism. Is this constrained calm to effect no purpose in the
decrees of wisdom? Examine, and you will find that the glory of
Athens is still increasing, even under a supposed subjection.
[Footnote 29]
[Footnote 29: The Romans, out of reverence to letters, left
to Athens a nominal freedom a long time after they had
virtually subjugated her. It was not till the reign of
Severus that her civilization was crushed. Chione is supposed
to speak one hundred and fifty years before that period.]
{66}
"The nominal dependent refines and civilizes her conqueror. The
wisdom of Athens, which, confined within its own narrow domain,
could but have enlightened the inhabitants of a few cities, is
now spreading over the entire earth; the words of its sages are
instructing our haughty rulers; the myths of our poets are
civilizing Rome. This, then, is the glory of Athens; and such
glory must needs be eternal. Lands may change owners, and
physical force give a momentary, a seeming nobility to a
barbarian; but mind is immortal! the empire of ideas lasts for
ever. Thus is Athens the civilizer of the nations.
"Sons of Athens! heirs of the philosophic ages! children of the
poets! to you I need not explain how the beautiful devices which
surround us are types of a higher knowledge--how many a glorious
idea lies hidden under the name Minerva. The veiled Isis of
Egypt, upon whose statue was inscribed, 'I am all that has been,
all that shall be, and none among mortals has ever yet lifted my
veil,' was, as you know, but another form of our loved Deity.
Wisdom must preside at every institution designed to last. The
precepts of Anaxagoras, the reveries of the divine Plato, alike
instruct us in the eternity of ideas. Truth goes by different
names upon this earth; it is represented by the nations under
different myths, according to the conception men form of it. It
requires a high intellect to contemplate truth in the abstract;
to most minds it is simplified, endowed with power by being
personified; hence our worship. Isis in Egypt, in Athens becomes
Minerva; the veil, if not lifted, is at least rendered more
transparent; and it may be that the time of its lifting is at
hand. Portents of wondrous power are working in men's hearts; the
principle of development evolved in Athens is becoming spread
over the earth. Let us take courage. Athens is still at the head
of civilization; it remains with her children that she so
continue.
"Three words are awakened within my breast, [Footnote 30]
While dwelling on Athena's story;
Three words are a key unlocking the rest,
Illustrating Attica's glory.
These words proceed from no outward cause,
Within us they write their immortal laws.
"Man was created all free, all free,
Chains seen at his birth were never;
Believe it, in spite of the enmity
And folly of men put together.
I fear not the slave who has broken his chain,
'Tis the Godlike resuming his own again.
"And Virtue is more than an empty call.
It may guidance and practice be.
Though man may stumble, and totter, and fall,
He may strive for divinity.
And what unto reason doth seem unreal.
Full oft, to the child-like, doth Wisdom reveal.
"For a God _doth_ exist; and a Holy Will
Is there still, though the human will palters;
Over time, over space, the high thought floateth still.
All glowing with life that ne'er falters;
While all things move round in unceasing change,
That spirit breathes peace through the heavenly range.
"Oh! guard well these words within every breast,
For on them rests Attica's glory;
Proclaim and observe them, with increasing zest,
They're the keys of Athena's story.
No man can e'er forfeit his inward worth.
While wisdom within to these words giveth birth."
[Footnote 30: The German student will here recognize that
this song is an imitation, or rather a translation adapted to
the subject of Schiller's "Drei Worte neun' ich Euch,
inhaltschwer." The infidelity of Chione, like that of modern
times, does not hesitate to avail itself of truths learned
from Christianity, when such truths can adorn their unsound
philosophy; in fact, the truth that is in it, saves their
theory; error cannot stand of itself.]
Chione ceased. She had not shone as she was wont to do; she felt
conscious that in palliating paganism to please the audience, she
was paltering with her own conscience. When she proposed first to
speak her address, she had intended to give a synopsis of the
philosophy and poetry of Greece, and to avoid mythology; but the
words she had heard had embittered her spirit, rendered it
defiant; and half-angrily, half-sarcastically, had she uttered
the sentiments we have recorded. There was not, however, the
mesmeric sympathy between her and the assembled crowd that was
wont to produce electric bursts of enthusiasm, albeit they agreed
with the sentiments expressed. Her own enthusiasm had been
quelled before commencing; she could not then communicate what
she did not possess. But it had been previously arranged that she
was to be crowned; she had been invited there for that purpose;
therefore the figure representing Minerva ceased to hover in the
air, came forward, and, to very sweet music, placed the crown on
Chione's head.
{67}
Beauty, crowned by Wisdom's hand,
Reigns triumphant in the land.
Her scented dower
Is music linked to poesy,
In tones of heavenly harmony,
Attuned to earth's necessity by Eloquence,
bright power!
The pause that succeeded was filled up with throwing of bouquets
and shouts of congratulation. When a lull came, and Chione was
about to give a parting salute to the spectators, these words
came distinctly to her ear, though in so low a tone that they
were inaudible to any but herself and those close to her:
Earth's crown of glory is a crown of thorns;
Such the Saviour's head adorns,
Who died for thee.
Crowned with thorns, for thee he bled.
On the cross his life-blood shed.
All for thee!
Chione became very pale; she attempted to come forward, but fell
back in the arms of her attendants; she had fainted.
--------
Translated From The French.
The Unity Of The Human Race.
This is one of a series of popular discourses given at the
Imperial Asylum of Vincennes, France, by A. de Quatrefages,
member of the Institute, and Professor of Natural Science. After
some preliminary remarks to his audience, he proceeds to the
question, What is man? "It is not difficult to perceive that man
is neither a mineral nor a vegetable, neither a plant nor a
stone. But is he an animal? Not likely, when we reflect upon all
his attributes.
"None of you would like to be compared to those animals who feed
on grass, to the hog who wallows in the mire, nor to the dog, in
whom man has found the qualities of both friend and companion;
nor further, to the horse, though he were as celebrated as the
famous Gladiator.
"Man is not an animal. He is distinguished above the brute
creation by numerous and important attributes. We have only to
consider his intellectual capacity, the power of articulation,
which gives to every people a special language, the capacity to
write, which reproduces language; the aid of the fine arts, to
explain and materialize the conceptions of his imagination. He is
also distinguished above animals by two fundamental characters
which belong solely to him. Man is the only organized and living
being who has the abstract sentiment of both good and evil, the
only being in whom there exists a moral sense, the only one who
believes in a future state, and who recognizes the existence of
beings superior to himself, having influence upon him for good or
evil. It is this two-fold conviction which grasps and holds the
great truths which are called religion.
{68}
"At a later period I will return to these two questions of
morality and religion, not as a theologian, but as a naturalist.
At present I limit myself to this fact, that man, however savage
he may be, shows signs of morality and religion that are not
found in any animal. Consequently, man is a being apart,
separated from animals by two great distinctions which are his
own, and also by his incontestable superiority. There the
difference ceases. With regard to his body, man is nothing more
or less than an animal. Apart from some differences of form and
disposition, he is no more than equal to the superior animals
that surround us. If we take for comparison those that assimilate
to our general form, anatomy shows us that our organs are the
same as theirs; we find in them muscle for muscle, nerve for
nerve, that is found in man himself. Physiology, in turn, has
demonstrated that, in the body of man, the organs, the muscles,
the nerves, have the same animal functions.
"This fact is indisputable, taken from a purely scientific and
practical view. We cannot experiment upon man, but it is possible
to do so upon animals. Human physiology employs the means to
enlighten us upon our organic functions. Physicians have carried
to the sick-bed the result of their investigations upon animal
life. Anthropology also, we shall see, has derived useful lessons
from beings who are essentially our inferiors. Anthropology
should descend still lower than animals to enlighten us
thoroughly. Vegetables are not animals any more than animals are
men; but man, animals, and vegetables are linked together in the
same living organization. By this only, they are distinguished
from the minerals, which are neither the one nor the other, and
by certain general facts known to all.
"All organized beings have a limited duration, all are created
small and weak, all grow and become strong; during a part of
their existence, all decrease in energy and vitality, sometimes
also in size, then die. During life, all organized beings have
need of nourishment. Before dying, all produce, either by a seed
or by an egg, (I speak of species, not individuals,) which is
true of the species that seem to come directly from a shoot, a
layer, or a graft; all proceed from a grain, or an egg. Thus, all
these great phenomena, common to all living organized beings,
including man as well as plants, suppose a general law for their
government. Science confirms this conclusion every day, which is
not an invention of reasoning alone, but is regarded as an
_experienced fact_. Further explanations are not necessary
to show the magnificent result.
"How admirable, that man and the smallest insect, that the lord
of the soil and the smallest plant, are attached one to the
other, by the same links, and that the entire living creation
forms together a perfect harmony!
"In this communion, and in certain phenomena of this accordance
with certain laws, equally common, there results one consequence
upon which I would not too strongly insist. Whatever may be the
questions relating to man, that we have to examine whenever these
touch upon any one of the phenomena that are common to all living
organized beings, we must not only investigate animal life, but
also vegetable life, if we would wish to find the truth.
{69}
"When one of these questions is proposed, what can we truthfully
urge in reply? We must examine man under the general laws that
govern other living organized beings. If the investigation tends
to make man an exception to these general laws, we shall know it
is false. If you resolve the problem so as to include man in the
general laws, you may be sure that you are scientific and
correct. With these proofs, and these only, I proceed to the
second question of anthropologists. Are there several species of
men, or does there exist but one, comprising several races?
"Some explanations are necessary. Examine the designs before you,
and you will discover the principal varieties exhibited in the
human type. You have there individuals from all parts of the
world; you see that they differ considerably in color, some in
their hair, others in their size, or in their peculiar features.
It behooves us to ascertain if the differences that present
themselves in these human groups are those of _species_, or
if they merely indicate the existence of _races_ belonging
to the same species.
"In order to reply to this question, you must ascertain the true
significance of the words _species_ and _race_. The
result of the discussion depends upon these two words. Unhappily,
they are often confounded and badly defined, and we become
enveloped in mystery when we wish to consider them more closely.
Let us then form a precise idea before entering into otherwise
profitless details.
"None of you certainly confound the horse with the ass; though
the horse may be no larger than the dogs of Newfoundland, or
though the ass should attain the size of an ordinary horse--for
example, the large asses of Poitou. You will immediately say they
are different species. You will say the same if you place a dog
and a wolf side by side.
"We call by the one name of dogs the different types, such as the
spaniel, the greyhound, the lap-dog, the Newfoundland, the King
Charles; and we are right. However, if we were to judge by the
eyes only, and even after more minute observations, there is
between the dogs I have named greater differences of color,
proportion, and size, than between the horse and the ass. The
latter have certainly more similarity between them than the types
of dogs I have named.
"If I should place a black and a white water-spaniel side by
side, you would call them both spaniels, though of a different
color. When we examine vegetables, it is the same thing; a red
and a white rose are equally roses; pears that are sold two for a
penny, are the same species as those sold at twenty cents each.
"Without any doubt you have arrived at the exact conclusion of
the naturalists; like them, you have resolved the questions of
_species_ and _race_, which at first sight seemed, for
the reasons I have given, more or less confused.
"These examples fully prove that popular observation and common
sense are in many things fully as reliable as the investigations
of science. Were such deductions generalized into scientific
language, I feel sure there would be found few if any mistakes.
"These investigations prove that animals and vegetables vary
within certain limits. The dog remains but a dog, whatever may be
his general form, color, or his shape. The pear is but a pear,
whatever may be its flavor or the color of its skin. It is from
these facts that I am led to believe that variations can be
transmitted through generations. The union of two spaniels
produces spaniels, the union of two mastiffs produces mastiffs.
{70}
Thus, in a general manner, the result is, that beings of the same
species can cease to resemble each other absolutely; moreover,
take exteriorly different characters, without isolating or
forming different species; as I have said, the _dog remains a
dog_, whatever may be the modifications he presents. These are
precisely the groups formed by individuals which we have spoken
of as the remote primitive types of species that have formed
distinct secondary groups, which naturalists call _races_.
"You will understand, then, what is meant in speaking of the
races of beeves, horses, etc. We have domesticated but one kind
of beeves, which have generated the Breton race, the great beeves
of Uri, of such savage aspect, and also the gentle Durhams. We
have but one kind of domestic horse, and this has given us the
pony, as well as the enormous horses that are seen in the streets
of London, commonly used by the brewers; finally, the several
races of sheep, goats, etc., belong to one and the same species.
I place this assemblage of proof vividly before you to avoid
vagueness in your investigations, which would be attended with
serious mistakes. I will now cite examples from the vegetable
kingdom, which will be as familiar to you as the foregoing.
"Let us take the coffee-tree. Its history is quite interesting.
The coffee-tree was originally from Africa. It has from time
immemorial been cultivated in Abyssinia, on the borders of the
Red Sea. It was not until toward the fifteenth century that the
seed migrated from this sea and penetrated into Arabia, where it
has been cultivated since that epoch. It is from there in
particular that we get the famous Mocha. The use of coffee became
common immediately. From the east it was introduced into Europe
at a later period, and it was at Marseilles that it was used for
the first time in France.
"The first cup of coffee that was drank in Paris, was in the year
1667. A few grains were brought over by a French sailor called
Thevenot. Two years after, Soliman Aga, ambassador of the Porte,
under Louis XIV., gave an entertainment to some friends of the
king, where it was introduced, and the beverage pronounced
delightful. The use of coffee, however, did not become general in
France until the eighteenth century. You see, then, that coffee
has not been very long in use. It was almost a century and a half
before it became general among Europeans.
"During this time Europe became tributary to Arabia for this
luxury. All the coffee that was used in Europe came from Arabia,
and particularly from Mocha. Toward the beginning of the
eighteenth century the Dutch tried to import it to Batavia, one
of their Indian colonies. They succeeded. From Batavia, some
plants were sent to Holland, and planted in heated earth. This
also proved a success.
"One of these plants was carried to Paris in 1710, and was placed
in one of the beds of the Jardin des Plantes. It flourished, and
supplied numberless plants. Toward 1720 or 1725, a French marine
officer named Captain Destiaux, thought that, as Holland had
cultivated coffee in Batavia, it could also be acclimated in the
French colonies in the Gulf of Mexico. At the moment of embarking
for Martinique he took three plants from the Jardin des Plantes,
and carried them with him. The voyage was long and impeded by
head-winds. Water becoming scarce, it became necessary to put the
crew upon short rations.
{71}
Captain Destiaux, like the others, had but a small allowance for
each day, and this he shared with his coffee-plants.
Notwithstanding all his care, two of them died in their transit.
One only arrived safe and sound at Martinique. Planted
immediately, it prospered wonderfully, and from it have descended
all the coffee-trees in the Antilles, and in South-America.
"Thirty years after, our western colonies exported millions of
pounds each year. You see that the plant, starting from Africa,
reached the east, the extremity of Asia, then America and the
west. It has consequently made almost the tour of the world. In
this long passage it has changed.
"Laying aside the plant that we are not familiar with, let us
take merely the grain. It is not necessary to be a planter to
distinguish its different qualities and their provinces. No one
will confound the Mocha with the Bourbon, the Rio Janeiro with
the Martinique. Each grain carries in its form, in its
proportions and aroma, its extraction, so to speak.
"From whence came these changes? We cannot certainly explain the
why or the wherefore, and follow rigorously the relation of cause
and effect; but in taking these phenomena together, it is evident
that these modifications result from the differences of
temperature, climate, and cultivation.
"This example, taken from the vegetable kingdom, shows us that by
transporting the same vegetable to different places, and
subjecting it to different culture, _diverse races_ are
obtained.
"Tea that was transported to South America several years since
presents the same results.
"Now take an example from among the animals. You know that the
turkey is a native of America. Its introduction into Europe is
quite recent.
"In America the turkey is wild; and there, in the condition of
its natural existence, it presents several characteristics which
distinguish it from the domestic bird. The wild turkey is
beautiful. Of a rich brown color, its plumage presents the
reflections of blue, copper, and gold, making it truly a
beautiful ornament. It was on account of its plumage that it was
first brought to France. No one dreamed of eating it, and the
first one that was served upon a table in France, was in the year
1570, and upon the occasion of the nuptials of King Charles IX.
"When found to be such a luxury, it was considered too good to be
merely looked at, and it passed from the court to the farm-yard,
from farm to farm, from east to west, from north to south. At
this present time it is an article of commerce all over France.
"In going from farm to farm, and from country to country, this
bird has sustained different conditions of existence,
nourishment, and temperature, but never a continuation of its
primitive condition that was natural to it in America. The result
is, that it has changed, and at this present time the turkey in
France bears no resemblance to its savage source. In general, it
is smaller, and its rich plumage has undergone a marked change.
Some are yellow, others white, some mixed with black, gray, and
yellow. Almost all the localities devoted to raising the fowl
have caused several new varieties, which have transformed them
into _races_.
"To have thus changed their habits so as to lose resemblance to
their first parents, are our French fowls any the less
descendants of the wild turkeys of America? Are they less the
brothers, or cousins, if you like the term better? Have they
ceased to be of the _same species?_ Certainly not!
{72}
"That which is characteristic of the turkey is also true of the
rabbit. The wild rabbit lives around and about us, on our downs,
and in our woods. It resembles our domestic rabbits but little.
Among the latter you will see the large and the small, the
smooth-haired and the silky; the black and the white, the yellow
and the gray, and the mixed. In a word, this species comprises a
great number of different races, all constituting one and the
same kind with the wild races we see around us. From these facts,
which I could multiply, we can deduce an important consequence to
which I call your attention. A pair of rabbits left unmolested in
a field, would, in a few years, people entire France with their
descendants. We have seen how the single coffee-plant, carried by
Captain Destiaux, has propagated all the plants now found in
America.
"The wild turkeys and their domestic descendants, the wild
rabbits and theirs, reduced to captivity, could then be
considered by naturalists as all proving equally their descent
from one primitive pair.
"This is the secret of species. Having always before our eyes
numbers of single groups of animals or vegetables, for one reason
or other we hardly consider them as descendants of one only
primitive pair; we call what we see a _species_; if there
are differences observable among these groups, they are _the
races of this species_.
"Observe that, in my explanations, I have not given for a
certainty the existence of one primitive source for rabbits and
turkeys. I do not affirm the fact, as neither observation nor
experience--the two guides we must follow in science--teaches
anything in this regard. I simply say, all are as though
descended from one only primitive pair.
"In summing up the question of _species_ _and_ race, it
is not difficult to understand nor to believe, when we know the
savage type, and have historical authority which permits us to
attach to this type the groups, more or less different, according
to their domestication. But when we are ignorant of the savage
type, and in want of historical authority, the question becomes
extremely difficult at first, because the differences we find in
one and the other, and above all, in the different groups, could
hardly be considered other than such as characterize different
species.
"Happily, physiology comes then to our relief. We find in this
science one of those grand and beautiful general laws, which
holds and maintains the established order, and which we admire
the more we study it. It is the law of _crossing_, which
governs animals as well as vegetables, and is, consequently,
applicable to man himself.
"We understand by the term _crossing_, all unions effected
between animals belonging to different species or to two
different races. The result of the unions obeying these laws is,
that if the animals of _different species_ unite, in the
majority of cases the union is barren.
"Thus, for example, it has been tried a million of times all over
the world, to effect a union between rabbits and hares. It is
said to have succeeded twice.
"Much doubt is cast upon this operation by the testimony of a man
of undoubted talent, habituated to experiments, who believed
these unions to be possible. Though availing himself of all
possible means of proof, he was not more fortunate than his
predecessors, Buffon and the brothers Geoffrey St. Hilaire. Thus,
the rabbit and the hare, though presenting a great conformity in
appearance, cannot reproduce. Such is the general result of
crossing two different _species_.
{73}
"In a few cases, the union between two different species may be
fruitful, but the offspring cannot reproduce. For example, the
union between a horse and an ass. The product of this union is
the mule. All the mules in the world are the descendants of the
ass and the mare. These animals are so numerous in Spain and
South America that they are preferred to horses, on account of
their great strength and powers of endurance. The genet, which is
less desirable because it is not so robust, is the fruit of the
inverse crossing of the horse and the female ass. The genet, no
more than the mule, can reproduce. If one or the other is
desired, of necessity recourse is had to the two _species_.
In extremely rare cases, fecundity remains among some of their
descendants, but it diminishes gradually from the second
generation down to the third, fourth, and fifth. The same result
is shown in the union of the canary bird. I could here accumulate
a crowd of analogous details. Above all, two great general facts
appear that comprehend all, and are the expression of the law;
they are that, notwithstanding the accumulated observations of
years, made from experiments on certain species, not a single
example is known of an intermediate species being obtained by the
_crossing_ of animals belonging to _two different
species_.
"This general fact explains how order is maintained in the actual
living creation. Were it otherwise, the animal and vegetable
world would have been filled with intermediate groups, passing
from one to the other insensibly, and in the confusion, it would
be impossible for naturalists to recognize them. The general
conclusion to draw from these precedents is, that infecundity is
_the law of union between animals of different species_.
"Unions are always more fruitful when between two animals of the
same race. Their descendants are as fruitful as the parents and
the grandparents, where pains are taken to preserve the race
pure, and to prevent strange blood from debasing it.
"When, on the contrary, a union is effected between two different
races belonging to the same species, producing a _mongrel
race_, the contrary takes place.
"There is no difficulty in obtaining a mongrel race--the result
of a crossing of races; but the difficulty is when there is a
pure race, and it is desirable to have it maintained, that great
care is needed to prevent strange blood from changing it.
"Races crossed by mongrels--that is to say, by animals of the
same species, but belonging to different races, multiply around
us. There are the dogs in the streets, the cats of the alleys,
the coach-horses; all beasts among whom the race is undecided in
consequence of crossing indiscriminately, their characteristics
becoming confounded.
"Far from endeavoring to obtain cross races, men who are occupied
in raising stock, also bird-fanciers, know with what care they
endeavor to preserve the purity of the races they keep. This is
the general fact, and the result is, _that infecundity is the
law of unions between animals belonging to different races_.
"This is the fundamental distinction between _species_ and
_race_. This distinction ought to be the more known and
considered, as it is borrowed from experience.
"When there are two animals, or two vegetables, of whom we are
uncertain as to whether they are two distinct _species_, we
have but to observe if their union is fruitful; and if this
quality attaches to their descendants, we can then affirm that,
despite the differences that separate them, _they are the races
of the same species_.
{74}
If, on the contrary, their offspring diminishes in a remarkable
manner at the end of several generations, we can then, without
hesitation, declare them to belong to _distinct species_. In
citing these examples, I have not overlooked the subject of my
discourse, or the question at its commencement.
"In referring to the designs before our eyes, they show us that
between the human groups the differences are marked enough,
though to all appearance less considerable than they appeared at
first. We do not know the types, or the primitive types, of the
several groups.
"When we meet with one or several men presenting the
characteristics of these types, and we cannot recognize them in
spite of historical explanations, we are led to judge by our
eyes. Without taking man himself into account, we cannot decide
if these several differences that present themselves in the human
family are those of _race_ or of _species_; if man can
be considered as having had but one primitive source only, or if
he should have been derived from several primitive sources.
"I have said before, and repeat again, man is an organized and
living being. Under this head he obeys all the general laws to
which are attached all organized and living beings; he obeys,
consequently, the law of crossing. He must then apply this law to
ascertain _if there is one or several species of men_. Take,
for example, the two types farthest removed--those which seem
more separated than the others by the greatest
differences--namely, the white and the black.
"If these types really constitute _distinct species_, the
union between these species should follow the proof that we have
seen characterize the unions between animals, and vegetables, of
different species. They should be unfruitful in the majority of
cases, or nearly so. Fecundity should disappear at the end of a
short period, and they could not form intermediate families
between the negroes and the whites. If these are only _the
races of one and the same species_, then unions, on the
contrary, should be quite fruitful, and fecundity should be found
among their descendants, and they should form intermediate races.
"These facts are decisive, and admit of no doubt.
"For three centuries the whites, _par excellence_, the
Europeans, have achieved, so to say, the conquest of the world.
They have gone everywhere. Everywhere they have found local races
who have borne them no resemblance. Whenever they have crossed
with them, these unions have been fruitful; more so than with
those indigenous to themselves.
"Man, from the result of the institution of slavery--which
happily has never stained the soil of France--has transported the
negro everywhere; everywhere he has crossed with his slaves, and
everywhere they have formed a population of mulattoes. Wherever
the negro has crossed with local groups or families, there has
arisen an intermediate race, who in character manifest their
two-fold origin. The whites have finally crossed with the
mongrels of all origins, and the result is, that in certain
quarters of the globe--particularly in South America--there is an
inextricable mixture of people, comparable, under the class, to
the dogs in our streets and the cats of our alleys.
"The rapidity with which these mongrel races cross and multiply
is really remarkable. It is scarcely three centuries--hardly
twelve generations--since Europeans penetrated into different
parts of the world.
{75}
It is estimated that already the number of mongrels resulting
from the crossing of whites with natives, is a seventieth of the
whole population of the globe. Experience is indisputable, if we
even deny modern science, or at least, wish to make man an
exception to all living and organized beings. We must admit that
all men form but one species, composed of a certain number of
different races; consequently, all men can only be considered as
having descended from one primitive pair.
"We arrive at this conclusion in despite of all kinds of
dogmatical, theological, philosophical, and metaphysical
considerations. Observation and experience alone, applied to the
animal and vegetable kingdoms, in a word, science, conducts us to
the conclusion, _there exists but one species of man._
"This result, I do not fear to say, is of great and serious
importance; for it creates in our minds an idea of the universal
fraternity of science and reason, the only schools that many
persons recognize at this present time.
"I hope that my demonstrations will have convinced you;
meanwhile, I am not ignorant, and you all know, that
anthropologists differ. There are among my contemporaries a
number of men, even of great merit, who believe in the plurality
of the human species. You may possibly come into contact with
them. Listen attentively, then, to the reasons they will urge to
make you see with their eyes. You will find that their reasonings
all tend to prove that there is too great a difference between
the negro and the white for them to be of the same species. In
reply, state that between the black and the white spaniel, the
lap-dog and the mastiff, there exist greater differences than
exist between the European and the African. Yet these animals are
all dogs. They may argue, perhaps, that man, whatever may have
been his characteristics, could not have generated both blacks
and whites. Then ask why the wild turkey, whose origin, and that
of its ancestors, we are acquainted with, and the wild rabbit,
which we find everywhere, could have generated all our domestic
races?
"We cannot, I repeat, explain perfectly the how and the
wherefore; but what we know is, that the fact exists, and we
shall find a general explanation in all states of existence--in
all conditions of people.
"It is not, then, surprising that man presents, in the different
groups, the differences herein depicted; man who trod the earth
long before the turkey and the rabbit; man, who for centuries has
existed upon the surface of the globe, submitting to the most
diverse and opposite conditions of existence, multiplying again
the causes of those modifications by his manners and habits, by
his ways of living, by more or less care in his own preservation;
man, finding himself in more marked and varied conditions than
those sustained by the animals we have quoted. If anything
surprises us, it is that the distinctions are not more
considerable.
"In turn, ask the polygenists--as those _savans_ are called
who believe in the multiplicity of the human species--how it is
that when the white man locates in any country, from the
antipodes, if you will, or from America or Polynesia--that if he
unites with the natives, who differ the most completely from him,
these unions are fruitful, and that, above all, there remains
traces of this alliance in producing a mongrel race?
{76}
"If you press the question more closely, you will find them
denying the truth of species; by so doing, placing themselves in
contradiction with all naturalists, botanists, or zoologists,
without exception; consequently, with all the eminent minds who
have followed in the wake of Buffon, Tournefort, Jussieu, Cuvier,
and Geoffrey St. Hilaire, who made the animal and vegetable
kingdoms their study, without discussion, or dreaming of its
connection with man. In agitating these doctrines, polygenists
place themselves in opposition to the most firmly established
science. You will hear them declare that man, above all, is an
exception; that he is guided by laws peculiar to himself; and
that arguments deduced from the study of animals and plants, are
not applicable to him. Then reply that, in the name of all the
natural sciences, they are certainly in error, and that it is an
impossibility that a living and organized being can escape the
laws of organization and of life, having a body fortified against
the laws that govern inorganic matter; that man, to be living and
organized, obeys, under this title, all general laws, and those
of intersection like all the others. The conclusion that we have
attained is, then, legitimate, and the nature of the arguments
employed to combat them, is a proof the more in its favor.
----------
Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.
A certain brother was praised in Abbot Antony's presence. He went
to visit him, and tried to see whether he would bear
mortification; and finding that he could not, he said to him:
"Thou art like a house which is fair to the eye on the outside,
but within hath been despoiled by robbers."
St. Synclitica said: "As a treasure which is exposed is quickly
spent, so, also, is every virtue which is made public soon
reduced to nothing. For as wax melteth before the face of the
fire, even so doth the soul waste away with praises, and lose the
firmness of virtue." Again, she said: "As it is impossible that
the seed and shoot should exist at the same time, even so those
who enjoy the glory of this world are unable to bear heavenly
fruit."
A certain brother said to Abbot Pastor: "What shall I do, for
when I sit in quiet I lose my spirits?" The old man replied,
"Neither despise nor condemn any one, nor cast obloquy upon him,
and God will give thee rest."
Abbot Antony said: "There are persons who wear away their bodies
by fasting; but because they have not discretion, they are far
distant from God."
A certain old man said: "If thou art ailing in body, do not lose
thy spirit; for if the Lord God desireth thee to become sick, who
art thou that thou shouldst be impatient under it? Doth he not
provide for thee in all things? Canst thou live without him? Be
patient, therefore, and beseech him to give what is expedient for
thee, that is, to do whatsoever may be his will, and to sit in
patience, eating thy bread in charity."
-----------
{77}
Holy Week In Jerusalem.
The sacred offices of the Catholic Church, wherever celebrated,
are admirably calculated to increase devotion, and render
intelligible the different events of the ecclesiastical year. In
every land the ceremonies of the great week which ends the season
of Lent have deep interest to all the faithful, since they
portray the chief events of redemption. These annual
commemorations of the passion of Christ have, however, an added
solemnity and power in the two great cities of religion, Rome and
Jerusalem. In the first, the vicar of our Lord takes part in the
holy rites; and, in the second, the whole service is more
impressive than elsewhere; for the great events here occurred,
and the remembrance of them is made, year by year, in closest
proximity to the spot where they took place. It is hazarding
little to say, that nowhere on earth does the office for holy
week have the deep solemnity which marks it in Jerusalem, for the
reason just given. While the rubrics of the Missal and Breviary
are followed with great exactness, several things peculiar to the
place have an interest which may render a description of them
worthy of attention.
On the morning of Palm Sunday, 1866, the writer of this sketch
went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to be present at the
benediction of the palms by his excellency the Patriarch of
Jerusalem. The palms, noble branches, seven feet in length, fresh
and green, are brought every year from Gaza, a little city about
eighteen miles distant. Tied in bundles of suitable size, they
were placed within the most holy sepulchre, the patriarch being
outside the sacred place until the time for sprinkling them with
holy water and incensing, when he entered for that purpose. The
benediction completed, the distribution of the palms took place,
and the long procession began. Chanting the antiphons, the clergy
and laity went twice around the sepulchre, and once around the
stone of unction, and then passed into the Latin chapel.
The solemn Mass, to be celebrated by the patriarch, was to begin
immediately. The holy sepulchre, being about six feet square, is,
of course, much too small for that purpose, and therefore a
temporary altar of large size was promptly set up in front of the
sacred tomb. While the attendants were preparing and decorating
this, in compliance with an intimation given early in the
morning, I went into the most holy sepulchre, and offered the
Divine Sacrifice--it being the third time I had been privileged
to say Mass in that holiest of places. To me it is one of the
most memorable things in life, that this happiness should, at
such a time, have been mine--that a simple priest could say Mass
in "the new tomb of Joseph, which he had hewn out of the rock,"
while the patriarch was officiating outside the sacred place.
On Wednesday, the office of Tenebrae was said in the church. The
patriarch was present and a large number of priests, friars,
seminarians, and choir-boys, and many of the laity. The service
was very solemn, and the music good. The priests were seated in
front of the holy sepulchre, and the triangular candlestick was
placed at the right hand of the door leading to the tomb.
{78}
The chanting of the Lamentations was most impressive; and when
the words, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, _convertere ad Dominum Deum
tuum!_" were uttered, it seemed that this plaintive entreaty
even now could be addressed with fitness to the city that once
was full of people, but is solitary, and made tributary to her
enemies. There was a wild pathos and deep earnestness in the
chant when the summons to turn to the Lord God was made, as if
the singer knew that to-day there is need for the city to listen
and obey. Jerusalem is in the power of the followers of the false
prophet of Mecca; schismatic Christians outnumber the Catholics;
the Jews know not the Lord their God; and the ways of Sion mourn.
Would that the expostulation could be heard by all, that they
might be perfectly united as a company of brethren, having the
same faith and the same worship!
In the afternoon, the column of the flagellation of Christ was
exposed for an hour, or two, by removing the iron grating from
the front of it. As is well known, a portion of the column is in
Rome, in the church of Saint Praxede. The fragment here is only
about one foot high, and of the same diameter. It is kept in the
Latin chapel, in a recess over an altar named after it, and
cannot be seen during the year, as there is little light in the
chapel, and that comes through a window high above and nearly
over the altar. A popular devotion is to pray in front of the
column, and then touch it with a rod, about twenty inches long,
having a brass ferule or cap on the end; this ferule is kissed on
the place which had touched the stone. It being impossible to
reach the pillar by the hand through the grating, this method has
been contrived to satisfy the devotion of those who are anxious
to salute with reverence all the objects and places connected
with the passion of our Lord. On Thursday, at five o'clock, we
went down to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as the office was
to begin early. We waited nearly an hour, in a dismal morning,
until it pleased the Turkish door-keeper to come and unlock the
portals. While standing here, among other subjects for
consideration, was the evident fact that Christians desiring to
celebrate the divine office, in the holiest week of the year, and
in the most sacred place on earth, were compelled to delay the
fulfilment of their wishes until permission had been given by a
Mohammedan. When we were admitted, the services were long,
occupying five and a half hours. The holy oils were consecrated.
At the end a procession was formed, and the blessed sacrament was
carried twice around the sepulchre, and once around the stone of
unction, and then was placed in a repository which stood in the
tomb where our Lord had lain centuries ago.
At one o'clock, the Mandatum, or ceremony of washing the feet of
the pilgrims, was performed by his excellency the patriarch in
front of the most holy sepulchre. He gave to each of the pilgrims
a wooden cross, about seven inches long, roughly made, and having
spaces under bits of pearl for relics from the stations of the
Via Dolorosa. Of the many objects of interest brought home from
the Holy Land, there is scarcely any one valued more than this,
because of the time, place, and occasion when it was received.
The office of the Tenebrae began at three o'clock, as on the day
before. Nothing can surpass in solemnity and deep impressiveness
the chantings of the Lamentations in this place.
{79}
The profound desolation of the soul of the prophet as he uttered
the sad words is fully expressed and realized; and the
remembrance of the calamities which have so frequently befallen
Jerusalem, and even now are her portion, gives bitterness to the
insulting demand, "Is this the city of perfect beauty, the joy of
all the earth?"
On Good Friday the patriarch officiated again in the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre. The passion was sung on Calvary by three
chanters, one reciting the narrative by Saint John, another the
words of our Lord, while the third sung the remainder. The voice
of the priest who chanted the words of Jesus was gentle and sad,
and so like what we may imagine to have been that of our Lord, as
to become painful and oppressive. When the ejaculation,
_consummatum est_, had been made, the first chanter went to
the place where the cross had been set up on which Jesus died,
and kneeling there, in a low voice uttered the words, _et
inclinato capite, tradidit spiritum_.
The prayers were chanted in front of the altar of the
crucifixion, which belongs to the Catholics, and is at the place
properly called of the crucifixion, as being that where our Lord
was nailed to the cross; it is to the right, and about twelve
feet from the spot where the cross was set up. The unveiling of
the cross, at the chant, "_Ecce lignum crucis_," was done
here also; and, when the crucifix was laid on the pavement in
front of the altar, it covered the stone which marks the locality
where our Lord was fastened to the tree. The veneration of the
cross at such a time and place was deeply impressive. After the
patriarch, the priests, monks, and laity, having put off their
shoes, came in their order, and kissed the feet of the image of
the Redeemer.
Wishing to spend as much of Good Friday on Calvary as was
possible, I returned to the church in the afternoon, and sat for
a long time on the floor, leaning against the large square
pillar, within ten feet of the spot where the great oblation was
made. While there, I meditated and prayed as well as was possible
under the circumstances. For many years the Catholics have had
exclusive possession of the church during the last three days of
holy week; and accordingly, when the faithful had been admitted,
the doors were locked, and the sacred offices performed in peace,
free from the annoyance of the crowd which generally fills the
edifice. Today, however, on returning, I found the doors open,
and every one allowed free access. Many who were not Catholics
were now present, and among them were five or six English
travellers who were out sight-seeing. Accompanied by their
dragoman or interpreter, they came on Calvary, and looked around
with idle curiosity. One of them, had he been alone, would
probably have knelt down and prayed; but, being with his friends,
he only bent one knee, and bowed his head a moment at the place
where the cross had been set up. The others of the party,
evidently, did not believe this to be the spot of the
crucifixion. They were more attracted by the gold, silver, and
diamonds on the image of the Blessed Virgin, on the little altar
of the Dolors, than by anything else, and for some time admired
the brilliancy of these as a candle was held near, and talked of
them as the most interesting objects. One glance at the place
where the Lord died was enough for them; and when they went away,
it was a relief to find the chapel again occupied by those who
came to worship. People who have no faith should not visit the
Holy Land.
{80}
If they do, they derive little benefit themselves, and give great
disedification to Christians of every name.
It was now toward the close of the day. Some persons, chiefly
Greeks, were praying on Calvary, when a Turkish officer came up,
and made signs for them to depart. Unwilling to do so, they
remained for some time, when he summoned several soldiers who,
with muskets, came up to enforce obedience to his commands. They
walked slowly around the chapel, close to the wall; and then the
people, seeing that they must go, quietly arose and descended. I
have little doubt that the church was cleared in order to prepare
for the solemn procession in the evening. Although the soldiers
behaved with as much decorum as possible, it was a sad sight for
Christians to find themselves driven from Calvary on Good Friday
by Turks, and it was the bitterest thing experienced in
Jerusalem.
There is always a company of soldiers on duty when any service of
unusual interest takes place in the church. They are there by
request of the French Consul, who is the representative of the
European protector of the Holy Land, and are designed to preserve
order and add to the display. Although the church covers a large
area of ground, there are no spaces of great extent; and thus the
presence of men to keep order is necessary. It is recorded with
pleasure that, during a residence of two months in the holy city,
I saw no act of incivility, nor even a rude look, on the part of
the soldiers. The Greeks and Armenians, not to be excelled by
Catholics, ask for the soldiers on occasion of their solemnities;
and thus, the court of the church, and the edifice itself, are
not unfrequently occupied by the military.
In the evening, the patriarch and clergy, with a crowd of laity,
assemble in the church for the great procession which is made but
on this day. The sacred building was filled to its utmost
capacity; but, owing to the perfect arrangements made, the long
service was gone through without the least irregularity or
embarrassment. There were seven sermons on the passion, in as
many different languages, by priests from the nations whose
vernacular they spoke. The office began in the Latin chapel, and
the first sermon, delivered with much fervor and pathos, was in
Italian. When this had been concluded, the procession was formed.
As it moved from one station to the next, verses of the Miserere
were sung. One of the Franciscan brothers, carrying a large
crucifix, led the procession, an acolyte being on either side of
him. At the place of the division of the garments of Christ, the
sermon was in Greek--at that of the mocking, in another Eastern
language. When we had climbed the stairs of Calvary, and were at
the place of crucifixion, the cross was laid on the ground, while
the sermon in German was preached. Then the crucifix was taken
from this place, where our Lord was once nailed to the wood, and
carried to that where Christ died. The sermon at this place was
in French, and was preached by the leader of the French caravan
of pilgrims, a venerable ecclesiastic. When the discourse was
finished, several priests came to take the body down from the
cross. The crown of thorns was first removed, very slowly, and
with great reverence. The nails were then tenderly drawn from the
hands; and, as each was removed, the arm of the figure, having
joints at the shoulders, was brought down to the side of the
body. The feet were, in like manner, disengaged from the nail; a
sheet passed under the arms, and the body lowered to the altar,
and laid on fine linen.
{81}
Holding the corners of this cloth, four priests slowly carried
the figure down the stairs to the stone of unction, where the
patriarch strewed myrrh over it, and sprinkled rose-water. The
sermon was now preached in Arabic by the Franciscan curate of the
Church of the Nativity, at Bethlehem, and was delivered in a most
energetic manner. Of the seven sermons preached, it was probably
the one understood by the largest number of those present.
Finally, the body was carried to the most holy sepulchre, and
laid in the same place where once reposed the Lamb of God, who
taketh away the sins of the world. Here the sermon was in
Spanish, in compliment to that nation of Catholic renown; and,
when it had been finished, the procession went to the Latin
chapel, whence it had started, and the service of the day was
over.
It will be readily understood that the ceremony of taking down
from the cross, and carrying the image of our Lord to the tomb,
was intended to be a representation of the manner in which the
deposition took place on the day of the earth's redemption. It
was a most powerful sermon, reaching the heart through the sight.
By it we were carried back eighteen hundred years. Standing on
Calvary, we were looking on him whose arms were stretched out on
the cross, as if, in his infinite love, he would embrace all
mankind. We saw him dying that we might live, and dead that we
might be ransomed from the grave. No word was spoken, as good
Father Jucundino came with pincers to remove the crown of thorns,
which he did in such a devout manner, as to make us feel that we
were witnessing the great transaction itself. The power and
impressiveness of the whole ceremony were such as to render the
bystanders awestruck and faint. A scene like this it is
impossible to forget, and neither pencil nor words could produce
a similar result.
On Holy Saturday I prayed a long time in the sepulchre, where our
Lord had lain, as on this day. To be on Calvary on Good Friday,
and in the Tomb on Easter eve, had been the desire of my heart.
With the realization of such a wish, any one should be content;
for he has a privilege granted to but few whose homes are distant
from the Holy Land. In the afternoon, the daily procession was
made with solemnity, the patriarch and many priests and laymen
being present. The pilgrims from Europe were also in the train.
Easter-day was the last of my sojourn in the holy city. Many
priests wished to say Mass in the holy sepulchre, some of whom
had not yet had that privilege. I said Mass on Calvary, for the
last time, that day. During the day the shrines were visited, and
the tomb was now indeed the place of the resurrection.
"_Surrexit, non est hic._" Yes! the grave is empty, and
death hath no more power over him who was once here but is risen
and gone. We see the place where the Lord lay. His day of victory
has come, and the triumph over death and hell is complete. The
tears of the Christian are dried, and the joy of the Paschal time
begins.
--------
{82}
Nellie Netterville;
Or, One Of The Transplanted.
Chapter I.
The stream which divides the county of Dublin from that of Meath
runs part of its course through a pretty, rock-strewn,
furze-blossoming valley, crowned at its western end by the ruins
of a castle, which, in the days of Cromwell, belonged to one of
the great families of the Pale--the English-Irish, as they were
usually called, in order to distinguish them from the Celtic
race, in whose land they had cast their fortunes.
A narrow, winding path leads from the castle to the stream below,
and down this there came, one cold January morning, in the year
of the great Irish "transplantation," a young girl, wrapt in a
hooded mantle of dark cloth, which, strong as it was, seemed
barely sufficient to defend her from the heavy night fogs still
rolling through the valley, hanging rock and bush and
castle-turret in a fantastic drapery of clouds, and then falling
back upon the earth in a mist as persistent, and quite as
drenching, as an actual down-pour of rain could possibly have
proved. Following the course of the zigzag stream, as,
half-hidden in furze and bramble, it made its way eastward to the
sea, a short ten minutes' walk brought her to a low hut, (it
could hardly be called a house,) built against a jutting rock,
which formed, in all probability, the back wall of the tenement.
Here she paused, and after tapping lightly on the door, as a
signal to its inmates, she turned, and throwing back the hood
which had hitherto concealed her features, gazed sadly up and
down the valley. In spite of the fog-mists and the cold, the spot
was indeed lovely enough in itself to deserve an admiring glance,
even from one already familiar with its beauty; but in those dark
eyes, heavy, as it seemed, with unshed tears, there was far less
of admiration than of the longing, wistful gaze of one who felt
she was looking her last upon a scene she loved, and was trying,
therefore, to imprint upon her memory even the minutest of its
features. For a moment she suffered her eyes to wander thus, from
the clear, bright stream flowing rapidly at her feet to the
double line of fantastic, irregularly cut rocks which, crowned
with patches of gorse and fern, shut out the valley from the
world beyond as completely as if it had been meant to form a
separate, kingdom in itself; and then at last, slowly, and as if
by a strong and painful effort of the will, she glanced toward
the spot where the castle stood, with its tall, square towers cut
in sharp and strong relief against the gloomy background of the
sky. A "firm and fearless-looking keep" it was, as the habitation
of one who, come of an invading race, had to hold his own against
all in-comers, had need to be; but while it rose boldly from a
shoulder of out-jutting rock, like the guardian fortress of the
glen, the little village which lay nestled at its foot, the mill
which turned merrily to the music of its bright stream, the
smooth terraces and dark woods immediately around it, the rich
grazing lands, with their herds of cattle, which stretched far
away as the eye could reach beyond, all seemed to indicate that
its owner had been so long settled on the spot as to have learned
at last to look upon it rather as his rightful inheritance than
as a gift of conquest.
{83}
Castled keep and merry mill, trees and cattle and cultivated
fields, the girl seemed to take all in, in that long, mournful
gaze which she cast upon them; but the thoughts and regrets which
they forced upon her, growing in bitterness as she dwelt upon
them, became at last too strong for calm endurance, and throwing
herself down upon her knees upon the cold, damp earth, she
covered her face with both her hands, and burst into a passionate
fit of weeping. Her sobs must have roused up the inmates of the
hut; for almost immediately afterward the door was cautiously
unclosed, and an ancient dame, with a large colored handkerchief
covering her gray hairs, and tied under her chin, even as her
descendants wear it to this hour, peeped out, with an evident
resolve to see as much and be as little seen as possible in
return, by the person who had, at that undue hour, disturbed her
quiet slumbers. The moment, however, she discovered who it was
that was weeping there, all thoughts of selfish fear seemed to
vanish from her mind, and with a wild cry, in which love and
grief and sympathy were mingled, as only an Irish cry can mix
them, she flung her strong, bony arms around the girl, and
exclaimed in Irish, a language with which--we may as well, once
for all remark--the proud lords of the Pale were quite
conversant, using it not only as a medium of communication with
their Irish dependents, but by preference to English, in their
familiar intercourse with each other. For this reason, while we
endeavor to give the old lady's conversation verbatim, as far as
idiom and ideas are concerned, we have ventured to omit all the
mispronunciations and bad grammarisms which, whether on the stage
or in a novel, are rightly or wrongly considered to be the one
thing needed toward the true delineation of the Irish character,
whatever the rank or education of the individual thus put on the
scene may happen to be.
"O my darling, my darling!" cried the old woman, almost lifting
the girl by main force from the ground; "my heart's blood,
a-cushla machree! what are you doing down there upon the damp
grass, (sure it will be the death of you, it will,) with the
morning fog wrapping round you like a curtain? Is there anything
wrong up there at the castle? or what is it all, at all, that
brings you down here before the sun has had time to say
'Good-morrow' to the tree-tops?"
"O Grannie, Grannie!" sobbed the girl, "have you not heard? do
you not know already? It was to say good-by--I could not go
without it. Grannie! I never shall see you again--perhaps
never."
Pity, and love, and sympathy, all beaming a moment before upon
the face of the old hag, changed as instantaneously as if by
magic, into an expression of wild hatred, worthy the features of
a conquered savage.
"It is true, then!" she cried; "it is true what I heard last
night! what I heard--but wouldn't believe, Miss Nellie--if you
were not here to the fore to say it to me yourself! It is true
that they are for robbing the old master of his own; and that
them murdering Cromwellians--my black curse on every mother's son
of them--"
But before she could bring her denunciation to its due
conclusion, the girl had put her hand across her mouth, and, with
terror written on every feature of her face, exclaimed:
{84}
"Hush, Grannie, hush? For Christ and his sweet Mother's sake,
keep quiet! Remember such words have cost many an honest man his
life ere now, and God alone can tell who may or may not be within
hearing at this moment."
She caught the old woman by the arm as she spoke, dragging rather
than leading her into the interior of the cottage. Once there,
however, and with the door carefully closed behind her, she made
no scruple of yielding to the anguish which old Grannie's
lamentations had rather sharpened than allayed, and sitting down
upon a low settle, suffered her tears to flow in silence. Grannie
squatted herself down on the ground at her feet, and swaying her
body backward and forward after the fashion of her people, broke
out once more into vociferous lamentations over the fallen
fortunes of her darling.
"Ochone! ochone! that the young May morning of my darling's life
(which ought to be as bright as God's dear skies above us) should
be clouded over this way like a black November's! Woe is me! woe
is me! that I should have lived to see the day when the old stock
is to be rooted out as if it was a worthless weed for the sake of
a set of beggarly rapscallions, who have only come to Ireland,
may be, because their own land (my heavy curse on it, for the
heavy hand it has ever and always laid on us!) wasn't big enough
to hold their wickedness."
It was in perfect unconsciousness and good faith that old Grannie
thus spoke of Nellie and her family as of the old stock of the
country--a favorite expression to this day among people of her
class in Ireland.
The English descendants of Ireland's first invaders had, in fact,
as years rolled by, and even while proudly asserting their own
claims as Englishmen, so thoroughly identified themselves both by
intermarriages and the adoption of language, dress, and manners
with the Celtic natives of the soil that the latter, ever ready,
too ready for their own interest perhaps, to be won by kindness,
had ended by transferring to them the clannish feeling once given
to their own rulers, and fought in the days we speak of under the
standard of a De Burgh or a Fitzgerald as heartily and bitterly
against Cromwell's soldiers as if an O'Neil or a MacMurrough had
led them to the combat. To Nellie Netterville, therefore, the
sympathy and indignation of old Grannie seemed quite as much a
matter of course as if the blue blood coursing through her veins
had been derived from a Celtic chieftain instead of from an old
Norman baron of the days of King Henry. Nellie was, moreover,
connected with the old woman by a tie which in those days was as
strong, and even stronger, than that of race; for the English of
the Pale had adopted in its most comprehensive sense the Irish
system of fosterage, and Grannie having acted as foster-mother to
Nellie's father, was, to all intents and purposes, as devoted to
the person of his daughter as if she had been in very deed a
grandchild of her own.
But natural as such sympathy might have seemed, and soothing as
no doubt it was to her wounded feelings, it was yet clothed in
such dangerous language that it had an effect upon Nellie the
very opposite of that which, under any other circumstances, it
might have been expected to produce. It recalled her to the
necessity of self-possession, and conscious that she must command
her own feelings if she hoped to control those of her
warm-hearted dependent, she deliberately wiped the tears from her
eyes, and rose from the settle on which she had flung herself
only a few minutes before, in an uncontrolled agony of grief.
{85}
When she felt that she had thoroughly mastered her own emotion,
she drew old Grannie toward her, made her sit down on the stool
she herself had just vacated, and kneeling down beside her, said
in a tone of command which contrasted, oddly yet prettily enough,
with the child-like attitude assumed for the purpose of giving
it:
"You must not say such things. Grannie. I forbid it! Now and for
ever I forbid it! You must not say such things. They can neither
help us nor save us sorrow, and they might cost your life, old
woman, if any evil-designing person heard them."
"My life! my life!" cried old Grannie passionately. "And tell me,
acushla, what is the value of my life to me, if all that made it
pleasant to my heart is to be taken from me? Haven't I seen your
father, whom I nursed at this breast until (God pardon me!) I
loved him as well or better than them that were sent to me for my
own portion? haven't I seen him brought back here for a bloody
burial in the very flower of his days? and didn't I lead the
keening over him at the self-same moment that I knew my own poor
boy was laying stiff and stark on the battle-field, where he had
fallen (as well became him) in the defence of his own master? And
now you come and tell me that you--you who are all that is left
me in the wide world; you who have been the very pulse of my
heart ever since you were in the cradle--that you and the old
lord are to be driven out of your own kingdom, and sent, God only
knows where, into banishment--(him an old man of seventy, and you
a slip of a girl that was only yesterday, so to speak, in your
nurse's arms)--and you would have me keep quiet, would you? You'd
have me belie the thought of my heart with a smiling face? and
all for the sake of a little longer life, forsooth! Troth,
a-lannah, I have had a good taste of that same life already, and
it's not so sweet I found it, that I would go as far as the river
to fetch another sup of it. Not so sweet--not so sweet," moaned
the old woman, rocking herself backward and forward in time to
the inflection of her voice, "not so sweet for the lone widow
woman, with barely a roof above her head, and not a chick or
child (when you are out of it) for comfort or for coaxing!"
Grannie had poured forth this harangue with all the eloquent
volubility of her Irish heart and tongue, and though Nellie had
made more than one effort for the purpose, she had hitherto found
it quite impossible to check her. Want of breath, however,
silenced her at last, and then her foster-child took advantage of
the lull in the storm to say:
"Dear old Grannie, do not talk so sadly. I will love and think of
you every day, even in that far-off west to which we are exiled.
And I forgot to say, moreover, that my dear mother is to remain
here for some months longer, and will be ready (as she ever is)
to give help and comfort to all that need it, and to you, of
course, dear Grannie, more than to all the rest--you whom she
looks, upon almost as the mother of her dead husband."
"Ready to give help? Ay, that in troth she is," quoth Grannie,
"God bless her for a sweet and gentle soul, that never did aught
but what was good and kind to any one ever since she came among
us, and that will be eighteen years come Christmas twelvemonth.
Ochone! but them were merry times, a-lannah! long before you were
born or thought of.
{86}
God pity you that you have burst into blossom in such weary days
as these are!"
"Merry times? I suppose they were," said Nellie good-naturedly,
trying to lead poor Grannie's thoughts back to the good old times
when she was young and happy. "Tell me about it now, dear
Grannie, (my mother's coming home, I mean,) that I may amuse
myself by thinking it all over again, when I am far away in the
lone west, and no good old Grannie to go and have a gossip with
when I am tired of my own company."
"Why, you see, Miss Nellie, and you mustn't be offended if I say
it," said Grannie, eagerly seizing on this new turn given to her
ideas; "we weren't too well pleased at first to hear that the
young master was to be wedded in foreign parts, and some of us
were even bold enough to ask if there weren't girls fair enough,
ay, and good enough too, for that matter, for him in Ireland,
that he must needs bring a Saxon to reign over us! However, when
the old lord up yonder at the castle, came down and told us how
she had sent him word, that for all she had the misfortune to be
English born, she meant, once she was married in Ireland, to be
more Irish than the Irish themselves, then, I promise you, every
vein in our hearts warmed toward her; and on the day of her
coming home, there wasn't, if you'll believe me, a man, woman, or
child, within ten miles of Netterville, who didn't go out to meet
her, until, what with the shouting and the hustling, she began to
think, (the creature,) as she has often told me since, that it
was going to massacre her, may be, that we were; for sure, until
the day she first saw the young master, it was nothing but tales
upon tales she had heard of how the wild Irish were worse than
the savages themselves, and how murder and robbery were as common
and as little thought of with us as daisies in the springtime.
Any way, if she thought that for a moment, she didn't think it
long; for when she faced round upon us at the castle-gates,
standing between her husband and her father-in-law, (the old lord
himself,) we gave her a cheer that might have been heard from
this to Tredagh, if the wind had set that way; and though she
didn't then understand the '_Cead-mille-failthe_ to your
ladyship!' that we were shouting in our Irish, she was cute
enough, at all events, to guess by our eyes and faces what our
tongues were saying. And that wasn't all," continued Grannie,
growing more and more garrulous as she warmed to her theme; "that
wasn't all neither; for when the people were so tired they could
shout no more, and quiet was restored, she whispered something to
the young master; and what do you think he did, my dear, but led
her right down to the place where me and my son (his own
foster-brother, that's gone, God rest him!) were standing in the
crowd, and she put out her pretty white hand and said, (it was
the first and last time that ever I liked the sound of the
English,) 'It is you, then, that was my husband's foster-mother,
isn't it?' And says I, in her own tongue, for I had picked up
English enough at the castle for that, 'Please your ladyship, I
am, and this is the boy,' says I, pulling my own boy forward--for
he was shy like, and had stepped a little backward when she came
near--'this is the boy that slept with Master Gerald' (that was
the master, you know, honey) 'on my breast.'"
{87}
"'Well, then,' said she, giving one hand to me and the other to
my boy, 'remember it is with my foster-brother I mean to lead out
the dancing to-night;' and troth, my pet, she was as good as her
word, and not a soul would she dance with, for all the fine lords
and gentlemen who had come to the wedding, until she had footed
it for a good half-hour at least with my Andie, Ah! them were
times indeed, my jewel," the old crone querulously wound up her
chronicle by saying. "And to think that I should have lived to
see the day when the young master's father and the master's child
are to be hunted out of their own by a Cromwellian upstart with
his 'buddagh Sassenachs,' (Saxon clowns,) like so many
bloodhounds at his heels, to ride over us roughshod."
So far the young girl had "seriously inclined her ear" to listen,
partly to soothe old Grannie's grief by suffering it to flow
over, and partly, perhaps, because her own mind, exhausted by
present sufferings, found some unconscious relief in letting
itself be carried back to those bright days when the sun of
worldly prosperity still lighted up her home. The instant,
however, that the old woman began, with all the ferocity of a
half-tamed nature, to pour out denunciations on the foes who had
wrought her ruin, she checked the dangerous indulgence of her
feelings by saying:
"Hush, dear Grannie, and listen to me. My mother is to stay here
until May, (so much grace they have seen fit to do us,) in order
that she may collect our stock and gather such of our people
together as may choose to follow us into exile."
"Then, may be, she'll take me," cried old Grannie suddenly, her
withered face lightening up into an expression of hope and joy
that was touching to behold. "May be she'll take me, a-lannah!"
Nellie Netterville eyed Grannie wistfully. Nothing, in fact,
would she have better liked than to have taken that old relic of
happier days with her to her exile; but old, decrepid, bowed down
by grief as well as years, as Grannie was, it would have been
folly, even more than cruelty, to have suffered her to offer
herself for Connaught transplantation. It would have been,
however, but a thankless office to have explained this in as many
words; so Nellie only said: "When the time comes, dear old woman,
when the time comes, it will be soon enough to talk about it
then--that is to say, if you are still able and willing for the
venture."
"Willing enough at all events, God knows," said Grannie
earnestly. "But why not go at once with you, my darling? The
mistress _is the mistress_ surely; but blood is thicker than
water, and aren't you the child of the man that I suckled on this
bosom? Why not go at once with you?"
"I think it is too late in the year for you--too cold--too
wretched; and besides, we are only to take one servant with us,
and of course it must be a man," said Nellie, not even feeling a
temptation to smile at the blind zeal which prompted Grannie to
offer herself, with her sixty years and her rheumatic limbs, to
the unprofitable post of bower-maiden in the wilderness. "It
would not do to alter our arrangements now," she continued
gently; "but when spring comes, we will see what can be done; and
in the mean time, you must go as often as you can to the castle,
to cheer my dear mother with a little chat. Promise me that you
will, dear Grannie, for she will be sad enough and lonely enough,
I promise you, this poor mother, and nothing will help her so
much in her desolation as to talk with you of those dear absent
ones, who well she knows are almost as precious to you as they
can be to herself. And now I must begone--I must indeed!
{88}
I could not go in peace without seeing you once more, and so I
stole out while all the rest of the world were sleeping; but now
the sun is high in the heavens, and they will be looking for me
at the castle. Good-by, dear Grannie, good-by!"
Sobbing as if her heart would break, Nellie flung her arms round
the old woman's neck; but Grannie, with a wild cry of mingled
grief and love, slipt through her embraces and flung herself at
her feet. Nellie raised her gently, placed her once more upon the
settle, and not daring to trust herself to another word, walked
straight out of the cottage, and closed the door behind her.
Chapter II.
The sun had by this time nearly penetrated through the heavy fog,
which had hung since early dawn like a vail over the valley; and
just as Nellie reached the foot of the path leading straight up
to the castle, it fairly broke through every obstacle, and cast a
gleam of wintry sunshine on her face. That face, once seen, was
not one easily to be forgotten. The features were almost, and yet
not quite, classic in their beauty, gaining in expression what
they lost in regularity; and the frequent mingling, by
intermarriages, of Celtic blood with that of her old Norman race,
had given Nellie that most especial characteristic of Irish
beauty--hair black and glossy as the raven's wing, with eyes blue
as the dark, double violet, and looking even bluer and darker
than they were by nature through the abundance of the long,
silken lashes, the same color as her hair, which fringed them.
She carried her small, beautifully-formed head with the grace and
spirit of a young antelope, and there was something of firmness
even in the elastic lightness of her movements, which gave an
idea of energy and decision not naturally to be looked for in one
so young and girlish, both as to form and feature. Her
tight-fitting robe of dark and strong material, though evidently
merely adopted for the convenience of travelling, rather set off
than detracted from the beauty of her form; and over it hung that
long, loose mantle of blue cloth which seems, time out of mind,
to have been a favorite garment with the Irish. It was fastened
at the throat by a brooch of gold, curious and valuable even then
for its evident antiquity; and with its broad, graceful folds
falling to her feet, and its hood drawn forward over her head,
and throwing her sweet, sad face somewhat into shadow, gave her
at that moment, as the sun shone down upon her, the very look and
expression of a Mater Dolorosa.
Ten minutes' rapid walking up a path, which looked more like an
irregular staircase cut through rock and turf-mould than a way
worn gradually by the pressure of men's feet, brought her to the
platform upon which the castle stood.
Moated and circumvallated toward the south and west, which were
easy of access from the flat lands beyond, Netterville was
comparatively defenceless on the side from whence Nellie now
approached it; its builders and inhabitants having evidently
considered the deep stream and valley which lay beneath as a
sufficient protection against their enemies.
The great gate stood looking eastward, and Nellie could see from
the spot where she halted that all the preparations for her
approaching journey were already almost completed. A couple of
sorry-looking nags, (garrans, the Irish would have called them,)
one with a pillion firmly fixed behind the saddle, were being led
slowly up and down in readiness for their riders.
{89}
Little sorrowful groups of the Irish dependents of the family
stood here and there upon the terraces, waiting (faithful to the
last as they ever were in those days) to give one parting glance
and one sorrowful, long farewell to their deposed chieftain and
his heiress; and a little further off, like hawks hovering around
their prey, might be seen a band of those iron-handed,
iron-hearted men in whose favor the transplantation of the
present owners of the soil had been decreed, and who had been set
there, half to watch and half to enforce departure, should
anything like evasion or resistance be attempted. Something very
like an angry frown clouded Nellie's brow as she caught sight of
these men for whose benefit she was being robbed of her
inheritance; but, unwilling to indulge such evil feelings, she
suffered her gaze to pass quietly beyond them until it rested
once more on the streamlet and valley as they stretched eastward
toward the sea. Just then some one tapped her on the shoulder,
and, turning sharply round, Nellie found herself confronted by a
woman not many years older, probably, than herself, but with a
face upon which, beautiful as it was, the early indulgence of
wild passions had stamped a look of premature decay.
"What would you with me?" said Nellie, surprised at the
familiarity of the salutation, and not in the least recognizing
the person who had been guilty of it. "I know you not. What do
you want with me?"
"Oh! little or nothing," said the other, in a harsh and taunting
voice; "little or nothing, my fair young mistress--heiress, that
has been, of the house of Netterville--only I thought that, may
be, you could say if the old mistress will be after going with
you into exile. _They_ told me she was," she added, with a
gesture toward the soldiers; "and yet, as far as I can see, only
one of the garrans has a pillion to its back. But, may be, she'll
be for going later--"
"I have already said," Nellie coldly answered, for she neither
liked the matter nor the manner of the woman's speech--"I have
already said that I know you not, and, in all likelihood, neither
does my mother. Why, therefore, do you ask the question?"
"Because I _hope_ it!" said the woman, with such a look of
hatred on her face that Nellie involuntarily recoiled a
step--"because I hope it; and then perhaps, when she is houseless
and hungry herself, she will remember that cold December night
when she drove me from her door, to sleep, for all that she
cared, under the shelter of the whin-bushes in the valley."
"If my mother, good and gentle as she is to all, ever acted as
you say she did, undoubtedly she had wise and sufficient reasons
for it," Nellie coldly answered.
"Undoubtedly--good and sufficient reasons had she, and so, for
that matter, had I too, when I put my heavy curse upon her and
all her breed," retorted the girl, with a coarse and taunting
laugh. "And see how it has come to work," she added wildly--"see
how it has come to work! Ay, ay--she'll mind it when it is too
late, I doubt not; and will think twice before she lets loose her
Saxon pride to flout a poor body for only asking a night's
shelter under her roof. Roof! she'll soon have no roof for
herself, I guess; but if ever she has one again, she'll think
better of it, I doubt not."
{90}
"She will think next time just what she thought last time--that,
so long as you lead the life you lead at present, you would not,
though you were a princess, be fitting company for the lowest
scullion in her kitchen."
Thus spoke a grave, sweet voice (not Nellie's) close at the
woman's elbow. She started, as if a wasp had stung her, and
turned toward the speaker.
A tall lady, dressed in widow's weeds, with a pale face and eyes
weary, it almost seemed, with sorrow, had approached quietly from
behind, and overhearing the girl's defiant speech, saved Nellie
the trouble of an answer by that firm yet most womanly response.
Then passing to the front, she put her arm round Nellie's waist,
as if to protect her from the very presence of the other, and
drew her away, saying:
"Come along, my daughter; the morning wears apace, and these long
delays do but embitter partings. Your grandfather is already
waiting. Remember, Nellie," she added in a faltering voice, "that
he, with his seventy years, will be almost as dependent upon your
strength and energy as you can be on his. He is my dead husband's
father, and therefore, after a long and bitter struggle with my
own heart, I have devoted you, my own and only treasure, to be
his best support and help and comfort in the long and
unseasonable journey to which the cruelty of our conquerors has
compelled him. I trust--I trust in God and his sweet Mother that
I shall see no cause later to repent me of this decision!"
Nellie drew a little closer to her mother, and a strange firmness
of expression passed over her young face as she answered quietly:
"My own unselfish mother, doubt not that I will be all--son and
daughter both in one--to him; and fear not, I do beseech you, for
our safety. What though he has seen his seventy winters, and I
but barely seventeen! We are strong and healthy, both of us; and
with clean consciences (which is more than our foes can boast of)
and good wits, I doubt not we shall reach our destination safely.
Destination!" she repeated bitterly--"ay, destination; for home,
in any sense of the word, it never can be to us."
"Say not so, my Nellie--say not so," said her mother gently.
"Home, after all, is only the place where we garner up our
treasures; and, therefore, in the spot where I may rejoin you,
however wild and desolate it otherwise shall be, _my_ heart,
at all events, will acknowledge it has found its home!"
As they thus conferred together, mother and daughter had been
moving slowly toward the castle, in absolute forgetfulness of the
woman who had originally made a third in the group, and who was
still following at a little distance. She stopped, however, on
discovering that they had no intention of making her a sharer in
their conversation, and, gazing after them with a fearful
mingling of hatred and wounded pride on her coarse, handsome
features, exclaimed aloud:
"The second time you have flouted me, good madam! Well, well, the
third is the charm, and then it will be my turn. See if I do not
make you rue it!"
Shaking her fist, as she spoke, savagely in the air, she turned
her back upon Netterville towers, and rushed down a path leading
directly to the river.
As Mrs. Netterville and her daughter approached the castle-gates,
a young man came out to meet them, and, with a look and bearing
half-way between that of an intelligent and trusted servant and a
petted follower, said hurriedly:
{91}
"My lord grows impatient, madam. He says he is ready to depart at
once, and that the sooner it is done the better. And, in troth, I
am much of the same way of thinking my own self," he added, with
that sort of grim severity which some men seem almost naturally
to assume the moment they feel themselves in danger of giving way
to grief, in the womanly fashion of tears.
Hamish was of the same age as Nellie, though he looked and felt
at least eight years older. He was her foster-brother, as we have
already said, and had been her companion in the nursery; but as
war and poverty thinned the ranks of followers attached to the
house of Netterville, he had been gradually advanced from one
post of confidence to another, until, young as he was, he united
the various duties of "bailiff" or "steward," as it would be
called in Ireland--major-domo or butler, valet, and footman, all
in his own proper person.
"True," said Mrs. Netterville, in answer to his
communication--"too true. Every moment that he lingers now will
be but a fresh barbing of the arrow. Come, my Nellie, let us
hasten to your grandfather. Would that I could persuade him to
take Hamish with him instead of Mat, who has little strength and
less wit to help you in such a journey. I should be far more at
ease, both on his account and yours, my daughter."
"Faix, madam, and it was just that same that I was thinking to
myself awhile ago," cried Hamish eagerly. "Sure, who has a better
right to go with Mistress Nellie than her own foster-brother? And
am not I strong enough, and more than willing enough to fight for
her--ay, and to die for her too, if any of them black-browed
hypocrites should dare for to cast their evil eyes upon her or
the old master?"
"Strong enough and brave enough undoubtedly you are," said
Nellie, speaking before her mother could reply, "and true-hearted
more than enough, my dear foster-brother, are you; but, if only
for that very reason, you must stay here to help and comfort my
dear mother. Bethink you, Hamish, hers is, in truth, the hardest
lot of any. We shall have but to endure the weariness of long
travel; she will have to contend with the insolence of men in
high places--yes, and perhaps even to dispute with them, day by
day, and hour by hour, for that which is her rightful due and
ours. This is man's work, not woman's; and a man, moreover,
quick-witted and fearing no one. Will you not be that man,
Hamish, to stand by her against the tyrant and oppressor, and to
act for her whenever and wherever it may be impossible for her to
act for herself?"
Hamish would have answered with a fervor equal to her own, but
Mistress Netterville prevented him by saying, with a mingling of
grief and impatience in her manner:
"It is in vain to talk to you, Nellie! You have all your
grandfather's stiff-necked notions on this subject. Nevertheless
it would have been far more to my real contentment if he and you
had yielded to my wishes, seeing that there is many a one still
left among our dependents to whom, on a pinch, I could entrust
the care both of cattle and of household gear, and but one (and
that is Hamish) to whom willingly I would confide my child."
"Now, may Heaven bless you for that very word, madam," cried
Hamish eagerly and gratefully; and then turning to Nellie, he
went on: "See now, Mistress Nellie, see now, when her ladyship
herself has said it--surely you would never think of going
contrary to her wishes!"
{92}
"Listen to me, Hamish," said Nellie, putting her hand on his
shoulder and standing still, so that her mother unconsciously
moved on without her. "Ever since that weary day when the sheriff
came here to inform us of our fate, I have had a strange,
uncomfortable foreboding that my mother will soon find herself in
even a worse plight than ours. A woman, as she will be, alone and
friendless--foemen all around her--foemen domiciled even in her
household--foemen, the worst and cruelest of any, with prayer on
their lips and hypocrisy in their hearts, and a strong sword at
their hips, ready to smite and slay, as they themselves express
it, all who oppose that wicked lusting for wealth and power which
they so blindly mistake for the promptings of a good spirit! With
us, once we have obtained our certificate from the commissioners
at Loughrea, it will be far otherwise. Each step we take in our
wild journey westward will, if, alas! it leads us further from
our friends, set, likewise, a safer distance between us and our
oppressors. Promise me, therefore, to ask no more to follow us
who go to peace and safety, but to abide quietly here, where
alone a real danger threatens. Promise me even more than this, my
foster-brother--promise to stay with her so long as ever she may
need you; and should aught of evil happen to her, which may God
avert! promise to let me know at once, that I may instantly
return and take a daughter's proper place beside her. Promise me
this, Hamish--nay, said _I promise!_--Hamish, you must
swear it!"
"I swear it! by the Mother of Heaven and her blessed Child, I
swear it!" said Hamish fervently; for he saw at once that there
was much probability in Nellie's view of the subject, though, in
his overweening anxiety for the daughter, he had hitherto
overlooked the chances of danger to the mother. "But, Christ save
us!" he added suddenly, as some wild notes of preparation reached
his experienced ear; "Christ save us, if the old women are not
going to keen for your departure as if it were a burial!"
"Oh! do not let them--do not let them; bid them stop if they
would not break our hearts!" cried Nellie, rushing on to overtake
her mother, while Hamish, in obedience to her wishes, struck
right across the terrace toward a distant group of women, among
whom, judging by their excited looks and gestures, he knew that
he should find the keeners. Long, however, ere he could reach
them, a wild cry of lamentation, taken up and prolonged until
every man, woman, and child within ear-shot had lent their voices
to swell the chorus, made him feel that he was too late; and
turning to ascertain the cause of this sudden outburst, he saw
that Lord Netterville had come forth from the castle, and was
standing at the open gates. A fine, soldierly-looking man he was,
counting over seventy years, yet in appearance not much more than
sixty, and as he stood there, pale and bare-headed, in the
presence of his people, a shout of such mingled love and
sympathy, grief and execration rent the air, that some of the
Cromwellian soldiers made an involuntary step forward, and
handled their muskets in expectation of an attack.
"Tell them to stop!" cried the old man, throwing up his arms like
one who could bear his agony no longer. "For God's sake, tell
them to stop! Let them wait, at least," he added, half bitterly,
half sorrowfully, "until, like the dead, I am out of hearing."
{93}
There was no need for Hamish to become the interpreter of his
wishes. That sudden cry of a man's irrepressible anguish had
reached the hearts of all who heard it, and a silence fell upon
the crowd--a silence more expressive of real sympathy than their
wildest lamentations could have been.
The old lord bowed, and tried to speak his thanks, but the words
died upon his lips, and he turned abruptly to take leave of his
daughter-in-law. She knelt to receive his blessing. He laid his
hand upon her head, and then, making an effort to command his
voice, said tenderly:
"Fare thee well, my best and dearest! It is the way of these
canting times to be for ever quoting Scripture, and for once I
will follow fashion. May Heaven bless and keep thee, daughter;
for a very Ruth hast thou been to me in my old age; yea, and
better than seven sons in this the day of my poverty and sorrow!"
He stooped to kiss her brow and to help her to rise, and as he
did so, he added in a whisper, meant only for the lady's ear:
"Forgive me. Mary, if I once more allude to that subject we have
so much discussed already. Are you still in the mind to send
Nellie with me? Think better of it, I entreat you. The daughter's
place should ever, to my poor thinking, be beside her mother!"
"I _have_ thought," she answered, "and I _have_
decided. If Nellie is my child, she is your grandchild as well;
and the duty which her father is no longer here to tender, it
must be her pride and joy to offer you in his stead. Moreover, my
good lord," she added, in a still lower tone, "the matter hath
another aspect. Nellie will be safer with you! This place and all
it contains is even now at the mercy of a lawless soldiery, and
therefore it is no place for her. Too well I feel that even I,
her mother, am powerless to protect her."
Lord Netterville cast a wistful glance on the fair face of his
young granddaughter, and said reluctantly:
"It may be that you are right, sweet Moll, as you ever are. Come,
then, if so it must be, give us our good-speed, and let us hasten
on our way."
He once more pressed her affectionately in his arms, then walked
straight up to his horse, and leaped almost without assistance to
the saddle. But his face flushed scarlet, and then grew deadly
pale, and as he shook his reins and settled himself in his seat,
it was evident to Hamish, who was holding his stirrup for him,
that he was struggling with all his might and main to bear
himself with a haughty semblance of indifference before the
English soldiery. After he was seated to his satisfaction, he
ventured a half glance around his people, and lifted his beaver
to salute them. But the effort was almost too much; the big tears
gathered in his eyes, and his hand shook so violently that he
could not replace his hat, which, escaping from his feeble grasp,
rolled under his horse's feet. Half a dozen children darted
forward to recover it, but Hamish had already picked it up and
given it to his master, who instantly put it on his head, saying,
in a tone of affected indifference:
"Pest on these trembling fingers which so libel the stout heart
within. This comes of wine and wassail, Hamish. Drink thou water
all thy life, good youth, if thou wouldst match a sturdy heart
with a steady hand, when thy seventy years and odd are on you."
{94}
"Faix, my lord, will I or nill I," said Hamish, trying to fall in
with the old man's humor by speaking lightly; "will I or nill I,
it seems only too likely that water will be the best part of my
wine for some time to come; leastways," he added in a lower
voice, "leastways till your honor comes back to your own again,
and broaches us a good cask of wine to celebrate the day."
"Back again! back again!" repeated Lord Netterville, shaking his
head with a mixture of grief and impatience impossible to
describe. "I tell thee, Hamish, that men never come back again
when they carry seventy years with them to exile. But where is my
granddaughter? Bid her come forth at once, for it's ill lingering
here with this weeping crowd around us, and yonder pestilent
group of fanatics marking out every mother's son among them,
doubtless, for future vengeance."
Mrs. Netterville heard this impatient cry for her only child, and
flung her arms for one last passionate embrace round Nellie's
neck. Then, firm and unfaltering to the end, she led her to
Hamish, who lifted her as reverently as if she had been an
empress (as indeed she was in his thoughts) to the pillion behind
her grandfather.
Lord Netterville barely waited until she was comfortably settled,
ere he stooped to kiss once more his daughter-in-law's uplifted
brow, after which, waving his hands toward the weeping people, he
dug his spurs deep into his horse's sides, and rode swiftly
forward.
Then, as if moved by one common impulse, every man, woman, and
child in presence there, fell down upon their knees, mingling
prayers and blessings, and howls and imprecations, as only an
Irish or an Italian crowd can do; and yet obedient to the last to
the wishes of their departing chief, it was not until he was
well-nigh out of sight that they broke out into that wild,
wailing keen, with which they were known to accompany their loved
ones to the grave. But the wind was less considerate, and as it
unluckily set that way, it bore one or two of the long, sad notes
to him in whose honor they were chanted. As they fell upon the
old exile's ears, the stoical calmness which he had hitherto
maintained forsook him utterly; the reins fell from his hands, he
bowed his head till his white locks mingled with his horse's
mane, and, "lifting up his voice," he wept as sadly and
unrestrainedly as a woman.
To Be Continued.
--------
{95}
The Church Review and Victor Cousin. [Footnote 31]
[Footnote 31: _The American Quarterly Church Review_.
New York: N. S. Richardson. January, 1868. Art. ii., "O. A.
Brownson as a Philosopher. Victor Cousin and his Philosophy.
_Catholic World_."]
The article in the _Church Review_ promises an estimate of
the character of Dr. O. A. Brownson as a philosopher; but what it
says has really no relation to that gentleman, and is simply an
attempt, not very successful, nor very brilliant indeed, to
vindicate M. Cousin's philosophy from the unfavorable judgment we
pronounced on it, in the magazine of last June. Dr. Brownson is
not the editor, nor one of the editors, of _The Catholic
World_; the article in question was signed by no name, was
impersonal, and the _Review_ has no authority for charging
its authorship to any one but ourselves, or for holding any but
ourselves responsible for its merits or demerits. When the name
of a writer is signed to an article, he should be held answerable
for its contents; but when it is not, the magazine in which it
appears is alone responsible. According to this rule, we hold the
_Church Review_ answerable for its "rasping" article against
ours.
The main purpose of the reviewer seems to be to prove that we
wrote in nearly entire ignorance of M. Cousin's philosophy, and
to vindicate it from the very grave charges we urged against it.
As to our ignorance, as well as his knowledge, that must speak
for itself; but we can say sincerely that we should be most happy
to be proved to have been in the wrong, and to see Cousin's
philosophy cleared from the charge of being unscientific,
rationalistic, pantheistic, or repugnant to Christianity and the
church. One great name would be erased from the list of our
adversaries, and their number would be so much lessened. We
should count it a great service to the cause which is so dear to
us, if the _Church Review_ could succeed in proving that the
errors we laid to his charge are founded only in our ignorance or
philosophical ineptness, and that his system is entirely free
from them. But though it talks largely against us, assumes a high
tone, and makes strong assertions and bold denials, we cannot
discover that it has effected anything, except the exhibition of
itself in an unenviable light. It has told us nothing of Cousin
or his philosophy not to be found in our article, and has not in
a single instance convicted us of ignorance, malice,
misstatement, misrepresentation, or even inexactness. This we
shall proceed now to show, briefly as we can, but at greater
length, perhaps, than its crude statements are worth.
The principal charges against us are:
1. We said M. Cousin called his philosophy eclecticism;
2. We wrongly denied scepticism to be a system of philosophy;
3. Showed our ignorance of Cousin's doctrine in saying it
remained in psychology, never attained to the objective, or
rose to ontology;
4. Misstated his doctrine of substance and cause;
5. Falsely denied that he admits a nexus between the creative
substance and the created existence;
6. Falsely asserted that he holds creation
to be necessary;
7. Wrongly and ignorantly accused him of Pantheism;
8. Asserted that he had but little knowledge of Catholic
theology;
9. Accused him of denying the necessity of language to thought.
{96}
In preferring these charges against M. Cousin's philosophy, we
have shown our ignorance of his real doctrine, our contempt for
his express declarations, and our philosophical incapacity, and
the reviewer thinks one may search in vain through any number of
magazine articles of equal length, for one more full of errors
and fallacies than ours. This is bad, and, if true, not at all to
our credit. We shall not say as much of his article, for that
would not be courteous, and instead of saying it, prefer to let
him prove it. We objected that M. Cousin assuming that to the
operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, can never,
on his system, establish such reality; the reviewer, p. 541,
gravely asserts that we ourselves hold, that to the operations of
reason no objective reality is necessary, and can never be
established! This is charming. But are these charges true? We
propose to take them up _seriatim_, and examine the
reviewer's proofs.
1. We said M. Cousin called his philosophical system eclecticism.
To this the reviewer replies:
"'Eclecticism can never be a philosophy;' making, among other
arguments, the pertinent inquiry: 'How, if you know not the
truth in its unity and integrity beforehand, are you, in
studying those several systems, to determine which is the part
of truth and which of error?'
"We beg his pardon, but M. Cousin never called his
philosophical system Eclecticism. In the introduction to the
_Vrai, Beau, et Bien_, he writes:
"'One word as to an opinion too much accredited. Some persons
persist in representing eclecticism as the doctrine to which
they would attach my name. I declare, then, that eclecticism
is, undoubtedly, very dear to me, for it is in my eyes the
light of the history of philosophy; but the fire which supplies
this light is elsewhere. Eclecticism is one of the most
important and useful applications of the philosophy I profess,
but it is not its principle. My true doctrine, my true flag, is
spiritualism; that philosophy, as stable as it is generous,
which began with Socrates and Plato, which the gospel spread
abroad in the world, and which Descartes placed under the
severe forms of modern thought'
"And the principles of this philosophy supply the touchstone
with which to try 'those several systems, and to determine
which is the part of truth and which of error.' Eclecticism, in
Cousin's view of it, as one might have discovered who had
'studied his works with some care,' is something more than a
blind syncretism, destitute of principles, or a fumbling among
conflicting systems to pick out such theories as please us."
If M. Cousin never called his philosophical system eclecticism,
why did he defend it from the objections brought on against it,
that, i. Eclecticism is a syncretism--all systems mingled
together; 2. Eclecticism approves of everything, the true and the
false, the good and the bad; 3. Eclecticism is fatalism; 4.
Eclecticism is the absence of all system? Why did he not say at
once that he did not profess eclecticism, instead of saying and
endeavoring to prove that the eclectic method is at once
philosophical and historical? [Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: See _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. pp.
39-42.]
Everybody knows that he professed eclecticism and defended it. As
a method, do you say? Be it so. Does he not maintain, from first
to last, that a philosopher's whole system is in his method? Does
he not say, "Given a philosopher's method, we can foretell his
whole system"? And is not his whole course of the history of
philosophy based on this assumption? We wrote our article for
those who knew Cousin's writings, not for those who knew them
not. There is nothing in the passage quoted from the reviewer,
quoted from Cousin, that contradicts what we said. We did not say
that he always called philosophy eclecticism, or pretend that it
was the principle of his system. We said:
{97}
"There is no doubt that all schools, as all sects, have their
part of truth, as well as their part of error; for the human
mind cannot embrace pure, unmixed error any more than the will
can pure, unmixed evil; but the eclectic method is not the
method of constructing true philosophy any more than it is the
method of constructing true Christian theology. The Catholic
acknowledges willingly the truth which the several sects hold;
but he does not derive it from them, nor arrive at it by
studying their systems. He holds it independently of them; and
having it already in its unity and integrity, he is able, in
studying them, to distinguish what they have that is true from
the errors they mix up with it. It must be the same with the
philosopher. _M. Cousin was not unaware of this, and he
finally asserted eclecticism rather as a method of historical
verification, than as the real and original method of
constructing philosophy_. The name was therefore unhappily
chosen, and is now seldom heard." (_Catholic World_, p.
335.)
Had the reviewer read this passage, he would have seen that we
were aware of the fact that latterly Cousin ceased to profess
eclecticism save as a method of verification; and if he had read
our article through, he would have seen that we were aware that
he held spiritualism to be the principle of his system, and that
we criticised it as such.
2. Cousin counts scepticism as a system of philosophy. We object,
and ask very pertinently, since he holds every system has a
truth, and truth is always something affirmative, positive,
"What, then, is the truth of scepticism, which is a system of
pure negation, and not only affirms nothing, but denies that any
thing can be affirmed?" Will the reviewer answer the question?
The reviewer, of course, finds us in the wrong. Here is his
reply:
"In the history of the progress of the human mind, the phase of
scepticism is not to be overlooked. At different periods it has
occurred, to wield a strong, sometimes a controlling, often a
salutary, influence over the thought of an age. Its work, it is
true, is destructive, and not constructive; but not the less as
a check and restraint upon fanciful speculation, and the
establishment of unsound hypotheses, it has its _raison
d'être_, and contributes, in its way, to the advancement of
truth. Nor can the works of Sextus, Pyrrho, Glanvil, Montaigne,
Gassendi, or Hume be considered less 'systematic' than those of
any dogmatist, merely from their being 'systems of pure
negation.'" (P. 533.)
That it is sometimes reasonable and salutary to doubt, as if the
reviewer should doubt his extraordinary genius as a philosopher,
we readily admit; but what salutary influence has ever been
exerted on science or morals by any so-called system of
scepticism, which denies the possibility of science, and renders
the binding nature of virtue uncertain, we have never yet been
able to ascertain. Moreover, a system of pure negation is simply
no system at all, for it has no principle and affirms nothing. A
sceptical turn of mind is as undesirable as a credulous mind.
That the persons named, of whom only one, Pyrrho, professed
universal scepticism, and perhaps even he carried his scepticism
no farther than to doubt the reality of matter, may have rendered
some service to the cause of truth, as the drunken helotae
promoted temperance among the Spartan youth, is possible; but
they have done it by the truth they asserted, not by the doubt
they disseminated. There is, moreover, a great difference between
doubting, or suspending our judgment where we are ignorant or
where our knowledge is incomplete, and erecting doubt into the
principle of a system which assumes all knowledge to be
impossible, and that certainty is nowhere attained or attainable.
It seems, we confess, a little odd to find a Church Review taking
up the defence of scepticism.
{98}
3. We assert in our article that M. Cousin, though he professes
to come out of the sphere of psychology, and to rise legitimately
to ontology, remains always there; and, in point of fact, the
ontology he asserts is only an abstraction or generalization of
psychological facts. The reviewer is almost shocked at this, and
is "tempted to think that the time" we claim to have spent in
studying the works of Cousin with some care "might have been
better employed in the acquisition of some useful knowledge more
within the reach of our 'understanding.'" It is possible. But
what has he to allege against what we asserted, and think we
proved? Nothing that we can find except that Cousin professes to
attain, and perhaps believes he does attain, to real objective
existence, and, scientifically, to real ontology. But, my good
friend, that is nothing to the purpose. The question is not as to
what Cousin professes to have done, or what he has really
attempted to do, but what he has actually done. When we allege
that the being, the God asserted by Cousin, is, on his system,
his principles, and method, only an abstraction or a
generalization; you do not prove us wrong by reiterating his
assertion that it is real being, that it is the living God, for
it is, though you seem not to be aware of it, that very assertion
that is denied. We readily concede that Cousin does not
_profess_ to rise to ontology by induction from his
psychology, but we maintain that the only ontology he attains to
is simply an induction from his psychology, and therefore is, and
can be, only an abstraction or a generalization. We must here
reproduce a passage from our own article.
"What is certain, and this is all the ontologist need assert,
or, in fact, can assert, is, that ontology is neither an
induction nor a deduction from psychological data. God is not,
and cannot be, the generalization of our own souls. But it does
not follow from this that we do not think that which is God,
and that it is from thought we do and must take it. We take it
from thought and by thinking. What is objected to in the
psychologists is the assumption that thought is a purely
psychological or subjective fact, and that from this
psychological or subjective fact we can, by way of induction,
attain to ontological truth. But as we understand M. Cousin,
and we studied his works with some care thirty or thirty-five
years ago, and had the honor of his private correspondence,
this he never pretends to do. What he claims is, that in the
analysis of consciousness we detect a class of facts or ideas
which are not psychological or subjective, but really
ontological, and do actually carry us out of the region of
psychology into that of ontology. That his account of these
facts or ideas is to be accepted as correct or adequate we do
not pretend, but that he _professes_ to recognize them and
distinguish them from purely psychological facts is undeniable.
"The defect or error of M. Cousin on this point was in failing,
as we have already observed, to identify the absolute or
necessary ideas he detects and asserts with God, the only
_ens necessarium et reale_, and in failing to assert them
in their objectivity to the whole subject, and in presenting
them only as objective to the human personality. He never
succeeded in cutting himself wholly loose from the German
nonsense of a subjective-object or objective-subject, and when
he had clearly proved an idea to be objective to the reflective
reason and the human personality, he did not dare assert it to
be objective in relation to the whole subject. It was
impersonal, but might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant
maintained with regard to the categories." (_Catholic
World_, PP. 335, 336.)
The reviewer, after snubbing us for our ignorance and ineptness,
which are very great, as we are well aware and humbly confess,
replies to us in this manner:
"And yet nothing in Cousin is clearer or more positive than
that this 'pure and sublime degree of the reason, when will,
reflection, and personality are as yet absent'--this
'intuition and spontaneous revelation, which is the primitive
mode of reason'--is objective to the whole subject in every
_possible_ sense, and is, consequently, conformed to the
objective, and a revelation of it.
"Can the critic have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, 'thirty or
thirty-five years ago'? If so, we advise him to refresh his
memory by a re-perusal, and perhaps he may withdraw the strange
assertion that Cousin held an 'absolute idea to be impersonal,
but that it might be in a certain sense subjective, _as Kant
maintained with regard to the categories_.' 'The scepticism
of Kant,' says Cousin, [Footnote 33] 'rests on his finding the
laws of the reason to be subjective, personal to man; but here
is a mode of the reason where these same laws are, as it were,
deprived of all subjectivity--where the reason shows itself
almost entirely impersonal.
{99}
"How the critic would wish this impersonal activity to be
objective to the 'whole subject,' and not to the 'personal
only,' as if there was any greater degree of objectivity in one
case than in the other, it is not easy to see. It looks like a
distinction without a difference. The abstract and logical
distinction is apparent, but though distinct, the 'whole
subject,' and the 'human personality,' cannot be separated, so
that what is objective to one, shall not be so to the other
also. The 'whole subject' is, simply, the thinking, feeling,
willing being, which we are, as distinguished from the world
external to us. If an idea, then, is revealed to us by what is
completely foreign to us--if an act of the reason is
spontaneous and unreflective, +hat is, impersonal--what is
there that can be more objective to the subject?
"We have said, that such an act is objective to the subject in
every _possible_ sense. For we are not to forget the
conditions of the case. 'Does one wish,' says Cousin, 'in order
to believe in the objectivity and validity of the reason, that
it should cease to make its appearance in a particular
subject--in man, for instance? But then, if reason is outside
of the subject, that is, of myself, it is nothing to me. For me
to have consciousness of it, it must descend into me, it must
make itself mine, and become in this sense subjective. A reason
which is not mine, which, in itself being entirely universal,
does not incarnate itself in some manner in my consciousness,
is for me as though it did not exist. [Footnote 34]
Consequently, to wish that the reason, in order to be
trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to
demand an impossibility.'" (Pp. 534, 535.)
[Footnote 33: Lecture viii.]
[Footnote 34: Lectures on Kant, viii.]
We have introduced this long extract in order to give our readers
a fair specimen of the reviewer's style and capacity as a
reasoner. It will be seen that the reviewer alleges, as proof
against us, what is in question--the very thing that he is to
prove. We have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, and we know well,
and have never thought of denying, that he criticises Kant
sharply, says many admirable things against him, and professes to
reject his subjectivism; we know, also, that he holds what he
calls the impersonal reason to be objective, operating
independently of us; all this we know and so stated, we thought,
clearly enough, in our article; but we, nevertheless, maintain
that he does not make this impersonal reason really objective,
but simply independent in its operations of our personality. He
holds that reason has two modes of activity--the one personal,
the other impersonal; but he recognizes only a distinction of
modes, sometimes only a difference of degrees, making, as we have
seen, as quoted by the reviewer, the impersonal reason a sublimer
"degree" of reason than the personal. He calls the impersonal
reason the spontaneous reason, sometimes simply spontaneity. All
this is evident enough to any one at all familiar with Cousin's
philosophical writings.
But what is this reason which operates in these two modes,
impersonal and spontaneous in the one, personal and reflective in
the other? As the distinction between the personal and impersonal
is, by Cousin's own avowal, a difference simply of modes or
degrees, there can be no entitative or substantial difference
between them. They are not two different or distinct reasons, but
one and the same reason, operating in two different modes or
degrees. Now, we demand, what is this one substantive reason
operating in these two different degrees or modes? It certainly
is not an abstraction, for abstractions are nullities and cannot
operate or act at all. What, then, is it? Is it God, or is it
man? If you say it is God, then you deny reason to man, make him
a brute, unless you identify man with God.
{100}
If you say it is man, that it is a faculty of the human soul, as
Cousin certainly does say--for he makes it our faculty and only
faculty of intelligence--then you make it subjective, since
nothing is more subjective than one's own faculties. They are the
subject itself. Consequently the impersonal reason belongs as
truly to man, the subject, as the personal reason, and therefore
is not objective, as we said, to the whole subject, but at best
only to the will and the personality--what Cousin calls _le
moi_. The most distinguished of the disciples of Cousin was
Theodore Jouffroy, who, in his confessions, nearly curses Cousin
for having seduced him from his Christian faith, whose loss he so
bitterly regretted on his dying-bed, and who was, in Cousin's
judgment, as expressed in a letter to the writer of this article,
"a true philosopher." This true philosopher and favorite disciple
of Cousin illustrates the difference between the impersonal
reason and the personal by the difference between _seeing_
and _looking_, _hearing_ and _listening_, which
corresponds precisely to the difference noted by Leibnitz between
what he calls simple _perception_ and _apperception_.
In both cases it is the man who sees, hears, or perceives; but in
the latter case, the will intervenes and we not only see, but
look, not only perceive, but apperceive.
Now, it is very clear, such being the case, that Cousin does not
get out of the sphere of the subject any more than does Kant, and
all the arguments he adduces against Kant, apply equally against
himself; for he recognizes no actor in thought, or what he calls
the fact of consciousness, but the subject. The fact which he
alleges, that the impersonal reason necessitates the mind,
irresistibly controls it, is no more than Kant says of his
categories, which he resolutely maintains are forms of the
subject. Hence, as Cousin charges Kant very justly with
subjectivism and scepticism, we are equally justified in
preferring the same charges against himself. This is what we
showed in the article the reviewer is criticising, and to this he
should have replied, but, unhappily, has not. He only quotes
Cousin to the effect that, "to wish the reason, in order to be
trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to demand
an impossibility," which only confirms what we have said.
We pursue in our article the argument still further, and add:
"Reduced to its proper character as asserted by M. Cousin,
intuition is empirical, and stands opposed not to reflection,
but to discursion, and is simply the immediate and direct
perception of the object without the intervention of any
process, more or less elaborate, of reasoning. This is, indeed,
not an unusual sense of the word, perhaps its more common
sense, but it is a sense that renders the distinction between
intuition and reflection of no importance to M. Cousin, for it
does not carry him out of the sphere of the subject, or afford
him any basis for his ontological inductions. He has still the
question as to the objectivity and reality of the ideal to
solve, and no recognized means of solving it. His ontological
conclusions, therefore, as a writer in the _Christian
Examiner_ told him as long ago as 1836, rest simply on the
credibility of reason or faith in its trustworthiness, which
can never be established, because it is assumed that, to the
operation of reason, no objective reality is necessary, since
the object, if impersonal, may, for aught that appears, be
included in the subject." (_Catholic World_, p. 338.)
We quote the reply of the reviewer to this at full length, for no
mortal man can abridge or condense it without losing its essence.
{101}
"If a man speaks thus, after a careful study of Cousin, it is
almost useless to argue with him. He either has not understood
the philosopher, or his scepticism is hopelessly obstinate.
Intuition, as asserted by Cousin, is not reduced to its proper
character, but simply misrepresented, when it is called
empirical; for it is the primitive mode of reason, and prior to
all experience. It is a revelation of the objective to the
subject, and to be a revelation must, of course, come into the
consciousness of the subject. Cousin has carefully and
repeatedly established the true character of intuition as a
disclosure to the understanding in the reason, and free from
any touch of subjectivity. _Of course, his ontological
conclusions rest on a belief in the credibility of reason, and,
of course, this credibility can never be established in a
logical way, although, metaphysically, it is abundantly
established_. One may 'assume,' to the end of time, that 'to
the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary,
since the object may, for aught that appears, be included in
the subject,' but the universal and invincible opinion of the
human race has been, and will be, to the contrary of such an
assumption.
"As firmly as Reid and Hamilton have established the doctrine
of sensible perception, and the objective existence of the
material world, has Cousin that of the objective existence of
the absolute, and, on the very same ground, the veracity of
consciousness. And the mass of mankind have lived in happy
ignorance of any necessity for such arguments. When they sowed
and reaped, and bought and sold, they never questioned the real
existence of the objects they dealt with; _nor did they, when
the idea of duty or obligation made itself felt in their souls,
dream that, 'for such an operation of reason, no objective
reality was necessary_.'
"Men have an unquestioning but unconquerable belief, that the
very idea of obligation implies _something outside of
them_, that obliges. Something other than itself it must be,
that commands the soul. Right is a reality, and duty a fact.
The philosophy, that does not come round to an enlightened and
intelligent holding of the unreflecting belief of mankind, but
separates itself from it, is worse than useless. In such wisdom
it is indeed 'folly to be wise.' And this philosophic folly
comes from insisting on a logical demonstration of what is
logically undemonstrable--of what is superior, because anterior
to reasoning. We cannot _prove_ to the understanding
truths which are the very basis and groundwork of that
understanding itself." (Pp. 536, 537.)
This speaks for itself, and concedes, virtually, all we alleged
against Cousin's system; at least it convicts us of no
misapprehension or misrepresentation of that system; and the
reviewer's sneer at our ignorance and incapacity, however much
they may enliven his style and strengthen his argument, do not
seem to have been specially called for. Yet we think both he and
M. Cousin are mistaken when they assume that to demand any other
basis for science than the credibility or faith in the
trustworthiness of reason, is to demand an impossibility, for a
science founded on faith is simply no science at all. There is
science only where the mind grasps, and appropriates, not its own
faculties only, but the object itself. The reason, personal or
impersonal, is the faculty by which we grasp it, or the light by
which we behold it; not the object in which the mental action
terminates, but the medium by which we attain to the object. If
it were otherwise, there might be faith, but not science, and
though reason might search for the object, yet it would always be
pertinent to ask, Who or what vouches for reason? Descartes
answered, The veracity of God, which, in one sense, is true, but
not in the sense alleged; for on the Cartesian theory we might
ask, what vouches for the veracity of God? The only possible
answer would be, it is reason, and we should simply traverse a
circle without making the slightest advance.
The difficulty arises from adopting the psychological method of
philosophizing, or assuming, as Descartes does in his famous
_cogito, ergo sum_, I think, therefore, I exist, that man
can think in and of himself, or without the presence and active
concurrence of that which is not himself, and which we call the
object. Intuition, on Cousin's theory, is the spontaneous
operation of reason as opposed to discursion, which is its reflex
or reflective operation, but supposes that reason suffices for
its own operation.
{102}
In his course of philosophy professed at the Faculty of Letters
in 1818, he says, in the consciousness, that is, in thought,
there are two elements, the subject and object; or, in his
barbarous dialect, _le moi et le non-moi_; but he is careful
to assert the subject as active and the object as passive. Now, a
passive object is as if it were not, and can concur in nothing
with the activity of the subject. Then, as all the activity is on
the side of the subject, the subject must be able to think in and
of itself alone. The fact that I think an existence other than
myself, on this theory, is no proof that there is really any
other existence than myself till my thought is validated, and I
have nothing but thought with which to validate thought.
The _cogito, ergo sum_ is, of course, worthless as an
argument, as has often been shown; but there is in it an
assumption not generally noted; namely, that man suffices for his
own thought, and, therefore, that man is God. God alone suffices,
or can suffice, for his own thought, and needs nothing but
himself for his thought or his science. He knows himself in
himself, and is in himself the infinite Intelligibile, and the
infinite Intelligens. He knows in himself all his works, from
beginning to end, for he has made them, and all events, for he
has decreed them. There is for him no medium of science
distinguishable from himself; for he is, as the theologians say,
the adequate object of his own intelligence. But man being a
creature, and therefore dependent for his existence, his life,
and all his operations, interior and exterior, on the support and
active concurrence of that which is not himself, does not and
cannot suffice for his thought, and he does not and cannot think
in and of himself alone, in any manner, mode, form, or degree, or
without the active presence and concurrence of the object, as
Pierre Leroux has well shown in his otherwise very objectionable
_Réfutation de l'Eclecticisme._ The object being independent
of the subject, and not supplied by the subject, must exist _a
parte rei_, since, if it did not, it could not actually concur
with the subject in the production of thought. There can arise,
therefore, to the true philosopher, no question as to the
credibility or trustworthiness of reason, the validity or
invalidity of thought. The only question for him is, Do we think?
What do we think? He who thinks, knows that he thinks, and what
he thinks, for thought is science, and who knows, knows that he
knows, and what he knows.
The difficulty which Cousin and the reviewer encounter arises
from thus placing the question of method before the question of
principles, as we showed in our former article. No such
difficulty can arise in the path of him who has settled the
question of principles--which are given, not found, or obtained
by the action of the subject without them--and follows the method
they prescribe. The error, we repeat, arises from the
psychological method, which supposes all the activity in thought
is in the subject, and supposes reason to be operative in and of
itself, or without any objective reality, which reality, on
Cousin's system, or by the psychological method, can never be
established.
The reviewer concedes that objective reality cannot be
established _in a logical way_, but maintains that there is
no need of so establishing it; for "men have an unquestioning, an
unconquerable _belief_ that the very idea of obligation
implies something outside of them." Nobody denies the belief, but
its validity is precisely the matter in question.
{103}
How do you prove the validity of the idea of obligation? But the
reviewer forgets that Cousin makes it the precise end of
philosophy to legitimate this belief, and all the universal
beliefs of mankind, and convert them from beliefs into science.
How can philosophy do this, if obliged to support itself on these
very beliefs?
The reviewer follows the last passage with a bit of philosophy of
his own; but, as it has no relevancy to the matter in hand, and
is, withal, a little too transcendental for our taste, he must
excuse us for declining to discuss it. We cannot accept it, for
we cannot accept what we do not understand, and it professes to
be above all understanding. In fact, the reviewer seems to have a
very low opinion of understanding, and no little contempt for
logic. He reminds us of a friend we once had, who said to us, one
day, that if he trusted his understanding and followed his logic
he should go to Rome; but, as neither logic nor understanding is
trustworthy or of any account, he should join the Anglican
Church, which he incontinently did, and since, we doubt not,
found himself at home. Can it be that he is the writer of the
article criticising us?
The reviewer, in favoring us with this bit of philosophy of his
own, tells us, in support of it, that Sir William Hamilton says,
"All thinking is negation." So much the worse, then, for Sir
William Hamilton. All thinking is affirmative, and pure negation
can neither think nor be thought. Every thought is a judgment,
and affirms both the subject thinking and the object thought, and
their relation to each other. This, at least sometimes, is the
doctrine of Cousin, as any one may ascertain by reading his
essays, _Du Fait de Conscience_ and _Du Premier et du
dernier Fait de Conscience_. [Footnote 35] Though even in
these essays the doctrine is mixed up with much that is
objectionable, and which leads one, after all, to doubt if the
philosopher ever clearly perceived the fact, or the bearing of
the fact, he asserted. Cousin often sails along near the coast of
truth, sometimes almost rubs his bark against it, without
perceiving it. But we hasten on.
[Footnote 35: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t. i. pp. 248,
256.]
4. We are accused of misstating Cousin's doctrine of substance
and cause. Here is our statement and the reviewer's charge:
"'M. Cousin,' continues _The Catholic World_, 'professes
to have reduced the categories of Kant and Aristotle to
two--substance and cause; but as he in fact identifies cause
with substance, declaring substance to be substance _only in
so much_ [the italics are ours] as it is cause, and cause to
be cause _only in so much_ as it is substance, he really
reduces them to the single category of substance, which you may
call, indifferently, substance or cause. But, though every
substance is intrinsically and essentially a cause, yet, as it
_may be something more_ than a cause, it is not necessary
to insist on this, and it may be admitted that he recognized
two categories.'
"What is exactly meant by these two contradictory statements it
is not easy to guess; but let Cousin speak for himself:
[Footnote 36]
[Footnote 36: VI. Lecture, Course of 1818, on the Absolute.]
"'Previous to Leibnitz, these two ideas seemed separated in
modern philosophy by an impassable barrier. He, the first to
sound the nature of the idea of substance, brought it back to
the notion of force. This was the foundation of all his
philosophy, and of what afterward became the Monadology. ...
But has Leibnitz, in identifying the notion of substance with
that of cause, presented it with justness? Certainly, substance
is revealed to us by cause; for, suppress all exercise of the
cause and force which is in ourselves, and we do not exist to
ourselves. It is, then, the idea of cause which introduces into
the mind the idea of substance. But is substance nothing more
than cause which manifests it? .... The causative power is the
essential attribute of substance; it is not substance itself.
In a word, it has seemed to us surer to hold to these two
primitive notions; distinct, though inseparably united; one,
which is the sign and manifestation of the other, this, which
is the root and foundation of that.'
{104}
"One would think this sufficiently explicit for all who are not
afflicted with the blindness that will not see." (P. 539.)
We see no self-contradiction in our statement, and no
contradiction of M. Cousin. We maintain that M. Cousin really,
though probably not intentionally or consciously, reduces the
categories of Kant and Aristotle to the single category of
substance, and prove it by the words italicized by the reviewer,
which are our translation of Cousin's own words. Cousin says, in
his own language, in a well-known passage in the first preface of
his _Fragments Philosophiques_, "Le Dieu de la conscience
n'est pas un Dieu abstrait, un roi solitaire, rélegué pardelà la
création sur le trône desert d'une éternité silencieuse, et d'une
existence absolue qui ressemble au néant même de l'existence:
c'est un Dieu à la fois vrai et réel, à la fois substance et
cause, toujours substance et toujours cause, _n'étant substance
qu'en tant que cause, et cause qu'en tant que substance_,
c'est-à-dire, étant cause absolue, un et plusieurs, éternité et
temps, espace et nombre, essence et vie, indivisibilité et
totalité, principe, fin, et milieu, au sommet de l'être et à son
plus humble degré, infini et fini, tout ensemble, triple enfin,
c'est-à-dire, à la fois Dieu, nature, et humanité. En effet,
_si Dieu n'est pas tout il n'est rien._" [Footnote 37] This
passage justifies our first statement, because Cousin calls God
substance, the one, absolute substance, besides which there is no
substance. But as our purpose, at the moment, was not so much to
show that Cousin made substance and cause identical, as it was to
show that he made substance a necessary cause, we allowed, for
reasons which he himself gives in the passage cited by the
reviewer from his course of 1818 on the Absolute, that he might
be said to distinguish them, and to have reduced the categories
to two, instead of one only, as he professes to have done. But
the reviewer hardly needs to be told that, when it is assumed
that substance is cause only on condition of causing, that is,
causing from the necessity of its own being, the effect is not
substantially distinguishable from the substance causing, and is
only a mode or affection of the causative substance itself, or,
at best, a phenomenon.
[Footnote 37: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t. i. p. 76.]
5. Accepting substance and cause as two categories, we contend
that Cousin requires a third; namely, the creative act of the
causative substance, and contingent existences, as asserted in
the ideal formula. _Ens creat existentias_. To this the
reviewer cites, from Cousin, the following passage in reply:
"In the fifth lecture of the course of 1828, M. Cousin says:
"'The two terms of this so comprehensive formula do not
constitute a dualism, in which the first term is on one side
and the second on the other, without any other connection
between them than that of being perceived at the same time by
the intelligence; so far from this, the tie which binds them is
essential. It is a connection of _generation_ which draws
the second from the first, and constantly carries it back to
it, and which, with the two terms, constitutes the _three_
integrant elements of intelligence. ... Withdraw this relation
which binds variety to unity, and you destroy the necessary
bond of the two terms of every proposition. These three terms,
distinct, but inseparable, constitute at once a triplicity and
an indivisible unity. ... Carried into Theodicy, the theory I
have explained to you is nothing less than the very foundation
of Christianity. The Christians' God is at once triple and one,
and the animadversions which rise against the doctrine I teach
ought to ascend to the Christian Trinity.'" (P. 540.)
{105}
We said in our article, "Under the head of substances he (Cousin)
ranges all that is substantial or that pertains to real and
necessary being, and under the head of cause the phenomenal or
the effects of the causative action of substance. He says he
understands, by substance, the universal and absolute substance,
the real and necessary being of the theologians; and by
phenomena, not mere modes or appearances of substance, but finite
and relative substances, and calls them phenomena only in
opposition to the one absolute substance. They are created or
produced by the causative action of substance. [Footnote 38] If
this has any real meaning, he should recognize three categories
as in the ideal formula, _Ens creat existentias_, that is,
Being, existences, or creatures, and the creative act of being,
the real nexus between substance or being and contingent
existences, for it is that which places them and binds them to
the Creator."
[Footnote 38: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. pp. xix.
xx.]
The passage cited by the reviewer from Cousin is brought forward,
we suppose, to show that it does recognize this third category;
but if so, what becomes of the formal statement that he has
reduced the categories to _two_, substance and cause, or, as
he sometimes says, substance or being and phenomenon? Besides,
the passage cited does not recognize the third term or category
of the formula. It asserts not the _creative_ act of being
as the _nexus_ between substance and phenomenon, the
infinite and the finite, the absolute and the relative, etc.; but
_generation_, which is a very different thing, for the
generated is consubstantial with the generator.
6. We were arguing against Cousin's doctrine, that God, being
intrinsically active, or, as Aristotle and the schoolmen say,
_actus purissimus_, most pure act, must therefore
necessarily create or produce exteriorly. In prosecuting the
argument, we anticipated an objection which, perhaps, some might
be disposed to bring from Leibnitz's definition of substance, as
a _vis activa_, and endeavored to show that, even accepting
that definition, it would make nothing in favor of the doctrine
we were refuting, and which Cousin undeniably maintains. We say,
"The doctrine that substance is essentially cause, and must, from
intrinsic necessity, cause in the sense of creating, is not
tenable. We are aware that Leibnitz, a great name in philosophy,
defines substance to be an active force, a _vis activa_, but
we do not recollect that he anywhere pretends that its activity
necessarily extends beyond itself. God is _vis activa_, if
you will, in a supereminent degree; he is essentially active, and
would be neither being nor substance if he were not; he is, as
Aristotle and the schoolmen say, most pure act; ... but nothing
in this implies that he must necessarily act _ad extra_, or
create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his own divine
nature, but not necessarily out of the circle of his infinite
being, for he is complete in himself, is in himself the plenitude
of being, and always and everywhere suffices for himself, and
therefore for his own activity. Creation, or the production of
effects exterior to himself, is not necessary to the perfection
of his activity, adds nothing to him, as it can take nothing from
him. Hence, though we cannot conceive of him without conceiving
him as infinitely, eternally, and essentially active, we can
conceive of him as absolute substance or being, without
conceiving him to be necessarily acting or creating _ad
extra_."
{106}
The reviewer says, sneeringly, "This is the most remarkable
passage in this remarkable article." He comments on it in this
manner:
"Thus appearing to accept the now exploded Leibnitzian theory,
which Cousin has combated both in its original form, and as
maintained by De Biran, our critic tries to escape from it by
this subtle distinction between the southern and south-eastern
sides of the hair. He enlarges upon it. God, according to him,
is indeed _vis activa_ in the most eminent degree, but
this does not imply that he must act _ad extra_, or
create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his nature, but
not necessarily out of the circle of his own infinite being.
Hence, though we cannot conceive of him but as infinitely and
essentially active, we can conceive of him as absolute
substance without conceiving him to be necessarily creating, or
acting _ad extra_. M. Cousin, he says, evidently confounds
the interior acts of the divine being with his exterior or
creative acts.
"We have no wish to deny that he does make such a confusion. To
one who holds that 'to the operation of reason no objective
reality is necessary, and that such reality can never be
established,' this kind of subjective activity of the will,
which seems so nearly to resemble passivity--these pure acts,
or volitions, which never pass out of the sphere of the will
into causation--may be satisfactory; but to one who believes
that God is not a scholastic abstraction--to one who worships
the 'living God' of the Scriptures--it will sound like a
pitiful jugglery with words thinly veiling a lamentable
confusion of ideas. God is a person, and he acts as a person.
The divine will is no otherwise conceivable by us than as of
the same nature as man's will; it differs from it only in the
mode of its operation--for with him this is always immediate,
and no deliberation or choice is possible--and it is as absurd
to speak of the activity of his will, the eminently active
force, never extending 'out of the circle of his own infinite
being,' as it would be to call a man eminently an active person
whose activity was all merely purpose or volition, never
passing into the creative act _ad extra_, or out of the
circle of his own finite being.
"If St. Anselm is right, that, to be _in re_ is greater
than to be _in intellectu_, then has the creature man,
according to the critic, a higher faculty than his Creator
_essentially and necessarily_ has. For his will is by
nature causative, creative, productive _ad extra_, and it
is nothing unless its activity be called forth into act
external to his personality, while the pure acts of the divine
will may remain for ever enclosed in the circle of the divine
consciousness without realizing themselves _ad extra_!"
(Pp. 540, 541.)
We do not like to tell a man to his face, especially when he
assumes the lofty airs and makes the large pretensions of our
reviewer, that he does not know what he is talking about, or
understand the ordinary terms and distinctions of the science he
professes to have mastered, for that, in our judgment, would be
uncivil; but what better is to be said of the philosopher who
sees nothing more in the distinction between the divine act _ad
intra_, whence the eternal generation of the Son and the
eternal procession of the Holy Ghost, and the divine act _ad
extra_, whence man and nature, the universe, and all things
visible and invisible, distinguishable from the one necessary,
universal, immutable, and eternal being, than in "the distinction
between the southern and south-eastern sides of the hair"? The
Episcopalian journals were right in calling the _Church
Review's_ criticism on us "racy," "rasping," "scathing;" it is
certainly astounding, such as no mortal man could foresee, or be
prepared to answer to the satisfaction of its author.
In the passage reproduced from ourselves we neither accept nor
reject the definition of substance given by Leibnitz, nor do we
say that Cousin accepts it, although he certainly favors it in
his introduction to the _Posthumous Works of Maine de
Biran_, and adduces the fact of his having adopted it in his
defence against the charge of pantheism, [Footnote 39] but simply
argue that, if any one should adopt it and urge it as an argument
for Cousin, it would be of no avail, because Leibnitz does not
pretend that substance is or must be active outside of itself, or
out of its own interior, that is, must be creative of exterior
effects. This is our argument, and it must go for what it is
worth.
[Footnote 39: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. p. xxi.]
{107}
We admit that in some sense God may be a _vis activa_, but
we show almost immediately that it is in the sense that he is
most pure act, that is, in the sense opposed to the _potentia
nuda_ of the schoolmen, and means that God is _in actu_
most perfect being, and that nothing in his being is potential,
in need of being filled up or actualized. When we speak of his
activity, within the circle of his own being, we refer to the
fact that he is living God, therefore, Triune, Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. As all life is active, not passive, we mean to imply
that his life is in himself, and that he can and does eternally
and necessarily live, and in the very fulness of life in himself;
and therefore nothing is wanting to his infinite and perfect
activity and beatitude in himself, or without anything but
himself. This is so because he is Trinity, three equal persons in
one essence, and therefore he has no need of anything but
himself; nothing in his being or nature necessitates him to act
_ad extra_, that is, create existences distinct from
himself. Does the reviewer understand us now? He is an
Episcopalian, and believes, or professes to believe, in the
Trinity, and, therefore, in the eternal generation of the Son,
and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost. Do not this
generation and this procession imply action? Action assuredly and
necessarily, and eternal action too, because they are necessary
in the very essence or being of God, and he could not be
otherwise than three persons in one God, if, _per
impossibile_, he would. The unity of essence and trinity of
persons do not depend on the divine will, but on the divine
nature. Well, is this eternal action of generation and procession
_ad intra_, or _ad extra?_ Is the distinction of three
persons a distinction _from_ God, or a distinction _in_
God? Are we here making a distinction as frivolous as that
"between the southern and south-eastern sides of a hair"? Do you
not know the importance of the distinction? Think a moment, my
good friend. If you say the distinction is a distinction
_from_ God, you deny the divine unity--assert three Gods; if
you say it is a distinction in God, you simply assert one God in
three persons, or three persons in one God, or one divine
essence. If you deny both, your God is a dead unity in himself,
not a living God.
The action of God _ad intra_ is necessary, proceeds from the
fulness of the divine nature, and the result is the generation of
the Son and the procession of the Holy Ghost. Now, can you
understand what would be the consequence, if we made the action
of God _ad extra_, or creation, proceed from the necessity
of the divine nature? The first consequence would be that
creation is God, for what proceeds from God by the necessity of
his own nature is God, as the Arian controversy long ago taught
the world. The second consequence would be that God is incomplete
in himself, and has need to operate without, in order to complete
himself, which really denies God, and therefore creation,
everything, which is really the doctrine of Cousin, namely, God
completes himself in his works. Can you understand now, dear
reviewer, why we so strenuously deny that God creates or produces
existences distinguishable from himself, through necessity?
Cousin says that God creates from the intrinsic necessity of his
own nature, that creation is necessary. You say he has retracted
the expression. Be it so.
{108}
But, with all deference, we assert that he has not retracted or
explained away his doctrine, for it runs through his whole
system; and as he nowhere makes the distinction between action
_ad intra_ and action _ad extra_, his very assertion
that God is substance only in that he is cause, and cause only in
that he is substance, implies the doctrine that God, if substance
at all, cannot but create, or manifest himself without, or
develop externally. What say we? Even the reviewer sneers at the
distinction we have made, and at the efforts of theologians to
save the freedom of God in creating. Thus, in the paragraph
immediately succeeding our last extract, he says, "But all this
quibbling comes from an ignorant terror, lest God's free-will
should be attacked." The reviewer, on the page following, admits
all we asserted, and falls himself, blindfold, as it were, into
the very error he contends we falsely charge to the account of
Cousin. "The necessity he (Cousin) speaks of is a metaphysical
necessity, which no more destroys the free-will of God, than the
metaphysical necessity of doing right, that is, obligation,
destroys man's free-will." [Footnote 40] (P. 542.)
[Footnote 40: The reviewer, misled by the evasive answer of
Cousin, supposes the objection urged against his doctrine,
that creation is necessary, is, that it destroys the
free-will of God; but that, though a grave objection, is not
the one we insisted on; the real objection is, that if God is
assumed to create from the necessity of his own nature, he is
assumed not to create at all, for what is called his creation
can be only an evolution or development of himself, and
consequently producing nothing distinguishable in substance
from himself, which is pure pantheism. Of course, all
pantheism implies fatalism, for if we deny free-will in the
cause, we must deny it in the effect; but it is not to escape
fatalism, but pantheism that Cousin's doctrine of necessary
Creation is denied, as we pointed out in our former article.]
_Metaphysical_ necessity, according to the reviewer, p. 537,
means real necessity, since he says, "Metaphysics is the science
of the real," and therefore God is under a real necessity of
creating. Yet it is to misrepresent Cousin to say that, according
to him, creation is necessary! But assume that, by
_metaphysical_, the reviewer means _moral_; then God is
under a moral necessity, that is, morally bound to create, and
consequently would sin if he did not. But we have more yet, in
the same paragraph: "A power essentially creative _cannot but
create._" Agreed. But to assert that God is essentially
creative, is to assert that he is necessary creator, and that
creation is necessary, for God cannot change his essence or belie
it in his act. But this assertion of God as essentially creative,
is precisely what we objected to in Cousin, and therefore, while
asserting that God is infinitely and essentially _active_ in
his own being, we denied that he is essentially _creative_.
He is free in his own nature to create or not, as he pleases. The
reviewer does not seem to make much progress in defending Cousin
against our criticisms.
7. That Cousin was knowingly and intentionally a pantheist, we
have never pretended, but have given it as our belief that he was
not. We do not think that he ever comprehended the essential
principle of pantheism, or foresaw all the logical consequences
of the principles he himself adopted and defended. But his
doctrine, notwithstanding all his protests to the contrary, is
undeniably pantheism, if any doctrine ever deserved to be called
by that name. It is found not here and there in an incidental
phrase, but is integral; enters into the very substance and
marrow of his thought, and pervades all his writings. We felt it
when we attempted to follow him as our master, and had the
greatest difficulty in the world to give him a non-pantheistic
sense, and never succeeded to our own satisfaction in doing it.
{109}
Cousin's pantheism follows necessarily from two doctrines that
he, from first to last, maintains. First, there is only one
substance. Second, Creation is necessary. He says in the
_Avertissement_ to the third edition of his _Philosophical
Fragments_ that he only in rare passages speaks of substance
as one, and one only, and when he does so, he uses the word, not
in its ordinary sense, but in the sense of Plato, of the most
illustrious doctors of the church, and of the Holy Scripture in
that sublime word, I AM that I AM; that is, in the sense of
eternal, necessary, and self-existent Being. But this is not the
case. The passages in which he asserts there is and can be only
one substance, are not rare, but frequent, and to understand it
in any of these passages in any but its ordinary sense, would
make him write nonsense. He repeats a hundred times that there
is, and can be, only one substance, and says, expressly, that
substance is one or there is no substance, and that relative
substances contradict and destroy the very idea of substance. He
is talking, he says in his defence, of absolute substance. Be it
so; interpret him accordingly. "Besides the one only absolute
substance, there is and can be no substance, that is, no other
one only absolute substance." Think you M. Cousin writes in that
fashion? But we fully discussed this matter in our former
article, and as the reviewer discreetly refrains from even
attempting to show that we unjustly accused him of maintaining
that there is and can be but one substance, we need not attempt
any additional proof. The second doctrine, that creation is
necessary, the reviewer concedes and asserts, "In Cousin, as we
have attempted to explain, creation is not only possible, but
NECESSARY," repeating Cousin's own words.
"As to Cousin's pantheism, if any one is disposed to believe
that the systems of Spinoza and of Cousin have anything in
common, we can only recommend to him a diligent study of both
writers, freedom from prejudice, and a distrust of his own
hastily formed opinions. It is too large a question to enter
upon here, but we would like to ask the critic how he
reconciles the two philosophers on the great question he last
considered--the creation. In Spinoza, there is no creation. The
universe is only the various modes and attributes of substance,
subsisting with it from eternity in a necessary relation. In
Cousin, creation, as we have attempted to explain, is 'not only
possible but necessary.' The relation between the universe and
the supreme Substance is not a necessary relation of substance
and attribute, but a contingent relation of cause and effect,
produced by a creative fiat." (P. 545.)
A necessitated creation is no proper creation at all. And Cousin
denies that God does or can create from nothing; says God creates
out of his own fulness, that the stuff of creation is his own
substance, and time and again resolves what he calls creation
into evolution or development, and makes the relation between the
infinite and the finite, as we have seen, not that of
_creation_, but that of _generation_, which is only
development or explication. He also denies that individuals are
substances, and says they have their substance in the one
absolute substance. Let the reviewer read the preface to the
first edition of the _Fragments_, reproduced without change
in subsequent editions, and he will find enough more passages to
the same effect, two at least in which he asserts that finite
substances, not being able to exist in themselves without
something beyond themselves, are very much like phenomena; and
his very pretension is, that he has reduced the categories of
Kant and Aristotle to two, substance or being, and phenomenon.
Now, the essential principle of pantheism is the assertion of one
only substance and the denial of all finite substances.
{110}
It is not necessary, in order to be a pantheist, to maintain that
the apparent universe is an eternal mode or attribute of the one
only substance, as Spinoza does; for pantheism may even assert
the creation of modes and phenomena, which are perishable; its
essence is in the assertion of one only substance, which is the
ground or reality of all things, as Cousin maintains, and in
denying the creation of finite substances, that can act or
operate as second causes. Cousin, in his doctrine, does not
escape pantheism, and we repeat, that he is as decided a
pantheist as was Spinoza, though not precisely of the same
school.
The reviewer says, p. 544, "We proceed to another specimen of the
critic's accuracy; 'M. Cousin says pantheism is the divinization
of nature, taken in its totality as God, But this is sheer
atheism.'" Are we wrong? Here is what Cousin says in his own
language: "Le panthéism est _proprement_ la divinisation du
tout, le grand tout donné comme Dieu, l'universe Dieu de la
plupart de mes adversaires, de Saint-Simon, par example. C'est au
fond un veritable athéisme." [Footnote 41] If he elsewhere gives
a different definition, that is the reviewer's affair, not ours.
We never pretended that Cousin never contradicts himself, or
undertook to reconcile him with himself; but the reviewer should
not be over-hasty in charging inaccuracy, misrepresentation, or
ignorance where none is evident. He may be caught himself. The
reviewer stares at us for saying Cousin's "exposition of the
Alexandrian philosophy is a marvel of misapprehension." Can the
reviewer say it is not? Has he studied that philosophy? We
repeat, it is a marvel of misapprehension, both of Christian
theology and of that philosophy itself. The Neoplatonists were
pantheists and emanationists, and Cousin says the creation they
asserted was a creation proper. Let that suffice to save us from
the scathing lash of the reviewer.
[Footnote 41: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. pp. 18,
19.]
8. We said, in our article, "It was a great misfortune for M.
Cousin that what little he knew of Catholic theology, caught up,
apparently, at second hand, served only to mislead him. The great
controversies on Catholic dogmas have enlightened the darkest
passages of psychology and ontology, and placed the Catholic
theologian on a vantage-ground of which they who know it not are
incapable of conceiving. Before him your Descartes, Spinozas,
Kants, Fichtes, Hegels, and Cousins dwindle into pigmies." The
reviewer replies to this:
"This is something new indeed, and we think the great Gallican
churchmen of the seventeenth century, whom Cousin understood so
intimately, and for whom he had so sincere an admiration, would
be the last to claim an exclusive vantage-ground from their
knowledge of the controversies on Catholic dogma. For these
men, alike of the Oratory and of Port Royal, were Cartesians,
and their faith was interwoven with their philosophy; it was
not in opposition to it. And they knew that that philosophy was
based upon a thorough understanding of the great 'controversies
on Catholic dogma,' which had been carried on in the schools by
laymen as well as by ecclesiastics.
"But who is the Romish theologian the critic refers to, and how
is it he makes so little use of his 'vantage-ground'? Since
Descartes brought modern philosophy into being by its final
secularization, we do not recollect any theologian so eminent
that all the great men he has named dwindle into pigmies before
him. Unless, indeed, this should take place from their being so
far out of the worthy man's sight and comprehension, as to be
'dwarfed by the distance,' as Coleridge says." (Pp. 546, 547.)
{111}
We referred to no _Romish_ theologian in particular; but if
the reviewer wants names, we give him the names of St. Augustine,
St. Gregory the Great, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas of
Aquino, Fonseca, Suarez, Malebranche, even Cardinal Gerdll, and
Gioberti, the last, in fact, a contemporary of Cousin, whose
_Considerazioni sopra le dottrine del Cousin_ prove his
immense superiority over him, and of the others named with him.
Cousin may have admired the great Gallican churchmen of the
seventeenth century, but intimately understand them as
theologians, he did not, if we may judge from his writings;
moreover, all the great churchmen of that century were not
Frenchmen. As great, if not greater, were found among Italians,
Spaniards, Poles, and Germans, though less known to the
Protestant world. Has the reviewer forgotten, or has he never
known, the great men that in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries flourished in the great religious orders, the
Dominicans, Franciscans, the Augustinians, and especially the
Jesuits--men whose learning, genius, and ability were surpassed
only by their humility and sanctity?
But we spoke not of Cousin's little knowledge of churchmen, but
of his little knowledge of Catholic theology. The reviewer here,
probably, is not a competent judge, not being himself a Catholic
theologian, and being comparatively a stranger to Catholic
theology; but we will accept even his judgment in the case.
Cousin denies that there is anything in his philosophy not in
consonance with Christianity and the church; he denies that his
philosophy impugns the dogma of the Word or the Trinity, and
challenges proof to the contrary. Yet what does the reviewer
think of Cousin's resolution of the Trinity, as cited some pages
back, in his own language, into God, nature, and humanity? He
says God is triple. _"Cest-à-dire, à la fois Dieu, nature, et
humanité."_ Is that in consonance with Catholic theology?
Then, of the Word, after having proved in his way that the ideas
of the true, the beautiful, and the good are necessary and
absolute ideas, and identified them with the impersonal reason,
and the impersonal reason with the Logos, he asks what then? Are
they God? No, gentlemen, they are not God, he answers, but the
Word of God, thus plainly denying the Word of God to be God. Does
that prove he knew intimately Catholic theology? What says the
reviewer of Cousin's doctrine of inspiration and revelation? That
doctrine is, that inspiration and revelation are the spontaneous
operations of the impersonal reason as distinguished from the
reflective operations of the personal reason, which is pure
rationalism. Is that Catholic theology, or does it indicate much
knowledge of Catholic theology, to say it is in consonance with
that theology?
In his criticism on the Alexandrians or Neoplatonists, he blames
them for representing the multiple, the finite, what they call
creation, as a fall, and for not placing them on the same line
with unity, the infinite, or God considered in himself. Is that
in accordance with Catholicity, or is it a proof of his knowledge
of Catholic theology to assert that it is, and to challenge the
world to prove the contrary? But enough. No Catholic theologian,
not dazzled by Cousin's style, or carried away by his glowing
eloquence and brilliant generalizations, can read his
philosophical works without feeling that he was no Christian
believer, and that he neither knew nor respected Catholic faith
or theology. In his own mind he reduced Catholic faith to the
primitive beliefs of the race, inspired by the impersonal reason,
and as he never contradicted these as he understood them, he
persuaded himself that his philosophy did not impugn Christianity
and the church.
{112}
9. The reviewer says:
"One more extract, by way of capping the climax. Seemingly
ignorant of Cousin's criticism upon De Bonald's now exploded
theory of language, and his exposition of De Biran's, the
critic thinks, 'He would have done well to have studied more
carefully the remarkable work of De Bonald; had he done so, he
might have seen that the reflective reason cannot operate
without language.' Has this man not read what Cousin has
written, on the origin, purpose, uses, and effects of language,
that he represents him as believing that the reflective reason
can operate without language, without signs!" (P. 547.)
If M. Cousin maintains that the reflective reason cannot operate
without language, as in some sense he does, it is in a sense
different from that in which we implied he had need to learn that
fact. We were objecting to the spiritualism--we should say
intellectism, or noeticism--which he professed, that it assumed
that we can have pure intellections. Cousin's doctrine is that,
though we apprehend the intelligible only on the occasion of some
sensible affection, yet we do apprehend it without a sensible
medium. This doctrine we denied, and maintained, in opposition,
that, being the union of soul and body, man has, and can have in
this life, no pure intellections, and that we apprehend the
intelligible, as distinguished from the sensible, only through
the medium of the sensible or of a sensible representation, as
taught by Aristotle and St. Thomas. The sensists teach that we
can apprehend only the sensible, and that our science is limited
to our sensations and inductions therefrom; the pure
transcendentalists, or pure spiritualists, assert that we can and
do apprehend immediately the noetic, or, as they say, the
spiritual; the peripatetics hold that we apprehend it, but only
through the medium of sensible representation; Cousin, in his
eclecticism, makes the sensation the occasion of the apprehension
of the intelligible, but not its medium. On his theory the
sensible is no more a medium of noetic apprehension than on that
of the transcendentalists; for the occasion of doing a thing is
very different from the medium of doing it.
Now, language is for us the sign or sensible representation of
the intelligible, and, as every thought includes the apprehension
of the intelligible, therefore to every thought language, of some
sort, is essential. The reviewer stumbles, and supposes that we
are accusing Cousin of being ignorant of what he is not ignorant,
because he supposes that we mean by reflective reason the
discursive as distinguished from the intuitive faculty of the
soul, which, if he had comprehended at all our philosophy, he
would have seen is not the case. Intuition with us is ideal, not
empirical. It is not our act, whether spontaneous or reflective,
but a divine judgment affirmed by the Creator to us, and
constituting us capable of intelligence, of reason, and
reasoning. Reflective reason is our reason, and the reflex of the
divine judgment, or the divine reason, directly and immediately
affirmed to us by the Creator in the very act of creating us. Not
only discursion, then, but what both Cousin and the reviewer call
intuition, or immediate apprehension, is an operation of the
reflective reason. Hence, to the operation of reason in the
simple, direct apprehension of the _intelligible_, as well
as in discursion or reasoning, language of some sort, as a
sensible medium, is necessary and indispensable. When the
reviewer will prove to us that Cousin held, or in any sense
admitted this, he will tell us something of Cousin that we did
not know before, and we will then give him leave to abuse us to
his heart's content.
{113}
But we have already dwelt too long on this attempt at criticism
on us in the _Church Review_--a _Review_ from which,
considering the general character of Episcopalians, we expected,
if not much profound philosophy or any very rigid logic, at least
the courtesy and fairness of the well-bred gentleman, such as we
might expect from a cultivated and polished pagan. We regret to
say that we have been disappointed. It sets out with a promise to
discuss the character of Dr. Brownson as a philosopher, and
confines itself to a criticism on an article in our magazine
without the slightest allusion to a single one of that
gentleman's avowed writings. Even supposing, which the
_Review_ has no authority for supposing, that Dr. Brownson
wrote the article on Cousin, that article was entitled to be
treated gravely and respectfully; for no man in this country can
speak with more authority on Cousin's philosophy, for no one in
this country has had more intimate relations with the author, or
was accounted by him a more trust worthy expositor of his system.
As to the reviewer's own philosophical speculations, which he now
and then obtrudes, we have, for the most part, passed them over
in silence, for they have not seemed to us to have the stuff to
bear refuting. The writer evidently has no occasion to pride
himself on his aptitude for philosophical studies, and is very
far from understanding either the merits or defects of such a man
as Victor Cousin, in every respect so immeasurably above him. We
regret that he should have undertaken the defence of the great
French philosopher, for he had little qualification for the task.
He has provoked us to render more glaring the objectionable
features of Cousin's philosophy than we wished. If he sends us a
rejoinder, we shall be obliged to render them still more glaring,
and to sustain our statements by citation of passages from his
works, book and page marked, so express, so explicit, and so
numerous, as to render it impossible for the most sceptical to
doubt the justice of our criticism.
-----------
The Tears Of Jesus.
"And Martha said: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had
not died. ... Jesus saith to her: Thy brother shall rise again.
... And Mary saith to him: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died. ... And Jesus wept."
DISCIPLE.
"Kind Lord,
Dost Martha's love prefer?
Cheer Mary's heavy heart likewise,
And say to her,
Thy brother once again shall rise.
{114}
"Why fall those voiceless tears
In sad reply
To her, as if thine ears
Heard not her cry?
"What opens sorrow's deep abyss
At Mary's word?
When Martha spoke, no grief like this
Thy spirit stirred."
MASTER.
"My child,
Remember what I said to her--
The elder of the twain,
When she, the busy minister,
Of Mary did complain.
"Know, they who choose the better part
And love but me alone.
Ask only that my loving heart
Shall make their griefs mine own.
"To Martha is the promise given
That Lazarus shall rise from sleep;
But Mary is the bride of heaven--
With her shall not the bridegroom weep?"
DISCIPLE.
"Kind Lord,
When breaks my heart in agony,
Dost ever shed a tear with _me_?"
MASTER.
"My Child,
Wilt all things else for me resign?
Wilt others' love for mine forego
Wilt find thy joy alone in me?
Then will I count thy griefs as mine.
And with thy tears my tears shall flow
In loving sympathy."
---------
{115}
Sister Simplicia.
"What a wet, disagreeable day it is! If papa hadn't bought the
tickets last evening, I don't believe I should have come out
to-day, even for the sake of hearing Ristori in Marie Antoinette.
She can't do better than she does in Mary Stuart, and I already
wish ourselves back in your cosy little library again; besides, I
haven't half finished looking at those curious old illuminated
books of your father's, and, as we go home to-morrow, I fear I
shan't have time, for papa has an invitation for us all this
evening."
So spoke Anita Hartridge as she and Mary Kenton took their places
in the Broadway stage on their way to a matinee at the French
Theatre. Anita's father was a Baltimore merchant. He was often in
the city buying goods, but this was the first time he had brought
his daughter with him. The two girls were warm friends. They had
been educated together, and it was not yet a year since they had
bidden adieu to the convent walls, the one to thread, motherless,
the gay mazes of Baltimore society; the other to come home as a
household angel to the father and mother, who were already
beginning to grow old. It has been a happy week, a week all too
soon coming to an end; and Mary Kenton sits thinking sadly, so
wrapped in her reveries that she does not even raise her eyes
when the stage stops to take in more passengers.
She is thinking of Anita, of her beauty and brilliancy, her
quick, flashing, Southern gayety, and yet deep, true, sympathetic
heart; and she wonders what will become of her friend, with no
mother to restrain her impulsiveness and a father who thinks only
of gratifying her lightest wish. How gladly she would share with
her her own mother's tender care; and if she could but be taken
from this whirl of amusement for a short time; but no; they
return to-morrow. Well, here they are at Union Square, and Anita
is speaking softly.
"Mary, did you ever see so beautiful a face? No, not opposite;
over there in the corner next the door--that younger Sister of
Mercy. She looks like Elizabeth of Hungary. I have been watching
her all this time, and she has never looked up once. She seems
inspired. Do you believe any one _can_ be so happy as she
looks, I mean any one who leads so self-denying a life?"
But there is no time to reply. They leave the omnibus and are
soon entranced under the magic power of the great tragedian.
"I wish I were Ristori," said Anita, as they left the theatre.
"To have her power and to be admired as she is admired; oh! that
were grand. That were a life worth living. What is it to live as
we do--to-day as yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day again--no
grand purpose; and when we die, have the world go on just the
same as before? Such lives are not worth living. I wish I could
be great as Madame de Staël, or beautiful as Madame Recamier."
"'O world! so few the years we live,
Would that the life that thou dost give
Were life indeed!'"
repeated Mary slowly; "and yet, there are other lives that I had
rather take for my model than any of these."
{116}
"Yes, I know, Mary. You would take rather the life of some saint,
St. Elizabeth herself, perhaps; you are always so good and
gentle; and Sister Agnes used to say that she knew you would come
back to her some time as a sister yourself. But I am not at all
so; I love the world, and society, and amusement, and am only
dissatisfied because I am neither so brilliant nor beautiful as I
should like to be. I feel that your ideal is the better one, but
I have not strength of character enough to live anything but a
gay, butterfly life. You know my favorite song is, 'I'd be a
butterfly,' and indeed I do wish for beauty more than anything
else in the world. And yet, after all, that face that I saw under
the plain black bonnet was of a heavenly beauty that I cannot
forget. Page's copy of the _Madonna della Seggiola_ that we
admired so much yesterday is scarcely more beautiful."
"And her life has been as beautiful as her face, they say. But
there is our stage. Let us hurry a little; mother will be waiting
dinner for us already."
A low rap at Mrs. Kenton's door. It is the hour after dinner, and
Dr. Kenton and Mr. Hartridge are in the library, alternately
discussing business and their meerschaums. There are two hours
yet before the ladies need dress for the evening. Mrs. Kenton is
sitting in her large chair before the grate, and the girls come
in quietly and draw up two low ottomans at her feet. The gas is
not yet lighted, and the twilight throws long, deep shadows from
the curtains and the quaint, old-fashioned high bedposts.
"Mother, we have seen Sister Simplicia to-day. Anita very much
wishes to hear her history, and you have never told it to me yet.
It is just the night to tell a story, just such a night as we
read of, 'without, the snow falling thick and fast, but within a
bright fire throwing its cheerful light around the room and
lighting up the countenance of the narrator,'" said Mary,
smiling.
"I imagine the fire you are quoting about was of hickory logs in
a great, wide fireplace; and this is only a city grate," said her
mother in the same tone; and then more seriously, "but I will
tell you the story, since you wish it, and all the more readily
as I was thinking of her at the moment you entered.
"Eight years ago Rose Harding was the belle of our circle. I
loved her as I would have loved a little sister of my own, had I
been blessed with one. She was the younger sister of my dearest
friend; and when Rachel died, she left Rose half in my care, for
their mother was dead and the father only too indulgent. But Rose
was not easily spoiled, and looking back now at this distance, I
think that I have never known another that was her equal. Mr.
Harding was wealthy, and she had all that heart could wish. Of
course she was much sought after and much loved; but few were
made unhappy through her, for she was far too generous and too
conscientious to be a coquette; and when one evening she came to
me, blushing and trembling, and told me that Willis Courtney
loved her--"
"Willis Courtney, the son of papa's old partner?" asked Anita.
"You have seen him?"
"Yes; he was my ideal when I was still a very little girl. But
then I was sent away to be educated, and never saw him
afterward."
"He was worthy of Rose, though very different. How proud he was
of her! I loved to watch them together. He was so gentle and
thoughtful of every little attention, and she trusted and honored
him so fully. It seemed there never could be a brighter future in
store for any than for these two, and surely there never could be
any more deserving of the choicest blessings of earth.
{117}
Mr. Harding was happy in his child's happiness, and Willis only
waited a visit from his father to give him the glad surprise. Mr.
Courtney was at that time the senior partner in your father's
firm, Anita! Willis was in the second year of his law studies,
and in less than a year he could look forward to establishing a
home; for his father was growing old, and had told him often that
he only wished to see him happily settled in life before he died.
And so the weeks passed in happiness, and tomorrow Mr. Courtney
should come. I shall never forget how anxiously Rose awaited this
coming--expectant, hopeful, timid. 'Willis says his father is a
stern man. I shall be so afraid of him. Perhaps he will not
approve of me'--with a half-frightened laugh; 'I do so want him
to like me. Willis honors him so, and yet says he always stood in
awe of him. _Do_ you think he will like me? I wish to-morrow
were past, I dread it so; and yet Willis says he is sure to love
me, and that he will be so glad to have a daughter.'
"And Willis was at the depot, impatient to see his father again,
and still more impatient to have the crowning seal of approval
set upon his choice.
"At length the shrill whistle of the distant train, a few anxious
glances through the darkness, and the bright red light of the
engine glides past slowly. Why is it that this red glare, shining
as it passes, seems to throw a sort of supernatural glare over
the platform and the waiting figures? A strange, weird feeling
comes over him. Is it himself standing there, or is he, too, only
some phantom of his own imagination? In a moment he lives over
his whole past life in one comprehensive flash, as people who are
drowning are said to do. But the train has stopped, and there is
his father's bald head among the crowd of rushing passengers.
Willis passes his hand quickly over his forehead, as if to brush
away the illusion, and advances to meet him.
"It is a glad meeting. Mr. Courtney looks at his son, and, as he
looks, the benignant smile on his face broadens and deepens. It
is something to have delved in the counting-house all these
years, and bent his shoulders over the dull ledgers, that these
shoulders may have no need to bend, and that this intellect shall
have the means of making the best of itself; and, as he walks
beside him to the waiting carriage, he says in his heart, 'There
is none equal to _my_ son.'
"And now they sit in their parlor at the '---- House,' and the
bottle of old port is almost emptied, for Mr. Courtney is fond of
good wine. The waiter has arranged the fire, and brought in a
fresh bottle, and father and son are alone.
"'And now, Willis, who is she, this divinest of her sex; and when
am I to see her?'
"'To-morrow, or this evening if you prefer. Mr. Harding is almost
an invalid, and so spends his evenings at home, and Rose seldom
leaves him.'
"'_Harding!_ What Harding is this? You always spoke of her
as "Rose," and I never thought to ask her family name,' said Mr.
Courtney, in ill-suppressed anxiety.
"'Thomas Harding, formerly of New-Orleans. Why, father, what is
it; are you ill? What can I do for you?' said Willis, rising from
his chair quickly, as Mr. Courtney arose and staggered toward the
mantle piece. He stood there, resting his folded arms on it, with
his head so buried in them that the son could see nothing of his
face.
{118}
John Courtney was not a man to be approached easily. Whatever the
joys or sorrows of his life might have been, his son was as
ignorant of them as the stranger who met him just an hour ago. So
Willis stood now at a little distance, not feeling sufficient
freedom to approach, and anxiously awaiting some word or movement
that should give him permission to speak. But none such came,
and, after a few moments, Mr. Courtney raised his head, saying,
'A glass of wine, Willis. I felt a little faint a moment ago.
Travelling is tiresome work for an old man.' And Willis filled
the glass silently; for there was a look in the white face that
chilled, while it awed him--a look of determination, and yet of
indecision at the same time.
"It seemed as if a cold, misty atmosphere had suddenly entered
the room; and the two men spent the remainder of the evening in a
vain effort to sustain a conversation upon all manner of general
subjects, which the son seemed always to succeed in shaping till
it just approached the subject in which alone he was then
interested, and the father always to turn it off just in time to
prevent its touching. At length Willis arose, saying:
"'But your journey has tired you very much, father. I will go
now, that you may have a long night's rest.'
"'Yes, yes. I am no longer so young as I was once.'
"But after his son had gone, he forgot his weariness, and spent
the night in walking up and down the length of the parlor, and
drinking wine, as the waiter said in the morning, 'like a
high-bred gentleman;' and when the morning came, the look of
indecision had passed away, and the determination alone remained.
"And Willis passed the long hours of darkness in a nightmare of
undefined dread, half asleep, but yet entirely conscious of all
around; a state that confused imagination and reality, till the
most frightful dreams became impressed with all the power of real
events--so real that only the morning, with the unchanged,
familiar face of the servant could make him feel certain that
they were all waking dreams, and that he had not lived a horrible
year. But the cold water, and the cheerful breakfast-table, and
all the invigorating morning influences served to restore him;
and he laughed at the absurd fancies, and went around to his
father's hotel, wondering that he should have felt so discouraged
and uncomfortable in his presence last evening, and mentally
resolving to let no such chill come over their intercourse this
morning.
"As he stepped into the hall, he noticed the well-known baggage,
with the initials, 'J. C.,' and said to the waiter:
"'What carelessness is this? You have never carried up my
father's baggage.'
"'As soon as you had gone last evening,' said the waiter, 'I went
up to his door, sir, and asked if I should send it up then; but
he said, "No," as he should leave early in the morning, sir.'
"Willis hurried up and found the old man at breakfast, or rather
sitting there beside it, for he had evidently eaten nothing,
although he said he had finished.
"'Why, father! your baggage--'
"'Yes, yes, a telegram. Must return immediately; and now sit down
a moment. There is half an hour yet before going to the train.
When do you finish your studies?'
"'In two months.'
{119}
"'So I thought--so I thought. There is no hurry about your
beginning to practise, and I need your assistance in my business
just at present. There are some speculations in the West that
must be attended to. There is money in them, but I can't trust
Stephens to go alone, and I want to send you with him. I shall
make all arrangements for you to start at the end of two months.'
"'But, father--Rose?'
"'Time enough. There's nothing will test your affections like a
little absence. Besides, you aren't either of you old enough to
know what you want yet. If in two years you both feel as you do
now, why, then we'll see about matters; and you know your means
don't depend on your practice; besides, you'll get along better
in that for seeing something of the world before you commence.
I'm getting to be an old man, Willis, and need my son's help a
little now. Surely he won't make any objections to doing what I
desire?'
"Filial respect and affection was a strong trait in Willis
Courtney's character. Disobedience to the father whom he had
always feared, and to whom he was really so much indebted, was a
thing of which he had never thought before, and thought of now
only to put away the idea as one unworthy of him; and Rose, who
loved her own father devotedly, respected him the more for his
duty to his; and so it came about that when the two months had
passed, he went to California with Stephens, the head clerk of
the firm, and Rose had only the long, tender letters; and Mr.
Harding, who had never been dissatisfied while Willis was here,
grew suddenly restless, and longed to travel.
"'As long as Rose was so happy, I was contented here,' he said,
'but now she is often sad, and I think a little change will be
good for both of us. I have travelled too much in my life to be
satisfied to settle down in one spot and remain there. I must see
Italy once again before I die.'
"And so their passage was taken, and one morning we stood on the
deck of an English steamer to bid them 'God speed;' and after we
had come on shore again, stood long watching the ship till it was
far down the bay.
"At first Rose wrote long, cheerful, descriptive letters. A
summer at a German watering-place had almost entirely restored
Mr. Harding's health, and in the early autumn they began their
tour, intending to visit Vienna, and, passing directly from there
to Venice, make a short stay in two or three cities of Northern
Italy, and then go on to Rome to spend the winter.
"Letters came seldom now--it was at the beginning of our civil
war--and when they came, there was no longer any mention of
Willis, nor of glad anticipations of return; and later, in a
letter dated at Brescia, she wrote: 'I am in the city of Angela
da Brescia. How was it possible for her to be what she was? I
cannot understand it. To rise up out of the shadow of a great
grief, and to go forth cheerfully into the world and work to do
good and make others happy. It needs more than human will. God
alone can give the strength to do this, and yet if he does it
sometimes, as he did for her, why not always?'
"And still there was no mention of any personal grief; but the
whole tone of her letter was sad, and I felt that something more
than a mere transient annoyance had occurred to thus destroy her
accustomed cheerfulness.
{120}
"At first, the genial climate and the revival of old
associations--for he had spent several winters there in his
youth--had seemed to give Mr. Harding a new life, and almost a
second youth, while they visited the familiar places, and he
pointed out to his daughter the glorious relics of past
architecture and the grand works of the old masters; but it was
only for a time, and when we heard again, his strength was
failing rapidly. At Rome they had met an old friend who was
staying there with his wife, so they joined company, and planned
their return together for the ensuing summer.
"And all this time we had only heard of Willis Courtney that he
had, without returning home, joined the Union army as a private,
and that his father, whose sympathies were entirely Southern, was
very much displeased; and, in addition, that he had sold out his
interest in the business, some said in order to retire and enjoy
his wealth, others, to avoid a financial crisis which he imagined
to be impending.
"In May came another letter from Rose. The time of their return
was uncertain; her father was feeble, and wished neither to leave
the mild climate, nor to risk the danger of a voyage, till he
should be stronger. And in reply to some question of mine--'I
have heard no word from Willis Courtney this winter, and even
last autumn his letters had changed and were no longer like him.
But I cannot write of this. I do not understand it all. ... I
have spent almost the entire day in St. Peter's. I do this often.
It is God's grandest monument on earth, and I never feel so near
him as here. I never truly felt the love of holiness before; but
here, under the influence of the inimitable grandeur of his
church, and in the presence of his earthly representative, I can
almost shut out the vanities of the world, and bow before God
alone, worshipping him in supreme love and reverence. I love the
beautiful rites of the church. Ah! how gladly I would lie down
beneath the shadow of her walls, and sleep the last sleep--or if
that may not be, take the vows which should make me the bride of
heaven alone, and shut out for ever the coldness and deceptions
of the world. But my poor father needs me so much, and is so
entirely dependent upon me, that I cannot leave him while he
lives. He is fearfully changed, and has grown so much older
within the last two months that you would scarcely recognize him
now. I hope he may soon be better, and am sure he must be, for he
is always so cheerful.'
"But this was not to be, and after lingering a few weeks longer,
he died amid the scenes he had loved so well, having first
exacted a promise from Rose that she would return to New York
with Mr. and Mrs. Rowland.
"They had a pleasant voyage, good weather and a smooth sea, and
the vessel glided along, making every day her full number of
knots, and making glad the hearts of the passengers, who were
returning to home and friends.
"Mr. and Mrs. Rowland spent much of the time on deck, and Rose
sat near them, always with a book lying open on her lap; to the
careless observer she appeared to be reading, but those who,
after a few days, began to notice the sad face, noticed, too,
that the leaves of the book were never turned and that her glance
rested always on the sea. These were days of rest. The slow
rolling of the waves lent her an artificial calmness. The events
of the last few months had stunned her, and this was the
transition state before reaction. A sort of veil seemed to have
been cast between her vision and the past, and the future seemed
a blank, a desert that she had no wish to explore, and before
which she shut her eyes.
{121}
She seemed to be falling into that dreamy melancholy which so
often precedes insanity, and Mrs. Rowland watched her anxiously,
and Mr. Rowland made every exertion to distract her attention,
making every little excuse to get her to walk on deck, and to
notice some peculiar cloud or singular fish. And so the days
passed till they were within two days of New York; then the pilot
came on board, and they began to realize, for the first time,
that they were almost home. He brought the last papers, three
days old now, and the hitherto quiet passengers were all
excitement, gathered here and there in little groups eagerly
discussing the news he had brought, for those were times full of
interest, and this news was the defeat at Bull Run.
"Mr. Rowland had put a paper into Rose's hands, and as she read,
she became first interested; then the quick blood mounted to her
face, and Mr. Rowland remarked:
"'You have not yet forgotten that you are an American, Miss
Harding.'
"She replied quickly and continued reading. Presently the paper
dropped from her hands; her face became deadly pale, and she
leaned heavily against the rail for support. Mr. Rowland took up
the paper and searched the page she had been reading; but in
vain; he saw nothing that should have startled her, and so turned
away, thinking he had been mistaken, thus leaving her alone to
accustom herself to the reality of what she had read.
"What she had read? It was only a name, and that the name of a
common soldier.
"In looking over the list of the names of those found dead on the
battle-field of Bull Run, she had found that of Willis Courtney.
"The next day they reached Sandy Hook. But it was already
evening, and they were obliged to anchor over night, and defer
running up to the city till the next morning. There were many
impatient at this detention, but none more so than Rose Harding.
What has come over her? her kind friends asked each other in
vain; but she was no longer indifferent, and her face expressed a
cheerful determination. It was a conviction of duty, and a
resolution to fulfil it. All the night after the news, she had
lain awake and pictured to herself the horrors of lying wounded
on the battle-field, and of dying alone in the cold and darkness.
She had loved Willis Courtney with the full depths of a first
matured affection, and she loved him now, despite the
indifference and coldness with which he had rewarded that love.
And now he was dead, and whatever had come between them on earth
had passed away; and, strange as it seemed to her, she felt that
he had come back to her, and that they were nearer together than
they had ever been. But he was dead, and he had died in a noble
cause, and she felt ashamed of her own selfish grief, that had
shut out the world and its cares and sorrows. The old words came
ringing in her ears:
'The noblest place for man to die,
Is where he dies for man.'
"Had he not died nobly? And then she contrasted her own life with
his. What had _she_ done to make any of God's creatures
better or happier! 'Nothing! nothing!' Then came bitter regrets,
and accusations against her destiny. Why had she not been
permitted to be near him in the last struggle? Had not her own
pride been perhaps somewhat to blame? He had suffered alone.
"Then suddenly he seemed to stand beside her, and pointing
upward, to repeat to her those words of Christ: 'Inasmuch as ye
have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have
done it unto me.'
{122}
"It was a revelation. What God had done for Angela da Brescia, he
had done for her. Darkness had passed away, and in its place was
light, and the warmth of renewed life. 'Unto the least of these.'
Willis was gone. On earth she could do nothing more for him; but
there were others, others who were laying down their lives as
nobly and in the same cause; for these she could work; and
whatever she could do 'unto the least,' she should be doing for
_him_ and for _Christ_.
"It was no mere momentary enthusiasm. She came home to join the
devoted band of the Sisters of Mercy, and among these she was one
of the bravest and truest. No duties were too arduous and no
dangers too great, for this child of luxury to encounter.
Herself, and the great wealth which she had inherited from her
father, she consecrated to the service of God. Like the noble
Paula of old, who went forth from pagan Rome to assemble around
her a community of sisters in Palestine, 'she was piteous to them
that were sick, and comforted them, and served them right
humbly,' and 'laid the pillows aright' with a tender hand; and
many a poor soldier thanked her for his life, and many more
blessed with dying lips the name of her who had robbed the grim
messenger of his terrors, and shown the light of God's love
gilding the horizon of the valley of the shadow of death.
"And when the war was ended, she came back to New York, to
continue, in another field, her labors of love. Here she visited
hospitals and prisons, carrying the promises of the Father's
forgiveness to the repentant, and words of comfort and
consolation to those who were sick and weary of life.
"One morning, about a year ago, as she was visiting prisoners in
company with an older sister, she noticed in the Tombs a new
prisoner, who attracted her attention by his dignified bearing,
and evident reluctance to speak to any of his companions; and as
he turned, and she caught a view of his profile, she was startled
with a feeling that it was familiar to her; and yet she had
surely never seen the man. But he seemed glad to talk of
religion; and when she left, she gave him a pocket Bible to read
until she should next visit the prison. But all that day the face
seemed to haunt her. It came between her and her prayers; it
visited her dreams in the night, and hung over her like an
incubus that would not away at her entreaties; and she found
herself looking forward to her next visit with a mixed feeling of
anxiety and curiosity. When at last she went again, the old man
recognized her, and asked suddenly, in a trembling voice:
"'Are you Rose Harding?'
"'I am Sister Simplicia. I _was_ Rose Harding,' she replied,
shocked at the suddenness and eagerness of the question.
"He looked at her wonderingly, and then said:
"'Are you happy? But what use to ask. Your face and voice show
it. See here,' he added, and handed her back the open Bible. It
was one that Willis had given her years ago, and on the fly-leaf
to which the man now opened was written--
'Rose Harding.
From Willis Courtney.'
{123}
"This was the one relic she had kept of her past life. She had
fastened those leaves together with thin white wafers, so that
the names should be invisible, and had felt still that _his_
book must be especially blessed, and so had given it often to
prisoners to read. She had intended to destroy everything that
should remind her of Rose Harding; but these names, written in
his hand, she could not destroy, but had thought to hide them
even from herself.
"And this man had torn them open. It was as if he had committed a
sacrilege; as if he had opened the grave of the dead; for were
these not buried long ago?
"But he was speaking hurriedly:
"'I am John Courtney. I have something to tell you; something
that has hunted me down for years, and driven me here at last.'
And she listened.
"He had been her father's confidential clerk years ago in New
Orleans. In an evil moment, he had allowed himself to take a
small sum from the drawer; for his salary, large though it was,
was not sufficient to meet the expenses of a young man who loved
gay company, drank much and gambled more. It was not discovered,
and so he had helped himself again, and Mr. Harding, who was
scarcely older than himself, and had absolute confidence in him,
had still made no discovery; but when it became time to balance
the yearly accounts, he knew it could be concealed no longer, and
so one night he took enough more to pay travelling expenses, and
to help him in starting into some business for himself, and left
on a night-boat for the North. He remained secreted in St. Louis
till he had discovered through the papers that Mr. Harding had no
intention of prosecuting him; then, after having adopted the
precaution of changing his appearance as much as possible, and
his name from James Rellerton to John Courtney, had come to
Baltimore and gone into business, in which he had prospered, and
had married into one of the first families in the place. His wife
had died while Willis was yet a child, and he had centered his
pride and affection upon this only boy. For his sake he had
worked untiringly, and had showered his wealth upon him, that he
might never know the temptation that had overcome his father. But
from making any acknowledgment to Mr. Harding his pride shrunk.
He had, indeed, sent back the money he had taken, but to see Mr.
Harding he had felt to be impossible. James Rellerton was dead,
and John Courtney must stand without reproach before the world,
and no man living must know that there was any connection between
the two.
"But when Willis had spoken the name of Thomas Harding as that of
the father of his affianced bride, it seemed that retribution,
from being so long delayed, had come upon him with double
harshness, as the interest of a debt that has run long is
sometimes greater than the principal itself. Should he destroy
the happiness of the son for whom he would have given his life,
or run the risk of being recognized by Mr. Harding?
"He could do neither; and besides, would Mr. Harding allow his
daughter to marry the son of James Rellerton?
"Then he had resolved to separate them, and let time and events
decide the future means to be employed. It had been a double
game. If Willis had been instructed to watch Stephens, Stephens
had been no less definitely instructed to watch Willis; and when,
after six months, he had reported that the correspondence between
him and Rose was undiminished, he had received instructions that
he must 'see to it that it should cease gradually;' and so the
letters had been intercepted, a few times changed, and then no
longer sent in any form. The father had said:
{124}
"'My son will blame her, and his pride will prevent his
suffering.'
"But when did pride prevent suffering? It may prevent the showing
of any sign, and it did here; but Willis had been one of the
first volunteers, and then he had fallen; and the old man had
been left desolate with a double crime upon his conscience. He
had no object in attending to business and making money now, so
had sold his interest, and tried to find in travel that
alleviation from thought which could alone make life endurable.
But he could not leave himself--the one thing he desired to
leave--and an attraction beyond his control had brought him back
to New Orleans. Here the necessity for excitement had again led
him into the old temptation of gambling. But he was not always
successful; and when the Mississippi was again open, he had
travelled on the boats, at first with better success, but at last
had become too well known, and in looking for a new field, had
fallen in with a band of counterfeiters, and so had come to New
York in their employ.
"And this was the end of it all.
"At first Rose had listened with an intense loathing for the man.
Had he not wronged her father, and blighted her own youth, and
even chased his own son to his death; and was he not a
counterfeiter and a gambler; an outcast before God and man?
"Then, as she turned her glance, it fell upon her cross, and it
brought back the scene on Calvary and the face of Him who had
prayed 'Father, forgive them.' Then she looked again at the old
man, and, trembling with emotion, he cast himself on the floor at
her feet, crying:
"'Merciful sister, pray for me!'
"And the peace of God came back to her, as she clasped her hands,
and raising to heaven her eyes filled with the tears of a gentle
pity, prayed aloud:
"'O Jesus! be merciful; and deal with me even as I deal with this
repentant man.'
"The Bible of his son first, and the labors of the appointed
ministers of God afterward, brought him again under the
benediction of the church. But she it was who stood beside him in
the last struggle, and closed the eyes with more tenderness than
a daughter; for hers was that holy love, born of heaven and
earth, which dwells only in the consecrated heart."
......
Mrs. Kenton had finished. The long shadows had grown longer and
mingled together, till it had become only darkness; and then the
moon had arisen and was shining with a pale light through the
masses of heavy clouds. They arose silently and went each to her
own room. But for Anita Hartridge this night was the
turning-point in life. The "butterfly" was such no longer, and in
its place grew up the noble woman.
Did Sister Simplicia, as she knelt at her prayers that night,
know the work she had done for her Master that day?
---------
{125}
The Merit Of Good Works
In a recent article we endeavored to explain the catholic
doctrine, that good works as well as faith are an essential
condition of justification. This implies, of course, that good
works are meritorious, and that eternal life is due to them as a
recompense. We wish to elucidate this point a little more fully,
and to show what is the nature of that merit which is ascribed to
good works proceeding from the principle of faith informed by
charity.
In the widest sense of the word, merit signifies any kind of
excellence or worthiness. In this sense, a picture is said to
have merit; and purely physical or intellectual perfections,
which are merely natural gifts, are said to merit admiration and
praise. In the strict sense of the word, merit signifies the
quality by which certain free, voluntary acts entitle the person
who performs them to an adequate recompense. It is in this sense
that merit is ascribed to the good works of a just man. These
works are said by Catholic theologians to deserve eternal life by
a merit of condignity and a title of justice.
What is meant by merit of condignity? It means that there is an
equality of dignity or intrinsic worth and value between the work
performed and the recompense bestowed. This is easily understood
in regard to merely human affairs. It is not easy to understand,
however, how a creature can deserve the reward of eternal life
from the Creator. Good works, however excellent they may be in
the finite order, and as measured by a human standard, appear to
be totally incommensurate with the infinite, and therefore
wanting in all condignity with an infinite recompense. So far as
the mere physical entity of the works is concerned, this is
really so. The gift of a cup of cold water to a person suffering
from thirst, the recital of a few prayers, a trivial act of
self-denial, evidently bear no proportion to eternal beatitude.
Neither does a life like that of St. Paul, filled with labors, or
a long course of penance and prayer like that of St. Romuald, or
a martyrdom like that of St. Polycarp. The mere extent or
duration of the labor or suffering, considered as something
endured for the sake of God, is nothing in comparison with the
crown of immortal life. The condignity of good works is not
derived from an equality or proportion between their physical
extent and duration and the physical extent and duration of the
recompense. It is derived from an equality in kind between the
interior principle from which good works proceed, and the
interior principle of beatitude. The interior principle of good
works is charity; not a merely natural charity, but a
supernatural, a divine charity, produced by the Holy Spirit. Good
works proceed from a supernatural principle, and are performed by
a concurrence of the human will with the divine Spirit. They
have, therefore, a superhuman, divine quality, and are elevated
to the supernatural order, the same order to which eternal
beatitude belongs. They are, therefore, equal to it in dignity in
this sense, that they are equally supernatural.
{126}
The principle of divine charity in the soul is, moreover, the
germ of the eternal life itself, which is promised as the reward
of the acts which proceed from charity. The life of grace is the
life of glory begun, and the life of glory is the life of grace
consummated. The germ is equal in grade and quality with the tree
which it produces, though not equal in extent and perfection. In
the same manner, a little act, like that of giving a cup of water
to another for the love of God, although trivial in itself,
contains a principle which is capable of uniting the soul to God
for all eternity. It is the principle of divine love, making the
soul like to God, imitating on a small scale those acts of the
love of God toward men which are the most stupendous, and
therefore, making the soul worthy to be loved by God with a love
of complacency similar in kind to that love which he has toward
himself.
Again, the value and merit of services rendered by one person to
another are estimated, not alone by the substance of the services
rendered, but by the quality of the person who renders them. An
article of small utility or cost is sometimes more valued as a
token of affection from a dear friend, or as a sign of esteem and
honor from a person of high rank, than a large sum of money would
be which had been accumulated by the industry of a servant. The
good works of a just man fall under this category. They are
estimated according to the quality and rank of the person who
performs them. The just man is the friend of God, and the
services he renders to God are valued accordingly, not as so much
work done, but as tokens of love and fidelity. As a friend of
God, the just man is a person of high rank in the scale of being.
He is a "partaker of the divine nature," as St. Peter distinctly
affirms. His human nature is exalted and sublimated to a certain
similitude with the nature of God; and the acts which proceed
from it have a corresponding dignity and elevation, proportioned
to their end, which is eternal life, or the consummation of the
union between human nature and the divine nature in eternal
beatitude. The just man is the adopted son of God the Father,
through his union with God the Son incarnate. This adoption into
a participation with Jesus Christ in his sonship reflects the
dignity and excellence of the person of Christ upon his person
and upon all his works. As a member of Christ and a son of God,
his person and his works are superior to the whole natural order,
and, therefore, there is nothing which has the relation of
condignity toward them except the supernatural order itself.
It is evident, therefore, that regenerate nature has condignity
with the state of glory, and that the good works which proceed
from it have condignity with degrees of splendor in this state of
glory. Regenerate nature bears the image of God, aspires after
union with God, is fitted to find its beatitude in the vision of
God, is made apt and worthy to be admitted into the kingdom of
heaven. It demands, therefore, as its last complement, the
_lumen gloriae_ which enables it to see God face to face.
The personal love of the soul to God as its friend and Father,
and the personal love of God to the soul as his friend and son,
require that they should have mutual vision of each other and
live together. This living with God is eternal life, which is,
therefore, the only fitting recompense for the love of God
exercised by the just man upon earth.
{127}
Theologians do not, however, regard the title in strict justice
to a supernatural reward, or the ratio of condign merit, as
consisting solely in the condignity of the meritorious works
themselves. They place it partially in the promise of God, or the
decree of his providence which he has promulgated, in which
special rewards are assigned as the recompense of good works
performed in the state of grace. Therefore, they say, the reward
of eternal life is due in strict justice, not by an obligation
arising _per se_ from the act of the creature, but by an
obligation of the Creator to himself to fulfil his own word. They
say that God may require, by virtue of his sovereign dominion,
any amount of service from the creature as his simple due,
without giving him any reward for it; that he may even annihilate
him if he pleases, and, moreover, that the holy acts of the
blessed in heaven, although they have a perfect condignity with
supernatural rewards, do not receive any. Therefore, they say, a
creature cannot merit a reward from God according to rigorous
justice, but only according to a rule of justice derived from the
free determination and promise of God. Scotus and some others
even hold that the condignity of meritorious works with the
promised reward is altogether extrinsic, and denotes merely that
they are conformed to the standard or rule which is laid down by
the divine law. It is, therefore, only required in strictness by
the definition of the church, that one should confess that the
good works of the just man entitle him to a supernatural reward
by virtue of a promise which God has given. Those who are so
extremely frightened at the sound of the phrase, "merit of
condignity," as applied to men, can adopt the opinion of Scotus
if they please. For our own part, we prefer the other and more
common doctrine of condignity which we have already explained. We
do not apprehend any danger to the glory of the Almighty from the
exaltation of his own works, or any diminution of the merits of
Christ from the glorification of his saints. On the contrary, the
power and glory of God are magnified the more, the more like to
himself the creature is shown to be which he has created. "God is
admirable in his saints;" and, the more excellent their works
are, the greater is the praise and homage which accrues to him
from these works which are offered up to him as acts of worship.
The only error to be feared is the attributing of something to
the creature which he derives from himself, as having
self-existent, independent being. To attribute to angel or man as
much good as is in a withered leaf, is equivalent to a total
denial of God, if this good is not referred to God as first
cause. But to attribute to created nature all possible good, even
to the degree of hypostatic union with the divine nature, does
not detract in the slightest degree from the truth that God alone
is good in himself, if the good of the creature is referred to
him as its source and author. No doubt all right to existence, to
immortality, to felicity of any kind, is derived from God, and is
originally a free gift to the creature from him. But the right is
a real right, of which the creature has just possession when God
has given it to him, one which may be an inalienable right in
certain circumstances, that is, a right which God cannot, in
consistency with his own attributes, withdraw. When God creates a
rational nature, in which he has implanted the desire and
expectation of immortal existence and felicity, he implicitly
promises immortality and felicity. We do not like to hear it said
that he can annihilate such a creature or withhold from it the
felicity after which it naturally aspires, unless it be as a just
punishment for sin.
{128}
So, when God creates man anew in the supernatural order, by
giving him the grace of regeneration, he gives him an implicit
promise of eternal beatitude. It is very true that he can exact
from him any amount of service he pleases, as a debt that is due
to his sovereign majesty; yet he cannot justly withhold from him
final beatitude, unless he forfeits it by his own fault. The
special reward annexed to every good work is undoubtedly due only
by virtue of the explicit promise which God has made, to reward
every such good work by an increase of grace and glory. It is
also true that God does confer some degrees of glory on the just
out of pure liberality and beyond the degree of merit. Moreover,
the period of merit is limited by the decree of God to this life,
because it is fitting that the creature should increase and
progress, during his probation, toward the full measure of his
perfection, and should afterward remain in that perfection when
he has arrived at his term. We think, therefore, that we have
made it plain enough that good works have a merit of condignity
in relation to eternal life, and nevertheless derive this merit
from the promise and appointment of God, subject to such
conditions as he has seen fit, in his sovereign wisdom and
liberality, to establish.
The doctrine we have laid down detracts in no way from the merits
of Christ. Christ alone has the principle of merit in his own
person as an original source. He alone has merited of condignity
grace to be bestowed on others. His merits alone are the cause of
the remission of sins, and the bestowal of regenerating,
sanctifying, saving grace. His merits merits of the saints as the
head is superior to the inferior members of the body. His
incarnation, life, and death are, in a word, the radical
meritorious cause of human salvation from the beginning to the
end; and, in their own proper sphere or order of causation, are
entirely alone. Christ is the only mediator of redemption and
salvation between God and man, in whom the Father is reconciling
the world to himself. His acts alone are referable to no
principle higher or more ultimate than his own personality. All
merely human grace, sanctity, or merit is, therefore, to be
referred to him as its chief author, and to merely human subjects
only as recipients or secondary and concurrent causes. It is easy
to understand, therefore, what is meant by presenting the merits
of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints before God as a motive
for bestowing grace. The saints have not merited anything over
and above that which Christ has merited, nor have they merited,
by a merit of condignity, even the application of the merits of
Christ to others. Through their personal merits, they have
obtained a kind of right of friendship to ask in a specially
efficacious manner for graces and favors to be conferred on those
for whom they intercede. Their mediation and merits are,
therefore, only efficacious by way of impetration and prayer, and
not by virtue of a right which they have obtained by a title of
justice. This is what is meant by merit of congruity, which
denotes a certain fitness in a person to obtain from God the
favors for which he asks. This merit of congruity is all that is
ascribed to the Blessed Virgin or the saints, as a groundwork of
their intervening power, by any Catholic theologian. It is the
same in kind with that which the just on earth possess, by virtue
of which they obtain, through their prayers, blessings and graces
for other persons. It is easy to see, therefore, how completely
the Catholic doctrine is misunderstood by those who imagine that
it either places man in the room of Christ, as his own Saviour,
or substitutes the mediation of the Blessed Virgin and the saints
for the mediation of Christ.
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{129}
Full Of Grace.
Flowers in the fields, and odors on the air,
The spring-time everywhere;
Music of singing birds and rippling rills,
Soft breezes from the hills;
So broke the sweetest season, long ago,
Far from this death-cold snow.
In that blest land which smiles to every eye,
Most favored from on high;
And in one town whose sheltering mountains stand
Broad breast-plates of the land;
So fair a spring-time sure was never seen,
Since Eden's walks were green.
A sudden glory flashed upon the air,
A face unearthly fair;
A beauty given but to those alone
The nearest to the throne;
The great archangels who upon their hair
The seven planets wear.
Lightly as diamonds--such the form that now,
With brilliant eyes and brow.
Paused by the humble dwellings of the poor.
Entered the humblest door,
Veiling his awful beauty, far too bright,
With wide wings, strong and white.
Within the dwelling where his flight was stayed
A kneeling woman prayed.
The angel bowed before that holy face,
And hailed her "Full of Grace."
No other title, not the kingly name
Which David's line can claim;
Not highest rank, though unto her was given
Queenship of earth and heaven;
Not as that one who gave life to the dead,
Bruising the serpent's head;
Not even as mother of the Sacrificed,
The world-redeeming Christ.
This thought might be a sermon, while yet we,
Heirs of eternity,
Walk this brief, sin-surrounded tract of life.
Wage this short, sharpest strife,
Which must be passed and won before the rest.
The triumph of the blessed.
And when the hour supreme of fate shall come,
And at our promised home
We wait in breathless and expectant dread
Between the quick and dead,
Then may the angel warders of the place
Welcome us, "Full of Grace."
--------
{130}
Translated From L'Economiste Belge.
How Our History Will Be Told
In The Year 3000.
In those days--our latest posterity _loquitur_--the people
were not entirely freed from the savage instincts of their
ancestors, the anthropophagi, those ferocious contemporaries of
the deluge and such great inundations of the world. True, they
did not still eat their enemies, nor break their skulls with
clubs; they did not pierce their bodies with arrows of bone and
flint; but they did the work more delicately, entirely according
to the rules of art, with the precision of a surgeon who cuts off
a limb, or the coolness of a butcher who bleeds a sheep. By dint
of inventions, calculations, and trials of every kind, they
fabricated, at last, most ingenious tools, very convenient and
very simple, and which they handled with equal dexterity. They
were not instruments of natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy,
or mathematics; our fathers possessed, it is true, objects of
this kind, but they did not think it proper to put them in the
hands of the people. Their thermometers, microscopes, telescopes,
and electrical machines remained in the shade of libraries or the
cabinets of the learned. The people were ignorant of their names
and uses, while they well understood the management of the tools
of which I speak. So you will suppose these were very useful
articles, as they were so generally employed in every clime and
nation, and their object to moralize and instruct mankind, as
governments consented to their gratuitous distribution among
their subjects--went farther, even, and imposed their use. But
alas! no; they were only tools of death and carnage, worthy to
figure among the arms and instruments of torture of preceding
ages; for while some shot off bullets, others threw to enormous
distances balls of brass and steel, that made holes in human
walls, burnt up towns, and sunk ships.
{131}
The men of this time were called _"civilized"!_ Strange to
say, they had abolished torture, and wished to do away with the
pain of death. The scaffold horrified them, and the sight of the
gallows gave them a vertigo! They had journals and books filled
with beautiful phrases in honor of peace and civilization. But
they did not comprehend the sense of aphorisms which they
repeated incessantly and inscribed everywhere, on the fronts of
their temples, and the first page of their constitutions.
Their age to them was the age of light, and they seemed ready to
burst with pride when they considered their enormous riches, the
fame of their arts, and the extent of their sciences. And, in
appearance, one might have believed them wise, and as good as the
beings who inhabit the more favored planets of our solar system.
They had noble aspirations and a generous ardor.
In the penumbra in which they were plunged, a confused mass of
whirling and exasperated workers was alone distinguishable,
hungry, indefatigable, running up and down, like busy ants
seeking their subsistence. The ear heard only a deafening and
monotonous noise, like the buzzing of a hive. But in spite of
shocks and hurts, inevitable from such a clamorous multitude,
order and harmony seemed about being established, when suddenly
the same beings who until then had appeared so laborious and
active, were seized with a sort of rage, and set violently upon
each other. The red light of incendiarism and the thundering
brightness of battle thus demonstrated to the astonished gaze of
philanthropists and thinkers, that vices, sanguinary passions,
and brutal instincts, always alive and always indomitable, were
only hidden in shade, and awaiting the favorable moment to break
their bonds and annihilate civilization. By the artificial and
slightly tarnished light of their sciences, philosophers had
gathered round them men of policy and amiability, civilized and
peaceable, distinguished by good manners, and saying pretty
things about fraternity and progress; but the light that broke
upon them, the evidence that disenchanted them in this shock of
nations, showed them only coarse and ignorant crowds, capable of
committing, in their folly and cruelty, every crime and every
infamy. They had believed that the type of their epoch was the
man of business, industrial or negotiating, the sharp worker,
armed for competition, and prepared for the incessant struggles
of production; and behold! suddenly this personage quits the
scene, transforming himself into a fantastical being, clothed in
brilliant colors, his head ornamented with cock's feathers, his
step stiffened, his manners brusque, and his voice short and
sonorous. At the first boom of the cannon, the rolling of the
drum, or the sound of a warlike march, millions of men, clothed
in red, like the common hangman, marched out of the shade,
furnished with instruments suitable for bleeding, scorching,
disembowelling, crushing, burning, and stopping the breath of
their neighbors. And perhaps you think these men were the refuse
of society; that they came from low haunts and prisons; had
neither heart nor intelligence; that they were given up to public
execration. You never were more mistaken. Each one of these
auxiliaries of death was considered healthy in mind and body,
vigorous and intelligent, honest and disciplined.
{132}
To exercise his trade suitably, he was obliged to possess a crowd
of precious qualities, know perfectly how to behave himself, be
honorable, and of unimpeachable integrity!
As to the great generals, they were wise men, and men of the
world. They were expected to study mathematics, as it specially
teaches order and harmony; history, which proves that violence
and force have never established anything; and many other
sciences, which one would have imagined capable of directing
their thoughts from their impious career, and rendering them
pacific and humane.
Toward 1866 a great invention agitated the world. You are ready
to believe it was some means of aerial locomotion, or some
process for utilizing central heat, or placing our planet in
communication with the neighboring ones of Mars and Venus. Alas!
no. Such discoveries were not yet ripe; and besides, men of this
age had other preoccupations. A small province of the north of
Germany, with an erudite and philosophical people, had the honor
of giving to the world the celebrated _needle-gun_. Tired of
thinking, they relinquished their ideal, to move heavily and
noisily under the sun of reality, and set about acting; but
instead of inventing a philosophy, they considered a new engine
of destruction more creditable, and having tried it with the most
magnificent results, they offered to the public the instrument
which was entirely to change the map of Europe, break the
equilibrium of power, and annihilate all international right.
After having laid low several millions of men on the field of
battle, this comparatively insignificant people on the borders of
the Spree, who until then had won more academical laurels than
cannons, and more truths than promises, began to comprehend that
they could play a splendid _rôle_, and exercise a
preponderating influence in Europe. Formerly they had invented an
absolute philosophy; now they invented and practised an absolute
policy. And this was the union of the German people, the triumph
of Prussian institutions, the decay of the Latin and rise of the
Germanic races, and many other changes which only absolute power
can effect. These little people on the borders of the Spree awoke
to a new life, and determined to take all and absorb all; they
threatened Holland; coveted Alsace; were disposed to swallow up
Bavaria, the grand-duchy of Baden, and Würtemberg. Other nations
were troubled, and justly; for the power of the Germans seemed to
them very much like absolutism. So each of them, in great haste,
began to perfect their own instruments of death with the faint
hope, too, that they might very soon make use of them. Old
France, tired of conquests and interior struggles, wished only to
rest. Having disturbed the tranquillity of Europe so often, she
had come to that age when repose is the chief good; so she
feigned ignorance of the insolent aspect and gestures of defiance
of her young rival; but unhappily a few judicious men, and many
more of an intriguing nature, fools and ambitious ones, were at
the head of affairs. These loved war as a golden egg, and birds
of prey, we know, derive their sustenance from a field of battle.
Some already dreamed of wading through blood to conquer an
epaulette, others that they gained millions in supplies, and
became great dignitaries in the empire.
{133}
So they went about repeating that their country was degraded,
reduced to a second rank; that Germanic insolence must be
chastised, and the glorious tricolor planted on the left shore of
the Rhine. The journals commented on their words, and the rustic
in his hut, the laborer at his forge, and the financier in his
counting-house dreamed with terror of the dawning evil. Certain
politicians, meditating on the situation and the march of events,
declared war inevitable, necessary, providential, and alone able
to reëstablish the influence of the country and the
_prestige_ of the government. So they burst out in eloquent
discourses in favor of military armaments, while on their side
strategists, inventors, and administrators set to work, believing
they were the foundation of the future prosperity of their
country.
Their theory was very simple. The power of a nation, they said,
depended on the number of men capable of bearing arms, and on the
quantity and quality of the engines of destruction that they
possessed. That is, our country must be powerful in order to be
rich, prosperous, and free. _Ergo_, let us increase to every
extent the effectiveness of our troops and fabricate without
parsimony such arms as are unparalleled in Europe. Weak patriots
and economists, the _Sancho Panzas_ of these _Don
Quizotte_ politics, murmured a little, but they found
themselves obliged to be silent and bow their heads under the
taunts and reproaches with which they were loaded. "Utopists,"
cried the inventors, "you say our machines are not useful; but
look down there in the direction of Sadowa and Custozza, and tell
us afterward if we have not rapidly and economically fabricated
smoke and glory. Ask the surgeons, and they will describe to you
the gaping wounds, the deep rents they can produce; [Footnote 42]
ask statesmen, and they will tell you the services they render to
the ambitious, and the good livings they secure thereby."
"Miserable citizens! men without energy and honor," cry they to
others, "you lazily prefer well-being to glory, and the success
of your personal enterprises to that of the national glory; but
let the hour of danger come, and we will make you walk at the
point of the bayonet, notwithstanding your cries and menaces."
... And people who cared nothing for truth, and judged by
appearances, echoed the cry, and called them utopists, hollow
dreamers, theorists, and, after all, cowardly and egotistical.
[Footnote 42: _At Strasbourg the effects of the Chassepot
gun have just been certified by experiments on a corpse hung
at a distance of fifteen yards. The experiments were made by
M. Sarazin, and corroborated by the medical faculty. We will
hear the good doctor in his own words: "I am far from
exaggerating," said he modestly, "the practical value of my
experiences, and I well know the desiderata, easier to
distinguish than resolve, that they present from the point of
view in which the effect of the Chassepot gun is produced
according to distance and on the living being. However,
everywhere I have drawn the following conclusions:
"At a short distance, and on a corpse the projectiles have
not deviated in their course.
"1. The diameter of the orifice, as it enters, is the same as
that of the projectile.
"2. The diameter of the orifice, as it goes out, is enormous,
seven to thirteen times larger than that of the ball.
"3. The arteries and veins are cut transversely, drawn back
and gaping. The muscles are torn and reduced to the
consistency of pulp.
"4. The bones are shattered to a considerable extent, and out
of all proportion to the shock of the projectile.
"To sum up, the effects present a remarkable intensity, and
it is well to note that, after having traversed the corpse,
the projectile pierced two planks, each an inch thick, and
buried itself deeply in the wall."_]
So soon as such a river of ink flowed from the desks of the
journalists, dragging in its course these insults and injuries,
the workmen commenced their labors. They made rifled cannon of
steel; hammered coats of mail for their men-of-war; pointed their
sword-blades with steel and iron; made bullets, balls, bombs, and
howitzers, heaped up in their arsenals great quantities of
powder.
{134}
And one bright day the government announced with pride to the
country that it owned 9173 brass cannons, 2774 howitzer cannons,
of the same material, 3210 bronze mortars, 3924 small bronze
howitzers, 1615 cast-iron cannons, 1220 howitzers, 20,000
carriages for ordnance, 10,000 covered wagons, 4,933,688 filled
cannon-balls, 3,630,738 howitzer-balls, 18,778,549 iron bullets,
351,107,574 ball-cartouches, 1,712,693 percussion guns, 817,413
guns of flint, 10,263,986 pounds of powder--in short, enough to
exterminate the entire globe. Admirable litany, which the good
citizens were to recite mentally every time they thought of the
future of their country! Yet profound politicians said it was not
enough, and the great statesmen were not at all satisfied. "We
must have," said they, "some terrible invention that will strike
our enemies with terror. We would like a machine that would mow
them down like the scythe of the reaper in the harvest, with
movement so regular and continued that it would be impossible for
one to escape."
They did speak of a new apparatus, ornamented by its inventor
with the pretty name of the grape-gun, and which could send off,
twice a minute, a shower of fifty balls. But public opinion
demanded something better, and the mortified death-seekers
recommenced their labors.
In those days philanthropists and politicians tried to think of
the best means of establishing peace an Europe. So they met in a
town of Switzerland, on the borders of a beautiful lake, and in
presence of grand and lovely scenery--a place which ought to have
inspired them with high and holy resolutions. But, unfortunately,
they brought with them the bellicose thoughts of their own
countries; and so they concluded the only way to promote peace
was to destroy all bad and weak governments, abolish abuses,
upset society, and so unite all peoples. One might have suggested
that a state of peace could alone have produced such harmony; but
they did not so closely consider the question.
They were so-called democrats, and they sincerely believed the
aurora of justice would shine in the future on the field of
battle, and brighten the smoking ruins of its former society. ...
But let us pardon our ancestors: they were more ignorant than
wicked. Peace to their ashes! which, mingling now with the
elements, circulate in the universe.
Since their time, the globe has many times recommenced its
eternal evolutions; the sun has gone out of its orbit, and
carried with it the planets into the depths of space; science has
become the principal work of human existence, and order is
established everywhere; and we, the latest comers on the earth,
live happily, because we are free--free, because we are
united--united, because we are members of the same family, and
children of the same God.
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{135}
Plan For A Country Church.
At the request of several bishops and clergymen, we intend to
publish from time to time in this magazine, architectural plans
suitable for churches of moderate size and costliness. There are
many churches of this kind, especially in small country places,
required by the wants of the people, where an architect cannot be
found, and where the materials, furniture, and other necessary
parts or appendages of the sacred edifice must be of the cheapest
possible kind. Generally speaking, churches of this sort are
built and furnished without any regard to beauty or rubrical
propriety. It is, however, just as cheap and easy to make them
attractive, neat, and strictly ecclesiastical in their style and
proportions as the contrary, if only proper plans and directions
can be obtained. These we purpose to furnish after various styles
of architecture, and suitable to the different exigencies and
tastes of different places and persons. In so doing, we hope to
supply a want that has long been felt, and to assist a great
number of priests who are laboriously engaged in the meritorious
but difficult task of building churches with but limited means
for carrying out their plans.
Description.
The design which we have engraved in this number will give
accommodation to two hundred and fifty persons seated, the area
of the floor of the church being 41 x 25 feet in the clear, with
a sanctuary of 12 x 16 feet, a sacristy 12 x 15 feet, and a porch
to the front of the church sheltering the door against exposure.
The confessional is placed in such a position that the comfort of
the priest as well as the convenience of the people may be
secured.
The church should be framed with good, stout sills 8x12 inch
section, resting on a substantial wall of rubble masonry, where
stone can be obtained, or of brick where this material becomes
necessary, which wall should be carried deep enough to be
unaffected by the frosts of winter, and raised one foot at least
above the earth, a wall of rubble or brick being built along the
centre to bear the joists of the floor. The joists should be (3 x
10) framed into the sills so that the top of the floor, when
finished, may be twenty-eight inches, above the earth, giving
four steps to the church, the floor of the sanctuary and sacristy
being one step higher, and both on a level. The corner-posts
should be 8 X 8 pine timber, and four intermediate posts of 4 x
8. under each principal of the roof. The plate on the top should
be 4 x 8, and carried round the whole building except where the
chancel intervenes, and care should be taken that all the scarfs
of this piece of timber should be carefully made. The posts
should all be braced with 4x6 pieces, and the walls studded with
4x4, so that, should it be deemed necessary, in particular
localities, to render the building less susceptible to the
changes of temperature, the inner space may be filled.
The roof should be framed as high as shown on the elevation, with
a slope of 60° with the horizon, in order to obtain greater
height to the interior and greater strength to the truss, with a
collar about midway of the height, but not lower, and curved
braces, resting on hammer beams projecting from the side-walls at
the height of the plate, and a curved brace underneath this beam,
bringing the strain of the truss as low as possible on the
side-walls, but not incommoding the congregation.
{136}
[Image: Front Exterior image of church building.]
Elevation
{137}
[Image: Floor plan of church building.]
{138}
This simple roof should be framed of the best seasoned timber,
4x6 inches scantling, and should be dressed neatly, and, wherever
desired, may be moulded and have chamfered edges, and the
spandrels filled with two-inch tracery.
In the sanctuary should this more especially be done to mark the
distinction of this part of the church. The principals of the
roof should be 10 ft. 3 in. apart from the centres, with rafters
of 2 x 8 laid across the same 2 ft. 6 in. apart, and the plank
covering to be laid neatly with narrow tongued and grooved boards
where it may not be desired to plaster the under side of the
rafters; in case it may be thought advisable to plaster the
ceiling, the plaster should be colored a light blue. The chancel
arch should be struck with a curve from the same centre as the
roof-braces, with the edges of the jambs and soffit chamfered and
moulded.
The walls plastered up to the plate and floated with two coats
and finished a light, pleasing, and warm color. If means
sufficient warranted, a good cornice neatly moulded should finish
the side-walls and break against the principals of the roof, and
may be of wood or run in plaster.
A label moulding should be run around each door and window, and
in the sanctuary should be enriched whenever possible.
The window over the altar should be two lights wide or more,
filled with good geometrical tracery, like that in the front of
the pattern shown, the side-windows having pointed heads to the
frames and sashes enclosed in segmental heads on the inside. All
the windows should be glazed with plain diamond quarry glass of a
warm color, and where it may be possible, the chancel window
should have enriched borders and the tracery filled with
appropriate symbols.
The front of the chapel has been shown covered with shingles, the
timbers showing the framing prominently, and should be dressed
and the angles chamfered in the manner indicated; the corner-post
that carries the bell-cot should be made in one length, and the
bell-cot sheltered by a roof of considerable projection and
surmounted by a cross, which feature may not inappropriately be
transferred to the gable of the chapel at the option of the
priest. In structures like the one presented, it is a simpler and
at the same time better arrangement to allow the eaves of the
roof to project and to dispense with the gutter, the earth below
being protected by flagging, or a properly graded gravelled
slope. The chimney shown on the plan should be placed in the
position marked, to render the draught more equable; in general,
all other details of the church, such as pews, and a gallery if
needed, and the doors, must be made to accord with the style of
the building, and the painting should be the natural color of the
wood, stained, unless it be sought to grain the roof or color in
bright colors.
In presenting these directions for the builder, many details and
features are omitted which can only be supplied by
specifications.
This building can be executed for the sum of $3150, the work
being plain but substantial, in accordance with the description.
----------
{139}
Miscellany.
We learn with much regret that on the 12th of February the
printing establishment of the Abbé Migne, at Mont Rouge, in the
southern suburb of Paris, was totally destroyed by fire. No
particulars of the occurrence have yet been given. The
enterprise, conducted with extraordinary vigor and ability by the
abbé, was unique in the history of publishing. It was founded for
the purpose of supplying books for the Catholic clergy of France
and the whole world. Nearly two thousand volumes, in large
imperial octavo, comprising the whole of the Greek and Latin
fathers of the church, and writers on theology and ecclesiastical
history, were edited, published, and kept constantly in print,
employing a staff of several hundred persons, including literary
men, printers, binders, etc.--_London Publishers' Circular._
----
_Amaurosis from Tobacco-Smoking._--Mr. Hutchinson has
reported thirty-seven cases of amaurosis, of which he says
thirty-one were among tobacco-smokers. Mr. Hutchinson concludes:
1. Amongst men, this peculiar form of amaurosis (primary white
atrophy of the optic nerve) is rarely met, except among
smokers.
2. Most of its subjects have been heavy smokers--half an ounce
to an ounce a day.
3. It is not associated with any other + affection of the
nervous system.
4. Amongst the measures of treatment, the prohibition of
tobacco ranks first in importance.
5. The circumstantial evidence tending to connect the affection
with the habit of tobacco-smoking is sufficient to warrant
further inquiry into the matter on the part of the
profession.--_Popular Science Review._
----
_The New Laboratory at the Sorbonne._--This magnificent
establishment, which is to be devoted to the pursuit of chemical
investigation, seems to provide for the student's wants on even a
more liberal scale than its celebrated rival at Berlin. Besides
the various rooms for researches in chemistry, _pur et
simple_, there are numberless apartments exclusively intended
for investigation in optics, electricity, mechanics, and so
forth. Motive-power is provided for by a steam-engine of great
force, which is connected by means of bands with wheels in the
several laboratories. Again, besides the ordinary pipes carrying
coal-gas, there will be a series of pipes supplying oxygen from
retorts kept constantly at work. Indeed, altogether the new
laboratory will be a species of Elysium for the chemical
investigator.
----
_The Bessemer Steel Spectrum._--Father Secchi, who lately
presented to the French Academy his fine memoir on the Stellar
Spectra, compared the spectra of certain yellow stars with the
spectrum produced in the Bessemer "converter" at a certain stage
of the process of manufacture. The employment of the spectroscope
in the preparation of this steel was begun a couple of years
since; but the comparison of the Bessemer spectrum with the
spectrum of the fixed stars has not, so far as we can remember,
been made before. The Bessemer spectrum is best seen when the
iron is completely decarbonized; it contains a great number of
very fine lines, and approaches closely to the spectrum of
_a_ Ononis and _a_ Herculis. The resemblance, no doubt,
is due to the fact that the Bessemer flame proceeds from a great
number of burning metals. The greatest importance attaches to the
analogy pointed out by Father Secchi. Father Secchi suggests that
beginners could not do better than practise on the Bessemer flame
before turning the spectroscope on the stars. Difficult an
instrument to conduct investigations with as the spectroscope
undoubtedly is, the difficulty almost becomes perplexity when the
student tries to examine stellar spectra.
----
{140}
New Publications.
Count Lucanor; or, The Fifty Pleasant Stories of Patronio.
Written by the Prince Don Juan, A.D. 1335-1347.
First done into English, from the Spanish,
by James York, Doctor of Medicine, 1868:
Basil Montague Pickering, Piccadilly,
in the City of Westminster.
For sale at the Catholic Publication House,
126 Nassau Street, New-York.
Mr. Pickering seems to revel in literary oddities. His book on
the _Pilgrim's Progress_ was quaint enough, and this volume
is scarcely behind it in any of its queer qualities. A more
totally _foreign_ book we do not remember ever seeing. In
style, idiom, turn of thought, everything, it is remote, _toto
caelo_, from all the ideas and criteria of English and modern
criticism. Its publication strikes us as being a remarkably bold
stroke; we cannot imagine for what class of readers it could have
been intended. The only market we could conceive of for such a
work in this country, would be a class of Mr. George Ticknor's,
if he were to have one, in Spanish archaeology. In Spanish, and
as Spanish, we should think it would prove most interesting; even
though the translation is intensely Iberian, both in structure
and thought.
The "Fifty Pleasant Stories" are very simple as to the machinery,
so to speak, of the telling of them. "Count Lucanor" throughout
the book asks advice of his friend Patronio, stating his case,
and being responded to with a story. Who Count Lucanor may have
been is a mystery for ever. The book shows him to posterity only
as a Spanish gentleman of apparent consequence, whose forte, as
poor Artemus Ward would say, seems to have been to fall into
difficulties and ask advice of Patronio. This gentleman appears
as a sort of Don Abraham Lincoln, or Señor Tom Corwin, rather.
Every question instantly and irresistibly reminds him of "a
little story, you know," etc., etc. This is all of their history.
What the end of a man must have been who answered every question
with an anecdote, we can only shudderingly decline to conjecture.
Whether the gallant Count Lucanor sportively ran him through the
body after one story too many some roystering day; whether he
went mad when the stories gave out, or whether death interrupted
him in a sage narrative, with his sapient hand button-holing the
count's doublet, it is not said.
There is a world of dry, old-world, dusty, aged pithiness about
the stories. They are generally very fairly to the point, and
often full of the peculiar patness so characteristic of Sancho
Panza. The most remarkable thing about the book, though, is the
really large number of apparent originals it contains. In it are
gems of all manner of precepts and principles that others have
amplified into poetry, and tragedy, and novels, and almost
everything. Still, we cannot call this more than a seeming
originality, because directly alongside of a tale we are
surprised to trace in Shakespeare, or La Fontaine, (a principal
debtor to Count Lucanor,) or some other admired author, we are as
likely to find some story so aged, so thread-bare, so worn and
torn and sapless with the use of centuries, that one is tempted
to refer it back to the year 1. Several of the tales are taken
from the _Arabian Nights_, and Don Juan Manuel generally
modernized them (?) to suit the enlightened Castilian and
anti-Moorish tastes of A.D. 1335, The old, old story of
Alnaschar, for instance, is dished up as "What happened to a
Woman called Pruhana," and the note to the story quietly goes on
to the original original, (skipping old Alnaschar with a word as
a mere junior copy,) namely, "the fifth part of the _Pantcha
Pantra_," which, all will be charmed to learn, is entitled
"Aparickchita Kariteva," which latter an Irish friend translates,
"Much good may it do ye," and our annotator "Inconsiderate
Conduct."
{141}
We will not quote the intensely thrilling narrative of this
Hindoo classic, but content ourselves with assuring our readers,
on our honor as a Brahmin, that the point is identically the
same.
One of the best examples of the characteristic aptness of the
book is Chapter vii.--"The Invisible Cloth." Count Lucanor's
quandary is all of a man who offered the count great advantages
if he would trust absolutely in him and in no one else. Three
impostors (we condense the good Patronio mercilessly) come to a
king as weavers of a peculiar cloth that no man but a legitimate
son of his father could see; to any one with even a secret taint
upon his authenticity it was utterly invisible. The king,
delighted with this test of so interesting and gossipable a
matter, shuts them up in his palace to make the cloth, furnishing
them rich raw material of all sorts. After some days the king is
invited alone to see the wonderful woof. King-like, the king
sends his chamberlain first. The chamberlain, trembling for his
pedigree, opens his mind's eye, sees the cloth distinctly, and
returns full of its praises. The king goes next, can't see it
either, is terrified for his title to his throne, and decides to
see it also; does see it, and admires it extravagantly. Finding
it still rather puzzling, he sends his Superintendent Kennedy
(_alguacil_) to work up the case. This functionary, likewise
failing to see it, and fearing supersedure by the senior
inspector of police, makes up his mind that the king's eyes are
good enough for him, and, through them, sees it too. Next a
councillor goes to report, and, like a true councilman as he is,
honors his father and mother by seeing it in the same light as
the powers that be. Finally, for some one of the three hundred
and sixty-five extraordinary feast-days of Spain, the king orders
a suit of the invisible cloth, doesn't dare not to see it, and
rides forth among his leal subjects in a costume strikingly like
that famous fatigue uniform of the Georgia cavalry, that we used
to hear so much of during the war. His people generally, out of
respect to their parents, submit to the optical illusion, till,
finally, a Spanish citizen of African descent, "having (says
Patronio--not we) nothing to lose, came to him and said: 'Sire,
to me it matters not whose son I am; therefore, I tell you that
you are riding without any clothes.'" The result is a general
opening of eyes, a sudden change of tailors, it is hoped, by the
king, and the disappearance of the weavers with the rich raw
material. Moral (slightly condensed from one page of
Patronio)--"Don't Trust."
"James York, Doctor of Medicine," has wasted valuable medical
time in translating this, with a good deal of fidelity to the
spirit of the Spanish. His style really does render much of its
quaintness; as much, perhaps, as today's English will hold in
solution. He is also very fairly fortunate with certain small
mottoes, or couplets, which close each story, prefaced thus, with
slight variations: "And Don Juan, (another utterly mystical
character, who does nothing but what follows,) also seeing that
it was a good example, wrote it in this book, and made these
lines, which say as follows:
'Who counsels thee to secrecy with friends,
Seeks to entrap thee for his own base ends.'"
(Chapter vii., above given.)'
The notes appended to each story are as odd, many of them, as the
stories. Generally, they are little more than notes of
admiration, but often brief _excursuses_, showing quite a
varied range of reading, and full of all manner of reconditeness.
These would seem to be mainly Mr. York's, and they do him credit
in spite of their ludicrously high praise now and then.
In the mechanical execution of the volume, Mr. Pickering, we
observe, cleaves to his chosen model, the Aldine press, and so
gives us in great perfection that accurate and studious-looking
print which we all feel we ought to like, and which none of us do
like. For our own part, we frankly own our preference for the
short _s_, and all the modern improvements.
{142}
Still, one must bear in mind a thing very obvious in all this
line of publications, that it is expressly to meet and foster a
kind of taste almost unknown in this country, and that the
publisher is evidently carrying out with consistency and energy a
peculiar policy of his own, whose success must at last be the
test of its own merit.
The general American reader will find this a thoroughly curious
book; the lover of cheap learning, a perfect treasure-house of
rather uncommon commonplaces; and the Spanish scholar, "a
genuine, if rugged, piece of ore from that rich mine of early
Spanish literature which yet lies hidden and unwrought."
----
Peter Claver: A Sketch of his Life and Labors
in behalf of the African Slave.
Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1868.
For sale at the Catholic Publication House,
126 Nassau street, New York.
This little book is a brief compendium of the life of a great
saint, who was the apostle of the negro slaves in South America.
Its publication is very timely, as it shows to the
philanthropists of New-England and of the country at large, who
interest themselves so much in behalf of the African race, what
Catholic charity has done and can do in their behalf. We
recommend it to their attention. The Catholic religion, and it
alone, can really and completely meet the wants of this
much-to-be-compassionated portion of mankind. The striking
vignette of this little volume, representing St. Peter Claver
supporting the head of a dying negro, who holds a crucifix
clasped to his dusky bosom, is an expressive emblem of this
truth. It would be an excellent thing if our philanthropists, in
Congress and out of Congress, would get a copy of this very
suggestive photograph framed and hung up in some place where they
are accustomed to say their prayers.
----
The Book of Moses; or, The Pentateuch in its
Authorship, Credibility, AND Civilization.
By the Rev. W. Smith, Ph.D.
Volume I. London: Longman, Green & Co. 1868.
For sale at the Catholic Publication House, New York.
Dr. Smith has given us in this volume the first instalment of an
extensive work on the Pentateuch. The authorship alone is treated
of in this portion of the work. Dr. Smith happily combines
orthodoxy of doctrine with a scientific spirit. He has evidently
studied Egyptology, geology, comparative philology, and other
sciences bearing on sacred science. He has also made himself
familiar with Jewish and Protestant, as well as Catholic
commentators. From a cursory examination, we are inclined to
judge that his great and useful task has been thus far very well
and thoroughly performed, and to expect that it will be completed
in a satisfactory manner. The volume is brought out in the best
style of English typographical art, with fac-similes of ancient
pictures and inscriptions, which add much to its value. We
recommend it to all students of the Holy Scriptures as one of the
most valuable aids to their researches which has yet been
published in the English language.
----
Life of St. Catharine of Sienna.
By Doctor Caterinus Senensis.
Translated by the Rev. John Fen, in 1609,
and Reëdited, with a Preface, by Very
Rev. Father Aylward.
New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1868.
This biography is a charming one, translated in the inimitable
English idiom of the 17th century. Father Aylward has very
successfully imitated the antiquated style in his valuable
preface. The biography leaves nothing to be desired as a history
of the private, interior life of the saint, though her wonderful
public career is but slightly touched upon. The sketch of it in
Father Aylward's preface induces us to wish that he would add to
the history of Saint Catharine's private life by Caterinus, an
equally complete history of her public life, with translations of
her letters, from his own graceful and devout pen, which would
furnish the English public with one of the best and most valuable
biographies of a truly great and heroic woman to be found in any
language.
----
{143}
Prayer the Key of Salvation.
By Michael Müller, C.S.S.R.
Baltimore: Kelly & Piet. 1868.
This book is an expansion of the excellent work of St. Alphonsus
Liguori on Prayer. The object of it seems to be, to explain the
saint's doctrine and illustrate it by examples, so as to bring it
more within the comprehension of the mass of the people. But we
are sorry to be obliged to say that the execution of the work
does not come up to the idea. Without commenting on the matter,
which is, in general, very good, we are compelled to say that the
style is faulty in the extreme; the sentences are mostly
un-English in their construction, and sometimes so long and
involved that they are hard to understand. It also abounds in
grammatical errors. In short, it is a pity it was not first
thoroughly overlooked and revised by a competent hand before
being allowed to go to press. However much we may desire to
commend this book, we cannot in conscience do so, so long as it
continues in its present dress.
----
La Reforme en Italie, les Precurseurs:
Discours Historiques de César Cantu.
Traduits de l'Italien par Aniset
Digard et Edmond Martin.
Paris: Adrien le Clere, 29 Rue Cassette. 1867.
Caesar Cantu is the author of the best universal history extant,
and of other historical works of the first class. He has
undertaken the task of crushing the destructive pseudo-reformers
of Italy under the weight of his massive historical erudition.
The first volume of the present work, which is the only one yet
published, brings down the subject to the 16th century, and will
be followed by three others. The author is a sound and orthodox
Catholic, yet, as a layman and as a historian, his work has not
the distinctively professional style and spirit which are usually
found in the works of ecclesiastical authors. He is fearless and
free in speaking the historical truth, even when it is
discreditable to ecclesiastical rulers and requires the exposure
of scandals and abuses in the church. His spirit is calm and
impartial, and the theological and ascetical elements are
carefully eliminated. He has gone back to the very origin of
Christianity, in order to trace the course of events from their
beginning, and has traced the outlines of the constitution of
historical Christianity. Church principles and dogmas are,
however, exhibited in a purely historical method, and as
essential portions of the history of facts and events. Such a
writer is terrible to parties whose opinions and schemes cannot
bear the light of history. The whole class of pseudo-reformers,
whether semi-Christian or openly infidel, are of this sort. Cantu
sweeps them off the track of history by the force and weight of
his erudition, as a locomotive tosses the stray cows on the track
of a railway, with broken legs, to linger and die in the meadows
at each side of it. It is only Catholic truth, either in the
supernatural or the natural order, which can bear investigation,
or survive the crucial test of history. The so-called Reformation
retains its hold on the respect of the world only through
ignorance. When history is better and more generally known, it
will be universally admitted that it was not only a great crime,
but a great blunder, a _faux pas_ in human progress.
----
The Infant Bridal, and other Poems.
By Aubrey De Vere. London: MacMillan & Co.
We are glad to see this book, rather for the memories than the
novelties it brings us. Almost all its contents have been
published in the author's other volumes, and there is nothing in
this to alter the opinions, either good or ill, that we took
occasion to express in a former review of them at large. The most
remarkable about the book is the selection of the republished
pieces.
{144}
It only verifies anew the observation that authors, no more than
we of the world, have the giftie to see themselves as others see
them. Some of the best poems are there, and some of the worst.
_The Infant Bridal_ and _The Search for Proserpine_ are
perhaps the very two poorest of all the author's longer
productions. Still, perhaps the many faults we fancy we see in
the tact of the compilation, only come to this--that we ourselves
would have compiled differently, and possibly worse.
But we meet, all over these elegant tinted pages, lines and
beauties that we fondly remember loving of old--fine blank verse,
wonderful descriptions, delicious idyls. These latter, by the
way, are equally remarkable and unremarked. They are from the
same fount with Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. We cannot resist
giving one extract, from _Glance_, p. 64:
"Come forth, dear maid, the day is calm and cool,
And bright though sunless. Like a long green scarf,
The tall pines, crowning yon gray promontory,
In distant ether hang, and cut the sea.
But lovers better love the dell, for there
Each is the other's world. How indolently
The tops of those pale poplars, bending, sway
Over the violet-braided river brim!
Whence comes this motion? for no wind is heard,
And the long grasses move not, nor the reeds.
Here we will sit, and watch the rushes lean
Like locks, along the leaden-colored stream
Far off; and thou, O child, shall talk to me
Of Naiads and their loves."
One more sample of the contents of this volume, and we have said
all there is to say. It is an unusual vein for De Vere, but one
in which, like Tennyson, he engages never lightly and always with
telling success. It is the close of _A Farewell to Naples_,
p. 255:
"From her whom genius never yet inspired.
Or virtue raised, or pulse heroic fired;
From her who, in the grand historic page.
Maintains one barren blank from age to age;
From her, with insect life and insect buzz.
Who, evermore unresting, nothing does;
From her who, with the future and the past,
No commerce holds--no structure rears to last.
From streets where spies and jesters, side by side.
Range the rank markets and their gains divide;
Where faith in art, and art in sense is lost.
And toys and gewgaws form a nation's boast;
Where passion, from affection's bond cut loose,
Revels in orgies of its own abuse;
And appetite, from passion's portals thrust.
Creeps on its belly to its grave in dust;
Where vice her mask disdains, where fraud is loud.
And naught but wisdom dumb, and justice cowed;
Lastly, from her who planted here unawed,
'Mid heaven-topped hills and waters bright and broad,
From these but nerves more swift to err has gained
And the dread stamp of sanctities profaned;
And, girt not less with ruin, lives to show
That worse than wasted weal is wasted woe--
We part; forth issuing through her closing gate.
With unreverting faces, not ingrate."
Cannot this book speak better for itself than our good word?
----
Folks and Fairies. Stories for little children.
By Lucy Randall Comfort.
With engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1868.
Judging, not, however, from perusal,
but from hearsay, we think the pleasure
of Mrs. Comfort's juvenile readers would
be increased if she had given them more
"Folks" and less "Fairies." On the
same high authority we also protest
against some of the engravings, for example,
"Otho returning home," as illustrations
of the text.
----
Books Received.
From Leypoldt & Holt, New York:
Mozart. A Biographical Romance.
From the German of Heribert Ran.
By E. R. Sill, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 323.
Easy French Reading: Being selections of historical tales and
anecdotes, arranged with copious foot-notes, containing
translations of the principal words, a progressive development
of the form of the verb, designations of the use of
prepositions and particles, and the idioms of the language. By
Professor Edward T. Fisher. To which is appended a brief French
grammar. By C. J. Delille. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 232.
From Kelly & Piet, Baltimore:
A Catechism of the Vows.
For the use of persons consecrated to
God in the religious state.
By the Rev. Father Peter Cotel, S.J.
From Samuel R. Wells, New York:
Oratory, Sacred and Secular: or, The Extemporaneous Speaker.
With sketches of the most eminent speakers of all ages. By
William Pittenger, author of Daring and Suffering. Introduction
by Hon. John A. Bingham, and appendix containing a Chairman's
Guide for conducting public meetings according to the best
parliamentary models, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 220.
Life in the West; or, Stories of the Mississippi Valley.
By N. C. Meeker, Agricultural Editor
of the New York Tribune, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 360.
From Lee & Shepard, Boston:
Red Cross; or, Young America in England and Wales.
A story of Travel and Adventure.
By Oliver Optic,
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 336.
--------------
{145}
The Catholic World.
Vol. VII., No. 38.--May, 1868.
Tennyson In His Catholic Aspects.
For a poet eminently modern and English in his modes of thought,
Tennyson is singularly free from the spirit of controversy. His
native land is distracted by religious feuds, yet he who has been
called "the recognized exponent of all the deeper thinkings of
his age," takes no active part in them, and seldom drops a line
that bespeaks the school of theology to which he belongs. At long
intervals, indeed, devout breathings escape him. Once now and
then he extracts a block of dogma from the deep quarry within,
and fixes it in an abiding place. He never scatters doubts
wantonly; he is always on the side of faith, though not perfect
and Catholic faith. He alludes to Christian doctrines as
postulates. For his purpose they need no proof. It would be idle
to prove anything if they were not true. They are the life of the
soul, and the vitality of verse.
"Fly, happy, happy sails, and bear the press,"
he cries; but he adds this apostrophe likewise:
"Fly happy with _the mission of the cross_."
_The Golden Year._
He looks for the resurrection of the body, and bids the dry dust
of his friend (Spedding) "lie still, _secure of change_."
(_Lines to J. S._) When the spirit quits its earthly frame,
he follows it straight into the unseen world and the presence of
its Creator and God. He points to "the grand old gardener and his
wife" in "yon blue heavens," smiling at the claims of long
descent, (_Lady Clara Vere de Vere;_) and he speeds the soul
of the expiring May Queen toward the blessed home of just souls
and true, there to wait a little while for her mother and Effie:
"To lie within the light of God, as I lie upon your breast--
Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."
_The May Queen_.
Intensely as he loves nature, Tennyson is no Pantheist. Though
like the wild Indian, he "sees God in clouds and hears him in the
wind," he does not therefore confound matter with its Maker, nor
lose sight of the personality of the Being whom he adores. He is
no disciple of fate or chance, but recognizes in all human
affairs the working of a divine and retributive providence, whose
final judgment of good and evil is foreshadowed and begun during
our mortal life.
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To His presence and promptitude in reply to prayer, he refers
more than once in pathetic and pointed language. He tells us how
Enoch Arden, when cast away on a desert island, heard in his
dream "the pealing of his parish bells," and
"Though he knew not wherefore, started up
Shuddering, and when the beauteous, hateful isle
Returned upon him, had not his poor heart
Spoken with that, which, being everywhere.
Lets none who speak with Him seem all alone,
Surely the man had _died of solitude_."
_Enoch Arden._
It would not be difficult for those who are acquainted with
Tennyson's earlier history, to discover the church of which he is
a member, and the section of it whose views he adopts. _In
Memoriam_ takes us into the interior of his father's
parsonage, to the Christmas hearth decorated with laurel, and the
old pastimes in the hall; to the witch-elms and towering
sycamore, whose shadows his Arthur had often found so fair; to
the lawn where they read the Tuscan poets together; and the
banquet in the neighboring summer woods. We almost hear the songs
that then pealed from knoll to knoll, while the happy tenants of
the presbytery lingered on the dry grass till bats went round in
fragrant skies, and the white kine glimmered, couching at ease,
and the trees laid their dark arms about the field. "The merry,
merry bells of Yule," with their silver chime, are referred to
more than once in Tennyson's poems. They seem to be ever ringing
in his ears. They controlled him, he says, in his boyhood, and
they bring him sorrow touched with joy.
It is in singing of Arthur Hallam that the poet's faith in the
immortality of the soul is brought out with beautiful clearness.
The bitterness of his grief draws him to the "comfort clasped in
truth revealed," and he looks forward with hope to the day when
he shall arrive at last at the blessed goal, and He who died in
Holy Land shall reach out the shining hand to him and his lost
friend, and take them "as a single soul." (_In Memoriam_,
lxxxiii.)
From the verses addressed to the Rev. F. D. Maurice, (January,
1854.) we learn that one of Tennyson's children claims that
gentleman as his godfather, and we gather from it and other
poems, what all the Laureate's friends know, that his sympathies
are with the _Broad Church_, of which Mr. Maurice, Kingsley,
Temple, the Bishop of London, and Dr. Stanley are distinguished
leaders. It is one of the peculiarities of this school to
moderate the torments of the lost and to deny that they are
eternal, to hope that good will in some way be the final goal of
ill, and that every winter will at last change to spring. It
cannot be disputed that this teaching is at variance with
Catholic doctrine; but it is one which Tennyson puts forward with
singular modesty, describing himself as
"An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light;
And with no language but a cry."
_In Memoriam_, liii.
The _Broad Church_, as its name implies, professes large and
liberal views. Not wishing to be tried by too strict a standard
itself, it repudiates all harsh judgments on others. Accordingly,
we find in Tennyson few allusions to errors, real or supposed, in
the creed of others. He regards as sacred whatever links the soul
to a divine truth. He has many friends who are Catholics, and we
have heard that he has expressed sincere anxiety to publish
nothing relative to the Catholic religion calculated to give
offence to its followers.
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There are few lines in his volumes which grate on the most pious
ear, and no devout breathings in which we do not cordially join.
It is in one of his earlier poems, and only in sport, that he
makes the Talking Oak tell of--
"Old summers, when the monk was fat,
And, issuing shorn and sleek,
Would twist his girdle tight, and pat
The girls upon the cheek,
Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's pence,
And numbered bead, and shrift.
Bluff Harry broke into the spence,
And turned the cowls adrift."
In conning his verse, therefore, the Catholic mind is at ease; it
lights on no charges to be repelled, and (so far as we know,
after long and close study of every line he has published) no
mistakes regarding our faith which require to be rectified. There
are those who imagine that in _St. Simeon Stylites_, he has
wilfully misrepresented the character of a Catholic saint; but we
venture to entertain a more lenient opinion, and shall endeavor
presently to justify it. It is in a tone of irony, such as we
must admire, that he describes the "heated pulpiteer in chapel,
not preaching simple Christ to simple men," but fulminating
"against the scarlet woman and her creed," and swinging his arms
violently, as if he held the apocalyptic millstone, while he
predicts the speedy casting of great Babylon into the sea.
(_Sea Dreams_.) Nor are there wanting points of contact
between Tennyson's ideas on religious matters and some of those
dwelt on by Catholic divines. Thus he, like Dr. Newman, finds the
arguments for the existence of God drawn from the power and
wisdom discoverable in the works of nature, cold and inconclusive
in comparison with that one which arises from the voice of
conscience and the feelings of the heart. The cxxiiid section of
_In Memoriam_ runs singularly parallel with this beautiful
passage in the _Apologia_, (p. 377:)
"Were it not for this voice, speaking so clearly in my
conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist
or a polytheist, when I looked into the world. ... I am far
from denying the real force of the arguments in proof of a God,
drawn from the general facts of human society; but these do not
warm me or enlighten me; they do not take away the winter of my
desolation, or make the buds unfold and the leaves grow within
me, and my moral being rejoice."
The arguments adduced by infidels, in support of their unbelief,
have never been rebutted in verse more cleverly than by Tennyson.
His blade flashes like lightning, and severs with as fine a
stroke as Saladin's scimitar. _The Two Voices_ may be cited
in proof, and also the following passages in the matchless elegy
on Arthur Hallam:
The Fates not blind, (_In Memoriam_) iii.
Life shall live for evermore. (_In Memoriam_) xxxiv.
If Death were death, love
would not be true love, (_In Memoriam_) xxxv.
Individuality defies the tomb, (_In Memoriam_) xlvi.
Immortality, (_In Memoriam_) liv. lv.
Doubt issuing in belief. (_In Memoriam_) xcv.
Knowledge without wisdom. (_In Memoriam_) cxiii.
Progress, (_In Memoriam_) cxvii.
We are not all matter. (_In Memoriam_) cxix.
The course of human things, (_In Memoriam_) cxxvii
These verses are no doubt the record of a mental conflict carried
on during some years of the author's earlier life--a battle
between materialism and spiritualism, between faith and unbelief,
reason and sense. The _Two Voices_ is philosophy singing, as
_In Memoriam_ is philosophy in tears. The _English
Cyclopaedia_ well calls the last poem "wonderful," and adds:
"In no language, probably, is there another series of elegies so
deep, so metaphysical, so imaginative, so musical, and showing
such impassioned, abnormal, and solemnizing affection for the
dead."
But it is now time to point to those passages in which Tennyson
may be said to have, more particularly, Catholic aspects. Be they
few or many, they are worth noticing, even though they prove
nothing but that a Protestant poet of the highest order has such
aspects, intense, striking, and lovely in no ordinary degree.
{148}
Every true poet is in a certain sense a divine creation, and
nothing but a celestial spark could ignite a Wordsworth, a
Longfellow, or an Emerson. It has ever been the delight of the
ancient church and her writers to discover portions of her truth
among those who are separated from her visible pale. Far from
grudging them these precious fragments, she only wishes they were
less scanty, and would willingly add to them till they reached
the full measure of the deposit of the faith. It would be easy to
make out a complete cycle of her doctrine in faith and morals
from the poems of Protestant and Mohammedan authors, but it would
be only by combining extracts from many who, in matters of
belief, differ widely from each other. In looking through the
Laureate's volumes for traces of the church's teaching, we are in
a special manner struck by his treatment of the invocation of the
departed. With what deep feeling does he invite the friend, who
is the subject of his immortal elegy, to be near him when his
light is low, when pain is at its height, when life is fading
away. (_In Memoriam_, xlix.) It reminds us of good Dr.
Johnson's prayer for the "attention and ministration" of his lost
wife, as Boswell has given it us. Can any Catholic express more
fully than the Laureate the frame of mind becoming those who
desire that the departed should still be near them at their side?
(_In Memoriam,_ 1.)
"How pure at heart and _sound in head_,
_With what divine affections bold_.
Should be the man whose thoughts would hold
An hour's communion with the dead.
"In vain shall thou, or any, call
The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too canst say,
My spirit is at peace with all.
"They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,
The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest.
"But when the heart is full of din,
_And doubt beside the portal waits_.
They can but listen at the gates.
And hear the household jar within."
_In Memoriam_, xciii.
"If I can," says the dying May Queen in _New Year's Eve_--
"If I can, I'll come again, mother, from out my resting-place;
Though you'll not see me, mother, _I shall look upon your face_;
Though I cannot speak a word, _I shall hearken what you say_,
_And be often, often with you, when you think I'm far away._"
It is not, therefore, in a vague and dreamy way, but with the
full force of the understanding, that Tennyson invokes the
spirits in their place of rest. It is not merely as a poet, but
as a Christian, that he exclaims:
"Oh! therefore, from thy sightless range,
With gods in unconjectured bliss.
Oh from the distance of the abyss
Of tenfold, complicated change,
"Descend, and touch, and enter: hear
The wish too strong for words to name;
That in the blindness of the frame
My ghost may feel that thine is near."
_In Memoriam_, xcii.
We say "as a Christian;" for we warmly repudiate the harsh
interpretation which is often put on his words addressed to the
Son of God:
"Thou _seemest_ human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood thou."
"See," it is said, "this is the most you can get from your
favorite about Christ--that he _seems_ divine. It is an
appearance, a semblance only." Now, this reasoning is most
unfair. The remainder of the verse implies his godhead--
"Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, _to make them thine._"
The verses which follow are a prayer to Christ, imploring from
him light and aid, wisdom and forgiveness. (Prefatory lines to
_In Memoriam_)
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In fact, it is evident from other parts of Tennyson's elegy, that
he does not use the word _seem_ in the sense of appearing to
be what a thing is _not_, but in the sense of its appearing
to be _what it is_. Thus, in the fifth stanza, below the
lines just quoted, we have--
"Forgive what _seemed_ my sin in me;
What _seemed_ my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord! to thee."
So again, _In Memoriam_, xxxiii.,
"O thou that after toil and storm,
May'st _seem_ to have reached a purer air;"
where "_seem_ to have reached" is equivalent to "thou who
_hast_ reached," with that delicate shade of difference only
which belongs to Greek rather than to English diction. Thus the
verb [Greek text] is repeatedly used in the New Testament as an
expletive, not meaningless to the ear, though adding no distinct
idea which can be expressed in a single word, [Greek text], (St.
Matt. iii. 9,) means to all intents, simply, "Say not in
yourselves," and [Greek text] (Gal. ii. 9) means, "who were
really the pillars they seemed to be." Such passages, it is true,
prove nothing as to Tennyson's use of the word _seem_, but
they do illustrate it. The perfect godhead of Christ is brought
out fully in the sermon preached by Averill in _Aylmer's
Field_. "The Lord from heaven, born of a village girl,
carpenter's son," is there styled in the prophet's words,
"Wonderful, Prince of Peace, the Mighty God."
When the Laureate prays that his very worth may be forgiven, he
employs the language of deep humility which meets us so
constantly in the writings of Catholic saints. It reminds us of
their prayers to the Father of Lights that the best they have
ever done may be pardoned, that their tears may be washed, their
myrrh incensed, their spikenard's scent perfumed, and their
breathings after God fumigated. It is no shallow view that he
takes of repentance when he makes Queen Guinevere ask:
"What is true repentance but in thought--
Not e'en in inmost thought to think again
The sins that made the past so pleasant to us?"
_Idylls of the King._
He has been accused of making St. Simeon Stylites a
self-righteous saint. That he makes him ambitious of saintdom is
true, but this hope which he "will not cease to grasp," is
fostered by no sense of his own merits, but, on the contrary,
springs from the deepest possible conviction of his unworthiness.
He describes himself as
"The basest of mankind,
From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,
Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet
For troops of devils mad with blasphemy."
He proclaims from his pillar, his "high nest of penance,"
"That Pontius and Iscariot by _his_ side
Showed like fair seraphs."
He details, indeed, in language strikingly intense, his
sufferings, prayers, and penances; but he disclaims all praise on
account of them, and ascribes all his patience to the divine
bounty. He does not breathe or "whisper any murmur of complaint,"
while he tells how his teeth
"Would chatter with the cold, and all his beard
Was tagged with icy fringes in the moon;"
how his "thighs were rotted with the dew;" and how
"For many weeks about his loins he wore
The rope that haled the buckets from the well.
Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose;"
yet the climax of it all is, "Have mercy, mercy: take away my
sin."
The Catholic aspects in _St. Agnes' Eve_ and _Sir
Galahad_, are no less marked than those of _St. Simeon
Stylites_.
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As a devout breathing of a dying nun, the first of these poems is
touching and exquisite. The snows lie deep on the convent-roof,
and the shadows of its towers "slant down the snowy sward," while
she prays and says:
"As these white robes are soiled and dark.
To yonder shining ground;
As this pale taper's earthly spark,
To yonder argent round;
So shows my soul before the Lamb,
My spirit before Thee;
So in mine earthly house I am,
To that I hope to be."
All heaven bursts its "starry floors," the gates roll back, the
heavenly Bridegroom waits to welcome and purify the sister's
departing soul. The vision dilates. It is mysteriously
vague--mysteriously distinct:
"The sabbaths of eternity.
One sabbath deep and wide--
A light upon the shining sea--
The Bridegroom with his bride!"
There is in such verse an indescribably Catholic tone. It is like
the heavenly music of faith, which pervades the _Paradise_
of Dante, and which (in spite of the lax lives of the authors)
runs through the "Sacred Songs" of Moore, and the _Epistle of
Eloisa_, and _The Dying Christian's Address to his Soul_,
by Pope. But if Tennyson has proved equal to portraying a
Catholic saint, he has also depicted most graphically a Catholic
knight of romance. Sir Galahad, one of the ornaments of King
Arthur's court, (_Idylls of the King_., p. 213,) whose
"strength is as the strength of ten,
Because his heart is pure,"
goes in quest of the Sangreal--the sacred wine. He hears the
noise of hymns amid the dark stems of the forest, sees in vision
the snowy altar-cloth with swinging censers and "silver vessels
sparkling clean." He sails, in magic barks, on "lonely mountain
meres," and catches glimpses of angels with folded feet "in
stoles of white," bearing the holy grail.
"Ah! blessed vision! _blood of God!_
My spirit beats her mortal bars.
As down dark tides the glory slides,
And star-light mingles with the stars. ...
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange.
By bridge and ford, by park and pale.
All armed I ride, whate'er betide.
Until I find the holy grail."
_Poems_, p. 336.
A Catholic aspect may sometimes be observed in a single word.
"And so thou lean on our fair father Christ," (_Idylls,
Guinevere_, p. 254,) may perhaps sound strange to some ears,
and is familiar to Catholics only. "He alone is our inward life,"
says Dr. Newman, speaking of Christ; "He not only regenerates us,
but (to allude to a higher mystery) _semper gignit_; he is
ever renewing our new birth and our heavenly sonship. In this
sense he may be called, _as in nature so in grace, our real
Father_." (_Letter to Dr. Pusey_, p. 89.) Hence, in the
Litany of the Holy Name we say, "Jesu, _Pater_ futuri
seculi," and "Jesu, _Pater_ pauperum."
The Catholic who well understands his own faith will always be
very scrupulous about disturbing that of others. If there is
anything abhorrent to him, "it is the scattering doubt and
unsettling consciences without necessity." (_Newman's
Apologia_, p. 344.) There is a well-known poem in _In
Memoriam_, (xxxiii.,) which admirably illustrates this
feeling. We quote but one verse, as the reader's memory will no
doubt supply the rest.
"Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse
A life that leads melodious ways."
The theory and practice of the wisest Catholics conform to the
spirit and letter of this injunction. Their devotional life, too,
is perfectly reflected in Tennyson whenever he writes of prayer.
{151}
There is a depth of feeling in his expressions on this subject
which reaches to the fact that prayer is the truest
religion--that it is the link which unites man more closely to
his Creator than any outward acts, any meditations, any professed
creed, and is the spring and current of religious life.
"Evermore
_Prayer_ from a living source within the will,
And beating up through all the bitter world,
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
Kept him a living soul"
_Enoch Arden_, p. 44.
"Thrice blest _whose lives are faithful prayers_.
Whose loves in higher love endure:
What souls possess themselves so pure?
Or is there blessedness like theirs?"
_In Memoriam_, xxxii.
Thus again, in the _Morte d'Arthur_, which was a forecast of
_The Idylls of the King_, we are reminded of the efficacy of
prayer in language worthy of being put into a Catholic's lips:
"Pray for my soul. _More things are wrought by prayer_
_Than this world dreams of_. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats.
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
_For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God._"
In the following lines, on the rarity of repentance, there is a
reference to the coöperation of human will with divine grace,
which equals the precision of a Catholic theologian:
"Full seldom _does_ a man repent, or _use_
_Both grace and will_ to pick the vicious quitch
_Of blood and custom_ wholly out of him.
And make all clean, and plant himself afresh."
_Idylls of the King_, p. 93.
In the same poem we find lines of a distinctly Catholic tone on
the repentant queen's entering a convent, and on a knight who had
long been the tenant of a hermitage. Guinevere speaks as follows:
"So let me, _if you do not shudder at me_,
Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you;
Wear black and white, and be a nun like you;
Fast with your fasts, _not feasting with your feasts_;
Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys.
_Bid not rejoicing_; mingle with your rites;
Pray and be prayed for; _lie before your shrines_;
Do each low office of your holy house;
Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole
To poor sick people, richer in his eyes
Who ransomed us, and haler, too, than I;
And treat their loathsome hurts, and heal mine own;
And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer
The sombre close of that voluptuous day
Which wrought the ruin of my lord the king."
_Idylls of the King_, p. 260.
The hermitage is thus described:
"There lived a knight
Not far from Camelot, now for forty years
A hermit, _who had prayed, labored, and prayed_.
And ever laboring had scooped himself
In the white rock a chapel and a hall
On massive columns, like a shorecliff cave.
And cells and chambers: all were fair and dry."
_Idylls of the King_, p. 168.
Among Tennyson's earlier poems, the picture of Isabel, "the
perfect wife," with her "_hate of gossip parlance, and of
sway_," her
"locks not wide dispread.
Madonna-wise on either side her head;
Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign
The summer calm of golden charity;"
and
"Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed
With the clear-pointed flame of chastity,"
_Poems_, pp. 7, 8,
is worthy of a Catholic matron. The description of St. Stephen,
in _The Two Voices_, has all the depth and pathos of the
poet's happiest mood; and, though neither it, nor some other
passages which have been quoted, contain anything distinctively
Catholic as opposed to other forms of Christianity, it is
strongly marked with those orthodox instincts to which we are
drawing attention:
"I cannot hide that some have striven,
_Achieving calm_, to whom was given
The joy that mixes man with heaven;
Who, rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam.
And did not dream it was a dream;
But heard, by secret transport led,
E'en in the charnels of the dead,
The murmur of the fountain-head--
Which did accomplish their desire,
Bore and forbore, and did not tire;
Like Stephen, an unquenched fire,
He heeded not reviling tones.
Nor sold his heart to idle moans.
Though cursed, and scorned, and bruised with stones;
But looking upward, full of grace.
He prayed, and from a happy place
God's glory smote him on the face."
_Poems_, p. 299.
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We are anxious not to appear to lay undue stress on these
extracts. Let them go for as much as they are worth, and no more.
We do not stretch them on any Procrustean bed to the measure of
orthodox. Others might be adduced, of a latitudinarian tendency,
but they are few in number, and do not neutralize the force of
these. In view of many passages in Shakespeare of a Catholic
bearing, and of several facts favorable to the belief that he was
a Catholic, M. Rio has come to the probably sound conclusion that
he really was what he himself wishes to prove him. We put no such
forced interpretation on our extracts from Tennyson as M. Rio has
certainly put on many which he has brought forward from the
Elizabethan poet; but we think that they are sufficiently cast in
a Catholic mould to warrant us in applying to Tennyson the words
which Carlyle has used in reference to his predecessor:
"Catholicism, with and against feudalism, but not against nature
and her bounty, gave us English a Shakespeare and era of
Shakespeare, and so produced _a blossom of Catholicism_."
(_French Revolution_, vol. i. 10.)
But religion, as we have said, does not occupy a prominent place
in Tennyson's pages. He is, in the main, like the great
dramatist--a poet of this world. Love and women are his favorite
themes, but love within the bounds of law, and woman strongly
idealized. License finds in him no apologist, while he throws
around purity and fidelity all the charms of song. The most rigid
moralist can find nothing to censure in his treatment of the
guilty love of Lancelot and Guinevere, the wedded love of Enid
and Geraint, the meretricious love of Vivien, and the unrequited
love of Elaine. If Milton had, as he intended, [Footnote 43]
chosen King Arthur as the subject of his epic, he could not have
taken a higher moral tone than Tennyson has in the _Idylls of
the King_, and, considering how lax were his notions about
marriage, it is probable he would have taken a lower one.
[Footnote 43: See his _Mansas_, and Life, by Toland, p.
17.]
King Arthur's praise of honorable courtship and conjugal faith is
too long to be quoted here, but it may be referred to as equally
eloquent and edifying. (_Idylls of the King_.)
The Laureate has learned at least one secret of making a great
name--not to write too much. "I hate many books," wrote Père
Lacordaire. "The capital point is, to have an aim in life, and
deeply to respect posterity by sending it but a small number of
well-meditated works." This has been Tennyson's rule. With six
slender volumes he has built himself an everlasting name. He has,
till within the last few months, seldom contributed to
periodicals, and when he has done so, the price paid for his
stanzas seems fabulous. The estimation in which he is held by
critics of a high order amounts, in many cases, to a passion and
a worship. The specimen he has given of a translation of the
_Iliad_ promises for it, if completed, all that Longfellow
has wrought for the _Divina Commedia_. The attempts he has
made at _Alcaics, Hendecasyllabics_, and _Galliambics_
in English have been thoroughly successful, and stamp him as an
accomplished scholar. (_Boädicea_, etc., in _Enoch Arden
and other Poems_.) As he does not write much, so neither does
he write fast. The impetuous oratory of Shakespeare's and Byron's
verse is unknown to him. He never affects it. He reminds us
rather of the operations of nature, who slowly and calmly, but
without difficulty, produces her marvellous results.
{153}
Drop by drop his immortal poems are distilled, like the
chalybeate droppings which leave at length on the cavern floor a
perfect red and crystal stalagmite. "Day by day," says the
_National Review_, when speaking on this subject--"day by
day, as the hours pass, the delicate sand falls into beautiful
forms, in stillness, in peace, in brooding." "The particular
power by which Mr. Tennyson surpasses all recent English poets,"
writes the _Edinburgh Review_, "is that of sustained
perfection. ... We look in vain among his modern rivals for any
who can compete with him in the power of saying beautifully the
thing he has to say."
O degli altri poeti onore e lume,
Vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore
Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. [Footnote 44]
[Footnote 44: _L Inferno_, i. 82.]
During a long period, the originality of Tennyson's verse was an
obstacle to its fame, and indeed continues to be so in the minds
of some readers. His use of obsolete words appears to many
persons affected, while others applaud him for his vigorous
Saxon, believing, with Dean Swift, that the Saxon element in our
compound tongue should be religiously preserved, and that the
writers and speakers who please us most are those whose style is
most Saxon in its character. If Tennyson has modelled his verse
after any author, it is undoubtedly Shakespeare, and the traces
of this study may perhaps be found in his vocabulary. Yet no man
is less of a plagiarist; not only his forms of thought but of
language also are original, and though he owes much to the early
dramatists, to Wordsworth and to Shelley, he fuses all metals in
the alembic of his own mind, and turns them to gold. His love of
nature is intense, and his observation of her works is
microscopic. Yet he is never so occupied with details as to lose
sight of broad outlines. In 1845, Wordsworth spoke of him as
"decidedly the first of our living poets;" but since that time
his fame has been steadily on the increase. Many of his lines
have passed into proverbs, and a crowd of feebly fluttering
imitators have vainly striven to rival him on the wing. What the
people once called a weed has grown into a tall flower, wearing a
crown of light, and flourishing far and wide. (_The Flower.
Enoch Arden_, etc., p. 152.) A concordance to _In
Memoriam_ has been published, and the several editions of the
Laureate's volumes have been collated as carefully as if they
were works of antiquity. Every ardent lover of English poetry is
familiar with Mariana, "in the lonely moated grange;" the good
Haroun Alraschid among his obelisks and cedars; Oriana wailing
amid the Norland whirlwinds; the Lady Shalott in her "four gray
walls and four gray towers;" the proud Lady Clara Vere de Vere;
the drowsy Lotos-Eaters; the chaste and benevolent Godiva; Maud
in her garden of "woodbine spices;" the true love of the Lord of
Burleigh, and the reward of honest Lady Clare. The highest praise
of these ballads is that they have sunk into the nation's heart.
They combine the chief excellences of other bards, and remind us
of some delicious fruit which unites in itself a variety of the
most exquisite flavors. This richness and sweetness may be
ascribed in part to that remarkable condensation of thought which
enriches one page of Tennyson with as many ideas and images as
would, in most other poets, be found scattered over two or three
pages. "We must not expect," wrote Shenstone in one of his
essays, "to trace the flow of Waller, the landskip of Thomson,
the fire of Dryden, the imagery of Shakespeare, the simplicity of
Spenser, the courtliness of Prior, the humor of Swift, the wit of
Cowley, the delicacy of Addison, the tenderness of Otway, and the
invention, the spirit, and sublimity of Milton, joined in any
single writer." Perhaps not.
{154}
But Shenstone had never read Tennyson, and there is no knowing
what he might have thought if he had conned the calm majesty of
_Ulysses_; the classical beauty of _Tithonus_ and the
_Princess_; the luxuriant eloquence of _Locksley Hall_;
the deep lyrical flow of _The Letters_ and _The
Voyage_; the _'cute_ drollery of the _Northern
Farmer_; the idyllic sweetness of _OEnone_; the grandeur
of _Morte d'Arthur_; the touching simplicity of _Enoch
Arden_; the power and pathos of _Aylmer's Field_; the
perfect minstrelsy of the _Rivulet_, and the songs, _O
Swallow, Swallow_, and _Tears, Idle Tears_; and the
sharps and trebles of the _Brook_, more musical than
Mendelssohn.
Far be it from us to carp at any poetry because it proceeds from
one who is not a Catholic. We believe, indeed, firmly that, if
Tennyson had been imbued with the ancient faith, it would have
cleared some vagueness both from his mind and his verse. But in
these days, when Socinianism, positivism, and free-thinking in
various shapes are taking such strong hold of educated men, we
rejoice unfeignedly to find popular writings marked, even in an
imperfect degree, with Christian doctrine and feeling. The
influence exerted by the Laureate in the world of letters is
great, and we have, therefore, endeavored at some length to show
how far it is favorable, and how far unfavorable, to the cause of
truth. Though unhappily not a Catholic, we recognize with delight
the fact that he is not an infidel, and we feel persuaded that
some at least of our readers will be pleased at our having placed
in a prominent point of view the redeeming features in the
religious character of his poetry.
-------------
Poland
When, fixed in righteous wrath, a nation's eye
Torments some crowned tormentor with just hate.
Nor threat nor flattery can that gaze abate;
Unshriven the unatoning years go by;
For as that starry archer in the sky
Unbends not his bright bow, though early and late
The syren sings, and folly weds with fate,
Even so that constellated destiny
Which keeps fire-vigil in a night-black heaven,
Upon the countenance of the doomed looks forth
Consentient with a nation's gaze on earth:
To the twinned powers a single gaze is given;
The earthly fate reveals the fate on high--
A brazen serpent raised, that says, not "live," but "die."
Aubrey de Vere.
-------------
{155}
Professor Draper's Books. [Footnote 45]
[Footnote 45:
1. _Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical;
or, Conditions and Course of the Life of Man_.
By J. W. Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry
and Physiology in the University of New York.
New York: Harper & Brothers. 1856. 8vo, pp. 649.
2. _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe_.
By the same. Fifth edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 628
3. _Thoughts on the Civil Policy of America_.
By the same. Third edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 323.
4. _History of the American Civil War_.
By the same. In three volumes.
Vol. I. 1867. 8vo, pp. 567.]
Professor Draper's works have had, and are having, a very rapid
sale, and are evidently very highly esteemed by that class of
readers who take an interest, without being very profoundly
versed, in the grave subjects which he treats. He is, we believe,
a good chemist and a respectable physiologist. His work on Human
Physiology, we have been assured by those whose judgment in such
matters we prefer to our own, is a work of real merit, and was,
when first published, up to the level of the science to which it
is devoted. We read it with care on its first appearance, and the
impression it left on our mind was, that the author yields too
much to the theory of chemical action in physiology, and does not
remember that man is the union of soul and body, and that the
soul modifies, even in the body, the action of the natural laws;
or rather, that the physiological laws of brute matter, or even
of animals, cannot be applied to man without many important
reserves. The Professor, indeed, recognizes, or says he
recognizes, in man a rational soul, or an immaterial principle;
but the recognition seems to be only a verbal concession, made to
the prejudices of those who have some lingering belief in
Christianity, for we find no use for it in his physiology. All
the physiological phenomena he dwells on he explains without it,
that is, as far as he explains them at all. Whatever his personal
belief may be, his doctrine is as purely materialistic as is Mr.
Herbert Spencer's, which explains all the phenomena of life by
the mechanical, chemical, and electrical changes and combinations
of matter.
It is due to Professor Draper to say, that in this respect he
only sins in common with the great body of modern physiologists.
Physiology--indeed, all the inductive sciences--have been for a
long time cast in a materialistic mould, and men of firm faith,
and sincere and ardent piety, are materialists, and, therefore,
atheists, the moment they enter the field of physical science,
and deny in their science what they resolutely affirm and would
die for in their faith. Hence the quarrel between the theologians
and the _savans_. The _savans_ have not reconciled
their so-called science with the great theological truths,
whether of reason or revelation, which only the fool doubts, or
in his heart denies. This proves that our physicists have made
far less progress in the sciences than they are in the habit of
boasting. That cannot be true in physiology which is false in
theology; and a physiology that denies all reality but matter, or
finds no place in it for God and the human soul, is no true
physiological science. The physiologist has far less evidence of
the existence of matter than I have of the existence of spirit;
and it is only by spirit that the material is apprehensible, or
can be shown to exist. Matter only mimics or imitates spirit.
{156}
The continual changes that take place from time to time in
physiology show--we say it with all deference to
physiologists--that it has not risen as yet to the dignity of a
science. It is of no use to speak of progress, for changes which
transform the whole body of a pretended science are not progress.
We may not have mastered all the facts of a science; we may be
discovering new facts every day; but if we have, for instance,
the true physiological science, the discovery of new facts may
throw new light on the science--may enable us to see clearer its
reach, and understand better its application, but cannot change
or modify its principles. As long as your pretended science is
liable to be changed in its principles, it is a theory, an
hypothesis, not a science. Physiologists have accumulated a large
stock of physiological facts, to which they are daily adding new
facts. We willingly admit these facts are not useless, and the
time spent in collecting them is not wasted; on the contrary, we
hold them to be valuable, and appreciate very highly the labor,
the patient research, and the nice observation that has
collected, classified, and described them; but we dare assert,
notwithstanding, that the science of physiology is yet to be
created; and created it will not be till physiologists have
learned and are able to set forth the dialectic relations of
spirit and matter, soul and body, God and nature, free-will and
necessity. Till then there may be known facts, but there will be
no physiological science. As far as what is called the science of
human life, or human physiology, goes, Professor Draper's work is
an able and commendable work; but he must permit us to say that
the real science of physiology he has not touched, has not
dreamed of; nor have any of his brethren who see in the human
soul only a useless appendage to the body. The soul is the
_forma corporis_, its informing, its vital principle, and
pervades, so to speak, and determines, or modifies, the whole
life and action of the human body, from the first instant of
conception to the very moment of death. The human body does not
exist, even in its embryonic state, first as a vegetable, then as
an animal, and afterward as united to an immaterial soul. It is
body united to soul from the first instant of conception, and man
lives, in any stage of his existence, but one and the same human
life. There is no moment after conception when the wilful
destruction of the foetus is not the murder of a human life.
As we said on a former occasion, or at least implied, man, though
the ancients called him a microcosm, the universe in little, and
contains in himself all the elements of nature, is neither a
mineral nor a vegetable, nor simply an animal, and the analogies
which the physiologist detects between him and the kingdoms below
him, form no scientific basis of human physiology, for like is
not same. There may be no difference that the microscope or the
crucible can detect between the blood of an ox and the blood of a
man; for the microscope and chemical tests are in both cases
applied to the dead subject, not the living, and the human blood
tested is withdrawn from the living action of the soul, an action
that escapes the most powerful microscope, and the most subtile
chemical agent. Comparative physiology may gratify the curiosity,
and, when not pressed beyond its legitimate bounds, it may even
be useful, and help us to a better understanding of our own
bodies; but it can never be the basis of a scientific induction,
because between man and all animals there is the difference of
species.
{157}
Comparative physiology is, therefore, unlike comparative
philology; for, however diverse may be the dialects compared,
there is no difference of species among them, and nothing hinders
philological inductions from possessing, in the secondary order,
a true scientific character. Physiological inductions, resting on
the comparative study of different individuals, or different
races or families of men, may also be truly scientific; for all
these individuals, and all these races or families belong to one
and the same species. But the comparative physiology that
compares men and animals, gives only analogies, not science.
We do not undervalue science; on the contrary, what we complain
of is, that our physiologists do not give us science; they give
us facts, theories, or hypotheses. Facts are not science till
referred to the principles that explain them, and these
principles themselves are not science till integrated in the
principles of that high and universal science called theology,
and which is really the science of the sciences. The men who pass
for _savans_, and are the hierophants and lawgivers of the
age, sin not by their science, but by their want of science.
Their ideal of science is too low and grovelling. Science is
vastly more than they conceive it; is higher, deeper, broader
than they look; and the best of them are, as Newton said of
himself, mere boys picking up shells on the shores of the great
ocean of truth. They, at best, remain in the vestibule of the
temple of science; they have not entered the penetralia and knelt
before the altar. We find no fault with Professor Draper's
science, where science he has; we only complain of him for
attempting to palm off upon us his ignorance for science, and
accepting, and laboring to make us accept as science what is
really no science. Yet he is not worse than others of his class.
The second work named in our list is the professor's attempt to
extend the principles of his human physiology to the human race
at large, and to apply them specially to the intellectual
development of Europe; the third is an attempt to apply them to
the civil policy of America, and the fourth is an attempt to get
a counter-proof of his theories in the history of our late civil
war. Through the four works we detect one and the same purpose,
one and the same doctrine, of which the principal _data_ are
presented in his work on human physiology, which is cast in a
purely materialistic mould. They are all written to show that all
philosophy, all religion, all morality, and all history are to be
physiologically explained, that is, by fixed, inflexible, and
irreversible natural laws. He admits, in words, that man has
free-will, but denies that it influences events or anything in
the life and conduct of men. He also admits, and claims credit
for admitting, a Supreme Being, as if there could be subordinate
beings, or any being but one who declares himself I AM THAT AM;
but a living and ever-present God, Creator, and upholder of the
universe, finds no recognition in his physiological system. His
God, like the gods of the old Epicureans, has nothing to do, but,
as Dr. Evarist de Gypendole, in his _Ointment for the Bite of
the Black Serpent_, happily expresses it, to "sleep all night
and to doze all day." He is a superfluity in science, like the
immaterial soul in the author's _Human Physiology_. All
things, in Professor Draper's system, originate, proceed from,
and terminate in, natural development, with a most superb
contempt for the _ratio sufficiens_ of Leibnitz, and the
first and final cause of the theologians and philosophers.
{158}
The only God his system recognizes is natural law, the law of the
generation and death of phenomena, and distinguishable from
nature only as the _natura naturans_ is distinguishable from
the _natura naturata_ of Spinoza. His system is, therefore,
notwithstanding his concessions to the Christian prejudices which
still linger with the unscientific, a system of pure naturalism,
and differs in no important respect from the _Religion
Positive_ of M. Augusta Comte.
The Duke of Argyle, in his _Reign of Law_, which we reviewed
last February, a man well versed in the modern sciences, sought,
while asserting the universal reign of law, to escape this system
of pure naturalism, by defining law to be "will enforcing itself
with power," or making what are called the laws of nature the
direct action of the divine Will. But this asserted activity only
for the divine Being, therefore denied second causes, and bound
not only nature, but the human will fast in fate, or rather,
absorbed man and nature in God; for man and nature do and can
exist only in so far as active, or in some sense causative. The
passive does not exist, and to place all activity in God alone is
to deny the creation of active existences or second causes, which
is the very essence of pantheism. Professor Draper and the
positivists, whom he follows, reverse the shield, and absorb not
man and nature in God, but both God and man in nature. John and
James are not Peter, but Peter is James and John. There is no
real difference between pantheism and atheism; both are absurd,
but the absurdity of atheism is more easily detected by the
common mind than the absurdity of pantheism. The one loses God by
losing unity. and the other by losing diversity, or everything
distinguishable from God. The God of the atheist is not, and the
God of the pantheist is as if he were not, and it makes no
practical difference whether you say God is all or all is God.
To undertake a critical review of these several works would
exceed both our space and our patience, and, moreover, were a
task that does not seem to be called for. Professor Draper, we
believe, ranks high among his scientific brethren. He writes in a
clear, easy, graceful, and pleasing style, but we have found
nothing new or profound in his works. His theories are almost as
old as the hills, and even older, if the hills are no older than
he pretends. His work on the Intellectual Development of Europe,
is in substance, taken from the positivists, and the positivist
philosophy is only a reproduction, with no scientific advance on
that of the old physiologers or hylozoists, as Cudworth calls
them. He agrees perfectly with the positivists in the recognition
of three ages or epochs, we should rather say stages, in human
development; the theological, the metaphysical, and the
scientific or positivist. In the theological age, man is in his
intellectual infancy, is filled with sentiments of fear and
wonder; ignorant of natural causes and effects, of the natural
laws themselves, he sees the supernatural in every event that
surpasses his understanding or experience, and bows before a God
in every natural force superior to his own. It is the age of
ignorance, wonder, credulity, and superstition. In the second the
intellect has been, to a certain extent, developed, and the gross
fetichism of the first age disappears, and men no longer worship
the visible apis, but the invisible apis, the spiritual or
metaphysical apis; not the bull, but, as the North American
Indian says, "the manitou of bulls;" and instead of worshipping
the visible objects of the universe, as the sun, moon, and stars,
the ocean and rivers, groves and fountains, storms and tempests,
as did polytheism in the outset, they worship certain
metaphysical abstractions into which they have refined them, and
which they finally generalize into one grand abstraction, which
they call Zeus, Jupiter, Jehovah, Theus, Deus, or God, and thus
assert the Hebrew and Christian monotheism.
{159}
In the third and last age there is no longer fetichism,
polytheism, or monotheism; men no longer divinize nature, or
their own abstractions, no longer believe in the supernatural or
the metaphysical or anything supposed to be supramundane, but
reject whatever is not sensible, material, positive as the object
of positive science.
The professor develops this system with less science than its
inventor or reviver, M. Auguste Comte and his European disciples;
but as well as he could be expected to do it, in respectable
English. He takes it as the basis of his _History of the
Intellectual Development of Europe_, and attempts to reconcile
with it all the known and unknown facts of that development. We
make no quotations to prove that we state the professor's
doctrine correctly, for no one who has read him, with any
attention, will question our statement; and, indeed, we might
find it difficult to quote passages which clearly and expressly
confirm it, for it is a grave complaint against him, as against
nearly all writers of his school, that they do not deal in clear
and express statements of doctrine. Had Professor Draper put
forth what is evidently his doctrine in clear, simple, and
distinct propositions, so that his doctrine could at once be seen
and understood, his works, instead of going through several
editions, and being commended in reviews and journals, as
scientific, learned, and profound, would have fallen dead from
the press, or been received with a universal burst of public
indignation; for they attack everything dear to the heart of the
Christian, the philosopher, and the citizen. Nothing worse is to
be found in the old French Encyclopedists, in the _Système de
la Nature_ of D'Holbach, or in _l'Homme-Plant_, and
_l'Homme-Machine_ of Lamettrie. His doctrine is nothing in
the world but pure materialism and atheism, and we do not believe
the American people are as yet prepared to deny either God, or
creation and Providence. The success of these authors is in their
vagueness, in their refusal to reduce their doctrine to distinct
propositions, in hinting, rather than stating it, and in
pretending to speak always in the name of science, thus: "Science
shows this," or "Science shows that;" when, if they knew anything
of the matter, they would know that science does no such thing.
Then, how can you accuse Professor Draper of atheism or
materialism; for does he not expressly declare his belief, as a
man of science, in the existence of the Supreme Being, and in an
immaterial and immortal soul? What Dr. Draper believes or
disbelieves, is his affair, not ours; we only assert that the
doctrine he defends in his professedly scientific books, from
beginning to end, is purely physiological, and has no God or soul
in it. As a man. Dr. Draper may believe much; as an author, he is
a materialist and an atheist, beyond all dispute: if he knows it,
little can be said for his honesty; if he does not know it,
little can be said for his science, or his competency to write on
the intellectual development of Europe, or of any other quarter
of the globe.
{160}
But to return to the theory the professor borrows from the
positivists. As the professor excludes from his physiology the
idea of creation, we cannot easily understand how he determines
what is the infancy of the human race, or when the human race was
in its infancy. If the race had no beginning, if, like Topsy, "it
didn't come, but grow'd," it had no infancy; if it had a
beginning, and you assume its earliest stage was that of infancy,
then it is necessary to know which stage is the earliest, and
what man really was in that stage. Hence, chronology becomes
all-important, and, as the author's science rejects all received
chronology, and speaks of changes and events which took place
millions and millions of ages ago, and of which there remains no
record but that chronicled in the rocks; but, as in that record
exact dates are not given, chronology, with him, whether of the
earth or of man, must be very uncertain, and it seems to us that
it must be very difficult for science to determine, with much
precision, when the race was, or what it was, in its infancy.
Thus he says:
"In the intellectual infancy of the savage state, man transfers
to nature his conceptions of himself, and, considering that
everything he does is determined by his own pleasure, regards
all passing events as depending on the arbitrary volition of a
superior but invisible power. He gives to the world a
constitution like his own. The tendency is _necessarily_
to superstition. Whatever is strange, or powerful, or vast,
impresses his imagination with dread. Such objects are only the
outward manifestations of an indwelling spirit, and, therefore,
worthy of his veneration." (_Intellect. Devel_. p. 2.)
We beg the professor's pardon, but he has only imperfectly
learned his lesson. In this which he regards as the age of fetich
worship, and the first stage of human development, he includes
ideas and conceptions which belong to the second, or metaphysical
age of his masters. But let this pass for the present. The author
evidently assumes that the savage state is the intellectual
infancy of the race. But how knows he that it is not the
intellectual old age and decrepitude of the race? The author,
while he holds, or appears to hold, like the positivists, to the
continuous progress of the race, does not hold to the continuous
progress of any given nation.
"A national type," he says, (ch. xi.,) "pursues its way
physically and intellectually through changes and developments
answering to those of the individual represented by infancy,
youth, manhood, old age, and death respectively."
How, then, say scientifically that your fetich age, or the age of
superstition, the theological age of the positivists, instead
being the infancy of the nation, is not its last stage next
preceding death? How determine physiologically or scientifically
that the savage is the infant man and not the worn-out man? Then
how determine that the superstition of which you have so much to
say, and which, with you, means religion, revelation, the church,
everything that claims to be, or that asserts, anything
supernatural, is not characteristic of the last stage of human
development, and not of the first?
Our modern physiologists and anti-Christian speculators seem all
to take it for granted that the savage gives us the type of the
primitive man. We refuted this absurd notion in our essay on
_Faith and the Sciences_. There are no known historical
facts to support it. Consult the record chronicled in the rocks,
as read by geologists. What does it prove?
{161}
Why, in the lowest and most ancient strata in which human remains
are found, along with those of extinct species of animals, you
find that the men of that epoch used stone implements, and were
ignorant of metals or unable to work them, and, therefore, must
have been savages. That is, the men who lived then, and in that
locality. Be it so. But does this prove that there did not,
contemporary with them, in other localities or in other quarters
of the globe, live and flourish nations in the full vigor of the
manhood of the race, having all the arts and implements of
civilized life? Did the savages of New England, when first
discovered, understand working in iron, and used they not stone
axes, and stone knives, many of which we have ourselves picked
up? And was it the same with Europeans? From the rudeness and
uncivilized condition of a people in one locality, you can
conclude nothing as to the primitive condition of the race.
The infancy of the race, if there is any justice in the analogy
assumed, is the age of growth, of progress; but nothing is less
progressive, or more strictly stationary, in a moral and
intellectual sense, than the savage state. Since history began,
there is not only no instance on record of a savage tribe rising
by indigenous effort to civilization, but none of a purely savage
tribe having ever, even by foreign assistance, become a civilized
nation. The Greeks in the earliest historical or semi-historical
times, were not savages, and we have no evidence that they ever
were. The Homeric poems were never the product of a savage
people, or of a people just emerging from the savage state into
civilization, and they are a proof that the Greeks, as a people,
had juster ideas of religion, and were less superstitious in the
age of Homer than in the age of St. Paul. The Germans are a
civilized people, and if they were first revealed to us as what
the Greeks and Romans called _barbarians_, they were never,
as far as known, savages. We all know how exceedingly difficult
it is to civilize our North American Indians. Individuals now and
then take up the elements of our civilization, but rarely, if
they are of pure Indian blood. They recoil before the advance of
civilization. The native Mexicans and Peruvians have, indeed,
received some elements of Christian civilization along with the
Christian faith and worship; but they were not, on the discovery
of this continent, pure savages, but had many of the elements of
a civilized people, and that they were of the same race with the
savages that roamed our northern forests, is not yet proved. The
historical probabilities are not on the side of the hypothesis of
the modern progressivists, but are on the side of the contrary
doctrine, that the savage state belongs to the old age of the
race--is not that from which man rises, but that into which he
falls.
Nor is there any historical evidence that superstition is older
than religion, that men begin in the counterfeit and proceed to
the genuine,--in the false, and proceed by way of development to
the true. They do not abuse a thing before having it.
Superstition presupposes religion, as falsehood presupposes
truth; for falsehood being unable to stand by itself, it is only
by the aid of truth that it can be asserted. "Fear made the
gods," sings Lucretius; but it can make none where belief in the
gods, does not already exist. Men may transfer their own
sentiments and passions to the divinity; but they must believe
that the divinity exists before they can do it.
{162}
They must believe that God is, before they can hear him in the
wind, see him in the sun and stars, or dread him in the storm and
the earthquake. It is not from dread of the strange, the
powerful, or the vast, that men develop the idea of God, the
spiritual, the supernatural; the dread presupposes the presence
and activity of the idea. Men, again, who, like the professor's
man in the infancy of the savage state, are able to conceive of
spirit and to distinguish between the outward manifestation and
the indwelling spirit, are not fetich worshippers, and for them
the fetich is no longer a god, but if retained at all, it is as a
sign or symbol of the invisible, Fetichism is the grossest form
of superstition, and obtains only among tribes fallen into the
grossest ignorance, that lie at the lowest round of the scale of
human beings; not among tribes in whom intelligence is
commencing, but in whom it is well-nigh extinguished.
Monotheism is older than polytheism, for polytheism, as the
author himself seems to hold, grows out of pantheism, and
pantheism evidently grows out of theism, out of the loss or
perversion of the idea of creation, or of the relation between
the creator and the creature, or cause and effect, and is and can
be found only among a people who have once believed in one God,
creator of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible.
Moreover, the earliest forms of the heathen superstitions are, so
far as historical evidence goes, the least gross, the least
corrupt. The religion of the early Romans was pure in comparison
with what it subsequently became, especially after the Etruscan
domination or influence. The Homeric poems show a religion less
corrupt than that defended by Aristophanes. The earliest of the
Vedas, or sacred books of the Hindoos, are free from the grosser
superstitions of the latest, and were written, the author very
justly thinks, before those grosser forms were introduced. This
is very remarkable, if we are to assume that the grossest forms
of superstition are the earliest! But we have with Greeks,
Egyptians, Indians, no books that are of earlier date than the
books of Moses, at least none that can be proved to have been
written earlier; and in the books of Moses, in whatever light or
character we take them, there is shown a religion older than any
of the heathen mythologies, and absolutely free from every form
of superstition, what is called the patriarchal religion, and
which is substantially the Jewish and Christian religion. The
earliest notices we have of idolatries and superstitions are
taken from these books, the oldest extant, at least none older
are known. If these books are regarded as historical documents,
then what we Christians hold to be the true religion has obtained
with a portion of the race from the creation of man, and, for a
long series of years, from the creation to Nimrod, the mighty
hunter or conqueror, was the only religion known; and your
fetichisms, polytheisms, pantheisms, idolatries, and
superstitions, which you note among the heathen, instead of being
the religion of the infancy of the race, are, comparatively
speaking, only recent innovations. If their authenticity as
historical documents be denied, they still, since their antiquity
is undeniable, prove the patriarchal religion obtained at an
earlier date than it can be proved that any of the heathen
mythologies existed. It is certain, then, that the patriarchal,
we may say, the Christian religion, is the earliest known
religion of the race, and therefore that fetichism, as contended
by the positivists and the professor after them, cannot be
asserted to have been the religion of the human race in the
earliest stage of its existence, nor the germ from which all the
various religions or superstitions of the world have been
developed.
{163}
But we may go still farther. The attempt to explain the origin
and course of religion by the study of the various heathen
mythologies, and idolatries, and superstitions, is as absurd as
to attempt to determine the origin and course of the Christian
religion by the study of the thousand and one sects that have
broken off from the church, and set up to be churches themselves.
They can teach us nothing except the gradual deterioration of
religious thought, and the development and growth of superstition
or irreligion among those separated from the central religious
life of the race. In the ancient Indian, Egyptian, and Greek
mythologies, on which the author dwells with so much emphasis, we
trace no gradual purification of the religious idea, but its
continual corruption and debasement. As the sects all presuppose
the Christian church, and could neither exist nor be intelligible
without her, so those various heathen mythologies presuppose the
patriarchal religion, are unintelligible without it, and could
not have originated or exist without it. The professor having
studied these mythologies in the darkness of no-religion,
understands nothing of them, and finds no sense in them--as
little sense as a man ignorant of Catholicity would find in the
creeds, confessions, and religious observances of the several
Protestant sects; but if he had studied them in the light of the
patriarchal religion, which they mutilate, corrupt, or travesty,
he might have understood them, and have traced with a steady hand
their origin and course, and their relation to the intellectual
development of the race.
We have no space to enter at length into the question here
suggested. In all the civilized heathen nations, the gods are
divided into two classes, the Dii Majores and the Dii Minores.
The Dii Majores are only the result of a false effort to explain
the mysterious dogma of the Trinity, and the perversion of the
Christian doctrine of the Eternal Generation of the Son, and the
Eternal Procession of the Holy Ghost. The type from which these
mythologies depart, not which they realize, is undeniably the
mystery of the Trinity asserted, more or less explicitly, by the
patriarchal religion; and hence, we find them all, from the
burning South to the frozen North, from the East to the West,
from the Old World to the New, asserting, in some form, in the
Divinity the sacred and mysterious Triad. The Dii Minores are a
corruption or perversion of the Catholic doctrine of saints and
angels, or that doctrine is the type which has been perverted or
corrupted, by substituting heroes for saints, and the angels that
fell for the angels that stood, and taking these for gods instead
of creatures. The enemies of Christianity have sufficiently
proved that the common type of both is given in the patriarchal
religion, hoping thereby to get a conclusive argument against
Christianity; but they have forgotten to state that, while the
one conforms to the type, the other departs from it, perverts or
corrupts it, and that the one that conforms is prior in date to
the one that corrupts, perverts or departs from it. No man can
study the patriarchal religion without seeing at a glance that it
is the various forms of heathenism that are the corrupt forms, as
no man can study both Catholicity and Protestantism without
seeing that Protestantism is the corruption, or
perversion--sometimes even the travesty of Catholicity.
{164}
The same conclusion is warranted alike by Indian and Egyptian
gloom and Greek gayety. The gloom speaks for itself. The gayety
is that of despair--the gayety that says: "Come, let us eat,
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die." Through all
heathendom you hear the wail, sometimes loud and stormy,
sometimes low and melodious, over some great and irreparable
loss, over a broken and unrealized ideal, just as you do in the
modern sectarian and unbelieving world.
But why is it that the professor and others, when seeking to give
the origin and course of religion, as related to the intellectual
development of the race, pass by the patriarchal, Jewish, or
Christian religion, and fasten on the religions or superstitions
of the Gentiles? It is their art, which consists in adroitly
avoiding all direct attacks on the faith of Christendom, and
confining themselves in their dissertations on the natural
history of the pagan superstitions, to establishing principles
which alike undermine both them and Christianity. It is evident
to every intelligent reader of Professor Draper's _Intellectual
Development of Europe_, that he means the principles he
asserts shall be applied to Christianity as well as to Indian,
Egyptian, Greek, and Roman mythology, and he gives many broad
hints to that effect. What then? Is he not giving the history of
the intellectual development of Europe? Can one give the history
of that development without taking notice of religion? If, in
giving the natural history of religion, showing whence and how it
originates, what have been its developments, its course, its
modifications, changes, decay, and death, by the influence of
natural causes, science establishes principles which overthrow
all religions, and render preposterous all claims of man to have
received a supernatural revelation, to be in communion with the
Invisible, or to be under any other providence than that of the
fixed, invariable, and irresistible laws of nature, or purely
physiological laws, whose fault is it? Would you condemn science,
or subordinate it to the needs of a crafty and unscrupulous
priesthood, fearful of losing their influence, and having the
human mind emancipated from their despotism? That is, you lay
down certain false principles, repudiated by reason and common
sense, and which all real science rejects with contempt, call
these false principles science, and when we protest, you cry out
with all your lungs, aided by all the simpletons of the age, that
we are hostile to science, would prevent free scientific
investigation, restrain free manly thought, and would keep the
people from getting a glimpse of the truth that would emancipate
them, and place them on the same line with the baboon or the
gorilla! A wonderful thing, is this modern science; and always
places, whatever it asserts or denies, its adepts in the right,
as against the theologians and the anointed priests of God!
The mystery is not difficult to explain. The physiologists, of
course, are good Sadducees, and really, unless going through a
churchyard after dark, or caught in a storm at sea, and in danger
of shipwreck, believe in neither angel nor spirit. They wish to
reduce all events, all phenomena, intellectual, moral, and
religious, to fixed, invariable, inflexible, irreversible, and
necessary laws of nature. They exclude in doctrine, if not in
words, the supernatural, creation, providence, and all
contingency. Every thing in man and in the universe is generated
or developed by physiological or natural laws, and follows them
in all their variations and changes.
{165}
Religion, then, must be a natural production, generated by man,
in conjunction with nature, and modified, changed, or destroyed,
according to the physical causes to which he is subjected in time
and place. This is partially true, or, at least, not manifestly
false in all respects of the various pagan superstitions, and
many facts may be cited that seem to prove it; but it is
manifestly not true of the patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian
religion, and the only way to make it appear true, is to not
distinguish that religion from the others, to include all
religions in one and the same category, and conclude that what
they prove to be partially true of a part, is and must be true of
the whole. That this is fair or logical, is not a matter that the
physiologists, who, where they detect an analogy, conclude
identity, trouble themselves at all about; besides, nothing in
their view is illogical or unfair that tends to discredit priests
and theologians. Very likely, also, such is their disdain or
contempt of religion, that they really do not know that there is
any radical difference between Christianity and Gentooism. We
have never encountered a physiologist, in the sense we use the
term here, that is, one who maintains that all in the history of
man and the universe proceeds from nature alone, who had much
knowledge of Christian theology, or knowledge enough to be aware
that in substance it is not identical with the pagan
superstitions. Their ignorance of our religion is sublime.
We have thus far proceeded on the supposition that the professor
means by the infancy of the savage state the infancy of the race;
we are not sure, after all, that this is precisely his thought,
or that he means anything more than the infancy of a particular
nation or family of nations is the savage state. He, however,
sums up his doctrine in his table of contents, chapter i., of his
_Intellectual Development_, in the proposition: "Individual
man is an emblem of communities, nations, and universal humanity.
They exhibit epochs of life like his, and like him are under the
control of physical conditions, and therefore of law;" that is,
physical or physiological law, for "human physiology" is only a
special department of universal physiology, as we have already
indicated. It would seem from this that the author makes the
savage state, as we have supposed, correspond, in the race, in
universal humanity, as well as in communities, to the epoch of
infancy in the individual. But does he mean to teach that the
race itself has its epoch of infancy, youth, manhood, old age,
and death? He can, perhaps, in a loose sense, predicate these
several epochs of nations and of political or civil communities;
but how can he predicate them all of the race? "Individuals die,
humanity survives," says Seneca; and are we to understand that
the professor means to assert that the race is born like the
individual, passes through childhood, youth, manhood, to old age,
and then dies? Who knows what he means?
But suppose that he has not settled in his own mind his meaning
on this point, as is most likely the case; that he has not asked
himself whether man on the earth has a beginning or an end, and
that he regards the race as a natural evolution, revolving always
in the same circle, and takes, therefore, the infancy he speaks
of as the infancy of a nation or a given community. Then his
doctrine is, that the earliest stage of every civilized nation or
community is the savage state, that the ancestors of the
civilized in every age are savages, and that all civilization has
been developed under the control of physical conditions from the
savage state.
{166}
The germ of all civilization then must be in the savage, and
civilization then must be evolved from the savage as the chicken
from the egg, or the egg from the sperm. But of this there is no
evidence; for, as we have seen, there is no nation known that has
sprung from exclusively savage ancestors, no known instance of a
savage people developing, if we may so speak, into a civilized
people. The theory rests on no historical or scientific basis,
and is perfectly gratuitous. In the savage state we detect
reminiscences of a past civilization, not the germs of a future
civilization, or if germs--germs that are dead, and that never do
or can germinate. There are degrees of civilization; people may
be more or less civilized; but we have no evidence, historical or
scientific, of a time when there was no civilized people extant.
There are civilized nations now, and contemporary with them are
various savage tribes, and the same may be said of every epoch
since history began. The civilized nations whose origin we know
have all sprung from races more or less civilized, never from
purely savage tribes. The physiologists overlook history, and
mistake the evening twilight for the dawn.
But pass over this. Let us come to the doctrine for which the
professor writes his book, namely, individuals, communities,
nations, universal humanity, are under the control of physical
conditions, therefore of physical law, or law in the sense of the
physiologists or the physicists. If this means anything, it means
that the religion, the morality, the intellectual development,
the growth and decay, the littleness and the grandeur of men and
nations depend solely on physical causes, not at all on moral
causes--a doctrine not true throughout even in human physiology,
and supported by no facts, except in a very restricted degree,
when applied to nations and communities. In the corporeal
phenomena of the individual the soul counts for much, and in
morbid physiology the moral often counts for more than the
physical; perhaps it always does, for we know from revelation
that the morbidity of nature is the penalty or effect of man's
transgression. It is proved to be false as applied to nations and
communities by the fact that the Christian religion, which is
substantially that of the ancient patriarchs, is, at least as far
as science can go, older than any of the false religions, has
maintained itself the same in all essential respects, unvaried
and invariable, in every variety of physical change, and in every
diversity of physical condition, and absolutely unaffected by any
natural causes whatever.
The chief physical conditions on which the professor relies are
climate and geographical position. Yet what we hold to be the
true religion, the primitive religion of mankind, has prevailed
in all climates, and been found the same in all geographical
positions. Nay, even the false pagan religions have varied only
in their accidents with climatic and geographical positions. We
find them in substance the same in India, Central Asia, on the
banks of the Danube, in the heart of Europe, in the ancient
Scania, the Northern Isles, in Mexico and Peru. The substance of
Greek and Roman or Etrurian mythology is the same with that of
India and Egypt. M. Rénan tells us that the monotheism so firmly
held by the Arabic branch of the Semitic family, is due to the
vast deserts over which the Arab tribes wander, which suggest the
ideas of unity and universality; and yet for centuries before
Mohammed, these same Arabs, wandering over the same deserts, were
polytheists and idolaters; and not from contemplating those
deserts, but by recalling the primitive traditions of mankind,
preserved by Jews and Christians, did the founder of Islamism
attain to the monotheism of the Koran. The professor is misled by
taking, in the heathen mythology he has studied, the poetic
imagery and embellishments, which indeed vary according to the
natural aspects, objects, and productions of the locality, for
their substance, thought, or doctrine.
{167}
The poetic illustrations, imagery, and embellishments of Judaism
are all oriental; but the Jew in all climates and in all
geographical positions holds one and the same religious faith
even to this day; and his only real difference from us is, that
he is still looking for a Christ to come, while we believe the
Christ he is looking for has come, and is the same Jesus of
Nazareth who was crucified at Jerusalem, under Pontius Pilate.
We know the author contends that there has been from the
beginning a radical difference between the Christianity of the
East and that of the West; but we know that such is not and never
has been the fact. The great Eastern fathers and theologians are
held in as high honor in Western Christendom as they ever were in
Eastern Christendom. Nearly all the great councils that defined
the dogmas held by the Catholic Church throughout the whole world
were held in the East. The Greeks were more speculative and more
addicted to philosophical subtleties and refinements than the
Latins, and therefore more liable to originate heresies; but
nowhere was heresy more vigorously combated, or the one faith of
the universal church more ably, more intelligently, or more
fervently defended than in the East, before the Emperors and the
Bishop of Constantinople drew the Eastern Church, or the larger
part of it, into schism. But the united Greek Church, the real
Eastern Church, the church of St. Athanasius, of the Basils, and
the Gregories, is one in spirit, one in faith, one in communion
with the Church of the West.
The author gravely tells us that Christianity had three primitive
forms, the Judaical, which has ended; the Gnostic, which has also
ended; the African, which still continues. But he has no
authority for what he says. Some Jewish observances were retained
for a time by Christians of Jewish origin, till the synagogue
could be buried with honor; but there never was a Jewish form of
Christianity, except among heretics, different from the
Christianity still held by the church. There are some phrases in
the Gospel of St. John, and in the Epistles of St. Paul that have
been thought to be directed against the gnostics; and Clemens of
Alexandria writes a work in which he uses the terms
_gnosis_, knowledge, and _gnostic_, a man possessing
knowledge or spiritual science, in a good sense; but, we suspect,
with a design of rescuing these from the bad sense in which they
were beginning to be used, as some of our European friends are
trying to do with the terms _liberal_ and _liberalist_.
Nevertheless, what Clemens defends under these terms is held by
Catholics to-day in the same sense in which he defends it. There
never was an African form of Christianity distinct from the
Christianity either of Europe or Asia. The two great theologians
of Africa are St. Cyprian and St. Augustine, both probably of
Roman, or, at least, of Italian extraction.
{168}
The doctrine which St. Cyprian is said to have maintained on
baptism administered by heretics, the only matter on which he
differed from Rome, has never been, and is not now, the doctrine
of the church. St. Augustine was converted in Milan, and had St.
Ambrose, a Roman, for his master, and differed from the
theologians either of the East or the West only in the unmatched
ability and science with which he defended the faith common to
all. He may have had some peculiar notions on some points, but if
so, these have never been received as Catholic doctrine.
The professor might as well assert the distinction, asserted in
Germany a few years since, which attracted some attention at the
time, but now forgotten, between the Petrine gospel, the Pauline
gospel, and the Joannine gospel, as the distinction of the three
primitive forms of Christianity which he asserts. We were told by
some learned German, we forget his name, that Peter, Paul, and
John represent three different phases or successive forms of
Christianity. The Petrine gospel represents religion, based on
authority; the Pauline, religion as based on intelligence; and
the Joannine, religion as based on love. The first was the
so-called Catholic or Roman Church. The reformation made an end
of that, and ushered in the Pauline form, or Protestantism, the
religion of the intellect. Philosophy, science. Biblical
criticism, and exegesis, the growth of liberal ideas, and the
development of the sentiments and affections of the heart, have
made an end of Protestantism, and are ushering in the Joannine
gospel, the religion of love, which is never to be superseded or
to pass away. The advocate of this theory had got beyond
authority and intelligence, whether he had attained to the
religion of love or not; yet the theory was only the revival of
the well-known heresy of the Eternal Evangel of the thirteenth
century. So hard is it to invent a new heresy. It were a waste of
words to attempt to show that this theory has not the slightest
foundation in fact. Paul and John assert authority as strenuously
as Peter; Peter and John give as free scope to the intellect as
Paul; and Peter and Paul agree with John in regard to love or
charity. There is nothing in the Gospel or Epistles of John to
surpass the burning love revealed, we might almost say concealed,
so unostentatious is it, by the inflamed Epistles of Paul. As for
Protestantism, silence best becomes it, when there is speech of
intelligence, so remarkable is it for its illogical and
unintellectual character. Protestants have their share of native
intellect, and the ordinary degree of intelligence on many
subjects; but in the science of theology, the basis of all the
sciences, and without which there is, and can be, no real
science, they have never yet excelled.
Nor did the reformation put an end to the so-called Petrine
gospel, the religion of authority, the church founded on Peter,
prince of the apostles. It may be that Protestantism is losing
what little intellectual character it once had, and developing in
a vague philanthropy, a watery sentimentality, or a blind
fanaticism, sometimes called Methodism, sometimes Evangelicalism;
but Peter still teaches and governs in his successor. The
Catholic Church has survived the attacks of the reformation and
the later revolution, as she survived the attacks of the
persecuting Jews and pagans, and the power and craft of civil
tyrants who sought to destroy or to enslave her, and is to-day
the only religion that advances by personal conviction and
conversion.
{169}
Mohammedanism can no longer propagate itself even by the sword;
the various pagan superstitions have reached their limits, and
are recoiling on themselves; and Protestantism has gained no
accession of territory or numbers since the death of Luther,
except by colonization and the natural increase of the population
then Protestant. The Catholic Church is not only a living
religion, but the only living religion, the only religion that
does, or can, command the homage of science, reason, free
thought, and the uncorrupted affections of the heart. The
Catholic religion is at once light, freedom, and love--the
religion of authority, of the intellect, and of the heart,
embracing in its indissoluble unity Peter, Paul, and John.
The professor's work on the intellectual development of Europe
proves that religion in some form has constituted a chief element
in that development. It always has been, and still is, the chief
element in the life of communities and nations, the spring and
centre of intellectual activity and progress. Even the works
before us revolve around it, or owe their existence to their
relation to it, and would have no intelligible purpose without
it. The author has written them to divest religion of its
supernatural character, to reduce it to a physiological law, and
to prove that it originates in the ignorance of men and nations,
and depends solely on physical conditions, chiefly on climate and
geographical position. But in this patriarchal, Jewish, Christian
religion there is something, and that of no slight influence on
the life of individuals and nations, on universal humanity, that
flatly contradicts him, that is essentially one and the same from
first to last, superior to climate and geographical position,
unaffected by natural causes, independent of physical conditions,
and in no sense subject to physiological laws. This suffices to
refute his theory, and that of the positivists, of whom he is a
distinguished disciple; for it proves the uniform presence and
activity in the life and development of men and nations, ever
since history began, of a power, a being, or cause above nature
and independent of nature, and therefore supernatural.
The theory that the rise, growth, decay, and death of nations
depend on physical conditions alone, chiefly on climate and
geographical position, seems to us attended with some grave
difficulties. Have the climate and geographical positions of
India, Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, essentially
changed from what they were at the epoch of their greatness? Did
not all the great and renowned nations of antiquity rise, grow,
prosper, decline, and die, in substantially the same physical
conditions, under the same climate, and in the same geographical
position? Like causes produce like effects. How could the same
physical causes cause alike the rise and growth, and the decay
and death of one and the same people, in one and the same
climate, and in one and the same geographical position? Do you
say, climate and even physical geography change with the lapse of
time? Be it so. Be it as the author maintains, that formerly
there was no variation of climate on this continent, from the
equator to either pole; but was there for Rome any appreciable
change in the climate and geography from the time of the third
Punic war to that of Honorius, or even of Augustulus, the last of
the Emperors? Or what change in the physical conditions of the
nation was there when it was falling from what there was when it
was rising?
{170}
Nations, like individuals, have, according to the professor,
their infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death. But why do
nations grow old and die? The individual grows old and dies,
because his interior physical machinery wears out, and because he
must die in order to attain the end for which he lives. But why
should this be the case with nations? They have no future life to
which death is the passage. The nation does not rise or fall with
the individuals that found it. One generation of individuals
passes away, and another comes, but the nation survives; and why,
if not destroyed by external violence, should it not continue to
survive and thrive to the end of time? There are no physical
causes, no known physiological laws, that prevent it. Why was not
Rome as able to withstand the barbarians, or to drive them back
from her frontiers, in the fourth century, as she was in the
first? Why was England so much weaker under the Stuarts than she
had been under the Tudors, or was again under the Protector? Or
why have we seen her so grand under Pitt and Wellington, and so
little and feeble under Palmerston and Lord Russell? Can you
explain this by a change of climate and geographical position, or
any change in the physical conditions of the nation, that is, any
physical changes not due to moral causes?
We see in several of the States of the Union a decrease, a
relative, if not a positive decrease, of the native population,
and the physical man actually degenerating, and to an extent that
should alarm the statesman and the patriot. Do you explain this
fact by the change in the climate and the geographical position?
The geographical position remains unchanged, and if the climate
has changed at all, it has been by way of amelioration. Do you
attribute it to a change in the physical condition of the
country? Not at all. There is no mystery as to the matter, and
though the effects may be physical or physiological, the causes
are well known to be moral, and chief among them is the immoral
influence of the doctrine the professor and his brother
physiologists are doing their best to diffuse among the people.
The cause is in the loss of religious faith, in the lack of moral
and religious instruction, in the spread of naturalism, and the
rejection of supernatural grace--without which the natural cannot
be sustained in its integrity--in the growth of luxury, and the
assertion of material goods or sensible pleasures, as the end and
aim of life. There is always something morally wrong where prizes
need to be offered to induce the young to marry, and to induce
the married to suffer their children to be born and reared.
So, also, do we know the secret of the rise, prosperity, decline,
and death of the renowned nations of antiquity. The Romans owed
the empire of the world to their temperance, prudence, fortitude,
and respect for religious principle, all of them moral causes;
and they owed their decline and fall to the loss of these
virtues, to their moral corruption. The same may be said of all
the ancient nations. Their religion, pure, or comparatively pure,
in the origin, becomes gradually corrupt, degenerates into a
corrupt and corrupting superstition, which hangs as a frightful
nightmare on the breasts of the people, destroying their moral
life and vigor.
{171}
To this follows, with a class, scepticism, the denial of God or
the gods, an Epicurean morality, and the worship of the senses;
the loss of all public spirit--public as well as private virtue,
and the nation falls of its own internal moral imbecility and
rottenness, as our own nation, not yet a century old, is in a
fair way of doing, and most assuredly will do, if the atheistic
philosophy and morality of the physiologists or positivists
become much more widely diffused than they are. The church will
be as unable, with all her supernatural truth, grace, life, and
strength, to save it, as she was to save the ancient Graeco-Roman
Empire, for to save it would require a resurrection of the dead.
The common sense of mankind, in all ages of the world, has
uniformly attributed the downfall of nations, states, and
empires, to moral causes, not to physiological laws, climatic
influences, or geographical position. The wicked shall be turned
into hell, and all the nations that forget God. Righteousness
exalteth a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people. This is
alike the voice of inspiration and of universal experience. The
traveller who visits the sites of nations renowned in story, now
buried in ruins, of cities once thronged with a teeming
population, the marts of the world, in which were heard, from
morning till night--till far into night--the din of industry, and
marks the solitude that now reigns there; the barren waste that
has succeeded to once fruitful fields and vineyards, and observes
the poor shepherd that feeds a petty flock on the scanty
pasturage, or the armed robber that watches for a victim to
plunder, receives a far less vivid impression of the dependence
of nations on physical causes and conditions, than of the
influence of the moral world on the natural, and reads in legible
characters the meaning of that fearful penalty which God
pronounced, when he said to the man: "And the earth for thy sake
shall be cursed." The physical changes that have come over
Assyria, Syria, Lybia, Egypt, and Palestine, are the effects of
the moral deterioration of man, not the cause of that
deterioration.
The professor, after dilating almost eloquently, and as a sage,
on the changeability, the transitoriness, the evanescent nature
of all the visible forms of things, says: "If from visible forms
we turn to directing law, how vast the difference! We pass from
the finite, the momentary, the incidental, the conditional, to
the illimitable, the eternal, the necessary, the unshackled. It
is of law I am to speak in this book. In a world composed of
vanishing forms, I am to vindicate the imperishability, the
majesty of law, and to show how man proceeds in his social march
in obedience to it," (_Ibid_. p, 16.) This sounds well; but,
unhappily, he has told us that communities and nations, like
individuals, are under the control of physical conditions, and
_therefore_ of law. If _therefore_ of law, then under
the law of physical conditions, and consequently of a physical or
physiological law. He dwells on the grandeur of this conception,
and challenges for it our deepest admiration. But we see not much
to admire in a purely physical law manifesting itself in
ceaseless instability, metamorphosis, and death. Will the author
forgive us, if we hint that he possibly does not very well
understand himself, or know precisely what it is that he says?
Hear him. "I am to lead my reader, perhaps in a reluctant path,
from the outward phantasmagorial illusions which surround us and
so ostentatiously obtrude themselves on our attention, to
something that lies in silence and strength behind.
{172}
I am to draw his thoughts from the tangible to the invisible,
from the limited to the universal, from the changeable to the
invariable, from the transitory to the eternal; from the
expedients and volitions so largely _amusing_ in the life of
man, to the predestined and resistless issuing of law from the
fiat of God." (_Ibid_. p. 16, 17.) Very respectable
rhetoric, but what does it mean? If it means anything, it means
that the visible universe is unreal, an illusion, a
phantasmagoria; that nothing is real, stable, permanent, but law,
which lies in silence and strength behind the phantasmagoria, and
that this law producing the illusion, dazzling us with mere
sense-shows, is identically God, from whose fiat the
phantasmagorial world issues. Is not this grand? is it not
sublime? The scientific professor forgets that he may find
readers, who can perceive through his rhetoric that he makes law
or God the reality of things, instead of their creator or maker,
simply their _causa essentialis_, the _causa immanens_
of Spinoza, and therefore asserts nothing but a very vulgar form
of pantheism, material pantheism, indistinguishable from naked
atheism; for his doctrine recognizes only the material, the
sensible, and by law he can mean only a physiological law like
that by which the liver secretes bile, the blood circulates
through the heart, seeds germinate, or plants bear fruit--a law
which has and can have no indivisible unity.
If the professor means simply that in the universe all proceeds
according to the law of cause and effect, he should bear in mind
that there are moral causes and effects as well as physical, and
supernatural as well as natural; but then he might find himself
in accord with theologians, some of whom, perhaps, in his own
favorite sciences are able to be his masters. It is not always
safe to measure the ignorance of others by our own. No theologian
denies, but every one asserts the law of cause and effect,
precisely what no atheist, pantheist, or naturalist does do, for
none of them ever rise above what the schools call _causa
essentialis_, the thing itself, that which, as we say,
_makes_ the thing, makes it itself and not another, or
constitutes its identity. Every theologian believes that God is
logical, logic in itself, and that all his works are dialectical
and realize a divine plan, which as a whole and in all its parts
is strictly and rigidly logical. If the professor means simply to
assert not only that all creatures and all events are under the
control of the law of cause and effect, but also under the law of
dialectics, there need be no quarrel between him and us; but in
such case, if he had known a little theology, he might have
spared himself and us a great deal of trouble, for we believe as
firmly in the universal reign of law as he or his Grace of
Argyle. But he would have gained little credit for original
genius, depth of thought, profound science, or rare learning, and
most likely would not have lived to see any one of his volumes
reach a fifth edition.
But we must not be understood to deny in the development of
nations or individuals all dependence on physical conditions, or
even of climate and geographical position. Man is neither pure
spirit, nor pure matter; he is the union of soul and body, and
can no more live without communion with nature, than he can
without communion with his like and with God. Hence he requires
the three great institutions of religion, society, and property,
which, in some form, are found in all tribes, nations, or civil
communities, and without which no people ever does or can
subsist.
{173}
Climate and geographical influences, no doubt, count for
something, for how much, science has not yet determined. There is
a difference in character between the inhabitants of mountains
and the inhabitants of plains, the dwellers on the sea-coast and
the dwellers inland, and the people of the north and the people
of the south; yet the Bas Bretons and the Irish have not lost
perceptibly anything, in three thousand years, of their original
character as a southern people, though dwelling for that space of
time, we know not how many centuries longer, far to the north.
Among the Irish you may find types of northern races, some of
whom have overrun the Island as conquerors; but amid all their
political and social vicissitudes, the Irish have retained, and
still retain, their southern character. The English have received
many accessions from Ireland and from the south, but they remain,
the great body of them, as they originally were, essentially a
northern people, and hence the marked difference between the
Irish character and the English, though inhabiting very nearly
the same parallels of latitude, and subject to much the same
climatic and geographical influences. The character of both the
English and the Irish is modified on this continent, but more by
amalgamation, and by political and social influences, than by
climate or geography. The Irish type is the most tenacious, and
is not unlikely in time to eliminate the Anglo-Saxon. It has a
great power of absorption, and the American people may ultimately
lose their northern type, and assume the characteristics of a
southern race, in spite of the constant influx of the Teutonic
element. What we object to is not giving something to physical
causes and conditions, but making them exclusive, and thus
rejecting moral causes, and reducing man and nature to an
inexorable fatalism.
In the several volumes of the professor, except the first named,
we are able to detect neither the philosophical historian nor the
man of real science. The respectable author has neither logic nor
exact, or even extensive, learning, and the only thing to be
admired in him, except his style, is the sublime confidence in
himself with which he undertakes to discuss and settle questions,
of which, for the most part, he knows nothing, and perhaps the
sublimer confidence with which he follows masters that know as
little as himself.
We own we have treated Professor Draper's work with very little
respect, for we have felt very little. His _Intellectual
Development of Europe_ is full of crudities from beginning to
end, and for the most part below criticism, or would be were it
not that it is levelled at all the principles of individual and
social life and progress. The book belongs to the age of
Leucippus and Democritus, and _ignores_, if we may use an
expressive term, though hardly English, Christian civilization
and all the progress men and nations have effected since the
opening of the Christian era. It is a monument not of science,
but of gross ignorance.
Yet in our remarks we have criticised the class to which the
author belongs, rather than the author himself. Men of real
science are modest, reverential, and we honor them, whatever the
department of nature to which they devote their studies. We
delight to sit at their feet and drink in instruction from their
lips; but when men, because they are passable chemists, know
something of human physiology, or the natural history of fishes,
undertake to propagate theories on God, man, and nature, that
violate the most sacred traditions of the race, deny the Gospel,
reduce the universe to matter, and place man on a level with the
brute, theories, too, which are utterly baseless, we cannot
reverence them, or listen to them with patience, however graceful
their elocution or charming their rhetoric.
----------
{174}
Morning At Spring Park.
Along the upland swell and wooded lawn
The aged farmer's voice is heard at dawn:
That well-known call across the dewy vale
Calls Spark and Daisy to the milking-pail.
The robin chirps; from farm to farm I hear
The bugle-note of wakeful chanticleer;
And far, far off, through grove and bosky dell,
The dreamy tinkle of sleek Snowflake's bell.
The huddling sheep, just loose from kindly fold,
Their nibbling way along the hill-side hold;
And timid squirrels and shy quails are seen
Flitting, unscared, across the shaded green.
The low horizon's dusky, violet blue
Is tinged with coming daylight's rosy hue,
Till o'er the golden fields of tasselled corn
Breaks all the rapture of the summer morn.
Through forest rifts the level sunbeams dart,
And gloomy nooks to sudden beauty start;
Those long, still lines which through rank foliage steal,
Undreamed-of charms among the woods reveal.
The yellow wheat-stooks catch the early light;
Far-nested homesteads gleam at once to sight;
While, from yon glimmering height, one spire serene
Points duly heavenward this terrestrial scene.
Long may the aged farmer's call be heard.
At dewy dawn, with song of matin bird.
Among his loving flocks and herds of kine,
A guileless master, watchful and benign.
And, when no more his agile footstep roves
These flowery pastures and these pleasant groves,
Good Shepherd, may thy call to fields more fair
Wean every thought from earth, make heaven his care!
----------
{175}
Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.
CHAPTER III.
"Set is the sun of the Netterville's glory!
Down in the dust its bright banners are trailing!
Hoarse in our anguish we whisper the story,
And men, as they listen, like women are wailing.
"Woe! woe to us--woe! we shall see him no more;
Our tears like the rains of November are flowing;
Woe! woe to us--woe! for the chief we deplore
Alone to his exile of sorrow is going.
"Alone?--not alone! for our dastardly foemen--
As cruel as base in the day of their power--
Have lifted their hands against maidens and women;
Uprooted the tree, and then trampled the flower.
"And so they have sent her to weep by strange waters--
The joy of our hearts and the light of our eyes--
The latest and fairest of Netterville's daughters,
In whom the last link of their destiny lies.
"Sad will be, mother, thy waking to-morrow!
Waking to weep o'er thy dove-rifled nest;
Widowed and childless--two-fold is thy sorrow.
And two-edged the sword that is lodged in thy breast.
"Well may we mourn her--when we too deplore her--
The vassals and serfs of thy conquering race;
If blood could but do it, our blood should restore her--
Restore her to thee and thy loving embrace.
"Yet not for her only, or thee, are we weeping;
We weep for our country, fast bound in that chain
Which in blood from her wrung heart the foeman is steeping,
Till it looks as if reddened and rusted by rain.
"Oh! when shall a leader to true hearts be given.
To fall on the stranger and force him to flee?
And when shall the shackles that bind her be riven?
And Erin stand up in her strength, and be free!"
So sung Hamish, the son of the last of the long line of minstrels
who, with harp and voice, had recorded the triumphs of the house
of Netterville, or mourned over the death or sorrow of its
chieftains. For, in spite of the law by which it was strictly
forbidden, the English of the Pale had persisted in the national
custom of keeping a bard or minstrel--whose office was always, or
almost always, hereditary--attached to their households; and in
its palmy days of power the family of Netterville was far too
jealous of its own importance not to have been always provided
with a similar appendage. Its last recognized minstrel had
fallen, however, in the same battle which had deprived Nellie of
her father, and, Hamish being then too young to take up his
father's office, the harp had ever since, literally as well as
figuratively, hung mute and unstrung in the halls of Netterville.
But grief and indignation over its utter ruin had unlocked at
last the tide of poetry and song, ever ready to flow over in the
Celtic breast, and Hamish felt himself changed into a bard upon
the spot. Forgetting the presence of the English soldiers, or,
more probably, exulting in the knowledge that they did not
understand the language in which he gave expression to his
feelings, he stepped out into the midst of the people, pouring
forth his lamentations, stanza after stanza, with all the
readiness and fire of a born _improvisatore_; and when at
last he paused, more for want of breath than want of matter, the
keeners took up the tale, and told, in their wild, wailing chant,
of the goodness and greatness, the glory and honour of their
departed chieftain and his heiress, precisely as they would have
done had the twain over whom they were lamenting been that very
day deposited in their graves. Up to this moment Mrs. Netterville
had preserved in a marvellous degree that statue-like calmness of
outward bearing which hid, and even at times belied, the workings
of a heart full of generous emotions; but the wild wailing of the
keeners broke down the artificial restraint she had put upon her
conduct, and, unable to listen quietly to what seemed to her ears
a positive prophecy of death to her beloved ones, she hastily
reëntered the house and retreated to her own apartment.
{176}
This was a small, dark chamber, which in happier times had been
set apart as a quiet retreat for prayer and household purposes,
but which now was the only one the mistress of the mansion could
call her own--the soldiers having that very morning taken
possession of all the others, devoting some of them to their own
particular accommodation and locking up the others. It was, in
fact, as a very singular and especial favour, and as some return
for the kindness she had shown in nursing one of their number who
had been taken suddenly ill on the night of their arrival, that
the use even of this small chamber had been allowed her; for it
was not the custom of Cromwell's army to deal too gently by the
vanquished, and many of the "transplanted," as high-born and
well-educated as she was, had been compelled, in similar
circumstances, to retire to the outer offices of their own abode,
while the rough soldiery who displaced them installed themselves
in the luxurious apartments of the interior.
Hidden from all curious eyes in this dark retreat, Mrs.
Netterville yielded at last to the cry of her weak human heart,
and, flinging herself face downward on the floor, gave way to a
passion of grief which was all the more terrible that it was
absolutely tearless. One or two of the few remaining women of the
household, knowing how fearfully her soul, in spite of all
outward show of calmness, must be wrung, tapped occasionally at
the door; but either she did not hear or did not choose to
answer, and they dared not enter without permission.
At last one of them went to Hamish, feeling instinctively that,
if any one could venture to intrude unbidden, it would be the
foster-brother of Nellie, and said:
"The mistress, God help her! is just drowned with the sorrow, and
won't even answer when we call. Hamish, a-bouchal, couldn't you
manage to go in, just by accident like, and say something or
other to give a turn to her thoughts?"
"Give a turn to her thoughts?" said Hamish crustily; "give a turn
to her thoughts, do you say? My certie, but you take it easy!
Hasn't the woman lost husband and child, to say nothing of the
old lord, who was all as one to her as her own father? and isn't
she going, moreover, to be turned out of house and home, and sent
adrift upon the wide world? and you talk of giving a turn to her
thoughts, as if it was the toothache she was troubled with or a
wasp that had stung her?"
"As you please, Mr. Hoity-toity," said the girl angrily; "I only
thought that, as you were a bit of a pet like, on account of our
young mistress, you might have ventured on the liberty. Not
having set up in that line myself, I cannot, of course, attempt
to meddle in the matter."
But though Hamish had spoken roughly, his heart was very sore,
for all that, over the sorrows of his lonely mistress.
He waited until Cathleen had vanished in a huff, and then, going
quietly to the study-door, knocked softly for admission.
But Mrs. Netterville gave no sign, and, after knocking two or
three times in vain, he opened the door gently and looked in. The
room was naturally a gloomy one, being panelled in black oak; but
Hamish felt as if it never _could_ have looked before so
gloomy as it did that moment.
{177}
Half study, half oratory as it was, Mrs. Netterville had spent
here many a long hour of lonely and impassioned prayer, what time
her husband and her father-in-law were fighting the battles of
their royal and most ungrateful master. A tall crucifix, carved,
like the rest of the furniture, in black oak, stood, therefore,
on a sort of _prie-dieu_ at the farther end of the room, and
near it was a table arranged in desk-fashion, at which she had
been in the habit of transacting the business of her household.
Room and _prie-dieu_, crucifix and table, Hamish had them
all by heart already.
Here in his baby days he had been used to come, when he and his
little foster-sister were wearied with their own play, to sit at
the feet of Mrs. Netterville and listen to the tales which she
invented for their amusement. Here, as time went on, separating
Nellie outwardly from his society, yet leaving her as near to him
in heart as ever, he had been wont to bring his morning offerings
of fish from the running stream, or bunches of purple heather
from the rocks. Here he had come for news of the war, and of the
master, on that very day which brought tidings of his death; and
here, too, even while he tried to comfort Nellie, who had flung
herself down in her childish misery just on the spot where her
mother lay prostrate now, he had wondered, and, young as he was,
had in part, at least, comprehended the marvellous
self-forgetfulness of Mrs. Netterville, who, in the midst of her
own bereavement, had yet found heart and voice to comfort her
aged father-in-law and her child, as if the blow which had struck
them down had not fallen with three-fold force on her own head.
In the darkness of the room and the confusion of his own
thoughts, he did not, however, at first perceive Mrs. Netterville
in her lowly posture, and glanced instinctively toward the
_prie-dieu_, where he had so often before seen her take
refuge in the hour of trial.
But she was not there, and a thrill of terror ran through his
frame when he at last discovered her, face downward, on the
floor, her widow's coif flung far away, and her long locks,
streaked--by the hand of grief, not time--abundantly with gray,
streaming round her in a disorder which struck Hamish all the
more forcibly, that it was in such direct contrast to the natural
habits of order and propriety she had brought with her from her
English home. There she lay, not weeping--such misery as hers
knows nothing of the relief of tears--not weeping, but crushed
and powerless, as if her very body had proved unequal to the
weight of sorrow put upon it, and had fallen beneath the burthen.
She seemed, indeed, not in a swoon, but stunned and stupefied,
and quite unconscious that she was not alone. Hamish trembled for
her intellect; but young as he was, he was used to sorrow, and
understood both the danger and the remedy.
His lady must be roused at any cost, even at that the very
thought of which made him tremble, the recalling her to a full
knowledge of her misery. He advanced farther into the room,
moving softly, in his great reverence for her desolation, as we
move, almost unconsciously to ourselves, in the presence of the
dead, and occupied himself for a few minutes in arranging the
loose papers on her desk, and the flowers which Nellie had placed
upon the _prie dieu_ only a day or two before. They were
faded now--faded as the poor child's fortunes--but instead of
throwing them away, he poured fresh water into the vase which
held them, as if that could have restored their beauty.
{178}
Yet he sighed heavily as he did so for the thought would flash
across his mind that, whether he sought to give, back life to a
withered flower, or joy to the heart of a bereaved mother, in
either case his task was hopeless. Mrs. Netterville took no
notice of his proceedings, though, as he began to get used to the
situation, he purposely made rather more bustle than was needed,
in hopes of arousing her. At last, in despair of succeeding by
milder methods, he let fall a heavy inkstand, smashing it into a
thousand pieces, and scattering the ink in all directions, an
event that in happier times would certainly not have passed
unreproved. But now she lay within a few inches of the inky
stream, as heedless as though she were dead in earnest; and,
hopeless of recalling her to consciousness by anything short of a
personal appeal, he knelt down beside her and tapped her sharply
on the shoulder, half wondering at his own temerity as he did so.
She shuddered as if, light as the touch had been, it yet had hurt
her, and muttered impatiently, and like one half asleep:
"Not now, Hamish! not now!--leave me for the present, I entreat
you!"
"And why not now?" Hamish answered almost roughly. "Do you think
_you_ only have a cause for grieving? Tell me, my mistress,
if we, humble as we are, and not to be thought of in comparison
with your ladyship's honor, if we have not lost--are losing
nothing? Ah! if you could but hear the weeping and wailing that
is going on among the creatures down-stairs, you would never do
us such a wrong as to suppose that _your_ heart is the only
one sore and bleeding to-day!"
"Sore and bleeding! Yes! yes! I doubt it not," moaned the lady
sadly. "Sore and bleeding; but not widowed--not childless; they
have still husbands and children--they have not lost as I have
lost!"
"They have lost--not, may be, quite so much, but yet enough, and
more than enough, to set them wailing," answered Hamish firmly--
"they have lost a master, who was more like a father than a
master, and a young mistress, who was all as one as a daughter to
every one of them; and moreover," he added mournfully--"and
moreover, instead of the kind hand and generous heart that has
reigned over them till now, they are going to be handed over, (as
if they were so many stocks or stones encumbering the land,)
whether they like it or whether they don't, to the tender mercies
of those very men who thought it neither sin nor shame to make
the child a shield against the soldier's sword, when they fought
knee-deep in blood at the siege of Tredagh!"
"Why do you say these things, Hamish?" she almost shrieked in her
anguish. "Is it my fault? Could I help it? or why do you reproach
me with it?"
"_Your_ fault! No, indeed, it is not. More's the pity; for
if you could have helped it, to a dead certainty it never would
have happened," said Hamish, glad that he had roused her, even if
only to a fit of anger. "But though you cannot prevent these
things, my mistress, you can at all events comfort the creatures
that have to bear them, by showing that you have feelings for
their sorrows as well as for your own."
"I give comfort! God help me, I give comfort!" she answered, with
a sort of passionate irony in her manner; adding, however,
immediately afterward, in a softer tone, "How can I give comfort,
Hamish--I who need it so entirely myself?"
{179}
"That is the very thing," cried Hamish eagerly. "God love you,
madam! Do you not see that the only real comfort you could give
them would be the allowing them to try at least and comfort you?"
"Bid them pray, then, for the safe journey of my loved ones," she
answered hoarsely--"that is the only real comfort they can give
me."
"And why, then, couldn't we pray all together?" cried Hamish,
struck suddenly by a bright idea. "Why wouldn't you let them come
up here, madam? I warrant you they would pray as the best of them
never prayed before, if they only seen your ladyship's honor
kneeling and praying in the midst of them."
"I--I cannot pray--I cannot even think," she answered, laying her
head once more on her folded arms, like a weary or a chidden
child. "Go you, good Hamish, and pray yourself with them
down-stairs."
"In the kitchen, is it?" said Hamish, with a considerable portion
of irony in his voice. "Faix, my lady, and it's queer thoughts
we'd have, and queer prayers we would be saying there, with the
pot forenent us, boiling on the fire, and Cromwell's black rogues
of troopers coming and going, and flinging curses and scraps of
Scriptures (according to their usual custom) in equal measure at
our heads. No! no! my lady," he continued vehemently, "if you
would have us pray at all, it must be here--here where the cross
will mind us of a Mother who once stood at its foot, and who was
even more desolate than you are; a Mother silent and
heart-broken--not because her Child had gone before her into
exile, from whence He might any day return, but because she saw
Him dying--dying in the midst of tortures--and forsaken so
entirely that it might well have seemed to her (only she knew
_that_ never could be) as if God as well as man had utterly
abandoned Him."
"You are right, Hamish; you are right," cried Mrs. Netterville
suddenly, touched to the quick by his voice and eloquence. "Go
you down at once, good Hamish, and bid them come here directly. I
shall be ready by the time they are assembled."
As Mrs. Netterville spoke thus, she rose from the floor, and
then, all at once perceiving the strange disorder of her attire,
she began hastily to gather up her tresses, previous to placing
her widow's coif upon them.
Hamish waited to hear no more, but instantly left the room to do
her bidding. As he walked rapidly toward the lower part of the
mansion, he drew a long sigh of relief, like one who has just got
rid of a heavy burden, as in truth he had; for he felt that he
had gained his point, and that whatever his mistress might have
yet to suffer, she was safe, at all events, from the effects of
that first great shock of sorrow which had threatened to overturn
her intellect.
When he returned to announce that the household was assembled and
waiting for her further orders he found her kneeling at the
_prie-dieu_, in all the grave composure of her usual manner.
She did not trust herself, however, to look round, but merely
signed to him that they should come in; and the instant the noise
and bustle of their first entrance had subsided, she commenced
reading from her open missal.
But the very sound of her own voice in supplicatory accents
seemed to break the spell which had hitherto been laid upon her
faculties. She fairly broke down and burst into a flood of tears.
This was more than enough for the excitable hearts around her,
and the room was filled in a moment with the wailing of her
people.
{180}
Hamish was in despair; and yet, perhaps, no other mode of
proceeding could have done so much toward calming her as did this
sudden outburst; for Mrs. Netterville had a true Englishwoman's
aversion to "scenes," however real and natural to the
circumstances of the case they might be. She instantly checked
her tears, and waiting quietly until the storm of grief had in
some degree died out, she collected all her energies, and read in
a low, steady voice the prayer or collect for those travelling by
land or sea, as she found it in her missal. A few other short but
earnest prayers succeeded, and then she paused once more. Her
audience took the hint and quietly retired. Hamish was about to
follow, but she rose from the _prie-dieu_, and signed to him
to remain.
"Hamish," she said, gently but decidedly, "I have done your
bidding, and now I expect that you will do mine. I wish to be
alone for the rest of the day--do you understand? alone with God
and my great sorrow! To-morrow I will begin the work for which I
have been left here, but to-day must be my own. Come not here
yourself, and look to it that no one else disturbs me. Keep a
heedful watch upon the soldiers, and see that no mischance occurs
between them and any of our people, I trust to you for this and
all things. Now leave me. If I have need of anything, I will let
you know."
There was that in Mrs. Netterville's tone and manner which made
Hamish feel he had gone quite far enough already; so, without
another word of remonstrance or expostulation, he made his
reverence and retired.
Chapter IV.
Mrs. Netterville waited until the echo of his retreating
footsteps had died away in the corridor, and then fastening the
door so as to secure herself from any further interruption from
the outside, she once more fell on her knees before the crucifix,
and buried her face in both her hands. How long she remained thus
she never knew exactly; but the shades of a short January evening
were already gathering in the room, when, with a start and a look
as if her conscience smote her, she rose suddenly from her knees.
"Christ pardon me!" she muttered half aloud, "that, in my own
selfish sorrows, I have forgotten others! Poor wretch! By this
time he must be well-nigh famished, if, indeed, (though I trust
it will not,) the delay has not worked him deeper mischief."
As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, she opened a
cupboard close at hand, and drew from thence a bottle of wine,
with some other articles of delicate food, packed carefully in a
wicker-basket, and evidently left there for some especial
purpose. She then sought through the gloom for a cloak, which she
threw upon her shoulders, and, drawing the hood down over her
face, and taking the basket on her arm, she hastily left the
room. Not, however, by the door through which Hamish and the
servants had retreated, but by another at the opposite end, and
which was almost invisible, in consequence of its forming one of
the panels in the black oak wainscoting of the chamber. It led
her directly by a short stone passage to another door or low
wicket, on opening which she found herself in the private grounds
of the castle. Before her at no great distance, stood an old
ivy-covered church, half hidden in a group of tall Irish trees,
which sheltered its little cemetery.
{181}
This was not the parish church, but a private chapel, built by
the Netterville family for their own particular use; and here
their infants had been baptized, their daughters married, and
their old men and women laid reverently to their last slumbers,
ever since they had established their existence in the land.
Mrs. Netterville could not resist a sigh as she glanced toward
its venerable walls. It seemed as if it were only yesterday that
she had gone there to lay down her husband in his lowly grave,
hoping and praying, out of the depths of her own great grief,
that she might soon be permitted to sleep quietly beside him. And
now, even this sad hope was to be hers no longer; this poor
possession of six feet of earth was to be wrested from her;
strangers would lay her in a distant grave, and even in death she
would be separated from her husband. The thought was too painful
to bear much lingering upon it, and turning her back upon the
church, Mrs. Netterville followed a path which lay close under
the castle walls, and led to a court-yard at a considerable
distance. Round this court-yard were grouped stables and other
offices, which, having been built at different periods and
without any consecutive idea as a whole, presented rather the
appearance of a collection of stunted farm-houses, than of the
regular out-buildings of an important mansion.
Each of these houses had a private entrance of its own; and
opening the door of one of them, Mrs. Netterville looked in
quietly and entered. The interior was a room, poorly but yet
decently furnished, and on a low settle-bed at the farther end
lay a young man, who, with his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, had
all the look of a person just rescued from the jaws of death. A
knapsack on the floor, a pike and musket in one corner of the
room, and a steel cap and buff coat in another, seemed to
announce him as one of the band of successful soldiers who were
even then in possession of the castle.
Poor fellow! he lay, with closed eyes, wan and weary, on his bed,
looking, at that moment, like anything rather than like a
successful soldier; but he lifted his head as he caught the noise
of the door creaking on its hinges, and his face brightened into
an expression of joy and gratitude pleasant to behold when he
discovered Mrs. Netterville standing on the threshold.
"Can you ever forgive me?" she said, going up to him at once. "I
cannot easily forgive myself for having left you so long alone.
In the grief and anguish in which I have been plunged all day, I
had well-nigh forgotten your existence, and you must be faint, I
fear me, for want of nourishment."
"Nay, madam," he answered, gently, indeed, but yet with a good
deal of that comfortable self-assurance in spiritual matters
which seems to have been an especial inheritance of "Cromwell's
saints." "If _you_ have forgotten, the Lord at least hath
been mindful of his servant, and hath cast so deep a slumber on
my senses, that I have been altogether unconscious of the lapse
of time, or of the absence of those carnal comforts which,
however the spirit may rebel against them, are nevertheless not
altogether to be despised, as being the means by which we receive
strength to do the bidding of our Master."
Mrs. Netterville could not help thinking that the posset-cup and
soothing draught, which she had administered the night before,
might have had as much as any especial interposition of
Providence to say to his seasonable slumbers; but the times were
too much out of joint to permit of her making, however
reverently, such an observation, so she merely touched his brow
and hand, and said:
{182}
"I am right glad, at all events, that you seem in nowise to have
suffered from my neglect. Eat now and drink, I pray you; for I
perceive by this refreshing moisture on your skin that all danger
has passed away, and that you need at present no worse physic
than good food and wine to restore you to your former strength."
"Nay, madam," said the soldier, with great and hardly repressed
feeling in his voice and manner. "Eat or drink I cannot, or in
any way refresh myself, until I have poured forth my song of
gratitude, first to the Lord of hosts, who hath delivered me from
this great danger, and then to you, who have tended me (even as
the widow of Sarepta might have waited on Elias) through the
perils of a sickness from which my very comrades and
fellow-laborers in the vineyard fled, trembling and afraid."
"You must pardon them, good Jackson," said Mrs. Netterville, "and
all the more readily, because this disease, from which you have
so marvellously recovered, is, men say, in its rapid progress and
almost sure mortality, akin, if not indeed wholly similar, to
that terrible malady the plague, which is the scourge of the
Eastern nations, and leaves crowded cities, once it has entered
in, as silent and deserted as the sepulchres of the dead. You
cannot therefore wonder, and you need not feel aggrieved, if men
who would have risked their lives for you on the battle-field,
yet shrunk from its unseen, and therefore, to poor human nature,
its more awful dangers."
"Nay, madam, I blame them not; perhaps even in their place I
should have done the same. Nevertheless--and though I have no
ill feeling toward them--I cannot forget that you, a Popish woman
and an enemy, have done that for me which the very children of my
own household have shrunk from doing, and I would fain show my
gratitude if I could."
"You can show it, and that right easily, if you will," she
answered kindly, "by eating and drinking heartily of the
provisions I have brought, and so regaining strength to wait all
the sooner on yourself. For I shall soon, as you doubtless know
already, have work in hand which will compel me to make my visits
fewer; and yet I shall not like to risk other lives by sending
any of the household to wait on you in my stead."
"Alas! madam, I fear I have been but a troublesome and
unprofitable, though not altogether, I do assure you, a thankless
guest," the man answered, in a somewhat sad and deprecatory
manner.
"Nay; but now you mistake me altogether," she answered earnestly.
"You have been a most patient sufferer, and that trouble--which
is altogether unavoidable in any sickness--has been, you may
believe me, a pleasure rather than an uneasiness to me. I only
meant to say that, though I shall still continue to visit you
morning and evening, I shall not be able to come so often in the
daytime as I have been used to do; for all matters in this sad
affair of the transplantation having fallen into my hands, you
may well imagine it is as much or more than one poor woman can
well accomplish by her own unaided efforts."
"Would that I could aid you," he answered fervently--"would that
I could comfort you! But, alas! in this matter of the
transplantation, I can do naught, seeing that it is the Lord
himself who hath girded on our swords, bidding us to smite and
spare not.
{183}
Nevertheless, lady, I am not ungrateful, and in the long,
sleepless nights of my weary malady I have wrestled for you in
prayer, striving exceedingly and being much exercised on your
account; nor gave I over until I had received the comfortable
assurance that, as the Lord sent angels to Lot to deliver him out
of Sodom, so he would some day make of me a shield and a defence,
whereby you might be snatched from the woes that he is about to
rain down on this land, because 'the cry of its idolatry is waxen
great before his face,' and he hath sworn to destroy it."
"Well, well!" she answered a little impatiently, "I thank you for
your good-will, at all events; but for the present we will
discourse no further on this matter. God will one day judge
between us, and by his fiat I am content to stand or fall, in all
those matters of religion on which, unhappily, we differ. See, I
have trimmed the lamp so that it will burn brightly until
morning, and there is food and wine on this little table. I will
put it close to the bed, so that when you need nourishment, you
will have but to put forth your hand to take it. And now I must
say good-night--to-morrow I will be with you by the early dawn."
Having thus done all that either charity or hospitality could ask
at her hands, Mrs. Netterville retired from the room, sooner,
probably, than she would have done if the soldier's last words
had not grated on her ear, and roused more angry passions than
she wished to yield to in her breast.
"He has a good heart, poor wretch," she thought, as she took her
way back to the castle; "but strange and fearful is it to see how
pride, in him, as in all his comrades, usurps the place of true
humility and religion."
The sudden sound of a pistol going off disturbed her in the midst
of her cogitations; and with a pang of indescribable fear and
presentiment of evil at her heart, she stood still. It seemed to
come from the grove of yew-trees round the church, and was not
repeated. Having ascertained this fact, she walked rapidly
forward in the direction of the sound, her mind in a perfect
whirl of fear, and only able to shape itself into the one
thought, pregnant of future evil, that, either by some of her own
people, or by one of the English soldiers, a murder had been
committed. Just as she entered the grove of yew-trees, she
perceived something like the loose garb of a woman fluttering
down the path before her, and then suddenly disappearing behind
the tower of the little church. She did not dare to call out; but
feeling certain that this person must either have fired the shot
herself, or have seen it fired by some one else, she quickened
her pace in order to overtake her. Twilight was already deepening
among the yew-trees; the path, moreover, was overgrown with weeds
and brambles, and as she ran with her eyes fixed on the spot
where the figure had disappeared, she felt herself suddenly
tripped up by some object lying right before her, and fell
heavily against it. At the first touch of that unseen something,
a sense of terror, such as animals are said to be conscious of in
the presence of their own dead, seized upon her senses, and all
the blood was curdling in her veins as slowly and with difficulty
she removed herself from its contact. Gradually, as she recovered
from the stunning effects of her fall, and her eyes grew
accustomed to the gloom around her, the "thing" on the ground
shaped itself into the form of a human being--but of a human
being so still and motionless, that it seemed probable it was a
corpse already.
{184}
Very reluctantly she put forth her hand to try if life were
really extinct; but suddenly discovering that she was dabbling it
in a pool of yet warm blood, she withdrew it with a shudder.
"My God! my God!" she moaned, "what enemy hath done this? Surely
it is one of the soldiers from the castle, and they will accuse
our people of the murder! Grant Heaven, indeed, that they are
innocent! Would that Hamish were here to help me. Yet no! they
would certainly in that case try to fix the guilt on him. I will
go hence and let them discover it as they can. Yet what if I
should meet them? I am all dabbled in his gore!"
With a new and sharp terror in her heart, as this thought took
possession of it, she began hastily to rub her hands in the moss
and dry leaves around her, in order to free them from the blood
which clung to them; and she was still engaged in this rather
equivocal occupation when a sudden stream of light was cast on
her from behind, and, rising suddenly, she found herself face to
face with the officer who had been left in command of the
garrison of the castle.
Half-a-dozen of his men were at his back, and by the light of the
lantern, which he carried, she read in their faces their
conviction of her guilt. At a sign from their chief they
surrounded her in awful silence, and he himself laid his hand
heavily on her shoulder:
"Murderess!" he said, "thou art taken in thy sin!"
"I did it not," cried Mrs. Netterville, so utterly confounded by
this terrible accusation that she hardly knew what she said. "So
help me Heaven! I am innocent of this deed!"
"Innocent! sayest thou?" the officer answered firmly. "Innocent!
thou with his blood red upon thy hands! Yea, and thy very
garments clotted in his gore! If then thou art innocent, as thou
wouldst have us to believe, say what wert thou doing in this
lonely spot at an hour when none but the murderer or the wanton
would care to be abroad?"
"I was returning from a visit to the soldier Jackson--a visit
which, as thou knowest, Master Rippel, I pay him every evening at
the hour of dusk; and I had well-nigh reached the castle, when
hearing a shot in this direction, and fearing mischief either for
my own people or for thine, I came hither if possible to prevent
it."
"A likely story, truly!" replied the officer, who, unluckily for
her, was one of the fiercest, if not the saintliest, of the band
of warriors then domiciled at the castle. "Nay, woman, and for
thine own sake hold thy peace, or out of thine own mouth thou
shalt stand presently condemned. For tell me, my masters," he
added, addressing the other men, "where will you find a woman,
who, hearing a shot, and dreading mischief, would not have fled
from the danger, instead of incontinently rushing, as she would
have us to believe she did, into its very jaws?"
"Yet have I rushed into the jaws of danger more than once already
within this fortnight, and that not for the sake of my own people
but of thine; as none ought to know better than thou, Master
Rippel, and thy comrades," Mrs. Netterville, now fairly put upon
her mettle, retorted bravely.
"Nay, and that is naught but the very truth, though the father of
lies (which is Beelzebub) himself had said it," one of the men
here ventured to remark. "For surely, Captain Rippel, you cannot
have forgotten that we should have had a soldier the less in the
camp of Israel, if she had not nursed the good youth Jackson
through this black business of the plague, when we, even we, men
anointed and girded to the fight, did hesitate to go near him."
{185}
"Ha! Dost thou also venture to defend her?" cried the officer
angrily. "Nay, then, let that woman which is called Deborah be
brought forward and confronted with the prisoner. Her testimony
must decide between us."
One or two of the soldiers who had been lingering at a little
distance in the dusky twilight now advanced, half pushing before
them, half leading, the very woman who had addressed Nellie so
impudently in the morning. She came forward with a strange
mixture of eagerness and reluctance in her manner; willing
enough, it might be, to bear false testimony against her
neighbor, but very unwilling to be confronted with its object.
They placed her face to face with Mrs. Netterville, and the
captain turned his lantern so that the light fell full on the
features of the latter. They were cold and calm, and almost
disdainful in their expression, now that she knew who was her
accuser; and Deborah, spite of all her efforts to brazen out the
interview, cowered beneath her glance of scorn.
"Nay, but look well upon her, Deborah," said the captain, seeing
that her eyes fell beneath those of the woman she had accused.
"Look well upon her, and say if this be not that Moabitish woman
whom thou sawest, as thou wert lingering (for no good purpose, I
do fear me greatly) in the shadow of the trees--whom thou sawest,
say I, steal hither between light and darkness, and treacherously
do to death our brother Tomkins, who, being--as methinks you
revealed to me just now--wearied overmuch with prayer and holding
forth, (he was, as I myself can testify, a man of most precious
doctrine, and greatly favored in the gift of preaching,) had come
hither to repose himself."
"Nay," said the woman, speaking in very tolerable English, an
accomplishment she had picked up when in service in Dublin; "of
that great weariness caused by too much prayer and preaching.
Master Rippel, I said naught--my own impression being," she
added, unable even before such an audience to repress the gibe,
"that the slumberous inclinations of worthy Master Tomkins had
been caused by a somewhat too ardent devotion lately tendered to
the wine-cask."
"Peace, scoffer! peace!" cried the captain. "And if thou wouldst
have thy blasphemy against the Lord and against his saints
forgiven, in this world or the next, look once more on the face
of the prisoner, and be not shamefaced or afraid, but say out
boldly whether you can swear to her in a court of justice as
being the person whom you espied just now in the act--yea, the
very act of murder."
"I can," said the woman shortly, and avoiding the eye of Mrs.
Netterville as she spoke.
"Thou canst?" the latter said in a tone of indignant
astonishment. "And pray, if thou wert watching me so narrowly,
why didst thou not endeavor to prevent me?--why not strike up my
weapon?--why not cry out, at least, so as to rouse up the
sleeping soldier?"
"I did what I could," the woman sullenly responded. "I sought out
his comrades. It was their look-out, not mine, and to them
accordingly I left it."
{186}
"She speaks the truth, as we who so lately heard her tale can
testify," the captain answered quickly. "You see, my men," he
added, addressing the other soldiers, "Beelzebub is divided
against himself, and the very children of his kingdom bear
witness against each other. Surely the woman Netterville is
guilty. Take her, therefore, some of you, a prisoner to the
castle, while the rest prepare a decent burial for our murdered
brother. I myself must speak apart with the witness Deborah, in
order to put her testimony into a fitting shape to be laid before
the court of my lords, the high commissioners of justice."
Chapter V.
The sun had climbed well-nigh midway in the heavens, lighting up
Clew Bay and its hundred isles until they glinted like emeralds
in the blue setting of the sea, as an old, white-haired man and a
young girl--the latter carrying a small bundle in one hand, while
with the other she supported the failing strength of her
companion, made their way, slowly and painfully, along the valley
through which runs the bright "Eriff" river on its way to the
ocean. Following the up course of the stream, they had passed,
almost without knowing it, through some of the finest of the
mountain scenery of the west, up hill and down hill, by pretty
cascades, in which the river seemed to be playing with the
obstacles which opposed it; round huge bare shoulders of rifted
and out-jutting rock; through dark, deep purple gorges, which
looked as if the mountains had been wrenched violently asunder in
order to produce them; and now, at last, they found themselves in
a quiet, dreary-looking glen, where cushions of soft moss and
yielding heather seemed to woo them to repose. Nevertheless,
footsore and worn out as they evidently were, they continued to
press bravely forward until they had nearly arrived at the
farther end of the valley; but by that time the old man's head
had begun to droop wearily on his breast, and his steps had
become so languid and uncertain that it was evident it would be
perilous to proceed farther without giving him the rest he so
absolutely required. Choosing, therefore, a little nook, where
the turf grew soft and dry, and where clusters of tall fern and
heather, rising nearly six feet from the root, seemed to promise
at least partial shelter from the midday sun, the girl quietly
disposed of her bundle as a pillow for his head, and invited him
with a smile to a siesta. He obeyed as readily as if he had been
a child, and she then sat down beside him, crooning an old
nursery lullaby to hush him into slumber. But she sought no such
salutary oblivion for herself; and no sooner had his eyes begun
to close in sleep than she rose, and, as if anxiety had rendered
her incapable of remaining quiet, wandered restlessly on until
she reached the top of a hill which shut in the valley from the
land beyond. There she paused, fear and foreboding, weariness and
sorrow, all forgotten or swallowed up in the breathless
admiration which took instant possession of her soul. Around her,
crumbled and tumbled in all directions, were hills bare indeed of
trees, but green to the very summit, and strangely picturesque in
the fantastic variety of their forms. There were quiet glens and
solemn, rock-strewn passes, with streamlets swelled into
cataracts by the rains of spring, yet looking in the distance
like mere threads of liquid silver spirting from their rugged
sides. There were long brown tracts of peat land, brightened and
relieved by patches of golden, flowering gorse, or of that thin
herbage which, in its perfectly emerald green, is only to be seen
in such like boggy places; and over and above all this, there
were the shadowy outlines of more than one far-off range of
mountains melting into the delicate blue background of the sky,
and changing color, as rapidly as the young cheek of beauty,
beneath the ever-shifting lights and shadows of that "cloud
scenery" which is nowhere more
beautiful or varied than in Ireland.
{187}
To the left, and looking, in the clear atmosphere, so close that
she almost felt she could have touched it with her outstretched
hand, rose "Croagh Patrick," sacred to the memory of Ireland's
great apostle; and Clew Bay lay, or seemed to lie, bright and
shining at her feet--Clew Bay, with its gracefully winding shore,
and its archipelago of islets; some bold, beetling rocks, ready
and able to do battle with the storm, others mere baskets of
verdure floating on the tide; while the largest and most
picturesque of them all, the sea, girt kingdom of Grana-Uaile,
Clare Island, stood bravely up, cliff over cliff, at the very
mouth of the harbor, guarding it against the winter encroachments
of the Atlantic, which, green as liquid jasper, and calm, in that
summer weather, as a giant sleeping in the sunshine, unrolled
itself beyond. Long and wistfully Nellie fixed her gaze upon that
fair prospect; and it was with a strange reluctance and
foreboding of future sorrow, that she at last withdrew in order
to examine attentively that portion of the country which lay more
immediately around her, and with which she believed herself about
to be more intimately connected. As she did so, a building,
perched half-way up a hill, rather more inland than that upon
which she herself was standing, attracted her eye, and she
gasped, with a sudden mingling of hope and fear, like a person
choking; for she felt a sudden conviction that in the wild,
uncultivated lands beneath her she beheld the portion assigned to
her grandfather by the commissioners at Loughrea, and in that
edifice, which seemed to have been built for the express purpose
of commanding and overawing the entire district, the house in
which they had told her she was to establish her new home.
_House_, indeed, it could scarcely be called in anything
like the modern acceptation of the term, though it was probably
perfectly well suited to the wants and wishes of the wild
chieftains by whom it had been erected. The original building had
consisted of a single tower, of which the rough, rude walls,
formed of huge stones, put unhammered and uncemented together,
betrayed its origin in times so far remote as to have no history
even in the oldest annals of the land. Added on to this gray
relic of the past, however, a new building was now evidently in
process of erection. It was far from finished yet, as Nellie knew
by the poles and scaffoldings around it; but even in its embryo
state it bore a terribly suspicious resemblance to that square,
simple fortalice type of building which seems to have been the
one architectural idea of Cromwell's Irish drafted soldiers, and
which still remains in many places, the silent but
uncontrovertible witness--the seal which they themselves have set
upon their forcible and unjust possession of the land. The very
look of that half-finished building seemed an answer to Nellie's
late foreboding, and with a sinking heart she turned her back
upon it and retraced her steps to the place where she had left
Lord Netterville. The old man had already shaken off his fitful
slumbers, and was toiling feebly up the hill.
{188}
Nellie ran back to fetch her bundle, which he had been unable to
bring with him; but overtaking him in an instant, she gave him
her arm, led him to the spot from whence she had just been taking
her bird's-eye view of the country, and, pointing to the
fortalice in process of erection, watched anxiously to discover
what sort of impression it would make on his mind. But either he
did not observe it, or did not take in the peculiar significance
of its presence in those wilds; and finding that he remained
silent and apparently unmoved, she collected all her remaining
energy to say cheerfully:
"Look at that old gray tower to the right. If the man whom we met
this morning among the hills spoke truth, we have reached the end
of our weary journey, and yonder is our future home. It is not
like our own dear Netterville, indeed, and yet it seems a goodly
enough mansion. So goodly," she added, stealing a glance beneath
her long lashes to see how he took the insinuation, "that I
almost wonder they should have dealt thus kindly by us; for I
know that many of the first of the 'transplanted' have had their
lots assigned them in places where there was not even the hut of
a peasant to shelter them from the weather."
"Tush, child! talk not to me of houses," the old man answered
querulously, too much occupied with the actual disadvantages of
his position to catch the hidden drift of Nellie's observation.
"What boots a goodly mansion, if starvation be at its portal? And
what, I pray you, but starvation are they condemned to, who have
been sent to make themselves a home among these barren
mountains?"
Nellie suffered her eyes to roam once more over the bright waters
of the bay, and then, with a quick sense of beauty kindling up in
her soul, she turned them hopefully upon Lord Netterville.
"Nay, dear grandfather, it is, after all, a country fair and
pleasant to the eye, and once my dear mother rejoins us with the
cows and 'garrans,' there can be no lack of plenty, even in these
wilds."
"Cows and garrans! And where are we to feed them, girl? Do you
expect to find the pleasant grazing-lands of Meath on the tops of
these barren hills? or are we to fatten our flocks on the
sea-drift, which, I have heard say, the natives of these wilds
are in the habit of gathering on the shore and boiling down into
food, not for their cattle, (they have none, poor wretches!) but
themselves?"
"Some of these hills certainly look black and bare enough, but
still I doubt not that among their glens and hollow places we
shall find many a good acre of green grass for the grazing of our
cattle," the girl answered patiently, and with an evident
determination to look, for the present at least, only on the
bright side of the question. "And now, dear sir," she added
gently, "had we not best move onward? for if yonder tower is
really to be our home, the sooner we are there the better."
She glanced toward the castle as she spoke, and the old man saw
that she started violently as she did so. She said not another
word, however; but he fancied that her cheek grew a shade
paler--if that were possible--than it had been before, as she
continued to gaze silently in that direction.
"What is it, Nellie?" he cried at last, frightened by her strange
looks and silence. "What do you see, child, that you look so
white and scared?"
"See!" she answered slowly and reluctantly, "there seems to be a
party of many people gathering in the court-yard; the house,
therefore, must be inhabited already!"
{189}
"People in the court-yard!" cried the old man, now fairly aroused
to that same fear which had been haunting Nellie for the last
half-hour. "What people, Nellie? Tell me, child, if you can
distinguish whether they seem to be natives or strangers to the
place. Our fate, alas! may be dependent on that fact."
The girl walked forward, and shading her eyes with her hand from
the blinding sunshine, looked again, and yet again, in the
direction of the tower.
"Yes," she said at last; "I was not mistaken. There is a party in
the court-yard, and some of them are even standing in the
gate-way, as if they had but this instant stept forth from the
mansion. Surely, grandfather, we cannot have misunderstood or
mistaken our instructions? There is no other building to be
seen--even in the distance--and this one answers in all respects
to the description. The man, too, from whom we inquired our way
this morning, assured us that it was called 'The Rath'--the very
name set down in our certificate. We cannot have been mistaken,
and yet--and yet--if there be persons already in possession,
their claim must needs be superior to our own."
She spoke hesitatingly, and in broken sentences, as if she were
following out a train of thought in her own mind, rather than
addressing her companion. He listened anxiously, and a cloud
gathered on his brow as he gradually took in her meaning.
"It may be only some of the natives," he said at last, in a low
voice. "The original owners, perhaps, of the tower, who have
waited our arrival before giving up possession."
"Owners!" said Nellie quickly. "They told us at Loughrea that the
owner had perished in the war, and that therefore we should find
it empty."
"They may have been mistaken, Nellie. They know little enough, I
think, those high and mighty commissioners at Loughrea, of the
land of which they are so liberally disposing; and still less, I
doubt me, of its original possessors."
"And if they are mistaken, we shall take the place of the
rightful owners, and so deal out to others the very measure which
our enemies have dealt to us. Grandfather, if we are guilty of
this thing, we shall have a twofold sin upon our souls--their
iniquity and our own."
"What would you have, child?" he answered pettishly; for, truth
to say, he had yet quite enough of the Englishman about him, not
to be over-particular as to the rights of the native Irish. "What
would you have? Did you not know already that, in the acceptation
of these lands, we were taking that which it was neither in the
Cromwellians' right to give or in ours to receive? And what if an
old tumble-down tower be thrown into the bargain? Trust me,
Nellie, the business is so black already that, like the face of
his Satanic majesty, who is the author of it, a little more or
less of smutch will hardly make it blacker or uglier than it is."
"I never thought of this before," said Nellie sadly; "I thought
only--fool that I was, so selfishly intent on my own
misfortunes--I thought only of tracts of land left barren for
want of inhabitants to till them, and of houses emptied by the
fate of war. I never dreamed of men and women and little children
turned out of their pleasant homes to make room for us--us who
have as little right to their possessions as the English soldiers
have to ours!"
{190}
"Nevertheless it has been done in almost every other case of
transplantation which I have heard of," the old man answered
restlessly. "And the iniquity--for it _is_ an iniquity--is
theirs who have driven us to such spoliation, not ours who have
been compelled in our own despite to do it."
But Nellie was far too noble, and too clear-sighted in her
nobleness, to shelter her actions behind such a subterfuge, and
she answered vehemently:
"But it must not be in ours, sir--it must not be in ours! We
will go down at once, and if the persons whom we see yonder be
the rightful owners of that tower, we will merely crave rest and
hospitality at their hands, until such a time as we have found a
place, however humble, in which, without injury to honor or
conscience, we can make ourselves a home."
"As you will, Nellie--as you will," he answered, too weary,
perhaps, to be able longer to dispute the point. "But after all,
we may be mistaken as to the ownership of these people. Look
again, and tell me, if you can, whether they are clad like
Englishmen, or in the native weeds?"
"Not in the native weeds, I think, my father. Rather I should
say, if it were not impossible, that the men whom I see down
yonder belonged to the army of the oppressor. Ha! Now a lady is
coming forth, and now they are mounting her, and a tall, stately
personage in--yes--certainly in military attire, is mounting
also, and takes his place at her side. Now half a dozen servants,
I suppose, or friends, are on their horses likewise, and now they
are moving forward. Father, they must come this way, there is
none other that I can see by which horses can pass with safety.
Let us wait for them behind the bank, and then, when they are
near enough, we will accost them, and if they be of the
conquering army, show them our certificate. They will, of course,
bow to its authority, and help us to take possession of that
house which the document assigns us. I am glad a woman is among
them; it will make it easier, I think, to speak."
As Nellie ran on thus, she drew her grandfather with her behind a
bank which dipt down suddenly upon the path, narrowing it until
it was all but impassable to riders. There, with pale face and
tightened breath, she nervously awaited the advent of the party
upon whose favorable or unfavorable disposition toward them she
felt her own fate and Lord Netterville's to be so painfully
dependent.
To Be Continued.
--------
{191}
The Roman Gathering. [Footnote 46]
By W. G. Dix.
[Footnote 46: We give place to the above article in our
columns, though from a non-Catholic pen, thinking that it
will be read with interest by our readers, while it
indicates, at the same time, the religious tendencies which
are becoming more and more prevalent among not a small class
of minds in our country.--Editor C. W.]
A man of many years, without vast temporal resources, despoiled
of a part of his possessions, having many and vigorous enemies
about him, and regarded by many even of those who profess the
Christian faith as about to fall from his high place in
Christendom, such a man invites his brethren of the apostolical
ministry throughout the world to honor by their personal presence
at Rome the anniversary of the martyrdom, eighteen hundred years
ago, of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and to join with him in the
exaltation of martyrs who, like them, though in far distant
lands, were "faithful unto death." They respond with eager joy
and haste to the call, and those who cannot go send on the wings
of the wind their words of loving veneration.
To say not a word of the spiritual claims of the man who sent
forth the invitation, so eagerly and widely accepted, there is in
the fact just stated a glowing evidence that, even in these days
of triumphant and insolent materialism, moral power has not
entirely lost ascendency. Though millions of knees are bent in
honor of the Dagon of materialism, in some one or other of its
myriad forms of degrading idolatry, yet millions of hearts also
recognize the gift of God as present evermore in his holy church.
Never before has the Catholic Church beheld so great a multitude,
from so distant places, assembled at her call at the central city
of the faith.
The enemies of catholicity have again and again referred to the
great inventions of modern times as sure destroyers of the claims
of the Catholic Church and of her hold upon her millions of
members; but lo! these very inventions are brought into the
service of the church. The printing-press, which was going to
annihilate the Catholic Church, has proved one of her most
effectual bulwarks; millions of printed pages inspire the
devotion of her children, and make known her claims to reading
men, until many who were even her enemies and revilers, from
ignorance and prejudice, acknowledge their error, and make haste
to go to "their father's house." Steam, in the view of many, was
about so to change the structure of society that the old and
decrepid Church of Rome, the great obstacle on the railroad of
materialism, was about to be run over and cast to the roadside, a
weak and useless wreck; but lo! the power of steam enables
hundreds and thousands more to go up to the sacred city, as the
tribes of Israel were wont to visit Jerusalem, than could
otherwise attend the festivals of the faith in St. Peter's
Church. Of the manifold uses of steam, a large proportion is in
the service of catholic truth. And then the telegraph; that,
surely, was to show an advanced state of civilization which could
not tolerate the slow and ancient ways of catholicity; but lo!
here, again, the event has contradicted the prophecy; for, by
means of the telegraph, the assemblage of the vast host at Rome
was known throughout the world on the very day of its occurrence;
and almost literally, in all parts of Christendom, thousands of
devout worshippers could turn their faces reverently toward the
altar of God in Rome at the very instant when those in its
immediate presence were bending before it, and could join in the
same prayers and anthems, as though the world itself were one
vast St. Peter's Church, and the strains of penitence and hymns
of joy could reverberate across oceans and mountains, among
distant nations and islands of the sea, as among the corridors
and arches of one great temple sacred to the triune God.
{192}
As in these instances, so in many others, the church has extended
her sway and deepened her power by the very forces which many
supposed would work her ruin. The history of the church has shown
in the domain of natural science, so often applied in the service
of infidelity and disorder, as in the field of human passion,
that God will make the wrath of man to praise him, and turn
weapons designed to attack his holy Church into her consecrated
armor of defence. The grace of God so overrules the inventions of
man and the powers of nature, that even the terrible lightning
becomes the vivid messenger to convey to the ends of the earth
the benediction of the Vicar of Christ.
What is the chief lesson of the recent gathering at Rome? It is
this, that the church of God, so often, in the view of her
enemies, destroyed, will not stay destroyed; that after every
"destruction" she renews her invincible youth, and rises to
pursue her career of conquest over sin, prejudice, and wrong;
that, though she may bend awhile to the storm that beats upon her
sacred head, she has never been wholly overcome; that,
notwithstanding all that mortal enmity, defection, outrage, have
done or can do, she yet lifts her forehead to the sky to be anew
baptized with light from the sun of truth above; and, strong in
the faith and promise of the Eternal God, she falters not in her
endeavors, patient and persistent, to subdue the world to Christ.
The history of the Catholic Church abounds with instances like
the Roman gathering in June, which prove that her hours of
affliction are those very ones when her faithful children gather
to her side, to assure her of their prayers and support, and to
discern upon her saintly face those "smiles through tears,"
which, in times of trial, are the warmest and most touching
acknowledgments of filial veneration.
The commemorative assemblage at the capital of Christendom,
signifies that the church of God is indestructible by any forces
that earth or hell, singly or united, can bring against her. She
may be at times like the bird in the snare of the fowler; but she
is sure of being released at length, and then she plumes her
wings afresh, and soars heavenward, filling the air with the
divine, exultant music of her voice. The powerful of the earth
have sometimes loaded the church with fetters; but by the
strength of Christ that dwells evermore in her, she has broken
the bonds asunder, or, by his transforming grace, they have
become the wreaths and garlands of new victory, even as the cross
of humiliation has become, by the sacrifice of our Lord, the
emblem of unfading glory.
The church of Christ, bearing on her brow his holy seal, and in
her hands his gifts of power, knelt in sorrow at his grave; but
she hailed his resurrection with joy, and was endowed anew with
treasures of immortal life.
{193}
Afterward, the might of heathendom arose against her, and she
descended from the wrath of man into the catacombs; but she
reascended, to wear upon her brow the diadem of a spiritual
empire that shall never fall until the elements shall melt with
fervent heat; and even then, true to all her history in deriving
new glory from every apparent defeat, she will rise again from
the great grave of nature to enjoy for ever the vision of God.
Kings of the earth have denied her right to invest the pastors of
her children with their due prerogatives, and have even dared her
to mortal combat; but though distressed and thwarted, she has
never relinquished her inherent rights, and she never will. As
many times as the head of the church on earth has been driven
from Rome by armed, ungrateful violence, so many times exactly
has he been welcomed back with tears of penitence and shouts of
rapture.
Despoiled of treasures committed to her care by faithful stewards
of God's bounty, she has labored with her own hands to feed her
needy children. At one time, persecuted in the wilderness, she
has found a refuge and a welcome in the courts of princes; at
another, driven from the courts of princes, because she would not
deny her Lord or her divine commission, she has found a humble
sanctuary in the wilderness, and knelt upon the bare earth to
adore the Lord of life and light, once the child in the manger,
and to invoke all the saints in glory to plead her cause in the
ear of infinite justice and goodness.
She has spurned the anointed king from the temple of God, until
he repented of his crime; and on the head of the lowly monk who
was spending his days in labor and prayer, she has placed the
triple crown. With one hand she has bathed with "baptismal dew"
the brow of the day-laborer's child, while the other she has
raised in defiance of imperial might, which dared to assail her
holy altar.
One of the most violent objections to the Catholic Church has
been urged for the very reason that she has so faithfully held
the balance between the contending forces of society. She has
been accused of favoring the claims of absolutism or popular
demands, as the triumph of either at the time would favor her own
ends, irrespective of right. The charge is unjust, is urged by
many who know better, yet it springs from an honest
misapprehension in many minds. It would have been utterly
impossible for an institution, designed to enlighten and guide
mankind in its higher relations, not to touch human interests of
every kind, and human institutions generally in many ways; yet
the challenge may safely be given to any thoughtful student of
history, to acknowledge with candor, whatever may be his
ecclesiastical position, that the Catholic Church, having often
been chosen to be, and having an inherent right to be, the umpire
between the rights of authority and the rights of individuals,
has faithfully labored to sustain lawful authority when assailed
by the wild fury of misguided multitudes, and that she has
interposed her powerful shield, often with the most triumphant
success, to protect men whose rights as men were assailed by
authority changed by ambition into arrogant and exacting tyranny.
What inconsistency and insincerity have been charged against the
Catholic Church for this remarkable and noble fact in her
history! In this respect the Catholic Church has followed
strictly in the steps of her Divine Author, who, when on earth,
invariably upheld the rights of authority, while vehemently
denouncing those who unjustly exercised it; and while going about
doing good, the friend of the friendless and the helper of the
helpless, pleading with divine eloquence, and laboring with
divine power for the outcast and the poor, never and nowhere
sanctioned the spirit of insurrection, but enjoined obedience as
one of the main duties of life.
{194}
Hence, it has come about, by one of those sublime mysteries,
which prove the divine origin of Christianity, that the greatest
revolution which has ever taken place in religious belief and in
civil society in all their bearings, has been effected by the
teachings, by the life and death of one who by no word or deed
ever assailed authority itself or incited resistance to it.
Beauty and order being the same thing, and religious truth being
the beauty of holiness, Christ, who was truth in person, must
have made his church the friend and upholder of all beauty and
order; and so it has proved for eighteen hundred years. The
church has been the celestial crucible in which whatever of human
art or invention had within it the essential attributes of higher
and spiritual goodness has been purified and adapted to the
service of religion. Has poetry sought to please the imaginations
of men? the church of Christ unfolded before her the annals of
Christianity, with her grand central sacrifice of infinite love,
and all her demonstrations of heroic suffering and courageous
faith; and poetry drew holier inspiration from the view, and
incited men by higher motives to a higher life. Have painting and
sculpture sought to represent objects of refining grace and
sublimity? the church of Christ persuaded them to look into the
records of the Christian past, and there they found treasures of
beauty and splendor, devotion and martyrdom, whose wealth of
illustration as examples; incentives, and memorials, art has not
exhausted for centuries, and will never exhaust. Christian
history is the inexhaustible quarry of whatever is most noble and
heroic in man, purified by the grace of God. Has architecture
sought to invest stone with the attributes of spiritual and
intellectual grace? the church of God has so portrayed before her
the sublimities of the Christian faith, that she knelt at her
feet in veneration, and thenceforth consecrated herself to build
enduring structures, which, the more they show of human power and
skill, the more they persuade men to the worship of God. Has
eloquence sought to nerve men for the grand conflicts of life?
the church of Christ has touched the lips of eloquence with
living fire from her altar, until have sprung forth words that
flamed with love to man and love to God. Has music sought to
weave her entrancing spells around the ear and heart and soul?
the church of Christ has breathed into music her own divine
being, until the music of the church seems like beatific worship,
and worship on earth like beatific music.
As in these respects, so in others, the church has made a holy
conquest of whatever is noblest among the endowments of men. In
speaking of Catholic history, even from the secular point of
view, it may be justly said, that nowhere else has there been
such wonderful discernment of the various capacities of the human
mind, and of their various adaptations. Tenacious of the truth
and of all its prerogatives, the Catholic Church has,
nevertheless, allowed a wide liberty of thought. That the
Catholic Church has narrowed the understandings of men, is a
singular charge to make in the face of the schools of Catholic
philosophy, in which men of varying mental structure, training,
or habits of thought, have had full, free play of their
faculties.
{195}
And where else have there been so many free and varying
activities as in the Catholic Church? The false charge that the
church fetters the minds and movements of men, may be traced to
the fact that all Catholic diversities of thought have converged,
like different rays of light, in the elucidation of truth, and
that varying modes of Catholic action have had one object--the
advancement of truth.
Here is the intended force of all these illustrations, for they
have had a logical purpose. The world will never outgrow the
church. All the boasted improvements in science, in art, in
civilization, so far from impeding the church of Christ, and
making her existence no longer needed, will, at the same time,
advance her power, and make her more needed than ever. If in the
middle ages, when society was in the process of transition from
the old to the new, the church was pre-eminently needed to keep
what was just and right and true in the older forms of
civilization, and gradually to adapt to them what was just and
right and true in the newer developments of society, most truly
is the church needed now, when there exists a perfect chaos of
opinions, and when a part of the civilized world is in another
transition, from the aimless, rudderless vagaries of
Protestantism to the solid rock of Catholicity. If ever the voice
of authority was needed, like the voice of the angel of God,
heard amid and above the howlings of the storm, it is needed now.
Much false reasoning has been uttered about the "unchangeable
church," as though, because "unchangeable," it was not adapted to
a changing and striving world, when, in truth, for the very
reason that the church of Christ is unchangeably true, she is
required and adapted for all the changes and emergencies of time.
Who ever heard a sailor complain of the mariner's compass,
because, on account of its unchangeable obstinacy, it would not
conform to his private judgments and caprices about the right
course? No one. It is for the very reason that the mariner's
compass is unchangeably true to the eternal law of magnetic
attraction, under all circumstances and in all places, that it is
the unerring guide among the whirlwinds and heavings of the great
deep. Catholicity is the mariner's compass upon a greater
deep--even that of the wild and rolling, beating ocean of
humanity, pointing, amid sunny calms, or gentle winds, or raging
gales, unerringly to the cross of Jesus Christ, as the needle of
the mariner's compass points to the north--guiding, age after
age, the precious freights of immortal souls to the harbor of
infinite and unending joy.
The force of this illustration is all the stronger that the
mariner's compass is a human adaptation of an immutable law of
nature to navigation, while the church of the living God is
divine alike in origin and application, and has existed from the
beginning, unchangeable, like God himself, yet adapting herself
to the wants of every age. The church of God is like his own
infinite providence, in which unchangeable truth meets in the
harmony of mercy the innumerable changes of human need.
Much has been written and more said about "the church of the
future," as though it were to be some millennial manifestation
altogether different from the historic church; but the church of
the future, which is not also the church of the past and of the
present, can be no church; for a true church must reach to the
ages back as well as to those before.
{196}
If the continuity is broken, truth is broken, and cannot be
restored. As for eighteen centuries there have been no forms of
civil society, no calms or tempests in the moral, political,
social, or religious world, in which the Catholic Church has not
been true to the organic principles of her divine life, even the
enemy of catholicity should admit--that fact being granted--that
the presumption is on her side that she will be equally true to
those principles during the centuries that are to come. He may
deny that the church has been true, and, consequently, that she
will be true, but he will not admit one proposition and deny the
other; he will admit both or deny both. In other words, he will
admit, equally with the friend of catholicity, the identity of
the church, past, present, and to come. Now, it will be
impossible for a friend or enemy of the Catholic Church, from her
beginning to this very day, to point to an hour when she was not
a living church; it is, then, probable, that she will continue to
be a living church. But where, since the promulgation of
Christianity to this time, has existed a body of Christian
believers, which, for the quality of continual existence, has so
good a right to be called the church of Christ as the Catholic
Church? Considering her numbers, extent, and duration, that
church has been preeminently the church of the past; considering
numbers, extent, and duration, that church is pre-eminently the
church of the present; considering all analogies and
probabilities, then the Catholic Church will be preeminently the
church of the future. In truth, the vindictive anger of the
enemies of the Catholic Church, in whatever form of opposition it
may be shown, proceeds from the fact, not that she is the dead
church of the past, as she is sometimes called, for there would
be no reason to war with the dead, but because she is, as she has
been and will be, the living church. The Catholic Church is hated
not for being too dead, but for being too living. She has seen
the birth and death of countless "improvements" of her
principles, and she has received with gladness into her fold many
an eager and conscientious inquirer for the "new church," who has
at length reached an end of his wanderings and a solution of his
doubts in finding, with tears of rapturous submission, that the
new church, for which he was seeking, is the same church which
has stood for ages, ever old, yet ever new, because representing
Him who is alike the Living God and the Ancient of Days.
The Catholic Church, so frequently and unjustly denounced as ever
behind the age, or even as facing the past, has been foremost in
all parts of the world. She has sent her faithful soldiers of the
cross where the spirit of commerce dared not go; she was the
first in the east and the first in the West; it was her lamp of
divine light which dispelled the gloomy terrors of the barbarous
north of Europe; it was her sceptre of celestial beauty, which,
under the guidance of Heaven, transformed the political and
social wreck of southern Europe into order. In what part of the
world which man could reach has she not planted the cross? Where
on the face of the earth is the mountain whose craggy sides have
not, at one time or another, sent back into the sounding air the
echoes of Catholic worship?
{197}
Daniel Webster gave a vivid picture of the extent of the power of
England, in what I think to be the grandest sentence which
America has contributed to the common treasure of English
literature. He said: "The morning drum-beat, following the sun,
and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth daily with
one unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." That grand
figure of speech may be applied to the extent of the Catholic
Church. Yet it is not by martial airs, but by hymns of praise and
penitential orisons and the continuous sacrifice that the
Catholic Church daily celebrates, "from the rising of the sun
unto the going down of the same," the triumphant march of the
Prince of Peace. How like "the sound of many waters" rolls hourly
heavenward the anthems of catholic worship throughout the world!
Not only is every moment of every day consecrated by catholic
hymns sung somewhere on earth; but how majestically roll down
through eighteen hundred years the unbroken anthems of catholic
devotion! Minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day,
night after night, month after month, year after year, century
after century, the holy strains go on unending. To the mind's ear
seem blended in one almost overpowering flood of holy harmony the
unnumbered voices which have sounded from the very hour when the
shepherds of Bethlehem heard the angelic song to this very
moment, when, somewhere, catholic voices are chanting praise to
the Lord and Saviour of men.
And, in this view, how literally has been fulfilled that
consoling prophecy, "Henceforth all generations shall call me
blessed." Wherever the Divine Son has been duly honored, there
also she, who was remembered with filial love even amid his dying
agonies for a world's salvation, has been remembered and called
blessed; called blessed from that lowly home and from that mount
of sorrow in the distant east, in millions of lowly homes, and
under the shadow of mountains to the farthest west; called
blessed by millions of loving and imploring voices through all
the ages since; called blessed in all the languages that have
been spoken since that time in all the world; called blessed in
the rudest forms of human speech and in the most ecstatic music
of voice and skill; called blessed by the lips of the little
child that can hardly speak the name of mother, and by the lips
that tremble with age and sorrow; called blessed by the sailor on
the deep, by the ploughman on the land, by the scholar at his
books, by the soldier drawing his sword for right upon the
battle-field; called blessed by the voices of peasant-girls
singing in sunny vineyards, and by the voices of those from whose
brows have flashed the gems of royal diadems; called blessed in
cottages and palaces, at wayside shrines, and under the golden
roofs of grand cathedrals; called blessed in the hour of joy and
in the hour of anguish--in the strength and beauty of life, and
at the gates of death. How long, how ardently, how faithfully has
all this loving honor been paid for so many generations, and will
continue to be paid for all generations to come, to that
sorrowing yet benignant one, who bore him who bore our woe!
The recent gathering at Rome indicates that there is no demand
which civilization can rightfully make of the Christian Church
which she will not eagerly, fully, and faithfully meet. The
largest assemblage of professed ministers of Christ which this
age has known--leaving here out of view the claims of the
Catholic Church to an apostolical priesthood--has been held in
Rome by the church, so extensively proclaimed and derided as
being behind the age. If there is life, deep, full, pervading
life anywhere on earth, it is in the Catholic Church and in all
her movements.
{198}
She will continue to draw to herself all the qualities and
capacities of life which are in harmony with her spirit; and this
accumulated spiritual force will constantly weaken the barriers
that divide her from the sympathies of a large part of
Christendom, until at length she will be acknowledged by all as
the only living and true church of Christ.
"The restoration of the unity of the church" has been the subject
of many thoughts, of many words, of earnest and devout prayer, of
much and noble effort, and, when understood as referring to the
reconciliation of those who have left the Catholic Church, or who
are now out of it because their fathers left it, the phrase may
pass without objection; but the phrase is greatly objectionable,
even to the extent of expressing an untruth, when it is used to
convey the idea that the unity of the church has ever been
broken. This has not been, and could not be. The church, intended
to be one, and to endure until the end of time, could not, in its
organic structure, be really broken at any period of its history,
without destroying its title as the one church of Christ.
Individuals, communities, even nations, as such, have been broken
off from it; but the essential church herself has remained one
and unbroken through all vicissitudes. The theory that the Church
of Rome, the Greek Church, and the Church of England are equal
and co-ordinate branches of the one church of Christ has no
foundation as an historical fact, and is as destructive of all
true ideas of the unity of the church as the wildest vagaries of
Protestantism. Is there on earth an institution which schism,
heresy, and political ambition have tried to destroy and have
tried in vain? There is; it is the Catholic Church. Is there an
institution on earth which, leaving out of regard all its claims,
has had the quality of historical continuity for eighteen
centuries? There is; it is the Catholic Church.
The charge, if not of bigotry, yet of most unreasonable
arrogance, has been more or less directly made against the
Catholic Church, because she has not received overtures of
reconciliation from enthusiastic and earnest individuals claiming
to represent national churches, as cordially as was expected. But
how can she accept, or even consider, any such overtures,
proceeding as they do from the assumption of equal position and
authority, without disowning herself, without denying even those
claims and prerogatives, the existence of which alone makes union
with her desirable? If there is no institution on earth which has
a valid title to be the continuous church of Christ, all efforts
will be vain to supply the gap of centuries by an establishment
now. A union of churches will not satisfy the design or promise
of our Lord, when he founded the unity of his church. If the
Christian church has really been broken into pieces, it will be
in vain to gather up the fragments; for, on that supposition, the
divine principle has long since departed, and the gates of hell
have prevailed. Those men of strong Catholic predilections, who,
nevertheless, have clung to the theory that the church of Christ
has been really broken, and must be repaired by management, will
yet thank God from their inmost souls for the immovable firmness
with which that theory has been denied at Rome.
The Catholic Church has never condemned a heresy more false or
destructive than the proposition that she is herself but one of
the divisions of the Christian church, having no authority to
speak or to rule in the name of her Lord.
{199}
To deny that the one church of Christ is now existing, and that
she has existed for ages, is to deny not merely a fact in
history, but it is to deny the word of our Lord; and to do that,
is to deny alike his holiness and his divinity. How can the
Catholic Church treat with those who wish to make terms before
submitting to her authority, on the basis of a positive untruth?
Catholicity is not an inheritance, to be decided among many
claimants, no one of whom has any right to be or to be regarded
as the sole heir of the homestead; but it is an estate left by
the divine Lord of the manor, in charge of the Prince of the
Apostles and his successors, on the express injunction that it is
to be kept one and undivided, in trust for the benefit of the
faithful for all time. The estate has been kept one and
undivided, according to the title-deed; the injunction has never
been broken; notwithstanding all defections from the household,
the homestead of the Christian world remains in the hands of the
same faithful succession to which it was committed by our Lord
himself. May God grant that all the younger sons who have gone
astray, may return with penitential alacrity to their Father's
house!
The Catholic Church will not stop in her progress, until she has
converted the world to Christ; but she has not denied, and will
not deny, her sacred trust and prerogative of catholicity for the
sake even of adding whole nations to her fold. Whoever enters her
fold must admit by that act her claim to be the one, undivided,
indivisible Church of Christ. There can be no "branches of the
Catholic Church" which are not directly joined to the root and
trunk of catholicity. A severed branch is no branch.
It is not the fault of the Catholic Church that multitudes "who
profess and call themselves Christians" are not members of her
communion. She affords the very largest liberty for individual or
associated action that can be yielded without denying her faith
or her commission. The highest poetry and the severest logic may
kneel in brotherly harmony at her altar. Gifts and talents the
most diverse have been consecrated to her service. The Catholic
Church advancing, century after century, under the banner of the
cross and dove, to the spiritual conquest of the world! how far
more sublime a spectacle it is than that of some parts of
Christendom, which are broken into little independent bands of
sectarian skirmishers, keeping up a kind of guerrilla warfare
against "the world, the flesh, and the devil," and each other.
There are inspiring tokens which show the depth and breadth of
the conviction, that the great schism of three centuries ago has
proved a terrible mistake. Multitudes outside of the Catholic
Church are inquiring with earnest solicitude about the meaning of
catholic unity. The main course of intellectual inquiry is, in
both hemispheres, respecting the claims of the Catholic Church.
There are evident signs that the chaos of Protestantism is about
to be broken up, and the wild, and dreary waste to bloom and glow
with Catholic beauty and order. God grant that it may be so, and
that not only thousands of individuals may know how precious a
prize it is to kneel devoutly and sincerely before, the altar of
God; but that even, mighty nations may be convinced, what
priceless gifts they have forfeited by three centuries of
separation from the source of all they have that has been or is
worth keeping.
{200}
In view of the fact that the revival of catholic feeling
enkindles also the enmity of those who scan it, the gathering at
Rome is not only an assurance before the world that the Catholic
Church will continue to be the guide of life and the empire of
civilization, but it is also a sublime challenge against all the
agencies of every kind that have been, or may be tried, to
eliminate Catholicity from the age. The Catholic Church has a
work to do, and she will do it. She can no more forego it, than
she can die by her own will. She has never flinched yet; she
never will. It is the very necessity as well as the reason of her
being that she shall fulfil her charge without wavering or
diminution; and this she will do. If the "gates of hell" cannot
prevail against the church of God, she may safely defy all mortal
might. The sun might more easily have refused to come forth at
the bidding of the Creator, than the church can refuse to do his
will in conquering the world for Christ. God speed the day when
the divisions of Christendom shall end; when all who profess to
be the disciples of Jesus Christ shall seek and find consolation
in his one, true, enduring fold; and when the sceptre of God,
manifest in the church, shall be extended in benignant power over
an obedient and rejoicing world.
--------
"The United Churches Of England And Ireland, In Ireland."
[Footnote 47]
[Footnote 47: _Ireland and her Churches_. By James
Godkin. London, Chapman & Hall. 1867. 1 vol. pp. 623.]
It is well to be accurate in the bestowal of titles, and we give,
therefore, the institution whose latest history lies before us
the exact definition by which, these sixty years past, it
rejoices to be known. Under this designation of its own choice
this institution is open to the reflection of being one of the
most modern of all the churches pretending to be national; the
junior of even our own American Episcopal Church, which is not
itself very far stricken in years; the junior, indeed, of all the
other churches we can at this moment recall to memory, unless we
were to include "the Church of the Latter-Day Saints," whose
Mecca stands upon Salt Lake.
On the first day of January, in the first year of this century,
the ecclesiastical system, establishment, or organization which
designates itself as "the United Church of England and Ireland,
in Ireland," came, with sound of many trumpets, into the world.
On that auspicious day, the legislative union of Ireland and
Great Britain was proclaimed; a new national flag, "the Union
Jack," was run up from the royal towers of London, Dublin, and
Edinburgh; a new royal title was assumed for the coinage of the
new realm, and in all great public transactions; a new "great
seal" was struck for the sovereign of the newly modelled state;
new peers and new commoners were added to the two houses of
Parliament, and, to complete the revolution, by the 5th clause of
the same act, the matters previously mentioned having been first
disposed of, this new church was, on that same day and hour, by
the same authority, called into existence. His majesty's
proclamation, announced at Paul's Cross in London, at the Cross
in Edinburgh, and where the Cross of _le Dame_ street ought
to have been, in Dublin, that "the doctrine, worship, discipline,
and government of the said United Church shall be and shall
remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by law
established for the Church of England."
{201}
The two national churches, thus by act of parliament and royal
proclamation, united into, so to speak, one imperial church, with
an identical "doctrine, worship, and discipline," had a good many
antecedents in common, and a good many others that were peculiar
to each side of the channel. Irish Protestantism had never been a
servile or even a close copy of its English senior. Whether, as
Swift sarcastically maintained, the sermons of Dublin pulpits
were flavored by the soil, or whether the cause of difference lay
in the atmosphere, the Irish variety of "the churches of the
Reformation," was as full of self-complacency and self-assertion,
as any of the sisterhood. It imbibed at the start, chiefly from
Usher, a larger draught of Genevan theology than was quite
reconcilable with the Thirty-nine Articles; it has been almost
invariably toryish in its relations to the state; while the
English establishment, at least since 1668, has been pretty
equally divided between the two great political parties. But the
most singular peculiarity of this very modern church of Ireland
was the persuasion it arrived at, and endeavored to impress upon
the world, that it was the veritable primitive Christianity of
the Green Isle; that instead of tracing its origin to quite
recent acts of parliament, its pedigree ran up nearly to the Acts
of the Apostles; that Saint Patrick and Saint Columba were its
true founders, and not such saints of yesterday as George Browne
and James Usher. Whenever it was necessary to enforce the
collection of tithes, or to protect the monopoly of university
education, the statutes at large were resorted to as the true
charter of its institution; but whenever it became requisite to
defend its anomalous position, by writing or speaking, the
Protestantism of Saint Patrick--his independence of Rome more
especially--was the favorite argument of its defenders.
No "reformed" community has ever made such desperate and
persistent efforts, with such flimsy or wholly imaginary
materials, to bridge over the long space of the middle ages, in
order to make some show of historical connection with the first
founders of Christianity. But the recent revival of genuine
ecclesiastical learning has utterly dissipated the last fond
efforts of these spiritual genealogists; and the very first acts
of its existence as a separated body, are now as well understood
as the 41st of George III., by which it became a copartner in
"the United Church of England and Ireland," no longer ago than
the first day of the year of our Lord, 1801.
The history of the Irish member of this curious ecclesiastical
firm may best be traced through the statutes at large. As its
parentage was parliamentary, so its life has been legislative.
There is one advantage in having this description of authority to
refer to, that it cannot be disputed. The "Journals of
Parliament" in England and Ireland, from the reformation to the
civil emancipation of the Catholics in 1829, are good Protestant
authority. The peers and commoners of the old religion were
excluded from the English houses, from the 10th of Elizabeth
(1567) to the 9th of George IV., (1829,) a period of 262 years;
and in Ireland, the last parliament in which Catholics sat was
that of 4th James II., (1689,) followed by a period of exclusion,
before the union, of 111 years.
{202}
It was not found possible, so early as the time of the two first
Stuarts and Elizabeth, to wholly exclude Catholics, or, as they
were then called, "recusants," from membership in either house in
Ireland; and accordingly we find them a formidable minority in
those rarely occurring assemblies, such as the Irish parliaments
held in the 11th and 25th of Elizabeth, the 11th James I., the
14th Charles I., and the 12th of Charles II, In the second
James's short-lived parliament of one session, hastily adjourned
to allow his lords and gentlemen to follow their master to the
banks of the "ill-fated river," they were a majority; but with
that evanescent exception, the statutes of Ireland are quite as
exclusively Protestant authority on all church matters as those
of England previous to the union of the legislatures and the
churches, and subsequently down to 1829.
The history of Protestantism in Ireland, from first to last, is a
political history. Its best record is to be found in the
parliamentary journals as well in the reign of Henry VIII. as of
George III. And though we do not propose to dwell, in the present
paper, in anything like detail on the annals of that
establishment previous to the present century, we must condense
into a short space the main facts of its first appearance on the
scene, and its early parliamentary nurture and education, to
account for the facility with which it ceased to be, even in
pretence, a national church at the time of the legislative union.
Political in its origin, its organization, and its government,
from the first hour of its existence, it had neither will, nor
wish, nor ability, if it had either, to resist the designs of the
state, which included its incorporation into the imperial system.
As the lay representation of Ireland was recast, as the seal and
the standard were changed, so the institution started by statute
and royal orders in council in the sixteenth century came
naturally to have its individuality extinguished by other
statutes and orders in council in the nineteenth. If this
so-called "Church of Ireland" had really believed itself to be
what its champions had so often asserted, the true and ancient
national church of the kingdom, it would at all events have made
some show of patriotic resistance before making its surrender.
Not only, however, was it not really national in its origin, but
it was then, and always, an eminently anti-popular institution.
There was not, as in other countries during the reformation, even
the pretext of what is called a popular "movement against Rome."
No Luther had arisen among the Celtic or the Anglo-Irish
Catholics in that age of perturbation. The ancient faith was
received as implicitly by the burgesses of Dublin as by the
clansmen of Connaught, and the spiritual supremacy of the pope
seemed a doctrine as impossible of contradiction to the
descendants of Strongbow as to the children of Milesius. No
internal revolt against Roman discipline or Roman doctrine had
shown itself within the western island. There was no spiritual
insurrection attempted from within to justify the resort to
external intervention. The annalists of Donegal, who are commonly
called "The Four Masters," and who were old enough to remember
the first mention of Protestantism in their own province, thus
unconsciously express the amazement of the educated Irish mind of
those days at the new doctors and doctrines:
{203}
"A.D. 1537. A heresy and a new error broke out in England, the
effects of pride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the
prevalence of a variety of scientific and philosophical
speculations, so that the people of England went into
opposition to the pope and to Rome. At the same time they
followed a variety of opinions, and the old law of Moses, after
the manner of the Jewish people, and they gave the title of
Head of the Church of God to the king. There were enacted by
the king and council new laws and statutes after their own
will."
But the laws and statutes enacted by the king and council in
England, for changing the national religion, were not immediately
either extended to, or proposed for imitation in, Ireland. The
zeal of the crowned apostle was tempered by the exigencies of the
politician. Before this king's time, the English power in Ireland
had been essentially a colonial power; "a pale" or enclosure, or
garrison. Whoever will not mark the point, will miss the very
pivot of all the operations of the new religion in Ireland. Henry
VIII. had inherited from his father, the first king of united
England for a century, the ambition of making himself equally
master of the neighboring nation. During the twenty years of the
sway of his great cardinal-chancellor, this object never was for
a moment lost sight of. When Wolsey went down to the grave in
disgrace without seeing it fulfilled, his royal pupil continued
to prosecute the plan to its entire accomplishment. This result,
however, he only reached in the thirty-second year of his reign,
(1541,) some six years before his miserable end. Ten years
previously, (1531,) he may be said to have established the new
religion in England by compelling the majority of the clergy to
subscribe to his supremacy in spirituals; within two years
followed his marriage with Anne Boleyn; and in 1535, his order
appeared commanding the omission "of the name of the Bishop of
Rome from every liturgical book," which may be said to have
completed the severance of England from Rome.
Not only did not Henry, in obedience to his political design of
adding another crown to his dominions, not press his reformed
doctrines immediately upon the Irish of either race, but he
expressly reprehended his deputies at Dublin for having
prematurely attempted the national conversion. In the same year
in which he struck the pope's name from every liturgical book, he
sharply rebuked George Browne, an English ex-Augustinian whom he
had appointed Archbishop of Dublin, for destroying certain relics
of saints in the churches of that city. Again in the same year.
Secretary Cromwell writes officially to contradict "a common
rumor," that he intended to pluck down the statue of "our Lady of
Trim," which was as famous on the west, as our "Lady of
Walsingham" on the east of the channel. Four years later, we find
the Lord Deputy Grey, after a victory over O'Neill at Bellahoe,
halting with the whole court and army at this celebrated place of
pilgrimage, and visiting this same shrine of our Lady--"very
devoutly kneeling before her, he heard three or four masses." At
that moment, in the thirtieth year of Henry VIII., and the sixth
of his open rupture with Rome, any Celtic-Irish or Anglo-Irish
Catholic, in the ranks of Lord Grey, not particularly well
informed as to the affairs of the neighboring kingdom, might have
rested honestly in the belief that he was serving a Catholic
prince in full communion with the rest of Christendom.
{204}
But as soon as the election to the kingship, which it is not in
our way here to dwell upon, was successfully over, and the new
royal title proclaimed, confirmed, and acknowledged abroad,
especially in Scotland and France, and by the emperor, then there
came a change. The politician being satisfied, the apostle awoke.
A commission of reformation, at the head of which sat Archbishop
Browne, undertook the purgation of the Dublin and neighboring
churches, producing as their warrant the royal authority, "dated
years before." A sufficient guard of horse and foot accompanied
these commissioners, and were much needed to protect them from
the populace. The statues and relics in the cathedrals of
Leighlin, Ferns, and Kildare; the Lady statue at Trim, and a
famous crucifixion in Ballyhogan Abbey, were forthwith destroyed.
So far and so soon as they could venture into the interior, this
"work, of reformation," under the royal warrant, was pushed on
vigorously, in order, as Henry's commission expressed it, "that
no fooleries of this kind might henceforth for ever be in use in
said land." This royal order (1539) sounded the key-note of
spoliation, and little more than this was attempted during the
remainder of this reign. The first serious effort at national
conversion was made under the orders in council of the 4th of
Edward VI., (1551,) when on Easter day the English liturgy was
for the first time publicly recited in Christ Church Cathedral,
the ex-Augustinian archbishop preaching from the text, "Open mine
eyes, that I may see the wonders of the laws," (Ps. 119.) The
liturgy was printed the same year at Dublin, in English, and the
lord deputy was instructed to take measures to have it
"translated into Irish in those places that need it." The
following year the work of spoliation was resumed with new vigor
at the famous seven churches of Clonmacnoise, and other points
upon the Shannon. Within twelve months thereafter, young Edward
died, and the five years' reign of Queen Mary gave a respite to
the Irish church. It was a period too short for restoration, but
long remembered with regretful affection for the temporary
exemption from persecution it had afforded.
Anti-national and anti-popular in its conception, the reformation
presented itself in Ireland as the enemy at once of the useful
and all the fine arts; of all that amused and ennobled and
entertained the people. Among both races, war was a business, and
the layman's hand was always within reach of his weapon. The arts
of peace--agriculture, architecture, botany, medicine, music,
were all inmates of the convent and the monastery. The civil
glories and treasures of the country were hoarded up where alone
they could be secured, in the chancel and the cloister. It was,
however, the first duty of the new reformers to strike down and
demolish these venerated remains of the piety of former
generations. Pictures brought from abroad, or the work of native
artists, were defaced; stained windows were brutally broken;
shrines smashed; beautiful missals thrown into the fire; croziers
broken to bits; chalices and ciboriums melted into bullion; bells
blessed to the offices of peace and forgiveness melted down to be
cast into ordnance; and all the endearing, civilizing, and solemn
associations interwoven from childhood with these consecrated
objects of art, were rudely torn out of the bleeding hearts of
the people. In the six remaining years of Henry, and the six of
Edward VI., nearly six hundred religious houses were thus
stripped, desecrated, and dismantled.
{205}
"They sold their roofs and bells," say the Four Masters, in the
annal already quoted, "so there was not a monastery left from the
Arran of the Saints to the Iccian Sea, which was not broken and
shattered, except a few only" in the remoter corners of the
kingdom. Of the regular religious orders then established in that
small kingdom, the rule of St. Augustine was followed by 256
houses, male and female; that of St. Bernard by 44; of St.
Francis by 114; of St. Dominick by 41; of St. Benedict by 14; of
Mount Carmel by 29. Besides these, it is a pathetic and
instructive circumstance to remember, that there were then, even
in that far western island, not less than 22 houses of Knights of
Saint John of Jerusalem, vowed to the redemption of the Holy
Sepulchre, and 14 of the Trinitarian Order for the redemption of
Christian captives from African slavery. All these, with their
interior furniture and external possessions, were with ruthless
hand transferred to the new clergy, or converted to worldly
purposes, in order to prepare the way of the new religion as set
forth by the king's order.
It is but fair to point out, that the preachers of this religious
revolution were only in part, though in a very considerable part,
the receivers of the spoils. A new aristocracy arose on the ruins
of the monasteries and churches. Some Irish houses may claim to
have ancestors who came in with Strongbow; but many more founders
of families came in penniless adventurers at the reformation. The
Bagnals and Chichesters, in the north; the St. Legers, Boyles,
and Kings in the south; and the Burkes and Croftons in the west,
were formerly, and some of their descendants still are, the
largest inheritors of ecclesiastical plunder. The chartered
minorities of townsmen, whose consciences consented to take the
oath of supremacy, were not without their recompense even in this
world. The neighboring church and convent property was frequently
assigned to these corporators, no matter how few in number, for
the use indeed of the corporation; but as they generally
contrived to become in their individual capacity tenants under
themselves as a corporation, there was at least one description
of occupants in the country, who held their lands on easy
conditions. These corporate bodies, which continued exclusively
Protestant down to the passage of the Irish Municipal Reform Bill
in 1834, were often reduced to a ludicrously small number; but
even in such Catholic cities as Limerick, Cashel, Clonmel, and
Waterford and Drogheda, they continued to possess and dispose of,
and often to alienate, the former endowments of pious chiefs and
barons to the suppressed convents and colleges of the vicinity.
The new proprietory and clerical interests thus created at the
expense of the confiscated church, were placed in a position to
require the constant protection and superintendence of the
creative power. And this again required, most unhappily both for
church and state in that country, the continuous proscription and
suppression of those who represented the important interests so
dispossessed and disinherited. From thence arose the deadly feud
between law and nature, which has disfigured and degraded
humanity in Ireland; which has so effectually separated the very
ideas of law and justice in the modern Irishman's mind that his
first presumption in all conflicting cases is (to his own loss
frequently) against the law, rather than in its favor. The body
of legislation of which we speak had long ago swelled to the
dimensions of a code, and since the early years of George III.
has been known exclusively by the name of _The Penal Code_.
{206}
The principal collections of this code are by Sir Henry Parnell,
(afterward Lord Congleton,) Mr. Bedford, an English barrister,
Mr. Mathew O'Conor, of the Irish bar, and the late indefatigable
Dr. R. R. Madden. The commentators on the code, from Edmund Burke
to Bishop Doyle, or rather the advocates for its amelioration in
the first place, and afterward for its total repeal, included
almost every name distinguished for liberality in the British
annals of the last hundred years.
The first of these proscriptive enactments dates from the 2d year
of Elizabeth, when a parliament representing ten counties was
held at Dublin. By this assembly the acts enforcing uniformity of
worship, and the queen's supremacy in spirituals as well as
temporals, are said to have been passed; though others say this
parliament adjourned without regularly adopting those measures.
In the 3d year of the same reign a further act is found on the
Irish Statute-Book, obliging, under forfeiture of office and
civil disfranchisement for life, "ecclesiastical persons and
officers, judges, justices, mayors, temporal officers, and every
other person who hath the queen's wages, to take the oath of
supremacy." Commissioners of ecclesiastical causes were created
by an act of the same session, "to adjudge heresy" according to
the canonical scriptures, the first four general councils, and
the laws of parliament. By this commission, five years later,
(1564,) the English _Book of Articles_ was declared of full
force in Ireland. These articles were twelve in number.
"1. The Trinity in Unity;
2. The Sufficiency of the Scriptures to Salvation;
3. The Orthodoxy of Particular Churches;
4. The Necessity of Holy Orders;
5. The Queen's Supremacy;
6. Denial of the Pope's authority 'to be more than other Bishops have;'
7. The Conformity of the Book of Common Prayer to the Scriptures;
8. The Ministration of Baptism does not depend on the Ceremonial;
9. Condemns 'Private Masses,' and denies that the Mass can
be a propitiatory Sacrifice for the Dead;
10. Asserts the Propriety of Communion in Both Kinds;
11. Utterly disallows Images, Relics, and Pilgrimages;
12. Requires a General Subscription to the foregoing Articles."
The subsequent legislation of Elizabeth in Ireland was chiefly
political, if we except (in the 11th and 12th of her reign) the
act respecting vacant benefices, and the act establishing
[Protestant] free schools.
Parliaments in those days assembled at long and uncertain
intervals. The only one held during the first James's reign in
Ireland--twenty-seven years after Elizabeth's last, and
twenty-one before Charles I. convened another--was purely
political. This parliament was opened and managed by the Lord
Deputy, Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, whose avowed and almost
only object in using such an agency was to make his royal master
"as absolute as any king in Christendom." Four years later,
(1639) was held the second and last Irish parliament of this
reign, and simultaneously, (at the instance, and under the advice
of Laud), the able, iron-nerved, and most unscrupulous deputy
summoned a convocation of the bishops and clergy of the
established religion, which forms a very curious picture of the
state of that establishment at the end of the first century of
the reformation. Strafford himself shall be our authority at this
point, and as abbreviated in Mr. Godkin's
book, pp. 64 and 65.
{207}
"He had ordered a convocation of the clergy to meet
simultaneously with the parliament for the purpose of adopting
the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, so that the
Irish articles might become a dead letter. The convocation went
to work conscientiously, digesting the canons, etc., to the
best of their judgment; but Wentworth found that they were not
doing what he wanted, and resolved to bring them to their
senses. In a letter to Laud he chuckled over his victory,
apparently quite unconscious that he had been playing the
tyrant, _circa sacra_, in a style worthy of Henry VIII.
Having learned what the committee of convocation had done, he
instantly sent for Dean Andrews, its chairman, requiring him to
bring the Book of Canons noted in the margin, together with the
draught he was to present that afternoon to the house. This
order he obeyed; 'but,' says the lord deputy, 'when I came to
open the book, and run over the _deliberandums_ in the
margin, I confess I was not so much moved since I came into
Ireland. I told him, certainly not a Dean of Limerick, but an
Ananias, had sat in the chair of that committee; however, sure
I was an Ananias had been there in spirit, if not in body, with
all the fraternities and conventicles of Amsterdam, that I was
ashamed and scandalized with it above measure.' He gave the
dean imperative orders not to report anything until he heard
from him again. He also issued orders to the primate, the
Bishops of Meath, Kilmore, Raphoe, and Derry, together with
Dean Leslie, the prolucutor, and the whole committee, to wait
upon him next morning. He then publicly rebuked them for acting
so unlike churchmen; told them that a few petty clerks had
presumed to make articles of faith, without the privity or
consent of state or bishop, as if they purposed at once 'to
take away all government and order forth of the church. But
those heady and arrogant courses he would not endure, nor would
he suffer them either to be mad in the convocation nor in their
pulpits.' He next gave them strict injunctions as to what the
convocation should do. They were to say content, or not
content, to the Articles of England, for he would not endure
that they should be disputed. He ordered the primate to frame a
canon on the subject; but it did not meet his approval, and so
the lord deputy framed one himself, whereupon his grace came to
him instantly and said he feared the canon would never pass in
such a form as his lordship had made, but he was hopeful it
might pass as he had drawn it himself. He therefore besought
the lord deputy to think a little better of it. The sequel is
best told in Strafford's own vigorous language--'But I confess,
having taken a little jealousy that his proceedings were not
open and free to those ends I had my eye upon, it was too late
now either to persuade or to affright me. I told his lordship I
was resolved to put it to them in those very words, and was
most confident there were not six in the house that would
refuse them, telling him, by the sequel, we should see whether
his lordship or myself better understood their minds in that
point, and by that I would be content to be judged, only for
order's sake I desired his lordship would vote this canon first
in the upper house of convocation, and so voted, then to pass
the question beneath also.' He adds that he enclosed the canon
[Footnote 48] to Dean Leslie, 'which, accordingly, that
afternoon was unanimously voted, first with the bishops, and
then by the rest of the clergy, excepting one man, who simply
did deliberate upon the receiving of the Articles of England.'"
[Footnote 48: The first Irish canon.]
We pause and draw a hard breath, after this dictatorial
description of how to rule a church and have a church, to observe
that the Irish Protestant prelates of those days were no mean
men; Bramhall was Bishop of Derry, and Bedell of Kilmore, and the
primate so hectored and overawed by this Cavalier-Cromwell was no
less a personage than James Usher. But being as they were, as
they well knew they were, the creatures of the state, what could
they do when brought into conflict with the author and finisher
of their law?
Omitting the period of the civil wars and the Cromwellian
Protectorate as a period phenomenal and exceptional, deserving
study apart, we pass to the first parliament of Charles II.,
(1662,) in which one of the first contributions to the statutes
which we find, is the renewal of the Elizabethan act of
uniformity. In the same session was passed the acts of settlement
and explanation, which have been called "the Magna Charta of
Irish Protestantism." These acts confirmed to their Puritan
possessors the properties of the Catholic gentry confiscated by
Cromwell for their attachment to both Charleses, and extending
into almost every county. Of 6000 proprietors, so confiscated,
but 60--one per cent--were restored, in part or whole, to their
hereditary estates.
{208}
Thirty years later, after William's victory over James II., 4000
remaining Catholic proprietors were subjected to a similar
proscription--so that in that half-century 10,000 owners of
estates forfeited them for their fidelity to their ancient, and
their hostility to what Mr. Froude correctly calls "the intrusive
religion."
No parliament sat again in Ireland, till that short one of a
single session before mentioned, (the 4th James II.,) summoned in
1689. This parliament repealed the acts of settlement and
explanation, Poyning's law, and other coercive and intolerant
statutes; but the issue of battle went against King James, and
the two succeeding reigns became fruitful beyond precedent of
penal legislation. Although the 9th of the "Articles of
Limerick"--at the close of the war--had simply imposed one
unobjectionable sentence as an oath of allegiance on the defeated
party, the act (2d and 3d William and Mary) prescribed an
elaborate form of abjuration of the doctrines of
transubstantiation and of the invocation of saints, and declaring
the holy sacrifice of the Mass "superstitious and idolatrous."'
The oath of abjuration concluded by the denial to any foreign
prince or prelate (namely, the pope) of "any jurisdiction, power,
superiority, preeminence, or authority, _ecclesiastical_ or
_spiritual_, within the realm." There never was a more
shameful breach of public faith than this statute. The treaty of
Limerick had simply prescribed this form of oath for the
restoration to their former _status_ of all who chose to
take it: "I, A. B., do solemnly promise and swear that I will be
faithful and bear true allegiance to their majesties King William
and Queen Mary; so help me God."
And the 10th article of the same treaty had provided: "The oath
to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their
majesties' government, shall be the oath aforesaid and no other."
Yet within the same twelvemonths in which William's generals and
lord-justices signed this latter compact, the new penal law was
passed, and the new oath of abjuration was imposed. In 1691, the
tolerant treaty was signed; in 1692, when the few Catholic peers
and commoners who ventured to present themselves appeared to be
sworn in of the new Irish parliament, they were met by this
infamous oath of abjuration, driven out and disqualified. Above a
million of their broad acres were forfeited, as a further penalty
on those who refused the oath, and we need not be surprised to
find, at King William's death, (1702,) that but "one sixth part"
of the property of the kingdom remained in Catholic hands.
The 7th and 8th William and Mary re-enacted, with additions, the
Elizabethan penal laws. Of these additions the principal were:
1. Authorizing the Protestant chancellor to name guardians for
Catholic minors.
2. Act to prevent recusants (Catholics) from becoming tutors in
private families, unless by license of the Protestant
ordinaries of their several dioceses.
3. An act to prevent Roman Catholics acting as
guardians to minor children.
4. An act to disarm Roman Catholics.
5. An act for the banishment of popish priests and prelates.
During the reign of Queen Anne, however, the code received its
last finishing contributions. In the 1st and 2d of this queen was
passed "the act for discouraging the further growth of popery,"
of which the following were the principal provisions:
{209}
"The third clause provides that if the son of an estated Papist
shall conform to the established religion, the father shall be
incapacitated from selling or mortgaging his estate, or
disposing of any portion of it by will. The fourth clause
prohibits a Papist from being the guardian of his own child;
and orders that, if at any time the child, though ever so
young, pretends to be a Protestant, it shall be taken from its
own father, and placed under the guardianship of the nearest
Protestant relation. The sixth clause renders Papists incapable
of purchasing any manors, tenements, hereditaments, or any
rents or profits arising out of the same, or of holding any
lease of lives, or other lease whatever, for any term exceeding
thirty-one years. And with respect even to such limited leases,
it further enacts that, if a Papist should hold a farm
producing a profit greater than one third of the amount of the
rent, his right to such should immediately cease, and pass over
entirely to the first Protestant who should discover the rate
of profit. The seventh clause prohibits Papists from succeeding
to the properties or estates of their Protestant relations. By
the tenth clause, the estate of a Papist, not having a
Protestant heir, is ordered to be gavelled, or divided in equal
shares between all his children. The sixteenth and
twenty-fourth clauses impose the oath of abjuration, and the
sacramental test, as a qualification for office, and for voting
at elections. The twenty-third clause deprives the Catholics of
Limerick and Galway of the protection secured to them by the
articles of the treaty of Limerick. The twenty-fifth clause
vests in her majesty all advowsons possessed by Papists.
"A further act was passed, in 1709, imposing additional
penalties. The first clause declares that no Papist shall be
capable of holding an annuity for life. The third provides that
the child of a Papist, on conforming, shall at once receive an
annuity from his father; and that the chancellor shall compel
the father to discover, upon oath, the full value of his
estate, real and personal, and thereupon make an order for the
support of such conforming child or children, and for securing
such a share of the property, after the father's death, as the
court shall think fit. The fourteenth and fifteenth clauses
secure jointures to Popish wives who shall conform. The
sixteenth prohibits a Papist from teaching, even as assistant
to a Protestant master. The eighteenth gives a salary of £30
per annum to Popish priests who shall conform. The twentieth
provides rewards for the discovery of Popish prelates, priests,
and teachers, according to the following whimsical scale: For
discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or other
person, exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction,
£50; for discovering each regular clergyman, and each secular
clergyman not registered, £20, and for discovering each Popish
schoolmaster or usher, £10. The twenty-first clause empowers
two justices to summon before them any Papist over eighteen
years of age, and interrogate him when and where he last heard
Mass said, and the names of the persons present, and likewise
touching the residence of any Popish priest or schoolmaster;
and if he refuses to give testimony, subjects him to a fine of
£20, or imprisonment for twelve months.
"Several other penal laws were enacted by the same parliament,
of which we can only notice one; it excludes Catholics from the
office of sheriff, and from grand juries, and enacts that, in
trials upon any statute for strengthening the Protestant
interest, the plaintiff might challenge a juror for being a
Papist, which challenge the judge was to allow."--_McGee's
Ireland_, vol. ii. pp. 605, 608.
We may here turn from this repulsive record of tyrannous
legislation to inquire into the consequences of it all at the end
of the second, and once again at the end of the third century,
from the reformation.
George II. came to the throne in 1727, and bequeathed it to his
successor in 1760. This generation saw, therefore, the close of
the second century of the great Protestant experiment; and if a
centennial celebration had been proposed to them in 1751, the
report of progress made must have included the following
principal facts.
"We have dispossessed the Catholic proprietors of five sixths
of their property during this last century; we have excluded
them from the bench, the bar, and parliament; we have
prohibited them being guardians or teachers of youth; we have
disfranchised and disarmed their whole body, even their nobles
and gentry; yet as far as the people are concerned, we labor in
vain. There has been lately (1747) a census of the kingdom, and
out of 4,300,000 inhabitants, 3,500,000 are returned as
papists. Even in Ulster they are not supplanted; in Leinster
they are three to one; in Munster, seven to one; in Connaught,
twelve to one. Without property, with few priests, and scarce
any bishops, still doth this perverse generation increase and
multiply. What can we do with them more than we have done to
convince and convert them?" To this searching question some
observer more profound than the others seems to have replied,
"Try education!"
{210}
The third centennial celebration of the introduction of the
English liturgy into Ireland--the 51st year of the union of the
two national churches--would have afforded an excellent
opportunity of taking stock, humanly speaking, of the progress
made in a hundred years. But no one thought of suggesting an
appropriate celebration of the great event, and so, unhappily,
the precious opportunity has been lost. We shall endeavor,
however, to supply the want of such a comprehensive retrospect;
and here, for the first time, we find the facts and figures of
Mr. Godkin's book of considerable service to the subject. From
the House of Commons debates of the year 1834, Mr. Godkin gives
the following sketch of the arguments and illustrations used in
support of "the Church Temporalities Act:"
"Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, and Mr. Sheil, while fully
admitting that an establishment tends to promote religion and
to preserve good order, contended that it ought not to be
maintained where it fails to secure these objects, and that it
must always fail when, as in Ireland, the members of the
Established Church are only a minority of the nation, while the
majority, constituting most of the poorer classes, are thrown
upon the voluntary system for the support of their clergy.
Concurring with Paley in his view of a Church
Establishment--that it should be founded upon utility, that it
should communicate religious knowledge to the masses of the
people, that it should not be debased into a state engine or an
instrument of political power--they demanded whether the Church
of Ireland fulfilled these essential conditions of an
establishment. They asked whether its immense revenues had been
employed in preserving and extending the Protestant faith in
Ireland? In the course of something more than a century it was
stated that its revenues had increased sevenfold, and now
amounted to £800,000 a year. Had its efficiency increased in
the same proportion? Had it even succeeded in keeping its own
small flock within the fold? On the contrary, they adduced
statistics to show a lamentable falling off in their numbers.
For example. Lord John Russell said, 'By Tighe's _History of
Kilkenny_, it appears that the number of Protestant families
in 1731 was 1055, but in 1800 they had been reduced to 941. The
total number of Protestants at the former period was 5238,
while the population of the county, which in 1800 was 108,000,
in 1731 was only 42,108 souls. From Stuart's _History of
Armagh_, we find that sixty years ago the Protestants in
that country were as two to one; now they are as one to three.
In 1733, the Roman Catholics in Kerry were twelve to one
Protestant, and now the former are much more numerous than even
that proportion. In Tullamore, in 1731, there were 64
Protestants to 613 Roman Catholics; but according to Mason's
parochial survey, in 1818 the Protestants had diminished to
only five, while the Roman Catholics had augmented to 2455. On
the whole, from the best computation he had seen--and he
believed it was not exaggerated one way or the other--the
entire number of Protestants belonging to the Established
Church in Ireland can hardly be stated higher than 750,000; and
of those 400,000 are resident in the ecclesiastical province of
Armagh.'"--pp. 153.
Now, for the maintenance of this church of 700,000 out of a
population of 7,000,000--this church of a tenth of the
people--there were then and now are held in mortmain of the best
lands of the kingdom, above 600,000 acres. We are told by the
poet:
"A time there was ere England's woes began
When every rood of ground sustained its man."
The Irish soil is not so nutritious; still, even there, every
acre stands for a soul saved or to be saved, according to "the
doctrine and discipline" of the united church.
{211}
In addition to the lands and their revenues, there are also
certain supplementary parliamentary grants not to be despised
even by light and worldly-minded persons. Mr. Godkin enumerates,
in his introduction, several of these:
"It may be desirable to add some more precise information on
that subject. There was a return made to Parliament, dated 24th
July, 1803, and signed by the then Chief Secretary, Mr.
Wickham, who certified that it was made up from the best
materials in the chief secretary's office, and believed to be
nearly accurate. From this return it appears that the number of
parishes in Ireland then was 2436; of benefices, 1120; of
churches, 1001; and of glebe-houses, 355. This represents the
state of the establishment in the year 1791.
"From 1791 to 1803 the Board of First Fruits granted the sum of
£500, in 88 cases, for the building of churches, making a total
of £44,000. During the same period the Board granted £100 each
for 116 glebe-houses, making a total of £11,600.
"From a parliamentary return, ordered in 1826, it appears that
within the present century the following amounts have been
voted by parliament up to that date: Gifts for building
churches, £224,946; loans for building churches, £286,572;
total, £511,538, for building churches in twenty-five years.
"During the same period gifts were made for glebes, £61,484;
gifts for building glebe-houses, £144,734. Loans were granted
for the same purpose amounting to £222,291, making a total for
glebes and glebe-houses of £428,509. Thus, between the year
1791 and 1826 the Establishment obtained for churches and
glebes the sum of £940,047. The number of glebe-houses in 1826
was increased to 771, and of benefices to 1396. The number of
cures with non-residence was 286." [Footnote 49]
[Footnote 49: The following additional figures (from the
_Union_ to the year 1844) are given on page 96:
For building churches,-- £625,371
For building glebe houses,-- 336,889
For Protestant charity schools,-- 1,105,588
For the Society for
Discountenancing Vice, etc.-- 101,991]
And, on the other hand, the celebrants of the third centenary, if
they had thought of holding one, would have learned from Mr.
Godkin (himself a resolute Protestant of the Unitarian school,
and an ex-reverend) of the alarming increase of popery of late
days even in the very capital of English authority.
"Indeed, the progress of the Roman Catholic Church in this city
is astonishing, and has no parallel perhaps in any country in
Europe. In 1820, there were in Dublin only ten parochial
chapels, most of them of an humble character and occupying
obscure positions. There were at the same time seven convents
or 'friaries,' as they were then called, and ten nunneries,
which Mr. Wright described as 'religious asylums where the
females of the Roman Catholic religion find shelter when
deprived of the protection of their relatives by the hand of
Providence.' [Footnote 50] Now the loveliest daughters of some
of the most respectable and the best connected Roman Catholic
families leave their happy homes and take the veil, sometimes
bringing with them ample fortunes--devoting themselves to the
work of education and the relief of the poor as 'Sisters of
Mercy,' 'Sisters of Charity,' etc.
[Footnote 50: Wright's _Dublin_, p. 174.]
"There are now thirty-two churches and chapels in Dublin and
its vicinity. In the diocese the total number of secular clergy
is 287, and of regulars 125; total priests, 412. The number of
nuns is 1150. Besides the Catholic University, with its ample
staff of professors, there are in the diocese six colleges,
seven superior schools for boys, fourteen superior schools for
ladies, twelve monastic primary schools, forty convent schools,
and 200 lay schools, without including those which are under
the National Board of Education. The Christian Brothers have
7000 pupils under their instruction, while the schools
connected with the convents in the diocese contain 15,000.
Besides Maynooth, which is amply endowed by the state, and
contains 500 or 600 students, all designed for the priesthood,
there is the College of All Hallows, at Drumcondra, in which
250 young men are being trained for the foreign mission. The
Roman Catholic charities of the city are varied and numerous.
There are magnificent hospitals, one of which especially--the
Mater Misericordiae--has been not inappropriately called 'the
Palace of the Sick Poor'--numerous orphanages, several widows'
houses, and other refuges for virtuous women; ragged and
industrial schools, night asylums, penitentiaries,
reformatories, institutions for the blind and deaf and dumb;
institutions for relieving the poor at their own houses, and
Christian doctrine fraternities almost innumerable. All these
wonderful organizations of religion and charity are supported
wholly on the voluntary principle, and they have nearly all
sprung into existence within half a century."--p. 94.
{212}
Such is the latest presentation of facts in relation to "Ireland
and her churches." Of Mr. Godkin's book (we don't know whether or
not he is still called _Reverend_) we can only say that it
is very fairly intended, and shows great industry in the
accumulation of materials. From some statements in the historical
introduction we most decidedly demur; but the valuable collection
of facts in the second part, under the head "Inspection of
Bishoprics," and the manifest desire to do, and to inculcate the
doing of, justice to men of all churches, throughout the whole
book, must bring in every true friend of Ireland the author's
debtor.
-----
Love's Burden.
"My burden is light"
The Disciple.
"Dear Lord, how canst thou say
'Tis light,
When I behold thee on the way
To Calvary's height,
Fainting and falling 'neath its heavy weight?
Ah! no. For me thy burden is too great."
The Master.
"Good child, thou dost mistake
The burden I would have thee take.
The cruel load
That crushed me down on Calvary's road
Was thine,
Not mine.
What lighter burden can there be
Than that which Love would lay on thee?"
The Disciple.
"Kind Lord, how foolish is my speech!
I mark the truth which thou wouldst teach
To my cold heart.
Love all the burden bears of others' woes,
Beyond its might;
But of its own on them it would impose
Only a part,
And makes that light."
--------
{213}
Florence Athern's Trial.
The farm-house occupied by the Lees, Henry and Margaret, was an
old-fashioned, plain brick building. It stood at right angles to
a country road which formed a short cut from the turnpike
(leading from the city of C---- to Hamilton, the county-town of
Butler county, Ohio) to the mills down on the Miami, passing
through Mr. Lee's property and by his garden-gate. The house was
some fifteen or twenty feet back from the road, and built one
room deep three sides, with an old-fashioned garret across the
whole of the main building. A wide brick pavement ran from the
gate opening into the road past the front of the house to another
gate opening into a private lane, leading from the barn and
stables, a hundred yards or so back of the house, to a creek some
distance in front, which had been dammed up to afford a
convenient watering-place for the farm cattle; another brick
pavement, not quite so wide, encircled the rear and sides of the
house. A broad gravel walk led from the back hall-door to a gate,
which, with a hedge, separated the grassy yard from the
vegetable-garden, up through that to the barn; another path led
from the front-door down between broad grass-plats of grass,
studded with evergreens and fruit-trees, over a rustic bridge
that spanned a deep ravine, to some stone steps leading down to a
spring, which, with the space around and the hill behind, was
paved with stone, beneath which the water ran a few feet, then
spread out into a creek fringed with willows. On the right of the
path from the bridge to some distance behind the spring was a
cherry orchard; on the left an open knoll bordered with
flower-beds and shrubbery, and occupied in the centre by a rustic
summer-house.
In front of the farm-house on the edge of the grass-plats was a
row of locust-trees. The parlor was at the end of the house
toward the road and to the right of the hall; to the left of that
was the dining-room; and on the left of that again the kitchen,
not fronting evenly with the rest, but leaving space for a porch
running to the end of the house, into the end of which a door
opened from the dining-room.
It was Christmas eve, 18--. A lovely, clear moonlight night,
rendered brighter by six or eight inches of snow that had fallen
the day before, and now lay glistening like diamond-dust in the
rays of the full moon. No sound disturbed the silence save the
occasional crackling of a branch or twig among the trees, and one
or two passers-by on horse-back or in wagon, trudging merrily
homeward; for though the railroad had long since made a much
shorter route from the city to the mills and Hamilton, Mr. Lee
had not retracted the permit to pass through his farm, and the
road still remained open.
The parlor windows gave out a brilliant light from the candles
burning on the mantle-piece and the Christmas tree, that blazed
between them and the wood fire on the old-fashioned hearth. A
group was seated round it.
{214}
Harry Lee, with just a shade of care on his joyous face and a few
threads of silver through his thick brown hair, sat opposite the
front windows at one side of the hearth; at his side, with her
arm resting on his knee, seated on a low ottoman, was a young
girl, his niece, Florence Athern; from the lamp on the table a
little behind her the soft light fell on the masses of golden
hair that covered her well-shaped head, and on the pages of a
richly illustrated book, the leaves of which were held open by a
hand perfect in its size, shape, and texture; and her face, as
she raised it from time to time, in answer to a caressing nod or
motion of her uncle, was very lovely, with a tinge of sadness in
the light of the soft blue eyes and the curve of the sensitive
lips. Opposite these two sat Margaret Lee. Younger than her
brother, but old before her time, her sad face was still
interesting, though it could not be called handsome. At her side
was a younger sister, whose whole attention was given to the
three children seated on the floor in the space before the fire,
eagerly examining the gifts just taken from the Christmas-trees.
Her husband sat on the other side of the table, on which was the
lamp, looking over a book of engravings, and trying, from time to
time, to restrain the uproar made by the juvenile group. Watching
the children while her hands were full of gifts that had fallen
to her share, stood an old colored woman, short and fat, and
dressed in a neat black dress, while on her head she wore a false
front of crinkled black hair and a black lace cap. Her kind old
face beamed with enjoyment at the children's pleasure.
The room was furnished handsomely and with taste. One or two
portraits and paintings of merit hung on the walls, and over the
mantle-piece was a picture of the Nativity, wreathed with holly,
and before which two wax candles were burning.
No one heard the step that approached the house; no one saw the
wan but handsome face that was thrust close to the panes for a
few moments. A tall, well-dressed man stood there looking in,
then turned away with a sound like a sob and a sigh and covered
his face with his hands. "It is she, my child, my darling; but I
am not worthy, O God! I am not worthy!" He did not look in again,
but turned and walked down the path leading to the spring,
murmuring, "Fifteen years, and so little change in outward
things. The same trees, the porch, the door-steps, only that
snow-ball and these ailanthuses grown into large bushes, and here
and there a flower-bed where there had been grass; but she--ah!
how has my darling passed these years that have been so dreary to
me?" Just then the kitchen-door opened, flooding the porch floor,
the steps, and portion of the walk with light. One of the workmen
came out, and the stranger drew himself closely behind a
pear-shaped evergreen. "I hope," he thought, "the fellow will not
bring a dog with him. He has a bucket in his hand, and may be
going to the spring; in that case, I have no escape, for the snow
will betray me if I move!" But the man said good-night in a
German accent, and, whistling to the Newfoundland which had come
out with him, and now stood snuffing the air toward where the
stranger was hiding, turned and walked the length of the porch,
down the steps at the end, past the pump and smoke-house, out
through the gate into the back lane, and so up to the barn. "So,"
said the stranger, "he has gone to feed the horses for the night,
and I am safe."
{215}
He walked slowly down across the bridge, and stood for a few
moments on the topmost step leading to the spring; then went down
there, and kneeling on the stones at the edge, scooped up some
water in his hand and drank; then rising and brushing the snow
off his clothes, he retraced his steps and once more gazed in at
the parlor window. It happened that the old colored woman had
just picked up the youngest child in her arms, and, followed by
the others, was moving toward the door, her face turned full to
the window, when she made an exclamation and nearly dropped the
child she held. "Why, Tamar," exclaimed Miss Lee, "what's the
matter?" "Oh! nothin'," replied the woman, "spec this colored
pusson gettin' nervus, dat's all. Come long, chicks, to roost."
And she left the room without affording a chance to the group
round the fire to see her face, which bore a frightened look. But
the children, busy with their happy prattle, did not notice it,
neither did the nurse who was waiting for them. As soon as she
had seen them snug in their beds, with stockings duly hung, and
night prayers said, she started to return to the kitchen. Her
mistress heard her, and came into the hall to speak to her,
preceding her through the dining-room and across the space on the
porch between the dining-room and kitchen doors, much to her
satisfaction, to the latter department, to make some necessary
arrangements for breakfast. On Miss Lee's return to the parlor, a
game of whist was proposed, in which the four elders joined,
leaving Florence to the quiet enjoyment of her book. After a
rubber of three games, a motion to retire was made by the
sisters; and Henry Lee, turning to Florence, said, "Well, Puss,
is it not time to give up your book? Half-past eleven, my pet,"
(looking at his watch,) "and we must be up early, you know, to be
ready for church, and dinner at Uncle Joe's to-morrow."
At last the brother and sister were left alone, and stood looking
at one another for a few moments; then Mr. Lee spoke: "It must be
done to-morrow. Who shall do it--you or I?"
"I think I had better, Harry dear. Women can deal better with
women in such a time, although I know your tender, loving heart,
and do not doubt it."
"I am glad, Mag, you will take it on yourself, for I feel a very
coward in the matter."
"Oh! yes, it is better that I should; but I will not tell her
till night--I will not mar the happiness of her Christmas till I
cannot help it."
"As you will; and now good-night, I must go and see that matters
are all right for the night. You say Anthony has gone up?"
"Oh! yes, some time ago."
"Well, good-night!" He left the parlor, and getting a lantern
from the closet under the stairs, lit it, and started to the
barn.
It had been the custom in this family, since Anna Lee married,
that she and her husband should spend Christmas eve at the old
homestead, and return to their own house in Hamilton, with her
brother, sister, and niece, on Christmas morning. The early Mass
was too early for them to hear it, so the clergyman was willing
to give them the holy communion as soon as they had spent a
sufficient time in preparation on their arrival. After making
their thanksgiving, they adjourned to Mrs. Mohun's house for
breakfast. Then, after High Mass and a Christmas dinner at Mrs.
Mohun's, the two Lees and Florence returned to "The Solitude."
This programme was carried out as usual on this Christmas day,
and the evening found the three sitting quietly in the parlor
round the fire-place, with no noise of children's prattle to
distract their attention.
{216}
On pretence of letters to write, Mr. Lee left the women alone
with a glance at his sister. No face was flattened against the
windows tonight, though old Tamar refrained from looking toward
them.
Florence occupied a low seat between her aunt and uncle; and when
the latter left the room, Margaret laid her head gently on the
young girl's shoulder, and drew her toward her, saying:
"Florence, dearest, your uncle had a letter yesterday from Arthur
Hinsdale. One to you came by the same mail; but on reading that
directed to him, your uncle decided not to give you yours till he
or I had told you something which you must know before you can
answer it. Here are both the letters, dear; you can read them in
your own room when I have finished. You have often asked," she
continued, as Florence took the letters in silence, "to be told
something about your mother and father. To-night I will tell
you." A hardness came into her voice as she spoke that made the
girl look up in surprise. "We lived, till your mother married, in
the northern part of the State of New York, among the mountains,
where people from the city came every summer to spend the hot
months. My father was wealthy, but cared for no life but that of
the country, so we saw nothing of the fashionable world, beyond
the glimpse caught in the summer. My mother was an invalid, and
cared for little beyond her own health; and Anna, who was then a
child ten or twelve years old, your mother, and I did pretty much
as we pleased. Harry was away at college at Fordham, and, when at
home in the vacations, was our constant companion in our rides
and walks.
"One summer a party of gentlemen from Philadelphia came up to the
Adirondacks to fish. Our farm and house was not far from the spot
where they encamped, and we met them several times in riding.
Your father was among them." Here she paused, as if choking back
some strong feeling, and Florence, slipping on her knees, wound
her arms around her, resting her head against her. "Your mother
was very beautiful," continued Margaret, threading her fingers
through the young girl's golden hair lingeringly, as though she
saw a resemblance that she loved to trace, "and it is not to be
wondered at that she should have attracted attention. After
several accidental meetings, he, your father, took advantage of
some trivial accident, the dropping of Florence's whip, or
something of the kind, to speak when, one day, we came upon them
suddenly. From this it was easy to make an excuse to visit the
farm-house with some of his friends. My father was a man of
cultivation and education, though he chose to bury himself from
the world, and liked the young men. After one or two visits, he
invited them to the house freely, I need not tell you the old,
old story, dear. Before the time came for the visitors to break
up their camp, Paul Athern was engaged to my sister. Florence was
but sixteen; Paul said he was nearly twenty-one; and my father
insisted that they should wait two years, and there was to be no
regular engagement for one year. This was at length agreed to
with great reluctance by, by--your father. He also, being a
Protestant, made all the necessary promises that your mother
should be allowed the full enjoyment of her religion.
"Well, the winter passed quietly as usual, and toward spring a
cousin of my mother's wrote, inviting us to pay her a visit in
New York. We had once before visited her when I was fourteen and
Florence twelve; so remembering the former pleasure, we were
quite eager to go, Florence particularly seemed anxious.
{217}
Tamar's mother was our cook, and had been my grandfather's slave
before slavery was done away with in New York. Tamar, a girl of
my own age, was our waiting-maid and humble companion and
_confidante_, and was to go with us. After a good deal of
hesitation--for he seemed to feel a presentiment of evil--my
father consented, and we went to New York. Our visit was nearly
over, when, one day, on coming home from a walk with my cousin, I
found Florence in the drawing-room with Paul Athern. She looked
guilty, and blushed when she saw my look of surprise; but Paul
greeted me with great apparent pleasure, and an easy grace that
covered whatever confusion he may have felt. That night, when
alone in our room, Florence said, 'Mag, was I very, very wrong to
let Paul know I was here? I did want to see him so much, dear.
Oh! you _don't_ know how I have craved a sight of his dear
face!' I could not resist her gentle pleading, so did not blame
her very much; but told her I must write to father, it was the
right thing to do and I must do it. The answer to my letter was a
peremptory order for our instant return home. We, or I, had no
idea of disobedience, and so prepared to return at once. The day
before we were to have left, Florence was particularly
affectionate, and seemed not to wish to be left alone. I had some
last errands to attend to, and leaving Tamar and Florence busy
with their packing, went out for two or three hours. I returned
to find the trunks packed, but neither Florence nor Tamar was in
the house. My cousin said Florence kissed her when she went out,
saying laughingly, 'May be you won't see me again.' Tamar went
with her, carrying her satchel. As evening drew on and they did
not return, a great fear came over me, and Cousin Mary had
difficulty in keeping me from rushing into the street to seek for
them. At last, a ring at the door was followed by Tamar's rushing
into the drawing-room. She threw herself at my feet, buried her
face in my lap, and cried as if her heart would break. At last,
when she could speak, Cousin Mary had great trouble to understand
her broken sentences. As for me, I sat stupefied, filled with the
one idea that Tamar had come back without Florence.
II.
"At last the frightened girl's story was made out. Florence had
taken her, on pretence of carrying her bag; but at Union Square,
Paul Athern met them with a carriage, into which they got, and
were taken to a hotel down Broadway, (the Astor House, we
afterward found it was.) Here they were shown into a private
parlor where there was a strange gentleman, who looked, Tamar
said, like the minister at home who preached in the little
country church near us. He bowed to Paul and Florence when they
entered, and then walked over to the farthest window and stood
looking out. Mr. Athern had to talk a long time to Miss Florence
before she was willing to do something that he wanted her to do.
At last he said something that seemed to frighten her, and then
he made a sign to the strange gentleman who went to the door of
another room opening into this, and opened it. Mr. Tremaine, one
of the fishing-party of the previous summer, came in, and before
Tamar knew what they were doing, she heard the strange gentleman
say, 'I pronounce you man and wife!' Then Florence fainted, and
they had great trouble to bring her
to.
{218}
Then they all signed a paper, and the gentlemen shook hands with
_Mr. and Mrs. Athern_, and left them. Paul, after a few
words to Florence, followed them. As soon as they were alone,
Florence threw herself on her knees and cried, 'Oh! what have I
done? what have I done? Tamar, do you think my darling father
will ever forgive me?' She sobbed and cried, but by the time Paul
returned had become quiet. When he came, she asked for paper and
pen, as she wished to write to her father. The letter was given
to Tamar, with a note to me, exonerating the girl from all blame.
Then Mr. Athern said it was time to start to the depot. Florence
turned very pale, but didn't say a word, only got up and began to
put on her things. Mr. Athern turned to Tamar and told her she
was to go home and tell me and Cousin Mary that we would never
see _Miss_ Florence again, but that Mr. and Mrs. Athern
would be happy to see them on their return from their wedding
tour. Then they went to the depot in a carriage, taking Tamar
with them, trusting to her getting safe home after they had left,
which, thanks to a kind Providence, she did.
"This news threw me into a brain-fever; and when I came to
myself, eight weeks after, I was told how my mother had died of a
heart disease at the shock of Florence's flight; how a letter had
come from Germantown, saying how happy she was if only she knew
her dear father had forgiven her; then another, full of grief at
the death of her mother and my illness; how my father had sold
the old house, and was waiting for my recovery to bury himself
and his griefs in the far west. So the next fall saw us fixed out
here; and Florence was told of the change, and that her father
would never cross the mountains again. My father had not cast her
off, as parents do in novels, but his displeasure and
disappointment were very great, and he let her know it; his
letters, few and seldom, were cold and formal, never again the
fond, loving missives they had been during the short separation
from him in her childhood. More than all, he grieved over the
Protestant marriage; for it was a Presbyterian minister who had
performed the ceremony, and Florence had never mentioned having
had it performed by a priest. One day, the next summer, as I was
sitting at the open door, I saw a carriage drive up to the gate,
and a lady get out; in a moment I knew it was Florence, and
calling Tamar, ran out to meet her, only to receive her fainting
in my arms. Tamar helped to carry her in and lay her on the sofa.
Father had gone to Hamilton; and before he returned, we had got
her up-stairs, and all traces of her arrival done away with. I
waited anxiously for him to come, and wondered how I should tell
him; but my anxiety was useless, for he came in with a small
glove in his hand, and his first question was, 'Where's
Florence?' I had hardly time to tell him, when the door opened,
and Florence herself was at his feet.
"I left them alone together, and when I returned, he had placed
her on the sofa, and was sitting close to her, holding her hand.
"It was not till the next day that we asked about her journey,
and then she told her story.
"Paul had never told his father of his marriage, knowing what
different plans the old gentleman had formed, and weakly putting
off the evil hour, dreading the scene that would follow. He often
told Florence of the urgings his father used to induce him to
marry a young lady of the fashionable world, and laughed as he
compared his 'meadow daisy,' as he called Florence, to the
'hot-house plant,' that was his
father's choice.
{219}
They managed to get along on the handsome allowance his father
made him, and Florence's share of my mother's fortune. One day
the little cottage at Germantown was overshadowed by a stately
carriage, and out of the carriage came an aristocratic-looking
gentleman, who inquired for Mrs. Paul Athern. When Florence
presented herself, her gentle beauty had no effect in melting his
stony heart, for he did his work well. It was Paul's father. He
told her of his plans for Paul, and how he had discovered their
secret at last; and, with a cruelty I cannot understand even now,
informed her quietly that that marriage was null and void; they
both being minors, by the statutes of New York could not contract
legal marriage without consent of parents or guardians. Florence
heard him out, and then rose and said she would wait till her
husband came home to know the truth. 'Your husband, madam, has
taken my advice and gone to New York for a few days, and you will
not have the opportunity of telling him what he knows already,
and knew when, to satisfy you, he went through the mockery of a
marriage.'" The listener tightened her hold on Margaret and hid
her face; her aunt put both arms around her, and continued: "Here
Florence lost all consciousness, and when she came to herself,
she was alone. The afternoon was nearly gone; but she called her
servant, made her help to pack her trunk, then sent her for a
carriage, leaving a note for Paul with the girl in charge of the
house. She drove to Philadelphia, waited quietly at a hotel till
the next morning, then started for the west.
"My father's anger was fearful, all the more so that he was
powerless. Florence was ill for several weeks after her return,
and even after she recovered she never looked like herself. She
came to us in June; in July came a letter to my father in Paul's
handwriting, which he threw into the fire unopened. In October
you were born, and in six weeks more your poor mother--died."
Here she paused again, and bent her head close to the
golden-tressed one pressed to her breast. "My father lived till
the next fall, but never the same man. Harry came home from
Fordham that summer, and took entire charge of the farm, my
father caring for nothing but to carry you about and watch you.
For two years we heard nothing of your father; and then the
eastern papers were full of a great forgery that had been
committed, and the forger was a son of one of the first families
in the city. Florence, darling, need I tell his name? The trial
proved his guilt, but he managed to escape, and one day we were
surprised by his sudden appearance here. He came without any
announcement, and walked right into the parlor where I was
sitting sewing and Uncle Harry reading, while you were asleep in
your cradle. Before we could recognize him almost, he asked in a
hoarse voice, 'Where is Florence--where, for God's sake, is my
wife?' Then a glance at my black dress and Harry's stern face as
he rose to repel his intrusion, seemed to reveal all, and he sank
on the floor in a deep swoon.
"We kept his presence in the house a secret from the men on the
farm, and only Tamar knew it; fortunately, the house-girl had
gone to Hamilton for a few days. He was quite wild for a day or
so; and when he came to himself, Harry demanded an explanation,
and he gave it.
"He had not known of his father's visit to Germantown till he
returned from New York, where he had gone that day at his
father's request, having written a letter to that effect to
Florence, which must have reached the house very soon after she
left it.
{220}
He was kept in New York on some pretext or another for three or
four weeks. His letters to Florence, of course, never reached
her, and on his return home he was told by his father that he
'had seen his pretty plaything, and told her some home truths.' A
fearful scene followed, when he left his father's house, swearing
never to set foot in it again, and that he would be revenged. He
did not know that the marriage was illegal, as he was under the
impression that he was twenty-one, till his father showed him the
record, and then he found his mistake; and, as of course he knew
that no Catholic clergyman would perform the ceremony, the Rev.
Mr. Bell was the only one who could be found to do it. He had
searched for Florence, and written to her father; but, as I knew
too well, had received no answer. His allowance being stopped, he
suddenly found himself without a penny, and no business or
business habits; so he could not come out here to us, and
gradually sought forgetfulness in dissipation. At last, by the
treachery of a friend, himself the guilty one, he was proved a
forger so skilfully that there was no getting over it. He swore
solemnly that he was innocent, and felt sure his innocence would
one day be proved. He did not stay long, being anxious to get out
of the country and the clutches of the law. You were a great
comfort to him, dear, during his short stay, but he had to leave
you. In fifteen years, Florence, we have heard or seen nothing of
him, and his guilt is still believed by those who have not
forgotten the circumstances. Now, my darling, you know why I told
you this ere your uncle gave you Arthur Hinsdale's letter." The
young girl made no answer save a shiver that ran through her
frame as she clung closer to her aunt. For a full hour they sat
thus in silence; then Harry Lee came into the room. Florence rose
to her feet and would have fallen, had her uncle not caught her
in his arms, and tenderly, as if she had been a baby, he lifted
her, and carried her up to her bed-room. Margaret followed, and
tenderly prepared the broken-hearted girl for bed. The letters
lay unheeded on the parlor floor.
III.
All through the night Margaret Lee sat by her niece's bed-side,
praying for strength for her darling, and watching the fitful
slumbers and soothing the sad awakenings. And in the silent
watches of the night arose the long-buried ghost of her own
life's happiness, and kept guard beside her. There was an episode
in the sad story she told her niece that was never
mentioned--that she had not allowed herself to think of for many
a long year; but to-night memory will not be silenced, and she
brings up, once more, the pleasant days when young Tremaine
whispered into her ear the same story which Paul told Florence,
and the fearful crushing of all her hopes of happiness, when her
father forbade her ever to see or speak to him again, his anger
was so great against him for having assisted Paul. Margaret
submitted quietly, as such natures do; but she never cared for
anything afterward beyond doing her strict duty--cheerfully and
heartily; but never joyously. Perhaps the old man repented when
it was too late; for in two years after, they heard Tremaine was
married, and he was
very tender to her then.
{221}
On his death-bed he drew her to him, and, asking her forgiveness
if he had made her suffer, blessed her for the fondest love and
gentlest tending that ever parent had from child. In that hour
Margaret felt repaid for all that had gone before. So, through
the long watches of the night, came up the memories of the long
ago, and Margaret lived over again the dead joys and sorrows.
Toward morning Florence slept quietly, and her watcher threw
herself on the bed beside her, and soon fell into a deep sleep.
When she awoke, the sun had risen, and on glancing at Florence,
she found her lying quietly awake.
"Aunt Margaret," said the young girl, "that--that--letter. I know
what he wrote, and it is not necessary to tell him, is it?"
"Only under certain circumstances, my darling; your own heart
will tell you what."
"Oh! yes, auntie; but that can never be. I can tell him that, and
nothing more."
"My poor, dear child, have you not faith enough? do you not think
his love for you is strong enough to live through this trial?"
"Yes, oh! yes! But would it be right to inflict the trial on him?
I think not; I think the burden is mine alone, and I alone must
bear it!"
"God grant you strength to do so, my precious one! If I could
have spared you the suffering, how gladly would I have done it!"
"I know that, auntie, dear. Do you think I do not feel and
appreciate the years of care and tender love I have had from you
and Uncle Harry? I was as happy as any one could be
before--before--and I can and will be happy with you still."
"God bless you, dearest!" was Margaret's answer, as she pressed a
kiss on her forehead and left the room.
As soon as she was alone, Florence turned the key in her door;
then, throwing a dressing-gown around her, fell on her knees
before a beautiful engraving of the Mater Dolorosa, which hung
over a _prie-dieu_ at the side of her bed. Long she knelt
there, her golden hair falling in dishevelled masses over her
shoulders, and nearly touching the floor as she knelt. At first
there was no sound, but presently her slight frame was convulsed
with suppressed weeping that soon found voice in sobs. At last
she rose, and began to dress, ever and anon pressing her hands to
her head or heart to still their aching. When she was ready to go
downstairs, she again knelt before the picture, and prayed for
strength to bear her cross, so that not even the shadow of it
should fall on those whose tenderness and love had been her
shield in the years that had gone.
And then she went down and greeted her uncle with a brave attempt
at her usual manner; she neglected nothing that she had been
accustomed to do, none of the little services she had been in the
habit of rendering; and, but for the sadness that no strength of
will could drive from her face, and the silence of the bird-like
voice that before made music through the house the whole day
long, a casual observer would not have guessed at the sufferings
of the previous night.
On going into the parlor, she saw the letters where she had
dropped them the night before, and the sight of them sent a cold
thrill of pain to her heart; but she picked them up and put them
in her pocket. After going through the house as usual, she locked
herself up in her room once more, to read the letters. Arthur
Hinsdale's to herself was, as she anticipated, a declaration of
affection; that to her uncle, written the day after, expressed a
hope that he would support his cause if it needed it.
{222}
And how were they to be answered? Florence paused long in painful
thought on the subject, but felt too utterly miserable to come to
any conclusion. So the day passed sadly, and so the night and the
next day. On the third day Florence felt that some answer must be
given and written before another night went by, and set herself
to her painful task. Having completed it, she brought the letter
down with her into the parlor, and sat down to some pretence of
employment that kept her hands busy, though her mind was far off.
Presently she heard the galloping of a horse in the lane, and in
a few moments a knock at the front-door. The blinds were down
over the front windows, so she had not seen any one pass, and,
rising, she tried to make her escape before the visitor was
admitted. But she was too late. As she opened the parlor door,
the front-door was opened from without by her uncle, and she
stood face to face with Arthur Hinsdale. The hearty greeting he
had met with from Mr. Lee had reassured the young man, and he was
not prepared for the frightened look and deadly pallor that
overspread Florence's face when she saw him. She stepped back
into the parlor, and held out her hand with a desperate attempt
to smile. Arthur took the hand and pressed it to his lips. Mr.
Lee had closed the parlor door, and she was alone with him. With
a desperate effort she commanded her voice enough to make some
commonplace remark about his journey, signing him to a chair,
while she seated herself.
"I ventured to come, although I had received no answer to my
letter. Did you receive it?"
Florence inclined her head.
"Then you knew the reason of my coming?"
Again Florence bowed, but could not speak.
"Miss Athern, was not my letter plain enough--do you not believe
me? I do not understand your silence."
"Your--your letter was fully understood, Mr. Hinsdale, and I
thank--"
"You thank me, Florence!"
Then in earnest language he told her how he loved her, and how
his fear that his letter had not reached her had brought him
there, preferring the pain of a double refusal to the doubt in
which he must have awaited her reply by post. To all this
Florence listened with head bent down and hands clasped; and when
he paused for a reply, she pointed to the letter lying on the
table. He took it up and walked to the window; a painful silence
followed, broken only by the rustling of the paper in his hands.
When he had finished reading, he came to her side, and leaning
over her said:
"Am I to receive this as your answer?"
"Yes!" said Florence in a whisper.
"A final and decisive answer?"
"Yes!"
"Then pardon me. Miss Athern, that I allowed my heart to read
your conduct as I hoped it was meant, not as you really meant it.
I gave you credit for a nobler heart than you possess. Let me
tell you the truth, though what I say seems a reproach, that
offer would never have been made had I not felt assured, by your
treatment of me, that it would be accepted."
Florence started, and the eloquent blood rushed to her very
temples.
"Mr. Hinsdale, you have no right to speak thus to me!"
She attempted to draw her hands from his grasp, but could not.
"No right!--well, perhaps I have not. Forgive me, Florence, and
only remember that I love you."
{223}
He still held her hands and tried to look into her face, but she
bent her head away from him.
"I love you, Florence, and I feel that I am entitled to a little
more consideration than that letter shows, Florence, will you be
my wife?"
A low but distinct "No," was the answer.
"Do you mean you do not love me?"
She made no answer, and he dropped or rather flung her hands from
him and started to his feet.
"Strange, unfeeling! O fool, fool that I was! to build my
happiness on such a crumbling base; to be caught in the net of a
false woman's beauty, the smiles of a vain coquette!"
"Arthur, Arthur! you will break my heart!"
She had risen and was standing with one hand resting on the back
of a chair, the other pressed to her head. He made a motion to
approach her, but she put out her hand with a sign to stop him.
"Now listen to me. I am no false woman, no vain coquette. Until
the night I received your letter, I knew no reason why I should
not--not--" She hesitated a moment. "I knew no reason why I
should not have answered it according to the dictates of my
heart; but that night a story of a life was told me that--that
changed my whole existence. It is a heavy burden to bear."
"But not, dearest, if I can help you bear it." He would have
taken her hand, but she drew back from him, "You cannot, no one
can--O God! help me, my heart is broken!" She threw her arms up
over her head, and would have fallen had he not caught her. She
had not fainted, though for a moment she thought death had come
to her relief; and almost in a moment released herself from his
arms, and said sadly: "I hoped to have spared us both this
misery; but it was God's will that we should not escape it. For
myself, a little more does not matter; but for you--O Arthur!
forgive me the pain I have made you suffer, and remember my own
cross is as heavy as I can bear. Good-by!" She held out her
hand--"good-by! You cannot return home to-day, it is too late; but
you must excuse me, I will send uncle."
"Florence! I am not going to remain if this is your answer. Do
you think I could break bread or sleep under your roof after what
has passed? Heavens! do you think I'm a stick or a stone?"
"As you will!" she said wearily, "I cannot help it!"
"Then I will take my leave." He was going; but as he laid his
hand on the door-knob, he glanced at her, and the expression of
heart-broken misery in the sweet face overcame his injured
feelings, and he turned and took her hand. "Forgive me, Florence;
I have been rude and unfeeling--selfish in my great
disappointment. Forgive me, darling; remember my love is strong
enough to bear the heaviest burden _you_ could lay upon it,
if your own strength fails, Good-by and God bless you." He raised
her hand to his lips, and in another moment was gone.
Every day Florence strove manfully with her trouble, and every
night her prayers were said before the _Mater Dolorosa_, for
strength to bear with silent patience the sorrow her loving
friends could not cure. But her face grew pale and wan, her form
more slight and delicate, till her aunt, in alarm, proposed a
change of scene. It was in the early spring, and Margaret Lee
proposed a tour through the eastern cities; but Florence begged
so hard not to be taken to New York or Philadelphia that the idea
was given up.
{224}
At last they determined to go direct to Boston, and sail thence
for Liverpool. This plan was carried out in June, leaving the
farm in charge of the overseer, and the house to Tamar.
To a mind like Florence's, imbued with a loving reverence for all
connected with the church, filled with a love for the beautiful
and grand, and a heart ready to receive their impressions; with
an intellect of no common order, and a quick appreciation of the
good and noble, a tour through Europe, particularly Spain,
France, and Italy, had many charms, and could not but awake an
interest that surprised herself. When they settled at Rome for
the winter, they had the satisfaction of a decided change for the
better in Florence's appearance.
But she had not forgotten; she was only glad that returning
strength of body enabled her to hide more effectually the anguish
and heart-sick yearning that sometimes seemed unbearable. Several
letters came from Arthur Hinsdale during the first year; but
Florence returned the same answer to all; and at last the young
man desisted. Three years were passed in idling from one point of
interest to another, when the tocsin of civil war in the United
States waked up the nations, and called the country's loyal
children from far and wide to her assistance.
Once more the scene is laid at "The Solitude;" but this time the
earth is not clothed in winter's snowy mantle. Hid in the wealth
of foliage the trees are wearing, the birds are singing their
vesper hymns, the sun is just sinking behind the woods, and
throws his last rays over a group seated on the grass near the
slope into the ravine.
Henry Lee is there, and Margaret and Annie and her children; but
Mr. Mohun is down in Tennessee with Rosecrans, and the wife's
brow wears an expression of anxiety, as she watches her children,
that was a stranger to it when we last saw her. Florence, too, is
there, looking very well, people say; but there is an indefinable
change that those nearest her feel, though they cannot say where
or in what it lies. One or two young ladies are added to the
group, and a young gentleman, whose shoulder-straps show his rank
as second lieutenant, while the foot still bound up and the
crutches lying near, show cause for his presence on the scene. He
is William Mohun, a younger brother of Annie's husband, and was
wounded in the siege of Vicksburg. What he is saying now must be
listened to.
"I wish you knew our colonel, Mr. Lee; for a braver, nobler,
kinder-hearted man never lived. He led a charge at Vicksburg, and
exposed himself unsparingly; indeed, he seemed to court death;
yet when he could help a wounded man, he was as gentle as a
woman. O Miss Florence! a friend of yours is the regimental
surgeon--Arthur Hinsdale, don't you remember him?"
"Oh! yes," replied Florence, with wonderful self-command.
"He, too," continued the young man, "deserves the thanks of the
nation; for I never saw such devotion to the wounded and dying.
Poor Warrington! hope he is not seriously wounded, for he will be
a great loss to us; and I hope Hinsdale is with him, for then I
know he will be well cared for."
"See, is there any mention of Joe's regiment. Will?" asked his
sister-in-law; and the young man referred to the paper in whose
columns he had seen the wounding of his colonel--Warrington.
Florence rose quietly and went into the house; the old
Newfoundland, who had been lying beside her, got up and walked at
her side in stately satisfaction, ever and anon thrusting his
cold nose into her hand in token of sympathy.
{225}
When Florence returned, there were traces of tears in her eyes;
but her face wore an expression of loving gratification her aunt
understood well.
A month and more has passed, and October began to touch, with her
changing pencil, the trees and shrubs. The air was hazy and
balmy, and the sun still warm; so the family at "The Solitude"
spent many of their evenings in the open air. William Mohun was
gone back to duty, and the young lady friends were again at home.
Florence and her two aunts were busy over comforts for the
soldiers, to help them through the weary winter with the thought
that loving hearts at home had not forgotten them. One evening
Florence had been down to the spring, and, lured by the lovely
evening, seated herself in the summer-house on the knoll above
it, with a book. She did not hear a carriage which approached the
house from the direction of Hamilton, nor did she see the two
gentlemen who alighted from it. Mr. Lee received Arthur Hinsdale
and his companion with cordial welcome, though surprised at the
sudden arrival, and wondering at Arthur's eager, excited manner.
He greeted Henry and Margaret warmly, but asked instantly for
Florence. They told him where she was, and the young man, instead
of crossing the bridge, which would have apprised her of his
coming, passed with a swift foot down the lane, and, springing
over the fence among the cherry-trees, down the slope, across the
path, was in the summer-house almost before Florence saw him.
"Florence, my darling, our trial is at an end. My precious one, I
know your secret now. Cruel! that you doubted me. Could you not
feel that nothing could change my love?"
He had taken her hands in his, and held them, looking down into
her sweet face while he spoke, Florence looked at him in
bewilderment; then, with a sobbing, convulsive movement of her
lips, almost fainted.
Meanwhile the gentleman, whom Arthur had introduced as Colonel
Warrington, followed Henry and Margaret into the parlor by the
door that opened at the end of the house toward the gate. When
they entered and Margaret turned to offer him a chair, she saw he
was deadly pale, and was glancing round the room as if it
recalled something painful. At the same moment a veil dropped
from Margaret's eyes. She walked up to him, and, laying her hand
on his arm, said, "Paul Athern, in heaven's name speak."
"Paul Athern?" said Henry Lee, with a start of surprise.
"Yes," replied the colonel sadly, "I am Paul Athern. God bless
you for the care you have taken of my darling. I can see her now
without fear. Henry Lee, I can offer you my hand, and you, an
honest man, can take it without hesitation."
Henry Lee grasped the hand extended to him warmly, saying, "I
never thought anything else, Athern, after the interview we had;
but I rejoice that you are relieved from your painful situation
and are living to enjoy the change. We began to fear you had
died. Tell us all about it; for Florence and Arthur will not join
us yet."
Then Paul Athern told how he had gone from "The Solitude" to New
Orleans with a firm purpose to win fortune and a fame that would
enable him to present himself before Florence in his true
relationship. He worked hard and steadily, and gained the
confidence of his employers to such an extent that they took him
into partnership, and then he came to Ohio to see his child.
{226}
But the stain was not removed from his name, and he shrank from
the meeting at the last, as much as at first he had longed for
it. He rode out to "The Solitude" on Christmas eve, and took a
peep at the family group through the window, and had gone again
without the consolation of hearing Florence speak. He told them
how, in looking in at the window the second time, he feared Tamar
had seen him, and he had hurried out to his horse and ridden away
quickly. So he went back with only the crumb of comfort that
stolen look afforded to his starving heart. When the war broke
out, he withdrew from business with a comfortable fortune, and
returned to C----, raised a company for the ---- regiment, and
rose to the rank of colonel. During his stay in C----, the family
were still in Europe; but he came out to "The Solitude," and had
a long talk with Tamar. Then came the wound that had prostrated
him and put him into Arthur Hinsdale's hands; during the ravings
of the fever he had mentioned names and revealed enough to arouse
Arthur's interest and curiosity. As soon as he was well enough,
the young man asked for an explanation, first telling why he
asked it. Paul told him all, and his story only bound the young
surgeon more closely to him. The colonel then paid a glowing
tribute to the kindness and care he had received from Arthur, and
to his general interest in and treatment of the wounded men. He
watched till Paul was well enough to travel, and then obtaining a
leave of absence for both from the commanding general, started
home. At first Paul refused to accompany Arthur; but one day a
wounded officer was brought in and laid on the bed next to the
one occupied by him. Arthur made a sign to Paul to help him to
remove the man's clothes; he stooped over him to unbutton his
coat, when the man opened his eyes, and, after looking round with
a startled gaze, fixed them on Paul with a frightened stare. Paul
looked and recognized the man who had blighted his whole
existence. A fierce struggle arose in his breast, and his fingers
ceased their work, while he turned away with a look of disgust
and dislike. Arthur looked up at him with surprise, and just then
the man made a desperate effort and put out his hand, saying
faintly:
"Athern, forgive--here--I have it--all here."
And his hand fluttered toward his heart, then fell, and his eyes
sought Paul's with agonized entreaty. It was a hard struggle; but
the better angel conquered, and Paul took the hand and said:
"I do forgive you, Brooks, as I hope to be forgiven."
A smile passed over the man's face; he moved his head slightly
and was dead. In his breast-pocket were two packages, one
addressed to Paul's father, the other to an influential gentleman
in Philadelphia. The latter was mailed duly, and the former,
Paul, his father being dead, opened. It contained a full
acknowledgment of having committed the forgery for which Paul
suffered, and an explanation of how it was managed. This
determined him at once to return to his wife's family. Meantime
the same story had been told in different words in the
summer-house down by the spring, and it took so long in the
telling that it was almost dark when Margaret, going to call her
niece, saw them rise and approach the house, Florence, with a
bright look of happiness her face had not worn for years, leaning
on Arthur's arm. She hastened with trembling footsteps to the
parlor, at the door of which Arthur left her, and in another
moment she was clasped in her father's arms.
{227}
A gay wedding-party is assembled, when the spring once more puts
on her robes of ferial green, in the parlor of "The Solitude."
All brides look lovely, they say; but certainly May never smiled
on a lovelier one than Florence Athern. Arthur Hinsdale certainly
seemed to think so, for he looked at her with reverence mingled
with his deep love, as though she were a spirit dropped from the
skies. The venerable and dearly loved and honored archbishop is
there, and has blessed the new ties; and the bride was given away
by that tall, handsome man in brigadier-general's uniform, with
one arm in a sling yet, at whose side is the noble form of Henry
Lee, while Margaret moves about through the company with her
usual quiet grace, and Tamar's face is filled with satisfaction
at her young mistress' joy, as she looks in at the door.
---------
Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.
A brother asked Abbot Antony to pray for him. The old man
responded: "Neither I can pity thee nor can God, unless thou
shalt have been anxious about thyself, and prayed to God."
Abbot Antony again said: "God doth not allow wars to arise in
this generation, because he knoweth they are weak and unable to
bear them."
Abbot Agathi said: "If a man of wrathful spirit should raise the
dead to life, he would not be pleasing to God because of his
wrath."
Abbot Pastor said: "Teach thy heart, to observe what thy tongue
teacheth others." Again, he said: "Men wish to appear adepts in
speaking; but in carrying out those things of which they speak,
they are found wanting."
Abbot Macarius said: "If we remember the evils done to us by men,
we shall deprive our soul of the power to remember God; but if we
call to mind those evils which the demons raise against us, we
shall be invulnerable."
Abbot Pastor said of Abbot John the Small that, having prayed to
God, all his passions had been taken away, and, thus made proof,
he came to a certain old man and said: "Behold a man freed from
passion, and compelled to battle with no temptations." And the
old man replied: "Go, pray the Lord that he command thee to be
tempted, for the soul grows perfect by temptation." And when
temptations came back upon him, he no longer prayed to be freed
from them, but said, "Lord, give me patience to bear with these
temptations."
Abbot Daniel used to say: "The stronger the body the weaker the
soul; and the weaker the body the stronger the soul."
----------
{228}
Popular Education. [Footnote 51]
[Footnote 51: _Report of the Rev. James Fraser.
Blackwood's Magazine_, Jan. 1868.]
At no period of the world's history have nations and their
governments seemed to be in such a feverish state of uncertainty
and apprehension. From all quarters of Christendom we hear the
cry of change. The last vestiges of the ancient order are
disappearing. The rule of caste is everywhere confronted by
self-asserting populations, who are no longer willing to bear the
patient yoke of servitude, even though consecrated by the
traditions of centuries. Russia has abolished her serfdom, so
long and so deeply rooted in her soil; and the more advanced
nations of Europe, whilst yet retaining their accustomed forms of
government, are heaving with the volcanic fires of revolution. We
speak not of violent revolution, mainly; but of that other more
radical and enduring change, which is the inevitable result of
the wonderful mechanical inventions of this age. It is simply
impossible in the dread presence of steam and the electric cable,
for nations to continue to be what the Greek republics and the
Roman empire were, or what mediaeval Europe was, centuries ago.
The Christian world is now, for all great practical purposes, one
nation. Even that "_despotism tempered by assassination_" is
not now the thing that Talleyrand described in his witty
aphorism; for the Czar himself bows to the censure of the world.
Napoleon prosecutes the Parisian editors, and sends them to
prison; but it avails nothing toward the suppression of the power
of opinion. He, to-day, has greater fear of the sentiment of
France, than ever his terrible uncle felt for the combined armies
of Europe. In England, the House of Peers has become a gloomy
pageant, and the Commons, under the new Reform Bill, will
henceforth represent, not the gentry, nor even the moneyed lords
of the loom, but the toiling millions of Great Britain. In a
word, power is passing from the few to the many, from the
hereditary rulers to the multitude. We have nothing to do, in
this article, with the merits of this vast revolution, as to the
manner of change, its good or evil, its probable success or
failure. We accept it as a fact, and propose to deal with it as
such. It is very possible that all this would have occurred if
America had never been discovered; but it is absolutely certain
that the achievements of Christopher Columbus and George
Washington have been the chief, immediate causes of its rapid
consummation. When a Bourbon king, to gratify the traditional
policy and animosities of his house, sent his fleets and armies
to help the glorious work of building up the independence of this
people, little did either he or his enraged and maniac foe, King
George, imagine what the end of it all would be! Little did they
dream that this land would, in ninety years, contain thirty
millions of men of European blood, and that the whole European
population would learn new principles, catch new inspirations,
and be filled with new longings, new hopes, and stern resolves by
intercourse with this young republic. Those pampered kings could
not foresee the advent of steam-ships and the telegraph!
{229}
They could not foretell the power of emigration--how it would
people a continent, build up its commerce, fortify it with the
materials for armies and navies, ready to be called into
existence more magically than the palace of Aladdin, and, above
and beyond all, how its sweeping currents of democratic ideas
would rush back upon the father-lands everywhere, washing away
the old dikes of royalty and caste, and floating the populations
over the battlements of feudal castles, musket in hand, and with
loud cries for "change;" that is, for the all-essential change
which shall see that governments be henceforth established and
conducted for the benefit for the governed, and not that the
governed shall be held, as they have been for many thousand years
heretofore, as the property of the ruler, existing solely for his
glory and profit. Europe sends her millions hither, and they in
turn send back by every ship to those they left behind, the
wonderful record of what they see here; and these inspiring
testimonies are read at the firesides of ten thousand hamlets by
kindred men whose awakening intelligence and energies are
stirring the foundations of European society and shaking all
thrones to inevitable ruin, unless they speedily plant themselves
on more solid ground than the _divine right of kings_. It is
now very certain that no government anywhere can be said to rest
on a sure basis, unless it stand upon the love and confidence of
the people. Any other basis is the lawful prey of time and
fortune, and will go with the opportunity that may arise for its
destruction.
Now, if these be facts with which we have to deal, then a very
grave question meets us right here, and it is this: Can any such
solid foundation for government be found in a self-governing
community? In other words, can the people govern themselves for
their own weal, and maintain institutions _solely by the force
of their own will_, which shall accomplish the purposes of
good government, and for ever secure the approval of all wise and
virtuous citizens? If nay, then, royalty and aristocracy being
repudiated, whither shall we fly for refuge and hope? If yea,
then how is this most precious end to be attained? We Americans,
by birth and blood, and still more so by passionate love of
country, say most emphatically that we have never doubted that
the way to such a consummation is plain, if only the nation will
pursue it. It is nothing new; simply the old and trite aphorism,
that a free, self-governing nation can only be so upon the
conditions precedent of a clear intelligence and a
well-established virtue; the latter (if we may separate the two)
must always take precedence, and be regarded as the indispensable
prerequisite. It follows, therefore, that education without
morality would be at least futile. It is very certain that it
would be absolutely _fatal_; because the intelligent man of
vice is armed with keen weapons, which are greatly blunted by
ignorance, and are consequently then less dangerous to society.
Catiline, the polished patrician, was a greater object of alarm
to Cicero and the Roman senate than the rude assassins whom he
had hired to do his treason. Before and during the first French
revolution, France was ablaze with genius; but, like the high
intelligence of the "Archangel ruined," it brought death in its
fiery track. Education without morality is more terrible than the
sword in the hands of men or a nation. It is not the part of
patriotism to deny that we have seen some instances of this in
our own favored country, and that the tendency to that perilous
condition is very apparent even now.
{230}
This has resulted from the too prevalent idea, taught by the
infidel or indifferent press, and accepted by the unreflecting or
equally indifferent citizen, that morality can be maintained
without formal or doctrinal religion; that one morality is as
good as another; that Plato would answer as well as Christ; that
what even the pagans taught--to deal honestly by your neighbor
and perform the domestic and public duties of life with
reasonable decency--is quite sufficient; and that all else is
nothing more than priestly dogmatism and controversial jargon. So
that, indeed, the prevailing opinion of the country would almost
seem to be (if we judge it by the secular press and multitudes of
very honest and intelligent citizens) that America, as a
Christian democratic nation, may be satisfied to be as moral, and
consequently as grand and powerful, as was pagan Rome in the days
of her republican simplicity of manners. They forget or ignore
the history of the _Decline and Fall_, and fail to see in
that tremendous catastrophe of the most extraordinary people of
the ancient world, the logical development of the certain causes
of destruction which were inherent in the nation from the day
that Romulus slew his brother upon the wall of the rising city.
It cannot be that Christ came for a delusion and a snare, or even
as a simple fatuity. If his coming was necessary, then it was to
teach a new religion and a new morality; _the one inseparable
from the other_. If this be indisputable, then all education
which is not based expressly and clearly upon religion is
heathenish, and will prove destructive in the end. It will
destroy the very people whom it was expected to save. It will
consume them as a fire. Pride and lust of power will burn out the
public conscience. The nation will drip with the blood of
unjustifiable conquest, as did pagan Rome, or be given up to the
ferocious struggle for individual aggrandizement, as seen in
later revolutionary times. The father of our country fully
recognized these principles, and in the foregoing we have but
echoed his words of warning in his Farewell Address to the
American People:
"Of all dispositions and habits," he says, "which lead to
political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable
supports. A volume could not trace all their connection with
private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is
the security for property, for regulation, for life, if the
sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the
instruments in courts of justice? And let us with caution
indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without
religion."
To this it will be replied, by some well-meaning persons, "How
can we place education in the United States upon the basis of
doctrinal religion, when we have innumerable sects, none of which
absolutely agree?" And now we approach the marrow of the subject.
First, let us clear away one difficulty. Let it be very
distinctly comprehended that nowhere can the state find its
commission as exclusive educator of the people. That is a duty
and a privilege belonging, of original right, to the family; it
is domestical and not political, though it may be always, and is
most frequently, wise and politic that the state should lend
efficient aid to _assist_, but not _arbitrarily to
control_ the training of the free citizen's child. The parent
is placed over the child by the Creator, and is the natural
guardian, primarily responsible for the training which is to lead
through this valley of probation to the eternal home.
{231}
Religious freedom, freedom of conscience, is not a right granted
by constitutions, but is the result of the relation of man as a
free, moral agent to the Creator who thought fit to make him the
master of his own destiny here and hereafter. To coerce the
conscience of the child by an educational system, actively or
passively, (for there may be effective coercion by negative
means,) is to violate the sacred rights of the parent, vested in
him by the divine appointment. There is not a religious man,
following any form of worship, professing to be a Christian and
an American, who can seriously deny this proposition, or who
would accept any other in a question involving his rights and
duties in regard to his own off-spring. No such man, we are sure,
would tolerate any assumption of the authority on the part of the
state to step between him and his child in the matter of
religious belief and instruction. No other form of tyranny would
arouse so quickly the indignant resistance of an American citizen
and father; and every upright man feels in his heart that what
would be so grievous to him should not be imposed upon any other
of his fellow-citizens, directly or indirectly. Actuated by such
views in the main, the state provides a system of public schools
from which, theoretical (and it may be practically in most
cases,) all forms of doctrinal religion are excluded, and
education is based upon a vague, undefined, generalized moral
teaching which very many eminent men of different religious
denominations have pronounced to be "godless," because the
doctrines of Christ (the foundation of his moral law) are not
taught in such schools according to any interpretation whatever,
for the plain reason that it could not be done without such
manifest injustice and wrong as we have already protested
against. To read the Bible, _without note or comment_, to
young children is, in reality, to lead them to the fountain of
living waters and forbid them to drink; whereas, "to expound the
word" is, at once, to violate the absolute neutrality which the
state is bound to maintain in the presence of conflicting
interpretations and dissenting consciences. Such is the precise
difficulty. Hence it is, that the Catholic Church has set its
face against the peril with which such a system of education
threatens its youth; and the Catholic pastors and their flocks,
though struggling with poverty, and harassed by ten thousand
pressing claims upon their charity, have strained every nerve to
establish parochial and other denominational schools where
secular education could be imparted without sacrificing religious
instruction.
There is no doubt but that there are many strong and marked
doctrinal differences between the various Protestant
denominations which have led some of their most eminent men to
argue against the possibility of a perfect or desirable system of
public schools upon the mixed or non-intervention basis.
Nevertheless, it is also true that in the fundamental point,
essentially characteristic of Protestantism, and in which it
especially differs from the Catholic Church (private
interpretation and the rejection of tradition) all Protestant
churches agree; and herein we find the reason why they can
conform to the necessities of such a public-school system as we
have described, with some degree of amalgamation; whereas their
Catholic fellow-citizens cannot avail themselves of the secular
advantages of such schools without a total sacrifice of religious
training.
{232}
We are told by the Rev. James Fraser, despatched on an official
mission for the purpose of reporting on the whole subject to the
commissioners appointed by her Majesty Queen Victoria, and who
visited the United States in 1865, that one of the
_influences_ adverse to the success of our American
common-school system is, "_the growing feeling that more
distinctly religious teaching is required, and that even the
interests of morality are imperfectly attended to;_" and
another "_influence_" is "_the very lukewarm support that
it receives from the clergy of any denomination, and the languid
way in which its claims on support and sympathy are rested on the
higher motives of Christian duty;_" from which, and other
causes, the Rev. Mr. Fraser reluctantly augurs misfortune to the
system itself in the future. There can be no doubt but that such
"lukewarmness" does exist, and that it is produced solely by the
"growing feeling that more distinctly religious teaching is
required." No accord of the Protestant sects upon what they call
"essentials," can permanently reconcile them to either a
doctrinal teaching at the public schools, in which it would be
impossible for them all to agree, or to the alternative necessity
of excluding from the schools all manner of "distinct religious
teaching," without which "even the interests of morality are
imperfectly attended to." Hence springs not only the
lukewarmness, but the affirmative opposition of distinguished
Protestant clergymen to the "godless system."
It is altogether erroneous, however, to suppose, and unjust to
charge, that Catholics are hostile to the continuance of the
present schools. FAR FROM IT. They rejoice to see their
Protestant fellow-citizens availing themselves freely of those
great opportunities to instruct the future self-governing
citizens of the young republic. They appreciate, nay, they insist
upon the absolute necessity of raising the standard of popular
intelligence, so as to insure the wisest possible administration
of public affairs through the agency of the elective franchise.
That their church is profoundly solicitous for the secular
education of her people is too manifest for dispute, since she
has, by the instrumentality of her various religious orders,
established universities, colleges, academies, and innumerable
preparatory schools in every great city, and throughout the rural
districts of the country, wherever it was possible to do so. A
glance at the Catholic Register or Directory, for 1868, will
satisfy the most sceptical upon that point. The Roman Catholic
Church has covered Europe with such institutions, grand in
design, and magnificent in endowment; and it is not her purpose
to permit her children in America to fall behind the age for the
want of similar advantages, if she can supply their necessities.
She is ever appealing to their public spirit, their patriotism,
their religious sentiment, to obtain the means to build and
conduct her educational establishments; and most nobly have they
ever responded; for it was by the steady contributions of the
poor mainly, that nearly all of those great works were begun and
perfected.
But we may well adopt the assertion of a writer in the last
January number of _Blackwood's Magazine_, that "_the fact
is palpable and every statesman, philosopher, and candid student
of the educational question confesses, that voluntary agencies
are wholly unable to undertake a task so gigantic,_" as that
of reaching the great mass of helpless ignorance existing even in
the most favored communities.
{233}
It is exactly here that government may legitimately step in with
its organized resources, but without wearing the pedagogue's cap.
The wisest governments of Europe, Catholic and Protestant, have
done this. They have abandoned the Lacedemonian usurpation of
domestic rights, reproduced by the first Napoleon, as he
expressed the policy in his curt style, "_My principal end in
the establishment of a teaching corps is to possess the means of
directing political and moral opinions._" A candid confession
for an autocrat. The nephew, who now reigns over France, has
learned by the experience of misfortune to be wiser and more
faithful to natural rights. In Catholic France education is
entirely free and without favoritism. The public educational fund
is equitably distributed to Catholic and Protestant, and each is
permitted to rear, under the supervision of their respective
clergy, as they may elect, the children of their own religious
household. Conscience is respected; and yet the youth of the
country are not deprived of instruction in the Christian faith at
the public schools. Protestant Prussia is as liberal and as wise
as France, and her system of public instruction is based upon the
necessity of religious teaching, and the right of the parent to
direct the child, and the just relation of the pastor to the
parent, and therefore the equity of a proper distribution of the
public-school fund. We have not the time, nor is it necessary to
go into the details; but it is sufficient to say that the
Prussian system concedes more to the Prussian Catholic than the
American Catholic has yet asked from an enlightened and
democratic American government; and yet, strange to say, the
American Catholic has been violently and persistently charged
with hostility to public education, and a conspiracy to destroy
republican institutions! Even England, iron-clad in her
prejudices, has adopted the principles of Prussia, niggardly as
her policy toward the public schools has always been. And what
shall we say of "benighted Austria," the land of popish
concordats! Let Mr. Kay, a recognized authority upon matters of
education, and a Protestant, answer this question.
"The most interesting and satisfactory feature of the Austrian
system is the great liberality with which the government,
though so staunch an adherent and supporter of the Romanist
priesthood, has treated the religious parties who differ from
themselves in their religious dogma. It has been entirely owing
to this liberality that neither the great number of the sects
in Austria, nor the great differences of their religious
tenets, has hindered the work of the education of the poor
throughout the empire. Here, as elsewhere, it has been
demonstrated that such difficulties may be easily overcome,
when a government understands how to raise a nation in
civilization, and wishes earnestly to do so.
"In those parishes of the Austrian empire where there are any
dissenters from the Roman Church, the education of their
children is not directed by the priests, but is committed to
the care of the dissenting ministers. These latter are
empowered and required by government to provide for, to watch
over, and to educate the children of their own sects in the
same manner as the priests are required to do for the education
of their children."
He also says:
"And yet in these countries--Austria, Bavaria, and the Rhine
provinces, and the Catholic Swiss cantons--the difficulties
arising from religious differences have been overcome, and all
their children have been brought under the influence of
religious education without any religious party having been
offended." (_Kay_, vol. ii. p. 3.)
And bearing testimony to the earnest desire of the Catholic
Church to advance the education of her children everywhere, he
says:
{234}
"In Catholic Germany, in France, and even in Italy, 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 priesthood of the present day
seeks to keep ahead of the intellectual progress of the
community in Catholic lands; and they might, perhaps, retort
upon 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 suppressed, but
is encouraged by the popish church and is a mighty instrument
in its hands and ably used. In every street in Rome, for
instance, there are at short distances public primary schools
for the education of the children of the lower and middle
classes of the neighborhood. Rome, with a population of 158,000
souls, has 372 public primary schools, with 482 teachers, and
14,000 children attending them. Has Edinburgh so many schools
for the instruction of these classes? I doubt it. Berlin, with
a population about double that of Rome, has only 264 schools.
Rome has also her university, with an average number of 600
students, and the papal states, with a population of 2,500,000,
contains seven universities; Prussia, with a population of
14,000,000, has but seven."
If the church has been found in hostility to educational systems,
it has been when, as in Ireland, the schools have been made
_proselytizing agencies_ and _instruments of
oppression_; and if she has disfavored without opposing other
systems, as here, it was solely to preserve her _own people_
from the damaging effects of a purely secular education, and to
secure for them the higher advantages of a religious training. If
others find that the schools answer all their wants, she is well
pleased to see them derive every benefit therefrom which the best
administration of such a system can produce. But the Catholic
people say: If we who are counted by millions, and who are daily
adding to the wealth of the nation by our labor and enterprise,
are required to pay taxes for the support of the public schools
which we cannot use for the education of our children, ought we
not, at least, to receive an equitable proportion of the public
fund, to assist us in securing what every good citizen wishes to
see accomplished, the education of our youth? We are now
millions, and millions more are coming, by ship and steamer,
every day, almost every hour. We are a part of the nation,
children and citizens of the great republic. Shall we add to the
virtue and intelligence of the community, or to its ignorance and
vice? We are struggling with all our might, and devoting all our
means to reach the lowest stratum of our society, and lift it up
into the light and air of secular knowledge and spiritual grace.
Why should not the State of New York help in the good work?
The regulations of France, Prussia, Austria, England, and other
countries of Europe would assuredly afford to our legislators the
practical details of a good working system, which it is not our
province to suggest in form, uninvited. Let it be conceded,
however, that millions of men throughout this country should not
be taxed for establishments of which they cannot conscientiously
avail themselves, unless, at the same time, they are permitted to
participate, in a reasonable way, in the enormous funds derived
from those tax-rates. Let the schools, though denominational when
endowed by the state, be subject to state inspection so far as to
insure the full compliance with the requirements of the general
law as to the standard of education to be bestowed, but with no
further control over management or discipline.
{235}
In the European countries referred to, (it may be said here
generally,) each religious denomination when sufficiently
numerous in a district to justify it, is permitted to establish a
denominational school; receiving its share of the public fund,
and being subject to governmental inspection as to the proper
application of the money, and the faithful discharge of the
engagement to impart secular knowledge according to the fixed
educational standard. The selection of the school-books and the
religious training of the children are in such cases placed in
the charge of the clergy, or made subject to their revision.
Where the religious denomination has not sufficient numerical
strength to enable it to establish a separate school, its
children attend the other public school or schools, but are
carefully guarded against all attempts at proselytizing, and
their religious instruction is confided to their own ministers.
In no instance is the proper proportion of the school fund ever
refused to any denomination which has the number requisite under
the law for the establishment of a separate school. By these
means, perfect freedom of conscience is preserved, and public
harmony and good-will promoted; whilst at the same time, the
children of all churches are brought up in the wisdom of the
world without losing the fear of God. In this way, too, religious
freedom becomes a _practical thing_, and not a
constitutional platitude or an empty national boast. In this
serious matter, this great national concern, those European
monarchies have expelled sham altogether. Have we? Do we in the
United States, vaunting our hatred of "_church and state_,"
our devotion to entire freedom of conscience, our preeminent love
of "_fair play_," our respect for the _inviolable rights
of minorities_, do we imitate the liberal example of
monarchical Europe, Catholic and Protestant, when we tax our six
millions of Catholics for public schools, and then refuse them a
participation in the fund? What just man will say that such a
rule is right? What wise man will say that it is _politic_?
At least, let it not be said that in our great cities, where
there are tens of thousands of poor Catholic children, and in
those rural districts where the numbers are notoriously
sufficient to justify the establishment of one or more schools,
they shall be driven to seek an education under a system which
their parents cannot conscientiously sanction, or be left to the
chances of procuring the rudiments of learning from the
over-taxed and doubly-taxed resources of their co-religionists.
Help the schools now actually existing, and which are filled to
overflowing with eager scholars; and assist those who are willing
to build up others; the cost is no greater; the educational
policy of the state is equally satisfied, whilst the morals of
the rising generation, purified by religious faith and
strengthened by religious practices, will give the republic
assurance of a glorious future.
We are satisfied that such a system would give us an enlightened
Christian people, and not merely a nation of intelligent men of
the world, as cold as they are polished, and as indifferent to
divine things as they are eager for the pleasures of sense and
the pride of life.
This would be a truly solid basis upon which to build and
perpetuate the empire of a self-governing nation. Without this,
our constitution is a rope of sand, our republicanism a delusion,
and our freedom a miserable snare to the down-trodden
nationalities all over the earth.
--------
{236}
All Souls' Day--1867.
Dying? along the trembling mountain flies
The fearful whisper fast from cot to cot;
Strong fathers stand aghast and mothers' eyes
Melt as their white lips stammer, "Not, oh! not
Him of all others? Nay,
Not him who from our hearths so oft drove death away?"
Well may those pale groups gather at each door.
Well may those tears that dread the worst be shed.
The hand that healed their ills will bless no more,
The life that served to lengthen theirs has fled;
And while they pray and weep,
Unto his rest he passeth like a child asleep.
Ah! this is sudden! why, this very morn
He rode amongst us: sick men woke to hear
The step of his black pacer: the new-born
Smiled at him from their cradles; many a tear
On faces wan and dim.
He dried to-day: to-night those cheeks are wet for him.
For there he lies, together gently laid
The hands we were so proud of, his white hair
Making the silver halo that it made
In life around his brow; as if in prayer
The gentle face composed.
With nameless peace o'ershadowing the eyelids closed.
And as beside him through the night we hold
Our solitary watch, I had not started
To hear my name break from him, as of old,
Or see the tranquil lips a moment parted.
To speak the word unsaid,
The last supreme adieu that instant death forbade.
I dread the day-dawn, for his silent rest
Befits the night: I half believe him mine,
While in the tapers' shadowy light, his breast
Seems heaving, and, amid the pale moonshine
That wanders o'er the lawn.
Crouch the still hounds unknowing that their master's gone.
{237}
But when the morning at his window stands
In glory beckoning, and he answers not;
Not for the wringing of the widowed hands,
Or orphans wrestling with their bitter lot,
I feel, old friend, too well,
That naught can wake thee but the final miracle.
Was it but yesterday, that at my gate,
Beneath the over-arching oaks we met;
Throned in his saddle, statue-like he sate,
A horseman every inch: I see him yet,
His morning mission done.
His deep-mouthed pack behind him trailing, one by one.
Mute are the mountains now! No more that cry
Of the full chase by all the breezes borne
Down the defiles, while echo's swift reply
Speeds the loud chorus! Nevermore the horn
Of our lost chief will shake
Those tempest-riven crags, or pierce the startled brake!
Those summits were his refuge when the touch
Of gloom was on him, and the gathered care
Of long life, that braved and suffered much,
Drove him from beaten walks, to breathe the air
That, haunts gray Carrick's crest,
And spur from dawn to dusk till effort purchased rest.
But yet, in all these thirty years, how few
The days we saw not the familiar form
Amid the valleys passing, till it grew
Part of the landscape: through the sun or storm
With equal front he rode,
Punctual as planets moving in the paths of God.
I've seen him, when the frozen tempest beat,
Breast it as gayly as the birds that played
Upon the drifts: and through the deadly heat
That drove the fainting reapers to the shade.
Smiling he passed along.
Erect the good gray head, and on his lips a song.
I've known him too, by anguish chained abed,
Forsake his midnight pillow with a moan,
And meekly ride wherever pity led,
To heal a sorrow slighter than his own;
Or rich or poor the same--
It mattered not: let any sorrow call, he came.
{238}
Thy life was sacrifice, my own old friend,
Yet sacrifice that earned a sacred joy,
For in thy breast kept beating to the end,
The trust and honest gladness of a boy;
The seventy years that span
Thy course, leave thee as pure as when their date began.
Who could have dreamed the sharp, sad overthrow
Of such a life, so tender, strong, and brave?
My pulse seems answering thy finger now--
'Twas one step from the stirrup to the grave!
Oh! lift your load with care,
And gently to its rest the precious burden bear.
All Souls' Day! as they place him in the aisle.
The bells his youth obeyed for Mass are ringing;
And, as beneath the churchyard gate we file,
To latest rite his honored relics bringing.
You'd think the dead had all
Arrayed their little homes for some high festival.
As if for _him_ the flowering chaplets, strewn
Throughout God's acre, breathe a second spring;
To him the ivy on the sculptured stone
A welcome from the tomb seems whispering:
The buried wear their best.
As, in their midst, their old companion takes his rest.
Yes, he is yours, not ours: set down the bier:
To you we leave him with a ready trust:
Beneath this sod there's scarce a spirit here
That was not once his friend: Oh! guard his dust!
And if your ashes may
Thrill to old love, your graves are gladder than our hearths to-day.
----------
{239}
Is it Honest? [Footnote 52]
[Footnote 52: Sermons in answer to the Tract, _Is it
Honest?_ By Rev. L. W. Bacon. _The Brooklyn Times_,
March 9th, 17th, 24th, 1868.]
A brief tract, issued a short time since by The Catholic
Publication Society, seems to have produced an unusual commotion
among our non-Catholic brethren, and has called forth reply after
reply from the sectarian press and pulpit. The tract is very
brief, and consists only of a few pointed questions; but it has
kindled a great fire, and compelled Protestants to come forward
and attempt to defend their honesty, in uttering their false
charges and gross calumnies against Catholics and the church. It
has put them on their defence, made them feel that they, not the
church, are now on trial before the public. This is no little
gain, and they do not have so easy a time of it, in defending
their libels, as they had in forging and uttering them, when
Catholics had no organ through which they could speak, and were
so borne down by public clamor that their voice could not have
been heard in denial, even if they had raised it. Times have
changed since those sad days when it was only necessary to vent a
false charge against the church, to have it accredited and
insisted on by a fanatical multitude as undeniable truth, however
ridiculous or absurd it might be.
Since our sectarian opponents have been put upon their defence,
we trust Catholics will keep them to it. We have acted on the
defensive long enough, and turn about is only fair play. They
must now prove their libels, or suffer judgment to go against
them. They feel that it is so, and they open their defence
resolutely, with apparent confidence and pluck. They have no lack
of words and show no misgiving. This is well; it is as we would
have it, for we wish them to have a fair trial, and to make the
strongest, boldest, and best defence the nature of the case
admits.
In our remarks we shall confine ourselves principally to the
justification attempted by Mr. Bacon, in his sermons, as we find
them in the _Brooklyn Times_; and we must remind him in the
outset that the assumption with which he commences--that the
tract, in appealing to the good sense of the public, whether it
is honest to insist on certain charges against the church as
true, when the slightest inquiry would show them to be
false--makes an important concession, or any concession at all to
the Protestant rule, is altogether unwarranted. He says: "This
submitting of the questions in dispute to the public, man by man,
after the Protestant, the American fashion--concedes at the
outset one great and most vital principle, to wit, that the
ultimate appeal in questions of personal belief, is to each man's
reason and conscience in the sight of God." Quite a mistake.
There is no question of personal belief in the case. The question
submitted to the public by the tract is not whether what the
church teaches and Catholics believe is true or false, but
whether it is honest to continue to accuse the church and
Catholics of holding and doing what it is well known, or may
easily be known, they do not do, and declare they do not hold?
{240}
This is the question, and the only question, submitted. Is it
honest to continue repeating day after day, and year after year,
foul calumnies against your neighbor, when the proofs that they
are calumnies lie under your hand, and spread out before your
eyes so plainly that he who runs may read? We think even the
smallest measure of common sense is sufficient to answer that
question, which is, on one side, simply a question of fact, and
on the other, a question of very ordinary morals. The competency
of reason to decide far more difficult questions than that, no
Catholic ever disputes. We think even the reason of a pagan can
go as far as that. "Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is
right?"
"But this tract," the preacher continues, "is a plain assertion
that no man ought blindly to accept the religious opinions to
which he is born, nor the instructions of his religious teachers;
but that he is bound, in honesty and justice, to hear the other
side, and decide between them by his own private judgment." If by
opinions is meant faith, it does no such thing; if by opinions
are meant only opinions, it may pass, though the tract neither
argues nor touches the question. The Catholic always supposes man
is endowed with reason and understanding, and that both are
active in the act of faith as in an act of science. There is and
can be no such thing as _blind_ faith, though blind
prejudices are not uncommon. Men seek or inquire for what they
have not, not for what they have. They who have the faith do not
seek it, and can examine what is opposed to it only for the
purpose of avoiding or refuting it. Catholics have the faith;
they are in possession of the truth, and have no need to make for
themselves the examination supposed. Non-Catholics have not the
faith; they have only opinions, often very erroneous, very
absurd, and very hurtful opinions, and they are therefore bound,
not by the _opinions_ they have received from their
religious teachers, or to which they were born, but to seek
diligently, with open minds and open hearts, for the truth till
they find it. When they find it, they will not be bound to seek
it, but to adhere to it, and obey it. There is no Protestant
teaching in this, and it is nothing "different from what the
Church of Rome always teaches her followers."
The tract says: "Americans love
fair play." The preacher says:
"I believe it is no more than the truth. If there is one thing
rather than another that Americans do love, it is this very
thing--absolute freedom and fairness of religious discussion.
Curious, isn't it? How came Americans to 'love fair play'?
Englishmen seem to have a similar taste. Catholic or Protestant
in England can speak or write his thoughts, on either side,
without hinderance or constraint. The same thing may be
remarked, in a measure, in Northern Germany. How can you
account for it? What is the reason, do you suppose, why they
don't 'love fair play' in Spain? or in Austria? or in Mexico?
or in Rome? This injured innocent stands in New York, at the
corners of the streets, bemoaning himself that he is treated
'dishonestly, and unjustly,' because the public will not buy
and read his books; and all the time, in the Holy City
itself--under the direct fatherly government of the pope--a
subject is not allowed to be (as this tract says) 'honest and
just' toward Protestant Christians by examining both sides,
except at the peril of being punished as for an infamous crime!
'Americans love fair play.' Why do all Roman Catholic nations
suppress it? Why does the pope forbid it in his own dominions?
And what reason have we to believe that, if these who are
clamoring for 'fair play' should ever hold the power in this
country, they would put it to any different use here, from that
which prevails in Catholic countries generally?"
{241}
We are not aware that there is any less love of fair play in
Spain, Mexico, or Rome, than in the United States, England, or
North-Germany, in Catholic than in non-Catholic countries, only
there is more faith and less need to seek it, or to examine both
sides in order to find it. As a matter of fact, though we cannot
regard it as any great merit, Catholics are generally far more
ready to hear both sides, and to read Protestant books, than
Protestants are to read Catholic books. We have never met with
intelligent Catholics as ignorant of Protestantism as we have
generally found intelligent Protestants of Catholicity. There is
nothing among Catholics to correspond to the blind prejudice,
deplorable ignorance, and narrow-minded bigotry of sectarians;
but we are happy to believe that even these are mellowing with
time, losing many of their old prejudices, and becoming more
enlightened and less bigoted and intolerant; there is still room
for improvement.
"Let us understand in the outset," says the preacher, "that the
charges against Catholics and the Catholic Church that are
complained of in this tract, are conceded by the writer to be
of grave importance. The prohibiting of the Bible to the
people--the belief that priestly absolution has efficacy of
itself, and is not merely conditional on the sincerity of the
sinner's repentance--the paying to images of such worship as
the heathen do--all these are declared by this writer to be
'detestable and horrible.' So that if it should appear that any
one of them is proved against Catholics or the Catholic Church,
the case is closed against them. He is not at liberty to go
back and apologize for the doctrine or palliate it. He has
declared it to be 'false doctrine'--'detestable and horrible.'"
What the tract regards as important or unimportant, is nothing to
the purpose; what the preacher must prove is, that it is honest
to continue to repeat charges against Catholics and the Catholic
Church which have been amply refuted, and the refutation of which
is within the reach of every one who would know the truth; or at
least he must show that the refutation is insufficient, and that
the charges are not false, but true. He will not find us
shrinking from the truth, apologizing for it, or seeking to get
behind it or around it. We, however, beg him to understand that
he is the party accused, and on trial, not we, and that we are
probably better judges on doubtful points, of what is or is not
Catholic doctrine and practice, than he or any of his brethren.
He will do well, also, to bear in mind that the question raised
by the tract is not whether the doctrine of the church is true or
false, but whether it is honest to persist in saying that it is
what the church and all Catholics affirm that it is not. What he
must prove, in order to be acquitted, is that the church and
Catholics do hold what the tract denies, and denies on authority,
or that there are good and sufficient reasons for believing that
they do so hold.
1. The tract asks, "Is it honest to say that the Catholic Church
prohibits the use of the Bible, when anybody who chooses can buy
as many as he likes at any Catholic bookstore, and can see on the
page of any one of them the approbation of the bishops of the
Catholic Church, with the pope at their head, encouraging
Catholics to read the Bible, in these words, 'The faithful should
be excited to the reading of the Holy Scriptures,' and that not
only for the Catholics of the United States, but also for those
of the whole world." Mr. Bacon does not meet directly the facts
alleged by the tract, nor plead truth in justification of the
libel; but undertakes to show that even if false, yet Protestants
may be personally honest in uttering it; and he adduces various
circumstances which he thinks may very innocently induce
Protestants to suppose that the church does prohibit the use of
the Bible.
{242}
We have not the patience to take up in detail all the
circumstances alleged, and refute the inferences drawn from them;
most of them are mere inventions, perversions of the truth,
misapprehensions of the facts in the case, and none, nor all of
them together, justify the inference, in face of what the tract
alleges, that the church prohibits the use of the Bible; and it
is easy for any one who honestly seeks the truth to know that
they do not.
The facts alleged by the tract are accessible to all who wish to
know them. He who makes a false charge through ignorance, when he
can with ordinary prudence know that it is false, is not
excusable; and it is not surely in those who claim to be the
enlightened portion of mankind to attempt to defend their honesty
at the expense of their intelligence. They are the last people in
the world, if we take them at their estimate of themselves, to be
permitted to plead invincible ignorance.
The _Newark Evening Journal_ is bolder and more direct than
Mr. Bacon. It asserts that the Church actually forbids the
reading of the Scriptures, and boldly challenges the fact alleged
by the tract. It says: "On the very page from which are taken the
words, 'The faithful should be excited to read the Holy
Scriptures,' are quoted, it is also said, 'To guard against error
it was judged necessary to forbid the reading of the Scriptures
in the vulgar languages, without the advice and permission of the
pastors and spiritual guides whom God has appointed to govern his
Church.' How then can it be false to say that the Church
prohibits the use of the Holy Scriptures?" Simply because to
forbid the _abuse_ of a thing is not to prohibit its
_use_. The faithful, for the promotion of faith and piety,
are excited to read the Scriptures; but to guard against error or
the abuse of the sacred writings, those who would wrest them to
their own destruction are forbidden to read them in the vulgar
languages, except under the direction of their spiritual guides.
A prudent and loving father forbids his child, who has a morbid
appetite or a sickly constitution, to eat of a certain kind of
food except under the direction of the family physician, lest the
child should be injured by it; can you therefore say that he
prohibits the _use_ of that kind of food? Certainly not. All
you can say is, that while he concedes the use, he takes
precautions against the abuse, which is in no sense inconsistent
with anything asserted by the tract.
Mr. Bacon, referring to reported cases of the confiscation of
Bibles, circulated by the Bible Society, found in the hands of
the laity, says the French Bible confiscated was the Catholic
version of De Sacy; that the Polish Bible circulated by the Bible
Society was, word for word, the copy of the version published two
centuries before, and approved by two popes; the Italian Bible,
for reading which the godly family Madiai were persecuted and
imprisoned, was the Catholic version [not so] of Martini,
Archbishop of Florence, published with the approbation and
sanction of Pope Pius VI. Suppose this correct, it does not prove
that the Church prohibits the use of the Holy Scriptures, but is
very good proof to the contrary. These versions were made and
published for the people, and would have been neither made nor
published if the use of the Scriptures was forbidden. And how can
you say that popes prohibit what you show they approved and
sanctioned? There was a German Bible before Luther, and our Douay
Bible was published before the version of King James.
{243}
"But I am not willing," continues the preacher, "that this
effrontery [what effrontery?] of this question should be let go
even with this answer." We can easily believe it. "I am ready to
call witnesses." Well, dear doctor, your witnesses; we are ready
to hear their testimony. "Whoever heard of a Catholic Bible
Society multiplying copies of the Bible?" Nobody that we know of.
But how long is it since Protestants had a Bible Society? Prior
to that, did they prohibit the use of the Holy Scriptures? "Popes
have fulminated their bulls against Bible Societies, denouncing
them as an invention of the devil." Not unlikely; but it is one
thing to denounce Bible Societies, and another to prohibit the
use or the reading of the Bible. Your witnesses. Rev. sir, do not
testify to the point. Besides, all the facts, or pretended facts,
you bring forward are too recent for your purpose. The accusation
that the Church prohibits the use of the Scriptures was made by
Protestants long before any of them are even said to have
occurred, and therefore could not have originated in them.
_Ex-post facto_ causes are not admitted in catholic
philosophy. The charge brought against the Church betrays no
little folly and ingratitude. If the Church had prohibited the
use of the Scriptures, how could the Reformers have got a copy of
them? They certainly purloined them from her, and could have got
them from no other source.
The preacher concludes his first sermon by saying: "I am glad the
time has come when it is understood on both sides that, if the
Roman Church is to commend itself to the American people, it must
begin by repudiating, as horrible and detestable, the teaching
and practice for three hundred years of the church." What has for
three hundred years been falsely alleged by her enemies to be her
teaching and practice, agreed; but what has really been her
teaching and practice, denied. "Let it but make good this new
claim, and we thank God for the new reformation, and welcome it
to the platform of Protestantism." There is no new claim in the
case; what the tract asserts has always been the doctrine and
practice of the church; she has always encouraged the use and
opposed the abuse of the Holy Scriptures. That the preacher
should desire a new reformation can be easily understood, for the
old has well-nigh run out; that he will ever be able to welcome
the church to the platform of Protestantism is, however, not
likely; for she is not fond of standing on platforms, and prefers
to remain seated on the rock. The reverend gentleman may be
shocked to hear it; but it is, nevertheless, a fact, that the
Bible and reason are not special Protestant possessions; they
were ours ages before Protestantism was born, and will be ours
ages after Protestantism is dead and forgotten.
2. In his second sermon--in a note to which he corrects his
assertion that it was the Catholic version of Martini, and states
that it was the Protestant version of Diodati, that was used by
the godly family of the Madiai--the preacher confines his efforts
to questions raised by the tract with regard to the worship of
images and pictures, and of the Blessed Virgin and the saints.
The tract asks:
"Is it honest _to accuse Catholics of paying divine worship
to images or pictures as the heathen do_--when any Catholic
indignantly repudiates any idea of the kind, and when the
Council of Trent distinctly declares the doctrine of the
Catholic Church in regard to them to be, 'that there is no
divinity or virtue in them which should appear to claim the
tribute of one's veneration;' but that all the honor which is
paid to them shall be referred to the originals whom they are
designed to represent?' (Sess. 25.)
{244}
"The answer to this question," the preacher says, "is to be
found by asking two others: 1. What sort of honors do the
heathen pay to images? 2. What sort of honors do Roman
Catholics pay to them? When we have got answers to these two,
we can compare them, and shall be able to say whether they are
the same."
We respectfully submit that neither of these questions need be
asked; for so far as pertinent, both are answered in the tract
itself. The accusation against Catholics which the tract implies
cannot be honestly made, is that we pay _divine_ worship to
images and pictures, as the heathen do; what the tract then
denies is that Catholics pay _divine_ worship to images and
pictures; and what it asserts is, that the heathen do pay them
divine worship; but this assertion is simply illustrative, and
should it be found inexact, it would not affect the formal denial
that the worship Catholics pay them is _divine_. As to what
sort of worship Catholics do render to images and pictures, the
answer in the tract is explicit, that it is a "certain tribute of
veneration paid them in honor of their original. The worship is
not divine worship, and the honor paid is not paid to them for
any virtue in them, but is referred solely to their originals."
The catechism puts this clearly enough. "_Q. And is it
allowable to honor relics, crucifixes, and holy pictures? A._
Yes; with an inferior and relative honor, as they relate to
Christ and his saints, and are the memorials of them. _Q. May
we then pray to relics and images? A._ No; by no means, for
they have no life or sense to hear or help us."
The preacher labors to show that this inferior and relative honor
is precisely what the heathen pay to the images of their gods;
but this, if true, would not prove that we do, but that the
heathen do not, pay divine honors to images. He cites various
authorities, Christian and heathen, to prove that it is not the
brass and gold and silver, when fashioned into a statue, that the
heathen worship, but that through the statue or image they
worship the invisible gods; that is, they worship the image as
the visible representation of the invisible divinity. This is, no
doubt, in some respects, the actual fact; nobody pretends that
they worship precisely the material statue, but the numen or god,
the prayers, invocations, incantations, and the other ceremonies
of the consecration of the statue by the priests compelled to
enter the statue and take up his abode in it. But to this image,
which for them contains the god, the heathen offer sacrifices and
other acts of worship which are due to God alone, which makes all
the difference in the world, though we have no doubt that the
type copied, perverted, corrupted, and travestied in heathen
worship is the Catholic type; as all heathenism is a corruption,
perversion, or travesty of the true religion, or as Protestantism
is a corruption, perversion, or travesty of the Catholic Church.
The heathen images and pictures represent no absent reality, and
are not memorials of an absent truth, like our sacred images and
pictures; and the heathen, then, can honor only the material
substance or the supposed indwelling numen or daemon. The gods
they are supposed to bring nigh, represent, or render visible,
are either purely imaginary, or evil spirits; hence the Scripture
tells us that "all the gods of the heathen are devils." And
finally, to these idols, which are nothing but wood and stone,
brass and silver, or gold, which represent, if anything, demons
or devils, the heathen pay divine honors; while we simply honor
and respect images and pictures of our Lord and his saints for
the sake of the originals, or the worth to which they are
related.
{245}
Here is a difference which we should suppose even our Protestant
doctor capable of perceiving and recognizing.
The preacher forgets that what is denied by the tract is, that we
pay divine honors to sacred images and pictures, and cites ample
authority to prove that we do not pay divine honors to them or
through them. We offer them no sacrifices, and we offer them no
prayers or praises, even as symbols or as memorials of a worth
they represent. They are never the media through which we honor
that worth; but we honor them for the sake of the worth to which
they are related, as the pious son honors the picture of his
mother, the patriot the picture of the father of his country, or
the lover the portrait of his mistress. The respect we pay them
springs from one of the deepest and purest principles of human
nature, and can be condemned only by those who hold that there is
nothing good in nature, and condemn as evil and only evil
whatever is natural.
The minister thinks that, even should enlightened and intelligent
Catholics understand the question as explained by the catechism
and defined by the Council of Trent, yet ignorant Catholics may
not; and with them the honors paid to images and pictures
actually degenerate into idolatry. He asks:
"But how in this respect do the people of modern Italy differ
from those of ancient and heathen Italy? Do the practices of
the people there correspond to the doctrines of the
theologians, or have they, as of old time, 'bettered the
instruction?' Do they pay no special veneration, as if there
were some special virtue in the image itself, to those images
that are reputed to bleed or sweat, or to the pictures that
wink? If it was only as a guide of the thoughts toward the
person represented that the image or picture served, then one
image would serve as well as another, except that those in
which the skill and genius of the artist had most excelled to
represent in touching and vivid portraiture the object of the
worship, might be preferred above ruder and coarser works. But
as I have passed from church to church in those lands in which
the Roman system has had unlimited opportunity to work itself
out into practice, and have 'beheld the devotions' of the
people, I have seen certain statues frequented by a multitude
of worshippers, and visited by pilgrims from afar, who had come
to bow down before them, and hung with myriads of votive
offerings--waxen effigies of arms and legs and other members
that had been healed in consequence of prayers to that
particular image. And one fact, which I did not then appreciate
the bearing of, was constantly observed by myself and my
companion--that these objects of special worship and veneration
were _never_ works of superior art, but commonly rude, and
sometimes even grotesque. The inexpressibly beautiful and
touching statue by Bernini, of the Virgin holding upon her
knees the body of the dead Jesus, is in the crypt of St.
Peter's, and admiring critics go down to study it by
torchlight. But the image which is _adored_ is a grimy
bronze idol above it in the nave of St. Peter's, which is so
venerated as the statue of that apostle that the toes of the
extended foot have been actually kissed away by the adorations
of the faithful."
It is very evident that the preacher, whatever opportunities he
may have had, knows very little of the Catholic people in
general, or of the Italian people in particular, and his guesses
would deserve more respect if made in relation to his own people.
Protestants have no distinctive worship which can be offered to
God alone, and are therefore very poor judges of what they may
see going on before their eyes among a Catholic people. The
Church is responsible only for the faith she teaches and the
practices she enjoins, approves, or permits. If the people depart
from this faith and abuse these practices in their practical
devotion, the fault, since she takes away no one's freedom, is
theirs, not hers.
{246}
The worship that Catholics render to God, the honor they pay to
the saints, and the respect they entertain for sacred images,
differs not, as all worship with Protestants must, simply as more
or less, but in kind, and not even a Protestant community can be
found so ignorant as not to be able to distinguish between an
image or a picture and the saint or person intended to be
represented by it. For the many years we lived as a Protestant we
never met any one of our brethren who mistook his mother's
portrait for his mother herself, or the statue of a distinguished
statesman for the statesman himself. Who ever mistakes the
equestrian statue of George Washington in Union Square for George
Washington on horseback, or confounds Andrew Jackson himself with
Mill's ugly equestrian statue of him in one of the squares of
Washington? Who could mistake the bronze horse on which the image
of the old General is placed, and which you fear every moment is
going to tilt over backward, for a real horse? Well, my dear
doctor, however ignorant these Italian people may be whom you see
kneeling before an image or a picture of the Madonna, they know
more of the doctrines of the Gospel, more of God, and of man's
duties and relations to him, more of his proper worship, than the
most enlightened non-Catholic community that exists or ever
existed on the earth. They may not know as much of error against
faith and piety, of false theories and crude speculations as
non-Catholics; but they know more of Christianity, more of what
Christianity really is, what it teaches, and what it exacts of
the faithful, than the wisest and most learned of your sectarian
ministers, not even excepting yourself.
With regard to bleeding, sweating, or winking pictures, if you
find people believing in them, you will never find among
Catholics any who believe that they bleed, sweat, or wink by any
virtue that is in the picture itself; but that the phenomenon is
a miracle, which God works by the saint pictured. You may doubt
the miracle, but not reasonably, unless on the ground that the
evidence in the case is insufficient. Whoever believes in God
believes in the possibility of miracles, and there is nothing
more miraculous in a picture of the Madonna winking, sweating, or
bleeding, than there was in Balaam's ass speaking and rebuking
his master. It is simply a question of fact. If the proofs are
conclusive, the fact is to be believed; if insufficient, no one
is bound to believe it.
If you find the people flocking to a particular image or picture
and bringing to it their votive offerings, it certainly is not,
as the preacher takes notice, on account of its merit as a work
of art; for the Italian people, with all their love and exquisite
taste for art, do not, like so many non-Catholics, confound
artistic culture with religious culture; nor is it because they
hold that there is any hidden virtue in that particular image or
picture itself, but because the saint whose it is, has or is
believed to have specially favored those who have invoked him
before it. They may or may not be mistaken as to the fact, but
the principle, on which the special devotion to our Lady or a
saint before a particular shrine is a correct one; and there is
in the practice no special honor to the image or picture for its
own sake, and consequently nothing necessarily superstitious or
idolatrous.
Even if, as there is no reason to believe, the statue of St.
Peter in St. Peter's at Rome, and which the preacher calls a
"grimy bronze idol," was originally, as he tells us some say it
was, a statue of Jupiter, the honor paid to it by the faithful
would not be paid to Jupiter, while intended to be paid to St.
Peter.
{247}
But the toes of the image have been worn away by the kisses of
the worshippers; and do not these kisses prove that Catholics
adore the image? The heathen adore their gods by kissing the feet
of their statues; and when Catholics kiss the feet of the images
of their saints, how can it be said that they do not worship or
adore images as the heathen do? The heathen use incense in the
worship of idols; Moses prescribes incense, and the Jews use it
in their worship of the true God; therefore the Jews are
idolaters! The preacher forgets that what the tract declares to
be dishonest is the accusation that Catholics pay _divine_
worship, that is, the worship due to God alone, to images and
pictures, as the heathen do. To kiss the feet of the statue of
St. Peter, from love and devotion to the saint himself, the
prince of the apostles, on whom our Lord founded his church, is
not to pay divine worship to the image, nor even to Peter
himself. Were we so happy as to find ourselves at St. Peter's in
Rome, we are quite sure that we should kneel before the statue of
St. Peter, and kiss its feet, running the risk of its having been
once a statue of Jupiter, and we should do it as a proper method
of expressing our love and veneration for the great apostle, and
as simply and innocently as the mother kisses the carefully
preserved portrait of her beloved son slain in battle for his
faith or his country. As to using the forms used by the heathen
to express affection or devotion, if proper in themselves, we
have as little scruple as we have in using the language which our
ancestors used in the worship of Woden or Thor, in our prayers
and praises to the One Ever-living and True God.
3. The sermon next takes up the false accusation that Catholics
pay divine worship to the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The
tract asks:
"Is IT HONEST _to accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed
Virgin or the Saints in the place of God or the Lord Jesus
Christ_--when the Council of Trent declares that it is
simply useful to ask their intercession in order to obtain
favor from God, through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who
alone is our Saviour and Redeemer--
"When 'asking their prayers and influence with God,' is exactly
of the same nature as when Christians ask the pious prayers of
one another?"
The preacher says, "At the outset let me remark, that the
question what Roman Catholics _do_ is not conclusively
answered by quoting what the Council of Trent declares." This
supposes that the same rule must be applied to Catholics, who
have an authoritative church, that is applicable to
non-Catholics, who have none, or to people among whom every one
believes according to his own private judgment, and does what is
right in his own eyes. But this is not permissible. Our faith is
taught and defined by authority, and to know what we as Catholics
believe or do, you must be certain what the church
authoritatively teaches or prescribes. We cannot go contrary to
that and be Catholics. No doubt Catholics may depart from the
faith of the church, and disobey her precepts; but when they
obstinately persist in doing so, they cease to be Catholics in
faith and practice, and their belief or their practice is of no
account in judging what is or is not Catholic doctrine or
practice. They who believe or do anything contrary to what is
declared by the Council of Trent, are _pro tanto_
non-Catholics. To know what is Catholic faith and Catholic
practice, you have only to consult the standards, of the Catholic
Church--not every individual Catholic, as you must every
individual Protestant when you wish to ascertain what is
Protestant
opinion and practice.
{248}
Our standards speak for themselves; and in determining what
Catholicity enjoins or allows, you must consult them, and them
only.
Mr. Bacon and his brethren have as free access to our standards
as we ourselves have, and they must remain under the charge of
dishonestly misrepresenting us, or prove by our standards that
the church offers or authorizes or does not forbid her children
from offering divine worship to the Blessed Virgin. Their
surmises, their conjectures, their inferences from what they see
among Catholics, but do not understand, must be thrown out as
inadmissible testimony. There are the standards: if they sustain
you, well and good; if not, you are convicted, and judgment must
go against you. This is the case presented by the tract, and
which Mr. Bacon and his friends are to meet fairly and squarely.
Now, the tract shows from the standards, from the Council of
Trent, which is plenary authority in the case, that the
accusation against Catholics of "putting the Blessed Virgin or
the saints in the place of God or the Lord Jesus Christ," is an
accusation so manifestly untrue that no one can honestly make it.
Here also is the catechism, which the church teaches all her
children. "_Q. Does this commandment [the first] forbid all
honor and veneration of saints and angels?_ No; we are to
honor them as God's special friends and servants, but not with
the honor which belongs to God." The Council of Trent declares
that "it is good and useful to ask the saints who reign together
with Christ in heaven, to pray for us," "or to ask favors for us
from our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is our Redeemer and
Saviour." We ask the saints in heaven, as we ask our friends on
earth, to pray for us. Here is the whole principle of the case.
The Council of Trent, Sess. 22, c. 3, defines that, "though the
church is accustomed to celebrate masses in honor of the saints,
yet she teaches they are never to be offered to them, but to God
alone." _Non tamen illis sacrificium offerri docet, sed Deo
soli, qui illos coronavit._ Now, with Catholics the
distinctively divine worship, the supreme worship due to God
alone, and which it would be idolatry to offer to any other, is
sacrifice, the highest possible sacrifice, the sacrifice of the
Mass, which our priests offer every day on the altar; the one
unbloody sacrifice which was offered in a bloody manner on
Calvary. This is offered to God alone; all else that is offered
to God in worship, prayer, praise, love, veneration, may, in kind
at least, be offered to men. We honor the chief magistrate,
whether called king or emperor, president or governor; we honor
the prelates whom the Holy Ghost has placed over us in the
church; we pray to or petition rulers and men in authority; we
chant the praises of the great and the heroic; we love our
country, our family, and friends; we venerate the wise and the
good, who, in services to the cause of truth, morals, and
religion, prove themselves godlike. That Protestants, who have no
sacrifice, no priest, no altar, no victim, should mistake the
nature of our _cultus sanctorum_, is not surprising, for
they have nothing in kind to offer God that we do not offer to
the saints, especially to the queen of saints, the Blessed Mother
of God. But this is their fault, not ours; for it is easy for
them to know--for our standards tell them so--that we as
Catholics place the supreme act of worship in the sacrifice of
the Mass--holding that only God is an adequate offering to God,
and that the sacrifice of the Mass is never offered to the saints
or to any but God alone.
{249}
There is a marked difference between our _cultus sanctorum_
and that with which men like Mr. Bacon, of Brooklyn, seek to
identify it. The heathen offered sacrifices, the highest form of
worship they had, to their idols, their demigods and heroes; we
offer the highest worship which we have--and we have it only
through God's goodness--to the one, living, true God only. This
proves that the accusation against Catholics of putting the
Blessed Virgin and the saints, as objects of worship, in the
place of God, is a false accusation, so well known or so easily
known to be false, that no one of ordinary intelligence can
honestly make it.
But the preacher supposes that Catholics, in other respects, put
them in the place of God. This is impossible. Catholics hold that
the saints, with the Blessed Virgin at their head, are men and
women--creatures whom God has made, has redeemed with his own
blood, and has elevated, sanctified, and glorified by his grace,
and therefore they cannot identify them with him or substitute
them for him. We hold that Mary is the Mother of Christ, and that
he is her Lord as well as ours, and that it is through his merits
alone, applied beforehand, that she was conceived without
original stain; and can anybody, so believing, mistake her for
her Son, in any respect put her in his place, or assign to her
his mediatorial work? The very fears expressed by our Protestant
friends that we do or are liable to do so, prove that even they
are able to discriminate between her and her Son; why not then
we?
The reverend gentleman continues:
"We are invited to several inquiries. First: Is it true that
the prayers that are offered by Roman Catholics to departed
saints, and especially to that holy woman whom we with them in
all generations unite to call the blessed, are only of such a
nature as we might offer to a fellow-Christian here upon the
earth in soliciting his prayers in our behalf? Secondly: Are
these supplications only for favor and influence, or are they
for the direct gift of blessing and salvation? Do they put Mary
into the place of Christ, the one Mediator between God and man;
making of the All-Merciful Saviour who inviteth all to come
unto him, an inaccessible object of dread and terror, whom we
dare not approach except through the mediation of Mary? Do they
ascribe to her the glory due to Christ, the only name given
under heaven among men whereby we may be saved? Do they profess
faith in her alone for salvation? Do they put the saints in the
place of the Holy Ghost, by supplicating from them directly the
divine gift of holiness and the renewal of the sinful heart?"
We have answered these questions by anticipation. It is probable
that Catholics believe somewhat more distinctly and more firmly
in "the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus," than
do the sects, and are less likely to forget it, seeing that all
their practical devotions, public and private, the great honors
given to Mary and the saints are founded on it and tend directly
to keep us from forgetting it. Catholics do not pray to Mary
because they regard the All-merciful Saviour as inaccessible, or
as an object of dread and terror; nor because she comes in
between them and him, represents him, or enables them to approach
him through her, as is evident from the fact that we not
unfrequently directly beseech him to grant that she and other
saints may pray for us. We honor her as the mother of God in his
human nature. We pray to her to pray to him for us, not only
because she is our mother as well as his, but because she is dear
to her Son our Lord, and he delights to honor her by granting her
requests.
{250}
For a like reason we invoke the saints, that is, ask them to pray
for us. We must then be more ignorant and stupid than even our
sectarian ministers believe us, if, in praying to them because as
his friends they are dear to him, we substitute them for him from
whom what we seek can alone come. If we believe they themselves
give it, why do we ask them to pray him to grant it? Cannot our
acute and ingenious doctor see that the invocation of saints
renders the error he supposes Catholics fall into utterly
impossible in the case of the most ignorant Catholic, and that it
tends to fix the mind and the heart directly on the fact that
every good and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down
from the Father of lights? Can he not see that the intercession
we invoke is a clear confession of the truth he thinks it
obscures or obliterates? If we think the good comes from them,
why do we ask them to intercede with Christ to bestow it? Why not
ask it of them? But is it true, as the tract affirms, that we ask
nothing of Mary and the saints in heaven that it would be
improper to ask of our fellow-Christian? This is not precisely
what the tract asserts. It asserts that asking their prayers and
influence is exactly of the same nature, that is, the same in
principle, with what Christians do when they ask the pious
prayers of one another. To this the preacher replies:
"I hold here a volume of 800 pages, almost every one of which
contains an answer to these questions, so far as I honestly
read it, in the affirmative. It is _The Glories of Mary_,
by St. Alphonsus Liguori, approved by John, Archbishop of
New-York. I scarcely know where to begin quoting, or to cease.
"'O Mary, sweet refuge of miserable sinners, assist me with thy
mercy. Keep far from me my infernal enemies, and _come
thyself_ to take my soul and present it to my eternal
Judge.' 'All the mercies ever bestowed upon men have come
through Mary.' 'Mary is called the gate of heaven, because no
one can enter heaven if he does not pass through Mary, who is
the door of it.' 'As we have access to the eternal Father only
through Jesus Christ, so we have access to Jesus Christ only
through Mary.'
"'Mary is the peacemaker between sinners and God.' 'My Mother
Mary, to thy hands I commit the cause of my eternal salvation.
To thee I consign my soul; it was lost, but thou must save it.'
'Thou art the advocate, the mediatrix of reconciliation, the
only hope, and the most secure refuge of sinners.' 'I place in
thee all my hopes of salvation.' 'She is the advocate of the
world and the true mediatrix between God and man.' 'Blessed is
he who clings with love and confidence to those two anchors of
salvation, Jesus and Mary.' 'Deliver me from the burden of my
sins; dispel the darkness of my mind; banish earthly affections
from my heart.' 'O Lady, change us from sinners to saints.'"
Tastes differ, and not every Catholic would employ every
expression used by St. Alphonsus in his _Glories of Mary_;
but none of these expressions convey to the Catholic mind what
they do to the Protestant mind; for Catholics have a key to their
meaning in their faith in the incarnation. The strongest of them
is justified by the relation of Mary to that great mystery in
which centres and from which radiates the whole of Christianity.
From her was taken that flesh, that human nature, in which God
redeems and saves us; and being taken from her, she has a
relation to God, our Saviour, and consequently to our redemption
and salvation, which no other woman, no other creature, has or
can have. This relation explains the passages in the Litany of
our Lady of Loretto, and those passages of St. Alphonsus and
other Catholic writers which assert that all mercies and graces
come from God through her. They all come from God in his human
nature; and as that nature was taken from her, they must in some
sense come through her.
{251}
They come through her, because they come from God as born of her.
They also come through her, because God, her divine Son, who
gives them, loves her as his mother, and delights to honor with
the highest honor a creature can receive; he therefore confers
the favors mortals pray for only through her intercession. But as
all the special honor done to her is done only in consequence of
her relation as his mother, the higher we carry that honor the
more clear, distinct, and energetic our conviction of the fact of
the incarnation, and the more impossible it must be for us to put
her in the place of the Incarnate Word, or to substitute her for
her Son, who is the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ
Jesus. To do so would be not only to rob him of his glory, but to
deny her title to that very honor given to her as the mother of
God. Catholics are not capable of anything so illogical and
absurd.
The key to the other expressions objected in St. Alphonsus is in
this same relation to the incarnation and the confidence of the
Saint in the power and efficacy of Mary's prayers or intercession
for us with her divine Son. He confides to Mary, leaves in her
hands the cause of his eternal salvation, as the client confides
his cause to his advocate or counsel. "My soul," he says, "was
lost, but thou must save it"--by thy intercession with thy Son,
who will deny thee nothing thou dost ask, because thou canst
never ask but what he inspires thee to ask, and what is agreeable
to his will, and he delights to honor thee before heaven and
earth by granting thy requests. In the same way understand the
expressions, "the advocate," "the mediatrix of reconciliation,"
and all the rest. The term mediatrix is not the best possible,
because it is liable to mislead not a Catholic, but a
non-Catholic, who believes little in the incarnation, and refuses
to interpret the language of Catholics by the official teaching
of their church. The Catholic always knows in what sense it is
said, and for him the explanations are never necessary; still
less are they necessary for Him who sees and knows the thoughts
and intents of the heart before they are even formed. It is the
duty of non-Catholics to consult the standards of the church and
to explain what seems to them difficult or inexact in the warm
and energetic expressions of Catholic love and devotion by them;
and it is not honest to found a charge against Catholics on such
expressions without having done so. The preacher continues:
"'Is IT HONEST to accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed
Virgin or the saints in the place of God or of the Lord Jesus
Christ? You have the answer. You know the place which God
claims for himself the 'honor which He will not give to
another.' You have heard from the very words of the Roman
Catholics themselves the place to which they exalt the spirits
of departed men and women."
Yes, you have the answer such as your minister gives; and we have
shown that his answer misinterprets facts which he does not
understand; that it refuses to interpret them by the key
furnished in the official teaching of the church; that it
contradicts itself, and proves, if anything, the falsity of the
very charge it undertakes to establish, and therefore clears
neither him nor you, if you accept it, from the charge of
dishonestly bringing false accusations against the church of God.
{252}
"Is IT HONEST _to assert that the Catholic Church grants any
indulgence or permission to commit sin_--when an
'indulgence,' according to her universally received doctrine,
was never dreamed of by Catholics to imply, in any case
whatever, any permission to commit the least sin; and when an
indulgence has no application whatever to sin until after sin
has been repented of and pardoned?"
The preacher has the air of conceding that this charge is
unfounded, and says, "If it is made, it does not appear to be
sustained yet he maintains that indulgences really remit the
punishment due to sins committed after the indulgence has been
bought and paid for; for they are alleged to preserve the
recipient in grace till death, in spite of subsequent sins." And
he cites the case of Tetzel, in the sixteenth century, in proof
He adduces what purports to be a form of absolution published by
Tetzel, and offered for sale in the market-places of Germany. The
form of absolution alleged is manifestly a forgery, and a very
stupid forgery; and besides, absolution and indulgences are very
different things, and the indulgence affects only a certain
temporary punishment that remains to be expiated after the
absolution is given or the eternal guilt is pardoned, and is
rather a commutation than a remission of even that temporary
punishment, which, if not commuted or borne here, must be
expiated hereafter in purgatory. There is no _form_ of
indulgence; there are _conditions_ of gaining an indulgence;
but there is no certificate given to the effect that we have
obtained it. If we have sincerely complied with the conditions
prescribed by the pope, we gain it; but whether we have gained it
neither we nor the church can know in this life without a special
revelation. Every Catholic knows that to offer money for it would
argue a disposition on his part that would render it impossible,
while he retained that disposition, to gain an indulgence. No one
can gain an indulgence while in a state of sin, and hence
indulgences are not at any price profitable things to purchase.
That Tetzel exaggerated the virtue of indulgences was asserted by
Luther and his friends; but that he offered them for sale in the
market-places, was never, we believe, even pretended until after
his death--was and never has been proved. Luther and his friends
complained that he was causing a scandal, and procured his arrest
and imprisonment in a convent of his order, where he died two
years after, without the matter, owing to the troubles of the
times, even undergoing a judicial investigation. As for Luther's
own testimony, in a case touching his hatred against Rome, it is
of no account.
"The only sense," continues the preacher, "in which the Roman
Church has ever sold licenses for crime, has been in this, of
announcing (not in America, in this century) a tariff of
cash-prices at which (_with_ contrition) all evil
consequences of certain sins, whether in this world or the
world to come, would be cancelled. The price-current in Germany
in the sixteenth century, ranged as follows: for polygamy, six
ducats; for sacrilege and perjury, nine ducats; for murder,
eight ducats. In Switzerland, at the same period, the price was
for infanticide, four francs; for parricide or fratricide, one
ducat."
This seems to us quite enough. The Catholic will perceive that
our learned friend is not very well posted on Catholic matters.
He evidently confounds sacramental absolution with indulgences,
and indulgences with the dispensations which the church grants in
particular cases, not from the law of God, nor the law of nature,
but from her own ecclesiastical law; and supposes that the fees
paid to the chancery for the necessary legal documents in the
various causes that come before it, are the fees paid by the
faithful for indulgences and the pardon of their sins. [Footnote
53]
{253}
A man who speaks of matters of which he knows nothing is liable
to say some very absurd things. Nevertheless, the preacher says
expressly, and we doubt not means to concede the point made by
the tract, that indulgences are not licenses to commit sin, but
he has labored to make his concession as little offensive to his
Protestant brethren as possible. Still he concedes it. "I think,
therefore," he says, "that the author of this tract is right in
claiming that it is not just to assert that the Catholic Church
grants any indulgence or permission to commit sin." No, she does
no such thing, she only "intimates beforehand her willingness, if
such and such crimes are committed, to make it all right with the
malefactor both in this world and the world to come, for
penitence--and CASH." He who should offer cash to pay for
absolution would receive for answer, "Thy money perish with
thee!"
[Footnote 53: For a full proof of the forgery of the above
passage in the book called _Tax-Book of the Roman
Chancery_, see Bishop England's Letters to Dr. Fuller,
Works of Bishop England, vol. iii. p. 13.]
"Is IT HONEST _to repeat over and over again that Catholics
pay the priests to pardon their sins_--such a thing is
unheard of anywhere in the Catholic Church--when any
transaction of the kind is stigmatized as a grievous sin, and
ranked along with murder, adultery, blasphemy, etc., in every
catechism and work on Catholic theology?"
The preacher thinks it is very honest, because, if the church
prohibits and punishes it as simony, it is very evident that it
sometimes happens. If the offence had never been committed, the
church would never have had occasion to legislate on the matter.
It was argued that for a long time the crime of parricide was
unknown at Rome, because there was no law prohibiting and
punishing it. This is his answer, and a proof, we suppose, of his
candor of which he boasts, of his readiness to die rather than
knowingly repeat a false charge against the church! The real
accusation against the church, which the tract denies can be
honestly made, is that Catholics are required to pay, or that the
priest can lawfully exact pay, for the pardon or absolution he
pronounces in the sacrament of penance. It does not necessarily
deny that the thing may sometimes be done, but, if so, it is
unlawfully, is a sin, and ranked along with murder, adultery,
etc. The sin of simony, in one form or another, has in the
history of the church often been committed, and those who
committed it are, in general, favorites with Protestant
historians, who seldom fail to brand as haughty tyrants and
spiritual despots the noble and virtuous popes who struggled
energetically against it, and did their best to correct or guard
against the evil. But honest men will not hold the church
responsible for the misdeeds of unprincipled men, which she
prohibits and exerts all the power of her discipline to prevent
and punish. The case is too plain to need argument. Penance, the
church teaches, is a sacrament, of which absolution is a part,
and to sell any sacrament or part thereof is simony, a grievous
sin; and though there is no sin that may not have been committed,
yet the fact of a priest, however depraved, demanding pay for
sacramental pardon or absolution is not known to have ever
occurred. The church prohibits it, indeed, but only in
prohibiting simony, and we are not aware that she has ever passed
any special law against this particular species of simony, and
therefore the argument of the preacher falls to the ground, and
for aught he shows, it is true to the letter that the thing is
unheard of.
{254}
"Is IT HONEST _to persist in saying that Catholics believe
that their sins are forgiven merely by the confession of them
to the priest, without a true sorrow for them, or a true
purpose to quit them_--when every child finds the contrary
distinctly and clearly stated in the catechism, which he is
obliged to learn before he can be admitted to the sacraments?
Any honest man can verify this statement by examining any
Catholic catechism."
"Nothing," says the preacher, "could be more conclusive than this
logic, if we could constantly presume that the belief and
practice of the people always coincide exactly with the teaching
of the catechism." If the coincidence were perfect, there would
be no sins to confess, no need of the sacrament of penance, and
no question as to the condition of ghostly absolution or pardon
could ever be raised. But as the preacher finds nothing to object
to under this head in the teaching or official practice of the
church, we must presume that he finds the logic of the tract,
whatever may be the deceptions, if any, practised upon the
priest, is quite conclusive, and he certainly concedes quite
enough to show that the accusation against the church which the
tract repels, cannot be honestly repeated. We would remind the
preacher that no one is forced against his will to go to
confession, and the very fact of one's going is presumptive proof
of sincere sorrow for his sins, and a resolution, weaker or
stronger, God helping him, to forsake them. Why should he seek to
deceive the priest, when he knows that if he seeks to do so, he
would not only receive no benefit from the absolution, but would
commit the grievous sin of sacrilege by profaning the sacrament?
"Is IT HONEST _to say that Catholics believe that man, by his
own power, can forgive sin_--when the priest is regarded by
the Catholic Church only as the agent of our Lord Jesus Christ,
acting by the power delegated to him, according to these words,
'Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and
whose sins you shall retain, they are retained?' St John xx.
23."
The preacher has offered no reply, or, if he has, we have
overlooked it, to this grave accusation; perhaps he has none to
make. The journals, however, attempt a reply, the purport of
which is, that, though the tract states truly the official
teaching of the church, yet Catholics practically believe, as
every one knows who has had intercourse with them, that it is the
priest, not God, who they believe pardons sin. This, too, is in
substance the reply of Mr. Bacon throughout. The tract states the
doctrine of the church correctly on all the points made, but then
that, it is pretended, is not the doctrine of the Catholic
people, the practical doctrine of Catholics, and gives no clue to
the practical workings of the Roman system--a clear confession
that they really have nothing to object to Catholic doctrine and
practice, though they have much to object to in what is no
doctrine or teaching or practice of the church. The reason of
this, we suppose, is, that they have no conception of the church.
Now, we think it is very likely that there are many Catholics who
cannot define very scholastically the distinction between
efficient cause and instrumental or medial cause; but put the
question to the most ignorant Catholic you can find. "Do you
believe the priest as a man in confession pardons your sins?" as
soon as he gets hold of what you are driving at, he will answer:
"No; he pardons or absolves them as a priest." This answer means
that the priest does not absolve by a virtue in him as a man, but
by virtue of his priestly office, to which he is appointed by the
Holy Ghost; that is, as the minister, or as the tract says, the
agent of our Lord Jesus Christ. All Catholics unhappily do not
conform their life to their faith; but you will find that the
faith of the people is that of the church, that which the church
officially teaches; and there is no room for the distinction
which non-Catholic ministers and journals, try, as their best
resort in self-vindication, to make between Catholicity in the
formularies of the church and the Catholicity that works
practically in the faith and lives of the Catholic people,
whether learned or unlearned.
{255}
All this talk about the practical workings of the system is
moonshine, at least outside of the record, to which no Catholic
is bound to reply. We are required to believe and defend only
what the church teaches and requires of her children:
8. The tract concludes with the question,
"Is IT HONEST _to make these and many other similar charges
against Catholics_--when they detest and abhor such false
doctrines more than those do who make them, and make them too,
without ever having read a Catholic book, or taken any honest
means of ascertaining the doctrines which the Catholic Church
really teaches? AMERICANS LOVE FAIR PLAY."
In spite of all that sectarian preachers and journals can say,
the unprejudiced and fair-minded American will answer, to each
question the tract puts, No! it is not honest, but gravely
dishonest; for every one is bound to judge Catholics by the
standards of the church, open to all the world. And these
manifestly disprove the accusations.
We have attempted no defence in this article of our holy religion
itself. We have only attempted to show our Protestant accusers
that their efforts to prove themselves honest, in their false
charges against the church and her faithful children, are
unsuccessful. They have not successfully impeached the tract in a
single instance, nor vindicated themselves from a single one of
its charges; nor can they do it. Many things may be said against
the immaculate spouse of Christ; the daughters of the
uncircumcised may call her black, may rail against her, and call
her all manner of hard names; but she stands ever in her
loveliness, all pure, and dear to her Lord, who loves her, and
gave his life for her, and dear to the heart of every one of her
loving children, and all the dearer from the foul aspersions cast
upon her by the ignorant, the foolish, and the malicious.
We have not taken much notice of the professions of candor and
independence of the preacher; for we have never much esteemed
professions which are contradicted by deeds; nor are we easily
won by fine things said of individual Catholics by one who in the
same breath calumniates the holy Catholic Church. Few sermons
have we read that show a more decided hostility to our religion
than these of the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, of Brooklyn, which are
unredeemed from their low sectarian character by any depth of
learning, extent of historical research, force of logic, richness
of imagination, flow of eloquence, or sparkle of wit. We have
found them very commonplace and dull; we have found it a dull
affair to read and reply to them; and we fear that our readers
will find our reply itself very dull, for dulness is contagious.
--------
{256}
Magas; or, Long Ago.
A Tale Of The Early Times.
Chapter IX.
"She is bewitched, my lord," said her attendants to Magas, as he
stood the next day by the bedside of Chione, and she knew him
not. "She is bewitched. Chloe and two or three others heard the
spell muttered just before she fell."
Magas looked incredulously, yet half-believing what they said.
"Why, who can have bewitched her?"
"The Christians, my lord; there were many present, and they came
on purpose. They failed the first time, but they did it the
next."
Magas gazed at Chione, as she lay, for the most part insensible,
yet at intervals uttering incoherent words which alarmed them
all. He said softly, "Chione?"
She started up and gazed fiercely at him. "Begone!" she said,
"you have lost me my soul for ever; begone!" And she struck him a
violent blow.
"It is ever thus, my lord," said an attendant consolingly, "when
people are thus attacked by the furies; they hate those most that
they loved the best."
"What makes you think the Christians have bewitched her?"
"They are practising magic all over, and playing all kinds of
tricks throughout the country."
"But why should they attack your mistress?"
"Why, my lord--" And the woman hesitated.
"Well, what?"
"Well, my lord, they do say she was once one of them; and when
any one leaves them, they never forgive them--they torment them
for ever."
"Pshaw! what nonsense is this?"
"I did not make the story, my lord; more than one says so."
"Let those in this house beware of ever saying it again then,
unless they are fond of being scourged." And Magas turned away.
He was but half satisfied, however. He remembered the meeting
with the bishop, as he had afterward discovered him to be. He
knew, too, that Lady Damaris was accounted a Christian, and that
Chione always shrank from naming her. The Christians had a great
name for magic: but Dionysius and the Lady Damaris were of the
highest families. Magas paced for many hours the sacred grove to
which he had wandered, then suddenly betook him to the bishop's
residence.
He was admitted, courteously received; but it was some time
before he returned the bishop's greeting. Dionysius waited his
pleasure with the courtesy for which he was remarkable.
At length Magas said: "I cannot think you have done it."
"Done what, my son?"
"Bewitched Chione; made her mad."
"Is Chione ill?"
"She is very ill, she is raving and insensible by turns."
"Your words seemed just now to imply I was concerned in her
illness."
"Her attendants think--think--tell me, noble Dionysius, is it
true that Chione was ever a Christian?"
"Why do you ask?"
{257}
"Because it is important that the Christians should know that, if
they have bewitched her in revenge for her leaving them, they
must undo the spell at once, or brave my vengeance."
"This much, at least, I may tell you--the Christians have not
bewitched her."
"Yet she fainted at some words uttered close to her, and that was
the _second_ interruption of the evening."
"My son, you must not make me responsible for the interruptions;
I was not present at your meeting."
"No, but some Christians were; that has been ascertained."
"Even so; each one must answer for himself."
"You did not send them there?"
"I did not!"
"Now, will you tell me, was Chione ever a Christian?"
"I would rather that she answer for herself."
"She is not in a state to answer for herself, and your answer may
prevent some suffering; if she was never a Christian, those
slaves shall be scourged who affirm she was."
Magas had hit on the right method, as he intended; the bishop
answered at once: "Spare the poor slaves, my son. I baptized
Chione myself."
"Baptized?"
"Yes, admitted her within the pale of the church by washing away
all sin; by that she became a Christian."
"How long ago?"
"About fifteen months before she was missing from Corinth."
When did she leave your society?"
"I suppose when she left Corinth; I have not spoken with her
since."
"Is her present illness connected with her Christianity?"
"How can I possibly tell, my son? I have not seen her; mental
agitation may have caused it, and her leaving her religion may
have caused that; how can I tell?"
"But has magic been used upon her?"
"Not by Christians, decidedly; and I should think, not at all.
Her brain is probably over-worked, and she has been suffering
from over-excitement: these will frequently cause derangement."
"And you think religion has nothing to do with it?"
"I did not say that, my son; to profess one thing and believe
another must occasion uneasiness, until the conscience is dead. I
should say, from your account, that Chione is suffering from
mental disturbance, brought on by her unfaithfulness to her own
convictions. Once a Christian, she must still feel its influence;
and unwilling to yield to its teachings, she writhes under its
power."
"That is it, that is what her nurses say; she is under the power
of the Christians--bewitched by them. Now, that spell must be
undone."
"If it is in her own mind, caused by her own act, _no one_
can undo it, as long as _her_ will remains perverse."
"What does this mean?" said Magas.
"It means this, my friend: Christianity links the soul to the
living God from which it sprang. To become a Christian is not a
myth, not a mere intellectual conviction, not an adoption of
philosophical tenets: it is an _act_, a solemn act of
_surrender_; it is an acknowledgment that the world has been
disturbed by influences foreign to the true God; it is a
renunciation of those influences, a solemn reunion of the soul
with the Eternal Soul, the Creator, the Upholder, the Redeemer;
it is positive.
{258}
A soul so linked by her own free consent, placed under
influences unknown to those outside, must, so long as conscience
speaks at all, suffer from the conflict she is undergoing, in
breaking loose from a personal intercourse with her Maker, as
also from a revelation of truth, beauty, and goodness, to plunge
anew into the darkness of human guesses."
"You speak in enigmas, my lord! I presume one must be initiated
to understand you. Meantime, tell me, can you do anything for
Chione?"
"I am somewhat of a physician, although no professor of magic. I
will see your patient, if it will give you comfort."
Magas bethought him: the visit of a Christian bishop to his house
would be too remarkable. What was he to do? Suddenly he said:
"What could possess Chione to make herself a Christian?"
"I believe it was the love of truth and beauty. She sought a key
to the mysteries of life, and Christianity offered her one."
"And yet she left it!"
"It is by no means clear that she has left it, otherwise than by
act. She is an unfaithful member, but she still believes, or it
would have no power over her."
"I wonder is it religion that is making her so ill? My Lord
Dionysius, among her former companions, do you know one whose
discretion you could trust to take care of her for a day or two,
who would be competent to discover whether Christianity is
disturbing her?"
"I know an amanuensis who might perhaps be willing to oblige you;
we will see." They left the house by a side-door. The bishop led
the way through a narrow path for some distance, till they came
to a villa. Here he made a signal at the gate; it was opened by
an old servitor, who bowed profoundly as he admitted him and his
companion. Dionysius whispered a word in his ear, and the old man
tottered on before to a side entrance, which he left open. They
entered, and very shortly another door opened into a small
library. A lady was writing there; they saluted her, and Magas
recognized Lotis.
The bishop quickly made known the purport of his visit, and Lotis
willingly offered her services. Magas, however, demurred. "Is it
possible," said he; "are you really a Christian?"
"I have that happiness," replied Lotis.
"Why, how can it be? how is it that lofty minds like yours and
Chione's can ally yourselves with such a drivelling set?"
Lotis smiled as she observed, "I think, Lord Magas, that the
illustrious Dionysius, who stands beside you, will scarcely feel
complimented."
Magas blushed and apologized. "Forgive me," he said; "I am so
fairly confounded to-day, I do not know what I am saying."
Dionysius said smilingly, "You do not know what Christianity is,
and therefore stand excused beforehand. Do you wish Lotis to
accompany you to Chione?"
"The more, as I think she will scarcely be suspected of--" Magas
hesitated. The bishop filled up the gap for him--"of belonging to
such a drivelling set. No; and Chione even does not know it; so
your secret will be doubly safe. You may confide in Lotis
entirely."
Chapter X.
Lotis took her place by the bedside of her friend, but she found
her situation almost a sinecure. Though Chione did not recognize
her, she was very uneasy in her presence. "Take those large black
eyes away from me," she would say.
{259}
Finally Lotis found herself reduced to watching in the next room,
as Magas still desired her to stay and direct proceedings; and to
beguile the hours, she occupied herself in what had become almost
a business with her, in transcribing the gospels and apostolic
papers for the use of the different churches. Magas often visited
her, and would have shared her watch, had she permitted it; but
this she would not hear of; so he was obliged to be content with
frequent visits to inquire after the progress of Chione, and by
degrees to study the parchments on which Lotis was engaged.
Ashamed to manifest the interest he felt, he took them to his own
apartment, and studied first, then secretly copied the writings
with his own hand. Weeks went on; Chione's health improved, but
her insanity did not pass away. Lotis proposed she should be
removed to a dwelling in the neighborhood of Lady Damaris' abode,
and be there tended.
"Two influences are about her here," she said, "counteracting
each other. There all will be in unison." Magas assented. "I am
no longer afraid of Christians," he said; "but how any one
_once_ believing what is here written," continued he,
producing the gospel he had written out with his own hand--" how
any one, once believing, can fall away, is a mystery. I would
give all my possessions to have the faith, the confidence in God,
herein described. Faith seems to mean the creature's power in
God, derived from God. Could I once feel that God is my Father in
the sense the gospel has it, I would bid adieu to philosophy for
ever, and be at rest."
"Then you are not angry that Chione is a Christian?" said Lotis.
"I am angry that she has acted a lie, and imposed upon me," he
said.
"It was love of you that constrained her. Forgive her, Magas."
"_Love_ of me! Did she not know I love truth? I can never
believe her again."
Lotis left the apartment and proceeded to superintend the removal
of Chione.
Magas went to the bishop, to make arrangements for Chione's
maintenance; he wished to settle revenues on her ere he departed.
"Depart! are you about to leave Athens, my son?"
"Yes, father; it has become hateful to me, since I no longer love
Chione."
"You do not intend to desert her?"
"I leave her in good hands; what can I do more?"
"Her whole being is bound up in you; through you she sinned."
"That is the worst of it; I cannot look at her without feeling
that; but yet, I knew not she was a Christian, nor did I know how
sublime the Christian faith is. I cannot forgive her for
abandoning her faith."
"But you are not a Christian, Magas?"
"No! I am waiting for the manifestation of God. I am going to the
apostle who has heard and seen, who works miracles in the name of
Jesus; I am going to ask of this Jesus the _power_ of
faith."
"What do you mean by the power of faith, Magas?"
"The power of becoming a son of God, of being free, with the
freedom of old Merion, who is more free amid his chains than the
young worldlings with their power and wealth. Free from my own
passions, which master me and blind me; free from false
knowledge, which misleads me; free from the power of habit, which
enslaves me.
{260}
I want power to endure that crucifixion which dying to these
objects will occasion me. I feel my own nature rebelling against
my aspiration, and I want power to conquer it. The apostle says
the gospel is power unto salvation, and that power is needed
where life must be one combat, as mine must be for the time to
come."
Dionysius, too modest to arrogate to himself the gifts which
daily experience proved him to possess, of working miracles to
attest the power of God, simply said, "The holy apostle Paul is
even now at Corinth; you cannot do better than seek him there; I
myself will shortly do the same."
Chapter XI.
Two years have passed; such years! Magas has left Athens, has
become a Christian--nay, a Christian preacher. His property has
been more for others than himself; for he has renounced wealth,
pomp, earthly power, to follow the footsteps of that wondrous
convert who was brought to Christ by being struck down to earth
by excess of light--blinded by glory--by seeing the heavenly
vision with the unprepared eyes of earth. By St. Paul confirmed
in the faith, Magas was, through the same apostle, set apart for
the ministry through the laying on of hands. Magas has so
completely changed his nature, his very features seem altered.
The young Athenian noble, proud of a long line of ancestry, but
seeks to devote his days to the one Master who shares his
undivided heart.
Yet he returned to Athens, and his voice was heard by Chione.
All night she listened; in her short slumbers she dreamed of him;
In the morning her wandering senses had returned. Lotis entered
her room with her breakfast; and the wild light in Chione's eyes
had subsided. She looked around; she inquired, "Where am I?
Lotis, why are you here?"
"I am here to tend you, dear Chione; you have been ill."
"Ill!" said Chione, passing her hand over her brow; "Ill! I've,
had a long, strange dream! Where's Magas?"
"I do not know," said Lotis.
"He was here last night," said Chione. "I heard his voice; all
night I watched for him; why did he keep away?"
"I cannot tell you," answered Lotis.
"Cannot tell! Is not this his house? is he not at home?"
"No! this is not his house," said Lotis; "he has been away from
Athens, and he left you here to be taken care of. Now you must
ask no more questions, but take your breakfast. I will send to
Magas to tell him you are better."
Lotis left the room and summoned another attendant, charging her
to be careful of her speech, lest the newly returned reason
should again fail, she herself sought the bishop to let him know
of the change.
It required some care to break to Chione the tidings that she was
in the house of the Lady Damaris; that for two years she had been
a prey to a most cruel malady of the brain, during which time
Lotis had taken every possible care of her; and that Magas had
been, during that time, away. Reawakened reason almost tottered
again on its throne. Chione's pride was evidently hurt.
"Two years! two years! was that the end of my triumph? Magas! a
mad woman! What has Magas been doing?"
"He will tell you that best himself; he will be here shortly."
"Two years! two long years! O Magas!"
......
{261}
"They met! But is this Magas? is this Chione? The long, lank
hair, eyes almost starting from their sockets; and that form, so
shrunken, so bereft of its former beauty, can this be the Venus
Urania? And Apollo! will you recognize him in that weather-beaten
form, coarsely clad, and mien so humble, though an intellectual
manliness still sat upon the brow?
"Is this Magas? the same, and yet so changed? Magas, speak to
me."
"You are then recovering at last, Chione?"
"At last! yes! I knew not of my illness till I recovered. Strange
thing, this mind is, Magas! I lived on you: you were absent--I
died; your voice brought me back to life."
"Nay, you were ill before I left you, Chione. It was a higher
voice speaking to you, to which you turned a deaf ear, that
caused your illness."
"What mean you?"
"That the remorse you felt for your abandoned faith upset your
mental energies. Venus Urania should not have been enacted by a
Christian."
"You have discovered my secret then; but I am a Christian no
longer."
"Oh! do not say that, Chione; say, rather, you will repent, do
penance. Chione, you cannot at will cast away faith. The effect
those words produced on you show that you still believe."
"The devils believe and tremble," muttered the unfortunate woman;
"yet it is not faith they have."
"But you are not yet a reprobate--are not yet beyond recall.
Chione, I, Magas, entreat you, do not lie to your God. You cannot
deceive him, and for his power, does not your past illness make
you tremble for the future?"
"What means this altered tone, Magas?" said Chione bitterly. "Are
you turned against me? Ah! I see how it is! Two years of absence,
two years of illness, have done their work. Man's constancy is of
a summer day; the winter comes, he freezes with the cold; for the
love within no longer glows, no longer sends the blood rushing
through the veins with a warmth that defies exterior cold. Some
other form fresher than this frame impaired by sickness hath
replaced Chione in your heart. You come to bid me farewell.
Farewell, Magas."
Deceived by her feigned calmness, Magas rose. "Again, Chione, I
entreat you to return to the religion you have abandoned."
"And do penance at the church door in sackcloth and ashes? Is
that your meaning? Will you be there to see me beg the prayers of
the faithful as they pass in to the mysteries from which I am
excluded?"
This was said with an inconceivable mixture of sarcasm and
bitterness.
"Love could sweeten even such an act as that," said Magas;
"surely, even that is better than apostasy."
"And who are you that dare to twit me with apostasy? False one,
wearied of thy old love, seeking another," (here she seized the
arm of Magas,) "tell me," she said fiercely, "what is the name of
the fair one for whom you abandon me?"
"Why would you know?" asked Magas.
"That I might tear her limb from limb!" said the frenzied woman.
"That is beyond your power, Chione. Him I love sits enthroned in
the heavens. I have no earthly love. Chione, farewell. Remember,
Magas blesses you--blesses you as he leaves you. You will not see
him soon again, for Magas is a Christian priest."
{262}
He left her.
No, the energies did not depart as she started to her feet on
hearing the last words--"a Christian priest!" "Magas! Oh! had I
known, could I have guessed! The love of Magas without losing my
religion! Can I regain it? Yes; by penance, Chione, doing
penance! Faugh! Chione standing in the cold, clothed in
sackcloth, exposed to the derision of the faithful. 'Twould be
easy to love, he said. Did he say so? Love must be boiling hot
indeed to sweeten such an act as that; and my love, ah! ah! love
for religion, such a religion as that, ah! ah! ah!"
The poor woman raved, but alas! there was too much method in her
madness. Wilfully she shut out faith; wilfully she turned to hate
all that heretofore she had held dear; but she acted for a while
with an earthly prudence that deceived those around her.
She staid with the Lady Damaris until she had recovered health
and strength, until she had made herself sure of the independence
Magas had settled on her. Then she left, and opened a school of
philosophy, which was soon filled. Her former reputation did her
much service in that respect, and that she had escaped from the
enchantments of the Christians, who had tried to destroy her,
added to the interest she inspired. She soon recovered her former
beauty, and she studied now, studied deeply, how to thwart the
Christians, how to demonstrate that whatever was beautiful in
their religion they had stolen from the muses; that whatever was
mystical came to them from Hindostan, the seat of mysticism; that
whatever was reasonable and ethical they had learned from
philosophy. It was a splendid success in Athens, that
philosophical school of Chione; for it flattered the passions
while it shed the grace of eloquence and refinement over them.
All beauty, taste, and melody were made to yield their utmost
sweetness there. Her disciples were of the rich, the great, the
noble. They could practise the elegant course of study
alternating with ease that she prescribed: "To enjoy is the aim
of existence, refinement, cultivation, a correct system of ethics
makes perfect enjoyment. Science gives interest, lifts one above
the vulgar. Art ennobles and civilizes, and Athens is still the
central point of art, science, and philosophy." So said Chione.
Chapter XII.
"Indeed, Lotis, you must give me more hope than that; you must
not bid me despair."
The words were spoken somewhat louder than was intended. They
were heard by one who was passing by. The speaker was Magas; the
passer-by was Chione. Magas was lamenting over the account he had
heard of Chione's continued resistance to grace. Chione applied
to the words another meaning; she ascribed them to a passion felt
for Lotis, and her heart burned with rage and jealousy.
"Magas was then returned to Athens. What was he doing?" She set
spies on his steps. He was often at the bishop's house, often in
the Christian assembly; but also often had interviews with Lotis.
This fact, which might have been easily explained by the
occupation of Lotis, who supplied copies of books, and kept
various accounts for the church, was otherwise interpreted by the
misled woman, and she resolved on the destruction of Lotis.
{263}
If she could not regain the love of Magas, at least she would not
have a rival. She had influence in the city. Nero's persecution,
though but little felt in the colonies, could be brought to bear.
Lotis should not live to triumph over her by a Christian
marriage. The idea was insupportable.
Up to this point, Chione had kept herself unfettered from human
ties since Magas had departed. She had loved Magas, and though
many had made her offers of marriage, she could not resolve to
accept them. Magas was alike elegant and profound. Who was worthy
to succeed him? Athenian after Athenian paid court to her; gay,
witty, and attractive to all, Chione accepted none. This was a
matter of great wonder in so licentious a city as Athens.
But a greater wonder still was to ensue. A new Roman praetor
arrived. A rude barbarian he seemed to the fashionables of
Athens: certainly he was not distinguished for refinement, for
learning, or for elegance; but it was soon observed that Chione
held him enthralled, and, what was more remarkable, that she
seemed to favor him.
How it happened, people could hardly tell, but a different spirit
seemed animating Athens. The Christians, from being despised were
becoming feared, and at length hated. When Nero's edict had been
first made known, it made little impression; but gradually a
voice was found, to proclaim that there were Christians in Athens
practising magic to the detriment of all good citizens.
A few poor slaves were seized and brought before the praetor;
they were ruthlessly condemned on acknowledging themselves
Christians. People were startled, but poor slaves have few
friends, and the matter blew over. Suddenly the praetor grows
more religious, decrees foreign to the usual spirit of Athenian
government are enacted; a test is instituted, and several free
citizens of Athens have to abide the scrutiny; executions follow,
and Chione's reputation suffers, for it is currently reported
that it is she who instigates the inquiry and persecutes the new
sect.
The Roman praetor evidently takes counsel of her. But there comes
one concerning whom even he hesitates; a young lady, daughter of
a philosopher, one beloved for her private virtues, is brought
before the judge. "Sacrifice to the genius of the emperor." "I
cannot." "Why not?" "I am a Christian." How often have the words
been repeated; they are so simple, yet so fraught with
consequence; how many perished under that simple interrogatory!
Lotis undergoes it; she is remanded; the praetor seeks to release
her; he is sick of his office when it hits upon the young, the
innocent, the lovely; the outside interests him, he cannot see
the soul. Faith, ever young, has sustained many an aged slave,
wrinkled with age; has adorned many a worker embrowned and
toil-worn, bearing marks on his frame that his life has not been
spent in uselessness; but these excited only a passing interest,
if any--they were common people (would that the toiling saints
were more common!) they went to their doom, by fire or by the
headsman, unmarked by men and unpitied, though Heaven assumed
their souls with hymns of joy, dressed them in white garments,
crowned them with brilliants, endowed them with perpetual youth
and with beauty that never will fade. But here comes a lady. The
praetor understands that she has slaves to wait upon her, every
luxury attends her; she may lead a life of indolence, if she
pleases. These are the exterior signs, the signs that awaken
commiseration. The praetor hesitates.
{264}
Chione does not hesitate. The prisoner is not only a Christian,
she is a member of a conspiracy just laid open to Chione's
apprehension. She has lived in the city longer than the praetor,
she knows its dangers. This Lotis is a dangerous person, she is a
personal enemy to Chione; she must die; nay, Chione names the
manner of her death; she is to die by fire. The praetor,
infatuated by his passion for the guilty woman who prescribes to
him the sentence he is to pronounce, submits, gently hinting that
he looks for his reward. "Reward!" says Chione to herself, "is
not a smile from me reward enough for a barbarian like him?" And
in her egotism, she really believes she is speaking the simple
truth.
The sentence is pronounced; horror seizes the city; to-morrow the
flames are to consume the conspirators, who are many in number;
and Lotis is among them; there is no escape.
The ancient bishop contrives, however, to visit his condemned
flock, bearing consolation, courage, and, above all, the blessed
sacrament, with him. To each and all he addressed himself
according to their needs; if he, too, staid a little longer with
Lotis than with the others, it arose out of a previous
conversation, and because he wished to promote a holy work.
"My daughter, do you know who has stirred up this accusation
against you?"
"I rather guess than know it, father. What have I done to draw
down Chione's hatred?"
"She is jealous of Magas in your regard. She cannot appreciate
the depth of Christian devotedness; she can understand selfish
aims alone."
"Poor Chione!"
"Do you, from your heart, forgive her?"
"I have not thought about forgiveness; I pity her too much."
"Do you remember the conversation we had years ago?"
"About laying down my life for her? Father, I do."
"Are you willing to do so now?"
"If I thought it would save her soul, I am more than willing."
"Pray for her, then, my daughter."
......
'Twas a wild shriek that rang through the streets that morning,
as Magas arrived just in time to see the procession set forth, to
recognize Lotis, to hear Chione's name as the one who had
procured her condemnation. "Stop, stop!" he had cried to the
Roman soldiery; "stop! It is all a mistake; stop! In a few
minutes it will be rectified. Stop for a short time, in the name
of all that is holy!" Had Magas donned his patrician's dress and
scattered largess, as in times of yore, his words would have been
heeded; a few minutes would have been granted. Even now, his air,
his manner, his authoritative gestures occasioned a slight pause;
but his weather-stained appearance caused him to be considered as
a plebeian, and the pause was not long. He flew rather than ran
to Chione's abode. "Come," said he, "it seems you are omnipotent
in Athens; come and prevent a murder." He dragged her with him to
the praetor's house, but the great man was absent. A bright flame
lit up the sky! "My God, if we are too late!" he cried. Almost
carrying Chione in his arms, Magas hurried through the streets,
till they came to a place set apart for the execution. It was
already commenced; singing hymns of glory to God, one soul after
another departed homeward. Magas paused opposite to Lotis; she
made a sign of recognition. Magas turned to Chione. "Are you a
devil," he shrieked, "that you have dared to do this?" "Forgive
her, Magas, as I forgive her," said the dying Lotis. "Farewell,
Chione! Friends we were in youth, and we shall yet meet in
heaven." Lotis was gone.
{265}
"Meet in heaven! meet in heaven! meet in heaven! I and Lotis meet
in heaven! meet in heaven! Magas, tell me, Magas, can it be?"
The brain of Magas was on fire with excitement, and he held a
murderess in his arms; but he was a Christian priest, and he
answered solemnly:
"God is merciful; Christ died for sinners. Do penance; it may be
yet."
Conclusion.
Very many years have passed away, and if the dignity of person is
considered, a more solemn martyrdom than the last we have
commemorated is to take place. The venerable bishop and his
companions, some priests, some laymen, are to lay their heads
upon the block--among them Magas. A woman veiled, bearing but few
remains of beauty or of youth, was also there; but not a
prisoner; she was there to kneel at the bishop's feet, to pray
for his blessing. That morning, for the first time for long, long
years, had that woman knelt within a Christian church--had
received the adorable sacrament of the body and blood of our
Lord, after years of penance heroically, _lovingly_
performed at the entrance to the building. That morning she had
been absolved, that morning communicated. Ere he went to his home
in heaven, the venerable bishop, who had sustained the fainting
and often faltering soul through so many years of expiation, had
thought fit to pronounce her purified, to command that she should
again take her place among the faithful. She came to thank him;
to accompany him--him and Magas! Consoled, the procession moved
along. Chione--such was the name of the penitent--knelt as the
victims knelt. The bishop, ere he surrendered himself, gave his
blessing to all the assembly. Magas preceded him to the block.
When the axe fell, the woman fell also. Magas and Chione stood
together before the judgment-seat of God.
-------
Translated From Le Correspondant.
Abyssinia And King Theodore.
By Antoine D'Abbadie.
A Spanish bull having accidentally strayed on a railroad, which
spoiled the beauty of his beloved country, met a locomotive. The
king of the pasture-lands, fired with anger at the violation of
his right, and listening only to the voice of his courage,
lowered his head and butted with his horns so accustomed to
victory against the mail-clad invader of his verdant fields. This
battle is an image of that which is going to take place between
England and Theodore, King of the Kings of Ethiopia. It is plain
that it is not Theodore who represents the locomotive.
{266}
Before explaining the true motives of the costly English
expedition to Abyssinia, it may be well to look at the physical
and moral condition of the country which is to be the scene of
conflict, and where I passed more than ten years of my youth.
The whole extent of territory from Suez and Aquabah to the Strait
of Mandeb, or _affliction_, along the shores of the Red Sea,
is barren and desolate. The small, scattered towns in this region
owe their existence to commercial travelling; and even in the
most favored portions of the land it takes a two or three days'
journey from the salt water into the interior, before meeting
cultivated fields.
The only deep bay in the south of the Red Sea is that of Adulis,
which the natives designate by the "Gulf of Velvet," perhaps on
account of the smoothness of its waters, sheltered by the
palisades which guard it on the eastern side. The English, who
are fond of baptizing territories before conquering them, have
called this part of the sea, "The bay of Annesley." This name is
said to be that of the family of Lord Valentia, who, little
versed in geography, imagined that he had discovered in 1809
those celebrated districts anciently frequented by Egyptian
merchants in the time of the Ptolemies. The island of Desa,
formed by a row of schistous hills, shelters the entrance to the
bay of Adulis, which we call by this name in memory of that
flourishing city of Adulis, which stood by its waves up to the
sixth century of our era. The natives still show the site of that
Grecian city, and inform the traveller that it was swallowed up
by an earthquake. Of its past greatness, there remain but a small
number of carved capitals in the lava of the environs, and some
sculptured marbles which seem to display the Byzantine style.
Near these ruins is the large village of Zullah, which contained,
in 1840, two hundred and fourteen cabins, and a population of
about one thousand souls. It is from Zullah that the shortest
route lies to the plains and highlands of Ethiopia, or, as the
English call it, Abyssinia.
Except during January and February, when the weather is still
warm, Zullah suffers from the frightful heat which pervades the
whole of that stretch of low land called Samhar, which lies along
the sea. Wishing to take a bath during the summer, I could not,
by reason of the seeming excessive coldness of the water. But
placing a thermometer in it, I found the temperature 36 degrees,
while in the shade the air was at 48 degrees. I found it at 65
degrees in the between-decks of a French steamer; and when
evening brings a refreshing breeze to cool this burning
atmosphere, one is tempted to say with a Frenchman after having
escaped during the bloody "reign of terror:" "I have done a great
deal, for I have managed to live."
Travellers at this season start at midnight, and traverse, on
their way into Ethiopia, a plain as barren as desolation itself.
Sometimes they encounter the _Karif_, an atmospheric column
of a red brick color, which appears on the horizon like a living
phantom. This column seems to increase in volume as it
approaches, the air that drives it along roaring like a
whirlwind. Man and beast are obliged to turn their backs to it,
and it covers them with a dry, black cloud, as with a mantle of
horror. In a few minutes the _Karif_ passes away; and men
are glad to be out of its hideous gloom, even though it be but to
wander again through that intense but quiet heat which broods
over the Samhar. Sometimes, also, the _Harur_, which the
Arabs call the _Simoom_ or _paison_, surprises the
traveller.
{267}
This wind comes without any previous sign of warning, belching
out burning death like a furnace. The patient camel then puts his
head on the ground, rejoiced to find relief even in the relative
freshness of the scorching earth; the strongest of the natives
succumb; and such is the sudden and complete prostration of human
strength during the simoom, that in the open country I have been
unable to hold up a small thermometer, to learn at least the
temperature of this strange wind, which science has as yet failed
to explain. This Harur lasted five minutes. They say that men and
beasts die if it lasts a quarter of an hour.
After crossing those desert plains, the traveller finds the
country gradually assume an undulating character. A stream is
met. Mountains rise up before him, and deep, verdant valleys
extend among them.
I often visited those valleys with, the vain hope of seeing a
phenomenon very rare in Europe. During the summer season caravans
repose or march in perfect safety under a serene sky, when
suddenly the practised ear of a native hears a strange noise in
the distance, rapidly increasing in loudness. He cries out, "The
torrent!" and climbs breathlessly up the nearest height. In less
than half a minute after, the whole valley disappears under a
broad and deep stream, which carries with it trees, pieces of
rock, and even wild beasts. Rising in an instant, those torrents
vanish in a day, and leave no trace of their passage, save ruins
of all sorts, and pools of stagnant water in the indentations of
the soil. The general nakedness of the mountains explains these
strange phenomena. From the bottom of the funnel in which the
traveller stands when he is in one of those valleys, he cannot
see the small clouds which let fall their liquid burdens with an
abundance unknown out of the tropical climates. There is very
little loam, and still less of roots of trees to absorb this
sudden rain; so that it rolls from rock to rock, as on a roof,
rushes through every little valley, and mingles in one common
river, as frightful as it is transitory. One day, as I arrived
just too late to behold it in all its grandeur, I found a
solitary individual, who, with a stupefied look, regarded the
still humid earth. "God save you," said I, "what news have you?
Where are your arms? Can a man like you remain without lance or
buckler?" "May you live long and well!" he replied. "The torrent
has carried away my lance, my buckler, my ass, my camel, and my
whole substance, my wife and my children. Woe is me! Woe is me!"
I then turned to my guide and asked him: "Does thy brother speak
truly?" "Doubtless," answered he, "and if the torrent came at
this moment, unless we were warned of its approach by the small
noise of which I have spoken, it is not the most swift-footed,
but the most lucky, who would be saved." Then turning toward the
son of his tribe--"May God console thee, my brother!" We all
repeated this pious wish, and continued our route, without being
able to give anything to this wretched man, for we had neither
victuals nor money; and from the summit of the neighboring hills
we could hear him repeating for a long time, "Woe is me! Woe is
me!"
For more than two centuries the civilization and native wealth of
Ethiopia have been concentrated around Lake Tana. Just on its
shores stands Quarata, the largest city of oriental Africa--proud
of its sanctuary and its twelve thousand inhabitants. A little
further on is Aringo, the Versailles of the dusky kings.
{268}
Near it is Dabra Tabor, the capital, or rather the camp of the
last chiefs, as well as of the actual sovereign; and finally, on
a spur of mountain which projects to the south, appears
Gondar--the famous Gondar, which I have seen, still powerful,
although reduced to eight thousand inhabitants, only a fourth of
its former population. Of all the faults of King Theodore, that
which the Ethiopians will be least ready to forgive is his having
systematically burned the city of Gondar. Of seventeen churches,
only two have escaped this cool and useless cruelty of the
despot.
The Ethiopians are a people of very mixed origin. Languages,
institutions, usages, and prejudices, even the shades of color
and the formations of the human body, are placed in strange
juxtaposition with one another. Except the Somal, who afford
instances of tall stature, the Ethiopians are of medium height,
have thick lips, white and well-formed teeth, and are of slender
frame. Their hair is curly; but straight hair, though rare, is
sometimes seen. The Semites have often the aquiline nose of the
Europeans. As to the color of the skin, all degrees, from the
copper color of the Neapolitan to the jet black of the negro, are
found. This latter color is often allied to European features.
There is an unconscious and natural grace in all the movements
and actions of the Ethiopians. Our sculptors might study their
gestures and drapery with profit.
On the coast, to the north of Zullah, live the Tigre, whose
language, traditions, and customs entitle them to be considered
among the descendants of Sem, like the Hebrews and Arabs. The
same must be said of the Tigray, who inhabit the neighboring
plateau, and speak a kindred idiom to that of the Tigre. The
Amaras, more lively, more intelligent, and more civilized, live
in the interior, and use a language of Semitic origin, yet
modified by associations with the sons of Cham. This is the
language used by most European travellers, for it is commonly
employed by the merchant, by the learned, and in diplomacy. The
Giiz, or Ethiopian, closely connected with the Tigre, is the dead
language, the Latin of those distant countries. It is used in
quotations, in philosophical and religious discussions, and
sometimes to conceal the sense of a conversation from the vulgar.
From Tujurrah to the environs of Zullah, a common language,
entirely different from those which we have mentioned, unites all
the fractions of the Afar nation, often called Dankalis, but
improperly, for the Dankalas, the Adali, etc., are only tribes of
the Afar. The Sahos, who are the most numerous among the
inhabitants of Zullah, and extend along all the slopes of the
neighboring plain, consider themselves as strangers to the Afar,
and speak a distinct but affiliated dialect. Another idiom much
more important by the number of the nations who use it, has also
the same origin as the Afar tongue. We mean the Ylmorma used by
the Oromos, whose name in war is Gallei or Galla, and who, by
reason of their conquests, have extended their sway from the Afar
country as far as to the still unknown regions of interior
Africa. Called Gallas by all the Christians of Ethiopia, the
Oromos threaten, by their proximity, the stronghold of Magdala,
where the English prisoners have been awaiting for four years the
arrival of their avenging countrymen.
A serious calculation of the population of any African nation has
never been made. As to the centres of population, a fatigued and
disgusted traveller, looking at them from a distance and but for
a moment, might state the census of such or such a city to be ten
thousand souls.
{269}
An optimist, on the contrary, might gravely affirm that at least
thirty thousand should be admitted as the correct number. It is,
in fact, almost impossible to form a proper estimate of the
population of Ethiopia. Considering its extent of territory, I
should say there are three or four millions in it, though if some
other traveller were to maintain that it contains six or eight
millions I could not refute his opinion, owing to the fact that I
do not know the proportion between the inhabited and the desert
portions of the country.
II.
The Jews were formerly numerous in Abyssinia. There are not
eighty thousand of them left now, and they are gradually
disappearing under the influence of the powerful civilization of
the Amara.
The origin of the Ethiopian Jews probably dates from the time of
the prophet Jeremias, when commerce was carried on between
Alexandria and Aksum. At a later period, similar facilities
brought to Ethiopia the first Christian missionaries. This
happened in the beginning of the fourth century, when the
inhabitants of Gaul, or France, were still plunged in the
darkness of paganism. The truth, however, progressed slowly in
Abyssinia; for the local Judaism, though notably separated from
that of the Hebrews, preserved its political power during five or
six hundred years, notwithstanding the wonderful efforts of
native missionaries, whose feasts and martyrdoms are still
celebrated in the country. Even up to the 14th century there were
pagans in it; and there are, very probably, some there still.
After the Mussulman invasion of the fifteenth century, Islamism
filtered through Egyptian society. The Christianity of the
country became corrupt, and we can liken it to nothing better now
than to those lepers who abound in this part of Africa, whose
bodies are at first attacked in their extremities, and fall away
piecemeal. In the same way, her Christianity perished on the
frontiers of Ethiopia. Twenty years before our arrival among the
Tigre, they were Christians, or rather they lived in the
recollection of their faith; but without baptism or sacrifice,
and guided in their prayers by the descendants of their last
priests. They became Mussulmans under our eyes, with the
exception of their principal chief, who said, with a touching and
proud respect for ancient usages, that "a king ought to die in
the faith of his fathers." One becomes irritated on reflecting
that two or three fervent missionaries could have, at the
beginning of this century, rolled back the tide of advancing
Mohammedanism, by evangelizing or rather reviving that ancient
Christianity whose history goes back as far as St. Athanasius,
and which we have seen expire after ages of agony.
If we study Christianity in the centre of Ethiopia, we find a
somewhat confused schism, but of all schisms the one least
removed from Catholic orthodoxy. The only dogmatic points which
we regret in this schism are the _one_ procession of the
Holy Ghost, which has been condemned among us only at a late
period, and the belief in only _one_ nature in Jesus Christ,
which is publicly professed by the African schools. But the term
in the Abyssinian vernacular which we translate by _nature_,
has such a vague and obscure signification that, if the word
could be destroyed, the schism would no longer exist.
{270}
It must be remembered that the Ethiopians do not understand the
art of defining; and when I restricted this ambiguous term
according to our method, they understood the dogma exactly as we,
and congratulated themselves on being, without knowing it,
attached to the same faith as Rome, that seat of St. Peter which
always commands their respect.
What particularly distinguish their Christianity from ours, are
vicious or irregular practices. Like many of the Eastern
Christians, they allow the marriage of the clergy; but in the
abbeys, where there are professors, they allow no priest to say
Mass who is not a celibatarian by vow. "Among you," said an
Ethiopian who had visited Europe, "the important practice is to
go to church." "And among you," I answered, "the one thing
necessary is to prolong your fastings." One is tempted to say
that the active people of the West, and the slow and
repose-loving nations of the East, have made the principal merit
of a Christian to consist in _those pious exercises which cost
the least trouble_.
It is impossible to leave this subject without saying a word
about the Dabtara, or secular clerics. They were organized by a
king who found himself, like many of his royal brethren in
Europe, very much embarrassed by those mixed questions, in which
the spiritual power seems to invade the domain of the temporal.
To keep the balance, between them, he created an intermediary
body, called the Dabtara. This order is filled from all classes
of society; and it possesses the usufruct of all the churches. It
alone takes charge of the temporal affairs of the church, and
frequently its members act as parish priests, which is a purely
temporal office in Abyssinia. The Dabtara hire by the month,
rebuke or dismiss the priest who says Mass. Their essential
function consists in singing in choir. This duty requires a
certain education. In Europe the music of our church hymns may be
changed, the words remaining unaltered. The contrary is the case
among the Ethiopians. Their music is traditional and sacramental,
and in every well-ordered church, the rhymed words of every hymn
are specially composed for every festival. The twelve Dabtara of
every church display their piety, wisdom, and especially their
wit in these productions. They use hymns learnedly ambiguous, to
criticise the bishop, to give a lesson to the head of the monks,
and even political hints to the sovereign. By recalling an act of
some personage of the Old Testament, they find occasion to
criticise the government of the city, to praise some Maecenas who
is expected to be present at the service, or even, if necessary,
to satisfy a personal grudge. When a Dabtara advances into the
choir to whisper into the ear of the principal chanter the hymn
which has just been written by the Dabtara, and which the singer
must know by heart, the other Dabtaras surround the composer,
examine the sense of the rhyme, and no matter what may be the
result of their investigation, they always congratulate the happy
author. Sometimes it is discovered that the hymn has not been
made by a member of the order, but by some young candidate in
distress, who, for a measure of meal, often sells to the wealthy
the fresh inspirations of his genius.
After the teacher of plain-chant, the most important professor is
he who teaches grammar, the roots of the sacred language, its
dictionary, and particularly the art of composing
hymns.
{271}
After the lesson, the pupils spread over the lawn before the
church, repeat the precepts just heard from their professor, and
essay to make rhymes or compose hymns, which they afterward
recite to him in order to obtain the benefit of his criticism. As
in our middle ages, these scholars ask alms and live in misery;
often they are the only servants of their preceptors. Lively and
frolicsome, like our collegians, they play many tricks on their
fellow-students, but never on their teacher, whom they love and
almost worship. Having once chanced at Gondar to describe how my
college-fellows in France had eaten the dinner of their
professor, and left a sermon on fasting and patience on his
plate, I was met with such a torrent of invective, that I never
ventured on a repetition of the scandal.
In Abyssinia, education is essentially public and gratuitous. As
all explanations must be made in the vernacular, which I spoke
but poorly in the beginning, I was obliged to have recourse to a
private tutor, and when I wished to recompense him for his
trouble, I was answered that science should not be sold like any
other vile merchandise, and that the honor of the teaching body
required knowledge to be transmitted gratuitously, just as it had
been acquired. The Ethiopian students are generally very
diligent. If they play truant, their parents bring them into the
church where the school is being held, and tie their feet
together with an iron chain. Sometimes this disciplinary measure
is ordered by the professor, and pupils are often seen who,
distrusting themselves, ask for those chains, which are not
considered symbols of dishonor. They are rarely worn by the
higher scholars.
The university course of the Ethiopians is composed of four
branches, which might be compared to the four faculties of our
own. A fifth branch, devoted to astronomy and replete with
traditional ideas, has not been cultivated for some time past. I
knew the last professor of this science, who had only one pupil.
The other classes are occupied with the study of the New
Testament, the fathers of the church, civil and canon law, and
the Old Testament. This last requires an effort of memory of
which few Europeans are capable; for I have never heard but of
one man in the West who knew the whole Bible by heart. No one can
be a teacher in Ethiopia without knowing by heart the text of the
book he is to explain, the variations of four or five
manuscripts, and especially the ingenious commentary, sometimes
even learned, but always traditional and purely oral, on the
text. The degree of bachelor is unknown in that country; that of
doctor is given to the student who is chosen by his professor as
capable of explaining in the evening to his comrades the lessons
given in class in the morning. In the case of a doubt of his
capacity, the teacher is consulted, and his affirmation is
considered a sufficient diploma. Great attention and much
perseverance are required to make this system of unmethodical
education profitable. An aged professor informed me that he had
learned to read in three years. He spent two years afterward in
learning the liturgical chant, and five years in studying grammar
and in composing hymns. He learned how to comment on the New
Testament in seven years; and spent fifteen years on the Old
Testament, for the strain on his memory was very great.
I have dwelt somewhat on the Ethiopian colleges because M. Blanc,
one of the English prisoners of Magdala, says expressly in his
narration: "The Abyssinians have no literature; their
Christianity is only a name; their conversational power is very
limited."
{272}
To this testimony, altogether negative, I oppose the statement
first made, and which I could prove and extend farther. I will
merely add that in Gojjam, as well as at Gondar and elsewhere, I
have held disputes with native. Christians, on religious,
philosophical, and other scientific subjects, and found them as
well informed as if they had been brought up in Paris or at
London.
With rare exceptions, the regular clergy alone has preserved its
virtues and its _prestige_. The secular priests have lost a
great part of their importance by the singular institution of the
Dabtara. Yet the Ethiopians, jealous of their political
independence, and capable of preserving it by the natural
influence of their traditional customs, wish to keep religious
authority powerful and undivided. To avoid schisms, and as
several bishops can consecrate others, they recognize only one,
who must be of white race and a stranger to the country. He has
always been consecrated by the schismatical patriarch of
Alexandria; but, since the last consecration, I was assured that
the Abyssinians would make application elsewhere for the future.
The title of their bishop is abun. The last abun or aboona was
Salama, who having only a semi-canonical appointment, and besides
being addicted to all kinds of vice, had very little influence
over the inferior clergy or the people. Suspected by the
professors and hated by the Dabtara, he planted more thorns than
blessings in the hearts of his subjects. A Copt by birth, he at
first frequented the English Protestant school at Cairo, and
carried afterward to the convent where he made his vows such
doctrines of disobedience and incredulous opinions, that the
Patriarch of Alexandria thought it would be wise to exile him to
Ethiopia as abun, though he was under the canonical age. In fact,
the abun was more anxious for money than for the faith. He
received the 36,000 francs, which are usually given as a present
at the investiture of the Abyssinian bishop; and the patriarch
thus delivered up distant Ethiopia, too much despised by the
Copts, to the vices and vague doctrines of Salama. This ornament
of the episcopacy had no sooner arrived in his diocese, than he
devoted himself to commerce, especially to the traffic in slaves,
which is most profitable. His vices were such that our pen cannot
describe them. He told me himself that by mistake he had ordained
priest a boy only ten years old, and laughed heartily at the
trick played on him in his case. Having learned from Monseigneur
de Jacobis the cases which annul an ordination, I told them to
the professors of canon law. They kept silence in public; and
when I pushed them with questions, they all gave me this answer:
"Your objections are true; only, in the name of God, do not
scatter them among the Dabtara. Except the Masses said by old
priests ordained by the preceding abun, there are none valid, and
there is no holy sacrifice in Ethiopia; but the ignorance and
strong faith of the faithful will suffice before God for their
salvation." Abun Salama, busied with intrigues, in which he
thought himself very skilful, was nevertheless, only the tool of
the princes, who attached him to them in order to help their
political combinations. It was he who consecrated King Theodore,
who, after frequently insulting his consecrator, finally cast him
into prison, where he lately died.
{273}
III.
No matter what the English prisoners may say to the contrary, the
Ethiopian soldiers are very brave, and fight fiercely if they are
well commanded. As in Europe during the middle ages, the flower
of their army is composed of cavalry. The battle is begun by the
fusiliers, who shoot well; but their importance had not yet been
comprehended by the native chiefs in my time. Soon the charge is
sounded, the cavalry rushes to the conflict, the victory is
quickly won, and the infantry, badly furnished with blunt sabres,
lances, and bucklers, hardly does anything but make prisoners.
Every soldier keeps all the spoils of those he may vanquish,
except the guns and blood-horses, which by right belong to the
general. During this latter phase of the victory, the
commander-in-chief, deserted by his eager soldiers, is left
almost unattended. In speaking with Ethiopian officers, I often
mentioned to them, but always in vain, how important it is to
have a body-guard for the commander. The first victory of Kasa,
now King Theodore, attracted attention to this necessity
afterward. Let us say a word here about the mother of this chief,
since she is involuntarily one of the remote causes of the
English expedition. This good old woman once did me a great
service, and in 1848, notwithstanding the recent elevation of her
son to royalty, she was still so polite as to rise at my
approach. She was then courted as a power behind the throne. But
a short time previously, she was the despised mother of Kasa, an
obscure rebel, living in misery, and reprobated by all. His poor
mother, in her old age, joined a religious order, and put on the
little white bonnet which is its distinctive sign. But she was
penniless. The convents had been robbed, and every one shunned
the mother of a rebel. She was finally compelled to turn vendor
of _koso_, a drug which the Ethiopians take six times a
year, to kill the tape-worm, with which most of the inhabitants
are afflicted.
Kasa, the rebel of Quara, grew more powerful day by day, and the
proud Manan grew angry. Manan was the mother of Ali, the most
powerful prince of Central Ethiopia, and the real mayoress of the
palace of that _fainékant_ king who ruled at Gondar, only
within the precincts of his dwelling. Manan, desiring to be
called _ytege_, or queen, an exclusive title in that
country, caused the nominal king to be dethroned by her son, and
placed her husband, _Yohannis_, or John, in his stead. This
prince was an estimable man, and honored me with his friendship.
In 1847, war was waged against the rebel Kasa. The soldiers of
Manan insulted their adversary. One gasconading cavalier
exclaimed, at a review: "Manan, my great queen, depend on my
valor, for I shall lead before you in chains this fellow; this
son of a vendor of _koso!_" But Kasa won the battle, and
chained the boaster in a hut, where, after a fast of twenty-four
hours, he received the following message from Kasa, delivered
verbally by a waggish page: "How hast thou passed the night, my
brother? How hast thou passed the day? May God deliver thee from
thy chains! May the Lord grant thee a little patience! Be sad
with me, for yesterday mamma remained at market all day, and
could not sell a single dose of _koso_. I have therefore no
money to buy bread for thee or for me. May God grant thee
patience, my brother! May God break thy chains! It is Kasa who
sends thee this message." The next day the officer received the
same message. On the third day the irony of the conqueror was
slightly changed.
{274}
After the usual salutations, the page joyfully informed the
captive that "Mamma had succeeded in selling a dose of
_koso_, and bought a loaf, which Kasa sends him."
A few days after, I heard these details at Gondar. The
news-mongers praised the mockery; but they only half-smiled, for
the flower of society had fallen into misfortune. Then they
regretted the good king Yohannis, and suspected the still
undeveloped wickedness of the character of Kasa, the adventurous
rebel of Quara. I saw Kasa, or Theodore, frequently at Gondar in
1848. He was dressed as a simple soldier, and had nothing, either
in his features or language, which presaged his high destiny. He
loved to speak of fire-arms. He was about twenty-eight years old;
his face rather black than red; his figure slim; and his agility
seemed to arise less from his muscular power than from that of
his will. His forehead is high and almost convex; his nose
slightly aquiline, a frequent characteristic of the pure-blooded
Amaras. His beard, like theirs, is sparse, and his thin lips
betray rather an Arabian than an Ethiopian origin. Kasa conquered
all his competitors, became King of Ethiopia, and was consecrated
by the abun, taking the name of Theodore, to verify an old
prophecy current among the Jews and Christians, that a king of
this name should rule over the ancient empire of Aksum. But the
Ethiopians, like all people of mountainous regions, tenacious of
their independence, and accustomed to liberty, did not yield at
once to an upstart usurper, who owed his success less to ability
and valor than to good luck.
In the beginning of his reign he acted with much clemency, owing,
it is said, to the happy influence exercised over him by his
first wife. When she died, he caused her body to be embalmed,
according to the custom of the Ethiopian princes of the race of
Solomon. Her coffin was carried after Theodore everywhere he
marched. A special tent was erected in the camp for her remains,
and the conqueror of Ethiopia was often seen entering it to
meditate on his past happiness, and ask of God, as it was said,
prudence and wisdom for the future. It is at this time that he
had real thoughts, though always eccentric, of a good government.
Civil divorce, and the consequent confusion of marriage, are the
plague-spot of Abyssinian society. They uproot the foundations of
the family, and are opposed to all ideas of order and stability.
Without understanding that a radical change in society cannot be
effected by a mere proclamation, Theodore decreed the obligation
of regular marriages, and the abolition of divorce. An able
statesman would have sought to destroy gradually, abuses of such
long standing. Another of his decrees did him equal honor, and
might have succeeded better, for he revived the old law of the
Ethiopians against the slave-trade.
But the heart of man is fickle. Prince Wibe, falling into the
hands of the conqueror, recommended his daughter to the Dabtara
and monks of Darasge, his favorite abbey, where he had his family
burial vault. One day the faithful guardians of the spot saw a
band of soldiers rushing toward them. They thought it was Tissu,
a recent rebel. They immediately concealed the sacred vessels,
and for safety shut up the daughter of Wibe in the vault. Their
surprise was great when they found it was Theodore himself, who
was, according to custom, marching over his kingdom in quest of
insurgents.
{275}
He wanted to see everything; and when they refused to open the
cavern for him, maintaining that a tomb prepared for Wibe, who
was still a chained captive, could have no interest for his
conqueror, Theodore suspected some plot, and caused the stone of
the sepulchre to be removed. His surprise was great when, instead
of a coffin, he beheld a beautiful girl, bathed in tears, and in
the attitude of prayer. Theodore forgot his first love. He set
Wibe at liberty, and married his daughter. This union was not
happy. The _ytege_, or queen, having interceded to save the
life of a rebel whom she had known at the court of her father,
Theodore refused at first her request, and becoming angry,
finally struck her. In order to humiliate her the more, he made a
common camp follower his concubine. From this moment his decree
on Christian marriage became a dead letter, and the slave-trade
was renewed. Men must have stronger virtue than that of King
Theodore, that their good thoughts may bear full fruit.
IV.
Let us here give some account of the English missions in
Ethiopia; for they have helped to bring about and inflame the war
now pending. M. Gobat, a Swiss Protestant, went as far as Gondar
about forty years ago, and acquired a knowledge of the language
of the country. After his return to Europe, he published a book
of such seeming good faith, that it deceived me at first, as it
must have deceived the English projectors of the missions.
Charity obliges me to write that M. Gobat, in giving an account
of his sermons to the people, has rather described what he
desired to say and the answers he would like to hear, than what
he actually said or heard. Without citing other witnesses of this
fact, that of an educated Dabtara will suffice, who was ignorant
of the existence of the Protestant missions. "Samuel Gobat," said
he, "was a prepossessing person, who deceived one at first. I,
who followed him, can affirm that he was really an unbeliever, or
that he pretended to be so. He proposed frightful doubts and
objections in matters affecting the Christian religion, but under
the form of hypotheses. He always began his strange assertions by
an _if_. Could he express them boldly? If he had, you know
that in Gondar, at least, he would not have been allowed to
continue, and he would have been denied a residence in our city."
The missionary societies in England did not know this condition
of the Ethiopian mind, and influenced by the specious arguments
of M. Gobat, they sent him a re-enforcement of three ministers,
whom he left to return to Europe. They preached much more
honestly and openly than he in Adwa and Tigray, where they were
established. They were expelled in 1838, fifteen days before my
arrival in the country. Two of them then went to Suria, from
which they were also driven. With a perseverance worthy of a
better cause, they returned again to Tigray, and again to Suria.
Always exiled, they had at last the prudence, in 1855, to make no
further attempt at evangelizing the country.
Seventeen years before this last date I met at Cairo a young
Lazarist priest, whom I persuaded to accompany me into Ethiopia,
to found a Catholic mission. He preceded me, went to Adwa about
eight days before the first expulsion of the Protestant
missionaries; and as my project seemed to him sensible, requiring
only time and patience to realize it, I brought letters from him
to Europe in 1838.
{276}
His holiness, Gregory XVI., favored our attempt, and sent two
missionaries to Ethiopia under the charge of Monseigneur de
Jacobis, who soon became known all through that region by the
name of Abuna Ya'igob. In spite of some imprudence, inevitable,
perhaps, in a country where there are such strange contrasts, he
succeeded beyond my most sanguine hopes, and when I left the
country in 1849, there were twelve thousand Catholics in it, and
many of the priests were natives. Last year an English account
gives the number as sixty thousand; for the influence of true
doctrines could not fail to be extended among a people so
intelligent as are the Abyssinians. Monseigneur de Jacobis helped
much to obtain this result, by his unchangeable mildness, and by
that personal influence which is always exercised by a priest
devoted to incessant prayer.
The fate of the Protestant missions was different. The ministers,
instead of attributing their want of success to themselves, have
blamed the Catholics as the movers of their expulsion from
Ethiopia. Even the English Consul Plowden in his official report
says that Theodore, after perusing the history of the Jesuits in
Abyssinia, decided to allow no Catholic priest to teach in his
states. The English are fond of decrying the memory of the
Jesuits who taught in Ethiopia up to 1630. It is, however, very
singular that I never heard of this history, and that the most
learned anti-Catholic professors at Gondar never mentioned it to
me in our controversies. On the contrary, they spoke of Peter
Paez and his co-laborers with admiration mingled with regret, and
quoted touching legends concerning them. A little further on in
his account, Plowden, who seems ignorant of the fact that sermons
are unknown in Ethiopia, adds that Theodore prohibited all
preaching contrary to the Copt Church. We cannot expect that an
English soldier, more or less Protestant, should comprehend fully
religious questions; but although he was a mere soldier, he ought
to have known that Theodore was attached to one of the three
national sects, and had forbidden all other creeds, and condemned
Catholics as well as Protestants.
It was in consequence of this decree that Monseigneur de Jacobis
was compelled to leave Gondar in 1855. This pious bishop went to
Musawwa, and there continued to govern his mission, which has
been left almost undisturbed by the natives for almost thirty
years. The chief proselytes of Gondar retired also to the shores
of the Red Sea, and the Protestant ministers, always on the
watch, imagined they had at length found a good opportunity to
teach in the capital. They went thither under the guidance of M.
Krapf, who, in default of other qualities, has at least uncommon
activity and persistence, but which have been so far sterile of
results. At their first expulsion in 1838, the four Protestant
missionaries left but _one proselyte in the whole of
Ethiopia_. This was a quondam pilgrim. He was going to
Jerusalem with an Ethiopian priest, who, falling short of money,
sold his companion into bondage. M. Gobat having ransomed him,
had no difficulty in inspiring him with hatred of the priests,
and of all their doctrines. We can only regard this single
convert as an apostate induced to desert his faith by resentment
and a spirit of revenge. Another young and intelligent Ethiopian,
after studying for years in the Protestant schools of Europe,
when asked, answered me frankly that the numerous dissensions in
religion witnessed by him among Protestants, had destroyed all
religious belief in his mind.
{277}
Religious England always believing, though erroneously, ought to
be startled by the consideration that her missionaries, real
mercenaries as they are, only succeed in propagating doubt and
incredulity instead of spreading the gospel.
M. Gobat, who was somewhat of a diplomatist, in writing to King
Theodore, did not state his object to be the foundation of a
Protestant mission. He merely announced that skilful mechanics,
desiring to improve the physical condition of the country, wished
to settle in it. King Theodore, who was desirous of obtaining
blacksmiths, gunners, and engineers, to make cannon and mortars,
and build bridges and roads, gave his consent. M. Gobat hinted
that the workmen wanted the free exercise of their religion.
Theodore referred the matter to the abun, who, knowing the tricks
of his old teachers, bluntly told Mr. Sterne, one of the
missionaries, who spoke of his intention to convert the Talasa,
or native Jews, as the sole object of his coming to Gondar, "This
mission to the Jews is only a pretext to plot against the faith
of the Christians." Pretending not to take the hint, Mr. Sterne
repeated his assertion, and the king consented to receive the
English mechanics, who were to be the instruments in the hands of
the pious missionaries in "evangelizing" the barbarous
Ethiopians. But on the testimony of Mr. Sterne himself, and that
of other Protestants, the scheme was a complete failure. Many of
the "mechanics," or "pious laymen," became as immoral as any of
the natives. Besides, in violation of their solemn promise made
to the abun, the missionaries distributed, as Plowden informs us,
"hundreds of Bibles, and taught the great truths of salvation to
many pagans and Christians." We extract these facts from the work
of the Rev. Mr. Badger, considered a most trustworthy witness in
official circles in England. [Footnote 54] After a short stay at
Gondar, Mr. Sterne went to London, was made bishop, and published
a wordy volume containing but one fact worth noticing, namely,
the intrinsic proof that the author was ignorant of the most
ordinary customs of Ethiopia. By an imprudence which has cost him
dear, Mr. Sterne related the story of the vender of _koso_
in his book. A former student of the English missionaries
informed Theodore of the fact, and the Protestants had reason to
feel bitterly that a man's friends often prove to be his greatest
enemies.
[Footnote 54: _The Story of the British Captives in
Abyssinia_, 1863, 1864. By the Rev. George Percy Badger.]
V.
The English government was indignant that its agent Plowden, as
it is known, should have been massacred on the highway near
Gondar. Theodore avenged his death, however, by the barbarous
slaughter of its authors and their associates. But the party of
the "saints" in England was not satisfied with this reparation.
Theodore was weak, and no match for England. It was safe,
therefore, to insult him. Had he been as powerful as the United
States, England would have been as loath to touch him as she is
afraid to refuse satisfaction to America for the ravages of the
Alabama on the high seas. She, however, suppressed the consulship
of Gondar, and sent Captain Cameron as her consul to Massowah,
under the protection of the Turkish flag. Captain Cameron was a
brave officer who had served in the Crimea, but he was no
diplomatist.
{278}
We all know that, as much from lack of this quality as from the
semi-barbarous habits of King Theodore, who thinks himself
all-powerful because he has been so successful in conquering
rebels in his own kingdom, Cameron and five other English
subjects, among them M. Rassam--another unskilful English
agent--and two Germans, were imprisoned at Magdala on the 8th of
July, 1866.
Magdala, where the prisoners still remain, is a stronghold in the
Abyssinian highlands, 3,000 feet above the level of the sea, and
the climate there is less warm than in most parts of the torrid
zone. There are a church, a treasury, a prison, and huts in the
place, and a population of about three or four thousand persons,
of whom four hundred are prisoners of every description; a
garrison of six hundred sharpshooters and as many common soldiers
armed with lance and shield. Although this fortress is considered
strong by the natives, one of the prisoners writes that a single
shell would suffice to blow up a place which the Ethiopians have
looked upon as impregnable for three centuries.
Besides the European prisoners at Magdala, Theodore keeps
fourteen others, mostly German mechanics, near his own quarters.
These artisans, exported at the expense of a Protestant
missionary society as "_pious laymen_" began their
evangelical labors as messengers of peace in a very extraordinary
fashion, by fabricating mortars and other engines of war. As for
the spiritual welfare of the Christians of Ethiopia, they looked
well to it by distilling bad brandy; and as for the temporal,
they drove the profitable trade of slave-mongers. This is what M.
Rassam, an Arabian, who turned Protestant to get employment from
the English government, tells us. He was nine years at Aden as
_lieutenant-governor_, and is considered one of the ablest
English agents in the East, if we are to believe the
parliamentary eulogium passed on him in a recent debate in the
House of Commons. The last account heard from this unfortunate
ambassador does not warrant the belief in his ability. The abun,
Salama, having died, M. Rassam advises the English to choose
another abun in Egypt, and put him at the head of the invading
army as a kind of palladium! This advice, if put into execution,
would be as absurd as if, on the death of Pius IX., Premier
Disraeli, imitating the policy of Pitt, and wishing to restore
the Marches to the Holy See, should send an army against the
Sardinians, with a pope at its head elected at Canterbury or
elsewhere, Jansenist or Catholic, no matter which, and should
expect all the Italians to respect him as sovereign pontiff.
VI.
England has undertaken the Abyssinian expedition to preserve her
_prestige_ in the East, and she is determined to gain her
point. The dusky King Theodore, pretended descendant of Solomon,
cannot complain that he has not received diplomatic notice. When
the German who brought him the British ultimatum, told him that
if he did not deliver up the prisoners he would have both the
armies of England and France against him--"Let them come," said
Theodore, "and call me a woman if I do not give them battle." We
know not if there be more of folly or of intrepid valor in this
proud answer. In fact, notwithstanding the narrations of some
travellers, naturally suspected of exaggeration, the Ethiopians
have no idea of the military power of the Western nations, and
their king may believe that he is a match for them.
{279}
The Bay of Adulis, usually so silent, is now swarming with ships.
There were in it, a short time ago, seventy vessels, without
counting those of the Arabians and East-Indians. The English have
built two quays to assist the debarkation of troops. The English
have the Snider gun, which they pretend to be superior to the
Chassepot rifle. They have even forty elephants to frighten
Theodore. One of them, an elephant of good sense if ever there
was one, behaved himself so badly at the debarkation of the
troops, that he was sent back to Hindostan.
England is determined to succeed. Instead of borrowing, she has
levied a tax of ten millions of dollars. She will need at least
six times that amount before the end of the war. Every English
prisoner to be freed will cost at least ten millions. But her
object is not merely the freeing of the prisoners, though she
asserts that it is. She has to provide water for sixty-five
thousand men and many beasts on the plains of Zullah, where, in
default of natural fresh water, the troops drink a distillation
of sea water. They need every day one hundred and eighty thousand
quarts to drink; and this quantity has been provided at the
enormous cost of twenty thousand dollars for every twenty-four
hours. To transport the munitions of war, mules were bought and
brought to Zullah from Egypt, Turkey, Spain, and France. The
English soldiers, not knowing at first how to manage them, tied
them with hay ropes. Many of the mules ate the ropes, escaped
into the desert, and were lost. A railroad has been built,
running from the sea to Sanafe, the first border station of
Ethiopia, a distance of almost one hundred miles.
The line of march has been well chosen. The English could have
crossed the plains of Tigray, which are level and oppose no
obstacle; and then crossed through Wasaya without meeting any
noteworthy difficulty except the river Takkaze, and Mount
Lamalmo. Farther on, at Dabra Tabor, where Theodore usually
resides, they might have chosen either the plains of the Lanige,
or the cool and verdant hills of the Waynadaga territory as the
sites of their encampment. But this route is not the shortest.
Besides, the Wasaya begins to be unhealthy in the month of May,
and there is no forage as far as Wagara.
The shorter route, which the English have taken, is by Agame and
Wag. On those elevated plateaux they may keep all their energy,
and they will find a territory less ravaged by civil war, and
good pastures. The distance from Zullah to Magdala is about the
same as from Paris to Lyons. But artillery is with difficulty
transported over many of the gullies on the route; and perhaps
for the elephants it will be found impracticable. But the leader
of the expedition, Sir Robert Napier, will not balk at these
details. He will push rapidly on to Delanta before the rainy
season, which begins about the 10th of July. According to the
prisoners, if he should invest Magdala at the beginning of May,
the want of water would soon force the garrison to surrender. If
the first rains have fallen before his arrival, the English will
occupy Tanta among the Wara Haymano, and from that point open
fire on Magdala. Soldiers living in huts, without casemates or
caverns, could not stand a day against the English guns. In, any
case, Magdala, the great Ethiopian fortress, will be taken, and
it will remain to be seen whether the troops will march to Dabra
Tabor to burn the camp of King Theodore, and kill him, or make
him prisoner.
{280}
Nevertheless, the use of diplomacy will not be despised. When
Theodore put M. Rassam in prison, with great protestations of
friendship, he promised him his liberty on the arrival of certain
machines and expert workers. England sent both to Massowah, but
required first the liberation of the prisoners without having
used any of those forms which render a contract binding in the
eyes of the Abyssinians. On his side, Theodore did not understand
the value of a simple signature. Besides, he had been deceived by
Plowden, who denied his character of consul, and cheated by the
denials of the Protestant missionaries as to their attempts to
proselytize the native Christians. He did not, therefore, believe
the protestations of the English. The want of a sensible agent
caused the failure of this negotiation, which might have
succeeded if more skilfully conducted. Moreover, the English
army, on entering the Tigray, issued a proclamation, of which the
_Times_ published a literal copy, as ridiculous in
_Amariñña_ dialect as in English. Besides, the language used
is almost unknown in Agama, where this document has been
published. The English officers do not seem to have known that a
proclamation is never published in Ethiopia in a written form.
But what will King Theodore, the pretended descendant of Solomon,
do? It is difficult to answer this question. The natives report
that Theodore is often out of his senses when he drinks brandy,
which the "_pious laymen_" of the Protestant mission
zealously manufacture for his _spiritual_ comfort. From the
very beginning of his reign, Plowden informs us that he
manifested symptoms of insanity. The English prisoners tell us
more explicitly that Theodore himself informed them that his
father was insane, and that he believed himself attacked with the
same disorder. Several traits in his conduct toward the
prisoners, and the massacre of one hundred of his own soldiers in
his camp, on mere suspicion, give gravity to the assertions. If
this be true, England has declared war against an adversary
unworthy of her dignity. In case of defeat, the only refuge for
Theodore is to retreat to his native province of Quara, on the
border of a terrible desert, breathing pestilence on all the
region around. Woe to the English soldiers if they attempt to
follow him thither!
Of all the ancient empire of Yasu the Great, that Ethiopian Louis
XIV., Theodore has only Quara, that he can call his own. His
governors of the Tigra have been expelled by rebels, or have made
themselves independent of his authority. Gojjan has proclaimed
its independence; Wag also has risen in arms; Suria is free, and
gives asylum to all refugees. Yet these are regions but recently
subjected to the conquering arms of Theodore. Tissu Gobaze rules
the lower Tigray, Wasaya, Walguayt, Simen, Wazara, and as far as
Dambya, where Gondar stood before Theodore destroyed it.
What then is left to this unfortunate tyrant, resisted at home by
numberless insurgents, and threatened by foreign force with
destruction? The Awamas, whose rights he has respected because
they know how to defend themselves, but who will seize the first
opportunity to rebel; Tagusa, Acafar, Alafa, and Meca stretching
along the Tana, but which he has made solitudes by his systematic
pillage; and finally Bagemdir, that beautiful portion of the
country, which obeys him with regret.
{281}
A disease, a slight cheek, or a courageous peasant, would be
sufficient to destroy Theodore, that royal meteor, which, after
shining for a few years, will soon be extinguished in the night
of oblivion. Considering the greatness of the English
preparations, we are led to suspect that she has the intention of
holding Northern Ethiopia after conquering it. Appearances seems
to favor this conjecture, and no matter what the English journals
may say, the idea is not of French origin. Plowden urged its
realization in his official letters thirteen years ago; Cameron
is in favor of it; and General Coghlan timidly hints its
practicability in his military monograph on Ethiopian affairs.
The English have been masters of Aden for the last thirty years,
and they wish to make the Red Sea an English lake. They desire
Ethiopia; for from it they could invade Egypt, where "King
Cotton" would rule in all his glory. They allege the case of
Algiers annexed to France in justification of their project. But
let it be observed that Charles X., who ransomed at his own
expense, the Greek slaves sold in the markets of Constantinople
and in Egypt, could not allow the Dey of Algiers alone to keep
French, Spanish, and English Christians in bonds; while the
English have never done anything to prevent the slave-trade in
Abyssinia. Many Christian slaves are annually bought within
gunshot of the British ships on the Red Sea, to be brutalized in
Mussulman harems. _England has never made an effort to stop the
traffic there_. Can we blame King Theodore then, who,
according to his degree of intelligence and power, wished to put
an end to this inhuman commerce, for saying with at least as much
modesty as her majesty's government has at command, "Which of us
two is the greater barbarian?"
----------
New Publications.
St. Columba, Apostle of Caledonia.
By the Count de Montalembert, of the French Academy,
New York: Catholic Publication House,
126 Nassau street. 1868.
Irish ecclesiastical history is something unique in the world,
and presents to us the spirit of Christianity run into an
entirely new and original mould. The Celtic race, whose most
perfect and completely actualized type exists in the people of
Ireland, is a singular specimen of humanity, as it used to be in
the primitive ages just after, and perhaps long before the flood,
preserved, continued, and apparently incapable of being destroyed
or changed, in the midst of other races of totally opposite
character. The sudden and entire conversion of this people to
Christianity, and the invincible tenacity with which it has clung
to its first faith, together with the marked individuality of the
expression which it has given to the Christian idea, form a
phenomenon in history which cannot be too much studied or
admired. It was a happy moment for Ireland when that Chevalier
Bayard of Catholic literature, the Count de Montalembert, felt
his chivalrous soul moved by the story of her ancient princely
monks and dauntless, adventurous apostles, and set himself to the
task of writing a work which unites all the romantic, poetic
charm of the lyric strains of her bards, with the accuracy and
minuteness of her monastic chronicles.
{282}
His narrative, partly owing to the nature of his subject, and
partly to his own genius, is like the _Scottish Chiefs_ and
the _Waverley Novels_. The most striking, original, and
grand of all the characters depicted by him in that part of the
_Monks of the West_ which is devoted to Ireland, is St.
Columba or Columbkill. This great man, who was by birth heir to
the dignity of Ard-righ, or chief king of Ireland, the founder of
Iona, and the apostle of Scotland, is the favorite saint of the
Irish people after St. Patrick. He is a more thoroughly Irish
saint than the great apostle of Ireland, who was the father and
founder of the Irish people as a Christian nation, but was
himself, probably, by birth and extraction a Gallo-Roman. A
warrior, a poet, a chieftain, a monk, a statesman, an apostle,
and, it is supposed, a prophet; the most intensely devoted and
patriotic lover of his native island, perhaps, that ever lived;
and yet sentenced by his stern old hermit confessor to perpetual
banishment from it; the life of Columba overflows with all the
materials of the most romantic and heroic interest.
The Life of Columba, whose title is placed at the head of this
notice, is, as we have implied already, a monograph extracted
from the great work on the _Monks of the West_, by
Montalembert. It is a small book of only 170 duo-decimo pages,
and therefore readable by almost everybody who ever reads
anything better than newspapers and dime novels. It is, above all
others, a book for every one, young or old, who has
Celtic-Catholic blood in his veins. It is time now to use that
English language which was forced by the haughty conqueror upon
the Irish people, from a cruel motive which God has overruled for
their glory and his own, as the means of diffusing the treasures
hidden hitherto, so to speak, under a _cromlech_. Those who
put this unwilling people into a compulsory course of English,
little thought what a keen-edged weapon they were placing in
their hands, and training them to use. They could not foresee
what use would be made of it by Curran, O'Connell, Thomas Moore,
Bishop Doyle, and Father Meehan. The possession of the English
language places the Irish people in communication with the whole
civilized world, without depriving them of their rich patrimony
of traditional lore, legend, and song. It is incumbent on all who
love the faith, and sympathize with the wrongs and hardships, of
the Irish people, to strain every nerve to increase the number
and diffuse the circulation of books, in which this religious and
patriotic tradition may be perpetuated. Wherever the Irish people
are, in Ireland, England, America, Australia, they are deriving
their intellectual nutriment more and more from English books;
and thus, in proportion as they become readers, are coming under
the influence of writers who write in the English language. It is
most important, therefore, for those who are charged with the
responsibility of watching over their religious, moral, and
intellectual culture, to see to it that their minds are not
flooded with an excess of purely secular literature, which has in
it no mixture of the Catholic tradition. The greatest danger and
misfortune of our rising generation of Catholics in America is
the lack of this tradition in historical, poetic, and romantic
literature. Even those who are the descendants of parents and
progenitors of the old Catholic stock, must necessarily lose by
degrees all vivid sentiment of any other nationality than the
American, and be more influenced by the _genius loci_ than
by any other genius, whether Celtic or Teutonic. The danger to be
guarded against is a peril of becoming so much Americanized as to
be reduced to a _caput mortuum_ in the process. An American
citizen, without faith and religion, even though he may be born
and live in Boston, is involved in the consequences of original
sin as well as others. It is no gain to transform a poor, simple,
believing, fervent Catholic immigrant, in the second or third
generation, into an intelligent, well fed, healthy animal, with a
comfortable farm and the elective franchise, but with no more
soul than the man with the muck-rake in the _Pilgrim's
Progress_, or those dirty heathen in the suburbs of the holy
city of New York, who spend their Sundays in weeding cabbages.
{283}
This deleterious change must be prevented, not only, by purely
spiritual means, but also by preserving and fostering as much as
possible the natural bonds which connect our youth of Catholic
origin with the traditions of their ancestry. Hence, we are in
favor of multiplying and circulating as much as possible those
books which relate the history of the Catholic Church of Ireland,
of her saints and prelates, her gallant chieftains and noble
martyrs, her sufferings and persecutions. The English Catholic
tradition, and the Scottish, are unfortunately broken. A dreary
gap of three centuries intervenes between the present and the
Catholic past; but in Ireland the continuity is perfect from the
fifth century to the present moment. This is the great artery of
life to the Catholic Church of the British empire and its
colonies, and it must not be severed. There is an intense
sympathy between the people of the United States and the people
of Ireland. This is chiefly a sympathy with their oppressed
condition as a people, and with their just demands for expiation
and redress for the wrongs they have suffered from the hands of
the British government. It would be prudent for the gentlemen of
the English parliament to take note of this, and to be wise in
time, by conceding all those rights and privileges at once with a
good grace, which Ireland is sure to obtain sooner or later,
whether parliament is willing or unwilling. This merely political
sympathy will, we trust, prepare the way for a higher and holier
sympathy with the faith, the constancy, the invincible fortitude
of the Irish people as a Catholic nation, the Spartans of a
sacred Thermopylae, who have immolated themselves to save the
faith. It is time that the American public should learn what is
the _Irish Version of the History of the Reformation_. This
presupposes a previous knowledge of the first planting and
cultivation of Christianity. When it is seen that the Irish
fought and died for the very same religion which was planted
among them by their first apostles, it will be easy to judge of
the claims which the religion of Elizabeth and Cromwell had upon
their submission. The labors of Montalembert are therefore
invaluable, as bringing to light the hidden treasures of Irish
ecclesiastical history, and in all his great work there is no
chapter to be found more charming than the biography of the great
patriarch of Iona. We conclude with the eulogium which Fintan, a
contemporary monk, pronounced upon St. Columba in an assembly of
wise and learned men, and which is justified by the history of
his life. "Columba is not to be compared with philosophers and
learned men, but with patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. The
Holy Spirit reigns in him; he has been chosen by God for the good
of all; he is a sage among all sages, a king among kings, an
anchorite with anchorites, a monk of monks; and in order to bring
himself to the level even of laymen, he knows how to be poor of
heart among the poor; thanks to the apostolic charity which
inspires him, he can rejoice with the joyful, and weep with the
unfortunate. And amid all the gifts which God's generosity has
lavished on him, the true humility of Christ is so royally rooted
in his soul that it seems to have been born with him."
----
Ecce Homo. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone.
Strahan & Co., London. G. Routledge & Sons,
416 Broome street, New York. 1868.
On the day of writing this notice, Mr. Gladstone is introducing
his motion for overthrowing that monstrous iniquity, the Irish
Establishment. We feel, consequently, especially well-disposed
toward him. Nevertheless, with all our respect for his talents
and character, we cannot help being reminded of his illustrious
countryman, that great ornament of the sea-faring profession.
Captain Bunsby. Our English brethren, when they take up solid
topics, appear to think laborious dulness and tedious obscurity
the evidence of deep learning and sound judgment. Their essays
are like those of collegians, who affect to write on political or
philosophical subjects in an extremely old-mannish,
old-cabinet-minister-like style.
{284}
This is remarkably the case with the venerable university dons
who advocate rationalistic opinions. The style of arguing adopted
by these worthy and dignified gentlemen bears a striking
resemblance to the movements of one who is carefully wending his
way among eggs. As an instance, we may cite the _Essays and
Reviews_, perhaps the dullest book ever written, unless the
_Treatises on Sacred Arithmetic and Mensuration_, by Dr.
Colenso, may be thought worthy to compete for the prize. The
_Ecce Homo_ is not to be placed in precisely the same
category. It is, nevertheless, in our humble opinion, a very
vague, wearisome, and unsatisfactory book. We cannot account for
its popularity in any other way than by ascribing it to the
restless, sceptical, misty state of the English mind on religious
subjects; the uneasy desire to find out something more than it
knows about Christianity and its author. After eighteen centuries
have rolled by, the question. Who is Jesus Christ? still remains
a puzzle to all those who will not submit to learn from the
teacher commissioned by himself. The author of _Ecce Homo_
has endeavored to throw himself back to the time and into the
period of the disciples of Christ, to examine with their eyes his
words and actions, and from these to abstract a mental conception
of his true character. What that conception is, remains as much a
puzzle as the gospels themselves are to a rationalist, or the
Exodus to Dr. Colenso. The language of _Ecce Homo_ is
certainly irreconcilable with the definitions of the Catholic
Church respecting the divine personality of Christ. Some of its
statements respecting the nature of the work accomplished by him
on the earth, and the evidence thereby furnished of his divine
mission, are forcible and valuable, and perhaps to rationalists,
Unitarians, and doubters, the work may be useful. No one,
however, who understands Catholic theology, and believes in the
true doctrine of the Incarnation, can read it without a strong
sentiment of repugnance and dissatisfaction. Mr. Gladstone,
nevertheless, although professing to accept the Catholic doctrine
of the Incarnation, undertakes the defence of the book, and even
apologises for its most offensive passages. By doing this he
shows that he himself does not grasp the full meaning of the
formulas to which he gives his assent; and although he is not a
rationalist, yet, from perpetual contact with them, and the
influence of that halting, inconsequent state of mind produced by
Anglicanism, he has acquired something of that dark-lantern style
of which we have spoken above. There are gleams of light and
passages of beauty here and there, especially on those pages
where the author treats of the Greek Mythology as an imperfect
effort to realize the idea of Deity incarnate in human form. As a
whole, the essay, which is a mere review of another book, was
well enough for a magazine article, but not of sufficient
importance to warrant its publication in book form. Every person
who acknowledges the true divinity of Jesus Christ while
rejecting the authority of the Catholic Church, stands in a
position logically absurd, and is therefore incapable of
adequately advocating the cause of Christ and Christianity
against the infidelity of the age. No one but a Catholic, endowed
with genius, and fully imbued with the spirit of Catholic
theology, can ever write in a satisfactory manner upon the Life
of Christ, so as to meet that demand which causes the abortive
efforts of unbelievers and half-Christians to find such an
extensive circulation.
----
On the Heights. A Novel.
By Berthold Auerbach.
Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1868.
This volume, professing to be a translation from the German, is
most thoroughly permeated with German _mysticism_; one can
hardly give it the dignified name of theology. It carries one
back in its bewildering metaphysics to the days of _The
Dial_, when every girl of eighteen belonging to a certain
clique, was devouring Bettina's correspondence with Goethe, and
listening with rapt soul to lectures on "Human Life," from the
oracular lips of a favorite seer; discourses utterly beyond the
comprehension of the maiden's papa, but which she understood
perfectly.
{285}
We are led to wonder, in our republican ignorance, if people in
court life converse and act in the stilted, theatrical manner in
which they are here represented; every person being what in these
days would be called "highly organized." In this particular, and
in the tedium and repetition of court detail, we were forcibly
reminded of the voluminous works of Miss Mühlbach, with this
difference, that _On the Heights_ makes no historical claim.
There are, however, very many sweet touches of nature in the
book, gems of thought; and now and then a rare pearl of good
counsel, near which, in reading, one involuntarily draws a
pencil-line, that they may be found again. Maternal love is
beautifully portrayed, both in high and low life, in the queen,
and in the foster-mother of the prince.
The author evidently, knows but little of the Catholic faith, and
less of its results, since the life of the _religieuse_ is
continually referred to (with a slight sneer) as "_a life in
which nothing happens_."
We close this volume with a sensation of weary sadness; there
seems to run through its pages "the cry of that deep-rooted pain,
under which, thoughtful men are languishing," like the distant
tones of an AEolian harp wafted on the night breezes. There is a
reaching forth in these mystic yearnings for the good, the true,
and the _enduring_, which the priceless gift of faith alone
brings to the weary and heavy-laden, in submission to God's
appointed teacher, the church.
The mechanical execution of the work is excellent, the type
clear, and the double-columed pages furnish a vast amount of
reading in a small compass.
------
Chemical Change in the Eucharist.
From the French of Jacques Abbadie.
By John W. Hamersley, A.M.
Jacques Abbadie was born in Switzerland, in 1654; "studied at
Saumur," writes Mr. Hamersley in his preface, "was doctorated at
Sedan, and installed pastor of the French (Huguenot) Church of
Berlin, at the instance of Count d'Espence."
He left his pastorate, became chaplain to Marshal Schomberg, and
came to England with William of Orange in 1688. After Schomberg's
death, in the battle of the Boyne, Abbadie was presented to the
deanery of Killaloo, in Ireland, where he died in 1727.
His book against transubstantiation in the Eucharist, is such as
might be expected from the literary leisure, taste, learning, and
piety of one of Schomberg's exemplary camp-followers. We read the
book with the hope of finding some objection in it worth a
refutation; but we have found nothing but the stale, oft-refuted
arguments of Protestants against the real presence. Led by the
title of the work, _Chemical Change in the Eucharist_, we
expected to meet some profound chemical discoveries that should
at least seem to contradict Catholic belief. But there is not
one. There is not even an allusion which would show the author to
be conversant with chemistry or any of the natural sciences.
Abbadie argues against the Catholic exegesis of the sixth chapter
of St. John, and against the words of consecration, "This is my
body," in the usual Protestant way. He insists that Christ's
words are to be taken figuratively; while Catholics claim that
they are to be taken literally.
One general answer will do for all heterodox interpretations of
Scripture on this and on other points. If Protestants urge that
private reason is the supreme judge of Scripture, how can they
deny to Catholics the right to use it? And if the private
judgment of Catholics finds that Christ spoke of a real presence
in the Holy Eucharist, and that his words are to be taken in
their plain, literal signification, why should Protestants
object? In point of fact, Catholics do admit private judgment,
properly understood, in the interpretation of Scripture. They
affirm that the interpretation of the church or of the fathers is
identical with the rational exegesis.
{286}
The interpretation of Protestants is _not_ a rational
interpretation, and does not give the true sense of Scripture.
They misinterpret the Scriptures by an _abuse_ of private
judgment. They gratuitously assume that Catholic interpretation
is contrary to the rational sense of the Bible; while Catholics
hold that their interpretation alone is rational. As a prudent,
sensible man, when he meets with a difficult passage in Homer or
Sophocles, consults the best commentators to aid him in
discovering the true sense; so, for a much greater reason, should
a Christian seek an authoritative explanation of those hard
passages of Holy Writ "which the unstable and unlearned wrest to
their own destruction." One who denies that there are difficult
texts in Scripture can never have read it. From the first text of
Genesis to the last in the Apocalypse, the Scripture is replete
with difficulties, which even the most learned commentators do
not always succeed in explaining.
All Abbadie's scriptural arguments against the real presence may
be, therefore, met with one remark. He explains certain texts in
a figurative sense. Catholics, however, interpret them to mean
what they plainly and literally express. Catholics do not need in
this case to appeal to the authority of the church or to the
fathers. Christ says, "This is my body;" Catholics believe him.
Christ says, "My flesh is meat indeed;" Catholics believe his
words. Abbadie and his sect admit that Christ says, "This is my
body;" that he affirms his flesh to be meat indeed; yet they will
not believe him. Who authorizes them to contradict the express
words of Christ? We ask _impartial_ reason to judge between
Catholic and Protestant in this controversy.
But where Abbadie shows his complete ignorance of the first
elements of the higher sciences is in "Letter Fourth" of his
book, p. 98. We quote from Mr. Hamersley's translation. "_All
our ideas of faith rely solely on sense;_ and their value to
us is measured by its certainty; and to faith, which is a
conviction of divine truth, there are four essentials: God
exists; he is truthful; he has revealed himself; each mystery of
our faith appears in such revelation. Sir--it is noteworthy--that
the _senses are the sole channels of all those truths, and
their_ SOLE _vouchers_." Again, "Thus the _senses are
the media of all evidence_." (P. 99.) The materialism of
d'Holbach, Cabanis, Helvetius, and Condillac is identical with
this doctrine of the doughty dean of Killaloo. If the senses
"_are the sole channels of truth_," instead of being the
mere occasions of reflection, then the whole order of
intelligible ideas, the ideas of God, spirit, and cause, are
illusions. The senses can only tell us the sensible or
phenomenal. Now, as the ideas of God, cause, spirit, truth,
justice, goodness, substance, etc., are all supersensible, they
cannot come from the senses. If the senses "_are the media of
all evidence_," the only things we can know are modes or
phenomena, colors, forms, sounds, etc. The senses tell us nothing
more. We must, therefore, deny the existence of God, of truth, of
goodness, cause, substance, etc.; and turn atheists, pantheists,
sceptics, or materialists, as all who logically follow out
Abbadie's or Locke's metaphysics really become. The philosophy of
the warlike chaplain of Schomberg's army is thus shown to be
essentially immoral.
Did Mr. Hamersley know this when he translated the book? We think
not, for he is evidently too innocent of logic and too ignorant
of truth to be able to understand fully even the arguments of the
superficial dean of Killaloo.
We shall make good our assertion by quoting a few of Mr.
Hamersley's own references: "In 1845, the pope made the
Immaculate Conception a part of the Roman creed and a condition
of salvation." (P. 113.) The gentleman probably was thinking of
the pope's decree of 1852.
"A.D. 597, Gregory I. instructs St. Augustine to accommodate the
ceremonies of the church to heathen rites." (P. 125.).
"The Maronites, _originally Monothelites_, protected by the
Emperor Heraclius, are now incorporated in the church of Rome."
(P. 126.)
{287}
"A.D. 1295, Boniface VIII. confines ex-pope Celestine V. in _a
cell about the size of his body_, lest he may elect to resume
the pontificate he has resigned--guards him night and day with 6
knights and 30 soldiers. Celestine dies of cruelty." (P. 129.)
"Gregory VII. threatens to anathematize all France, unless King
Philip _abandons simony_. (P. 135.) This was one of
Gregory's _crimes_ in the judgment of Mr. Hamersley.
"Alexander VI. (Borgia) is elected pope--his Holiness is
forthwith _adored by the cardinals_:" (P. 143.) What
idolatry!
"_Penance--a sacrament by which venial sins, committed after
baptism, are forgiven._" (P. 146.)
"The Nestorians were excommunicated A.D. 431, for holding, among
other views, two natures of Christ."
"The Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451, confirmed the doctrine of
the two natures of Christ, which the church had repudiated." (P.
148.)
As instances of schisms in the church, the _learned_
translator cites the following: "Dominicans and Franciscans--on
immaculate conception." "Thomists and Scotists--efficacy of grace
and immaculate conception." "Jesuits and Jansenists--on the
doctrine of grace." (P. 150.)
"Dec. 17, 1866, the _leading Romanists of the Council of
Baltimore_ invite the pope by letter to visit the United
States." (P. 157.)
"Jesuit pestilence." (P. 159.) "_Plague-spots--Roman Catholic
churches and institutions_." (P. 160.) This is a good instance
of Mr. Hamersley's rhetoric.
"The Papal Church in the United States _has recently adopted
the title of Roman Catholic_." Evidence: "It appears in large
iron gilt letters over the gate of the asylum in Fifth avenue,
New York--_Roman Catholic Male Orphan Asylum_." (P. 160.)
_This is one of the plague-spots_!
These are but a few of the literary beauties to be found in Mr.
Hamersley's additions to Abbadie. A Catholic could afford to
smile at both the original and his translator, if, unfortunately,
there were not found many persons so credulous as to believe
their falsehoods. The original work of Abbadie is tolerable. He
attempts to argue; and we have no doubt his military logic was
satisfactory enough to the square-headed soldiers of Schomberg's
army. Besides, when Abbadie wrote, civilization had not arrived
at such a degree of progress as it has now attained. But Mr.
Hamersley writes his falsehoods _now_. His ignorance and
fanaticism, of which we have culled but a few of the many
instances in his book, _are of our own day_. We cannot
understand why he should repeat them, since there is hardly any
moderately educated Protestant who does not know that most of his
allegations are false. If there be any so dull or fanatical as to
believe them, we feel for them more of pity than contempt.
In conclusion, we regret that the translator does not show as
much good sense or taste in choosing the subject as the
publishers manifest in the binding and printing of the work. We
are sorry to see such fine print wasted on a bad, worthless book.
Mr. Hamersley could have found nobler themes in foreign
literature, even though they might be the productions of
Protestants, to exercise those talents as a translator which he
has failed to show as a lover of truth, a logician, or a man of
good sense.
------
Life in the West; or, Stories of the Mississippi Valley.
By N. C. Meeker, Agricultural Editor of the New
York _Tribune_. New York: Samuel R. Wells.
"A long residence in the Mississippi Valley, frequent journeys
through its whole extent, and years of service as the Illinois
correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, have furnished the
materials for the following stories." Hence, it is almost
unnecessary to state that their claim to our careful
consideration rests upon something more substantial than the fact
of their being pleasingly told, varied in incident, and
unobjectionable in tone. Their real worth, and it is not slight,
arises from this, that they are made the agreeable medium of
conveying much valuable information concerning "life in the
West;" no less the hardships unavoidably to be endured by the
emigrant, the difficulties to be overcome, and the dangers to be
encountered, than his almost assured ultimate triumph.
{288}
Of general interest, but designed especially for those intending
to emigrate, is the appendix, containing a brief description of
the soil, climate, products, area, and population of each State
and territory lying in the great Valley of the Mississippi; and
also the locations of the several land-offices where application
must be made and all needful information can be obtained.
----
Mozart: A Biographical Romance.
From the German of Heribert Rau.
By E. R. Sill. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1868.
A poor translation of a frothy production. On the first page, the
child, Mozart, is called a "three-years-old son." Mr. Sill
evidently does not know that a three-year-old is English for
colts and heifers. Mozart's sister is also denominated a
"seven-years-old." The writer, if Mr. Sill has translated him
correctly, is exceedingly ignorant, or worse. On page 54 we read:
"They sought the pope's chair," (that is, the worshippers
crowding to St. Peter's for the services on Maundy-Thursday,)
"partly because it was the fashion, partly because they wanted to
be on hand to see everybody else do it, and partly because, to an
Italian, a hundred days' absolution in advance is always a
pleasant and convenient thing to have." The recitation of the
Tenebrae, in the evening, is called, on page 58, "the performance
of Mass." Would it not be well for our enterprising publishers in
this enlightened country, to employ a proof-reader who has
received a passable education?
------
The Great Day; or, Motives and Means of Perseverance
after First Communion.
Translated from the French by Mrs. J. Sadlier. New York, 1868.
A pretty and good little volume, intended for a gift to children,
as a memento of the happy day of their first communion. We have
only one criticism to make, which is, that its tone of thought is
too foreign. We wish that the accomplished translator had made
use of the original French only, as matter from which to compile
a delightful little book under this title, (a task which she
could so admirably perform,) suitable, in the freshness of its
thought, to the minds of American children. In lieu, however, of
the wished-for better book of Mrs. Sadlier's, we heartily
recommend this present volume to the attention of all pastors,
parents, and superintendents of Sunday-schools, who will find in
it, we are sure, just what very many of them have long desired to
procure as a worthy memento for "The Great Day."
------
Tales from the Diary of a Sister of Mercy.
By C. M. Brame.
New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1868.
We all remember _Passages from the Diary of a Late
Physician_, by Dr. Warren, and the intense interest everybody
felt in these sketches of the tragic scenes with which the
persons whose profession leads them among the sick, the
suffering, and the dying are familiar. This book is on a similar
plan, and is composed of graphic descriptions of what a Sister of
Mercy may be supposed to see and observe in her charitable
ministrations. The light of the Catholic religion thrown in among
these painful, tragic scenes, relieves their shadows, and leaves
a more healthful impression on the mind; in short, becoming their
pathetic effect. Those who love sensation stories will find their
taste gratified in this volume, and, at the same time, may be
able to derive from it some good moral and religious lessons.
------
We regret that a notice of _The First Report of the Catholic
Sunday-School Union_ was crowded out of the columns of this
number. It will appear in our next.--Ed. C. W.
-----------------------
{289}
The Catholic World.
Vol. VII., No. 39.--June, 1868.
--------
Edmund Campion.
In the spring of 1580, Elizabeth being then queen of Great
Britain, and England being in the midst of the turmoil which
accompanied the final establishment of Protestantism as the
religion of the realm, two expeditions set out from Rome, to
restore the faith in the British isles. One consisted of two
thousand armed soldiers, enlisted as a sort of crusaders, and
animated by the papal blessing and the promise of indulgences,
not to speak of the visions of worldly glory and profit which
even soldiers who fight under consecrated banners are apt to find
alluring. The other was composed of less than a score of
missionaries, Jesuits, secular priests, and others, whose most
enticing prospect was one of martyrdom. The soldiers were to land
in Ireland and help the rebellion of the Geraldines. The
missionaries were to penetrate in disguise into England, and
exercise the ministry of the proscribed and persecuted faith in
the secrecy of private houses and hidden chambers.
Looking at the history of those times in the light of subsequent
experience, it seems hard to account for the policy which could
imperil not only the lives of the missionaries, but the cause of
the church, by complicating the peaceful embassy of the priests
with the mission of war and insurrection. For it was no secret
that the troops came from Rome, and that large subsidies from the
Roman treasury were sent with them. Associated with them, too,
went an eminent ecclesiastic. Dr. Saunders, with the functions of
a legate. We must remember, however, that the accession of
Elizabeth had never been popularly acquiesced in. Her legitimacy
had never been generally acknowledged. Her reign thus far had
been a series of rebellions. The party which opposed her had a
fair title to the character of belligerents, and the continental
powers which espoused their cause were only doing what, by the
customs of the age, they had a perfect right to do. The pope had
issued a bull, excommunicating the queen, absolving her subjects
from their oath of allegiance, and even forbidding them to obey
her; and although he had afterward so far modified the bull as to
permit the English people to recognize her authority, _rebus
sic stantibus_, "while things remained as they were," he had
never ceased, in conjunction with other European powers, to
promote attempts in Ireland and elsewhere to overthrow her and
place the Queen of Scots upon the throne.
{290}
At this distance of time, with a line of successors to ratify
Elizabeth's title to the crown, and the fact of their failure
arguing against the insurgents, it is easy to condemn the papal
policy; but we must remember that affairs bore a different aspect
then; that Elizabeth's right to the throne was open to question;
and that the Catholic faith which she was striving to suppress
was still the faith of a large majority of the English people.
We have little to do, however, with this Irish expedition. It was
a miserable failure, and its only effect was, to aggravate the
sufferings of the Catholics and expose the missionaries to
increased danger. Our purpose in this article is rather to trace
the history of the more peaceful and strictly religious embassy,
so far as it bore upon the life of the illustrious martyr from
whom it derives its chief renown.
Edmund Campion, [Footnote 55] the son of a London bookseller, was
born on the 25th of January, 1539, (O. S.,) the year which
witnessed the commencement of the English persecution, of which
he was destined to be a victim, and the solemn approval of the
Society of Jesus, of which he was to be the first English martyr.
At St. John's College, Oxford, where he was educated and obtained
a fellowship, he was so much admired for his gift of speech and
grace of eloquence, that young men imitated not only his phrases
but his gait, and revered him as a second Cicero. It was the year
after he obtained his fellowship that Queen Mary died and
Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. The new sovereign allowed but
a few weeks to pass before she manifested her preference for the
Protestant doctrines; yet there was no attempt at first to force
the heresy upon the university of Oxford, her Majesty wisely
trusting to the insidious influences of time, persuasion, and
high example to bring the students and professors over to her
views. It is no great wonder, perhaps, that Campion, intoxicated
by the incense of adulation and enervated by the worldly comfort
of his position, shut his eyes to the dreadful gulf of heresy
into which the English Church was drifting, and seemed hardly to
realize the necessity which was being forced upon him of choosing
between God and the queen. He was not required for some years to
take any oath at variance with his fidelity to the church. So he
gave up the study of theology, to which he had hitherto devoted
himself, and applied his mind to secular learning. He was a
layman, and controversy might be left to the priests. When he
took his degree in 1564, he was induced to subscribe to the oath
against the pope's supremacy, and by the statutes of his college
he was also compelled to resume the study of divinity; yet he
still managed to stave off important questions and to confine his
reading to the old settled dogmas which had no direct bearing
upon the questions of the day.
[Footnote 55: _Edmund Campion: A Biography_.
By Richard Simpson. 8vo, pp. 387. London:
Williams & Norgate. New York:
The Catholic Publication Society.]
{291}
The time came, at last, when the theological neutral ground had
been thoroughly explored, and Campion turned to the Fathers. In
their venerable company he seemed to grow more thoughtful and
conscientious. The problem of his life now was not how he could
postpone serious considerations, and shake off religious
responsibility, but how he could reconcile true principles with
false practice; how he could remain in the Established Church of
England, and yet hold to all the old Catholic doctrines which the
Establishment denied. His position, in fact, was almost identical
with that of the modern Tractarians, and his college at Oxford
was the home of a party which entertained nearly the same
opinions. There was one of the Elizabethan bishops, Cheney of
Gloucester, who, having retained a good deal of the orthodox
faith, sympathized heartily with Campion's aspirations and
perplexities. He was the actual founder of the school represented
in later times by Newman and Pusey, and he had fixed upon Campion
to continue and perfect the work after he himself had passed
away. The bishop persuaded our young scholar to take deacons'
orders, so that he might preach and obtain preferment. But the
effect of this step upon Campion was such as Cheney little
anticipated. Almost immediately troubles beset his mind. He found
his new dignity odious and abominable. The idea of preferment
became hateful to him. He wished rather to live as a simple
layman, and in 1569 he resigned his appointments at the
university and went to Dublin, where it seemed that a more
agreeable career awaited him. A project was then afoot for
restoring the old Dublin university founded by Pope John XXI.,
but for some years extinct. The principal mover in the matter was
the Recorder of Dublin and Speaker of the House of Commons, James
Stanihurst, a zealous Catholic, and the father of one of
Campion's pupils. In his house Campion received a generous
welcome, and there he remained for a while, leading a kind of
monastic life, and waiting for the opening of the new seminary,
in which he hoped to find congenial employment. The scheme fell
through, however, and the chief cause of its failure was the
secret hostility of the government to Stanihurst, and the
Lord-Deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, who were most actively concerned
in it, and to Campion, who was to have the principal share in its
direction. Campion was not yet reconciled to the church, but he
was already distrusted as a papist, and only saved from arrest by
the protection of Sidney. Such protection, however, could not
avail him long. The rebellion of some of the English Catholic
nobles, the publication of the pope's bull against Elizabeth
which Felton had posted on the Bishop of London's gates, and the
designs of the king of Spain upon Ireland, had roused a
persecution, and Campion was one of those especially designated
to be arrested. The Lord-Deputy found means to warn him a few
hours before the officers arrived, and he saved himself by
flight. For two or three months he dodged the pursuivants about
Ireland, lurking in the houses of his friends, and working, in
the intervals of the pursuit, at a _History of Ireland_,
which he had begun while lodging with Stanihurst. At last, seeing
that he must soon be captured if he remained on the island, and
fearing to compromise the friends who gave him shelter, he
resolved to return to England, and accordingly, in the disguise
of a lackey, took ship at the little port of Tredagh, near
Dublin. The officers came on board to search for him, and
questioned everybody on the vessel except the fugitive himself.
They seized the manuscripts of his history, and then went away,
cursing "the seditious villain Campion." He reached England in
time to witness the trial of Dr. Storey, who was executed for the
faith in June, 1571.
{292}
We are told nothing of the progress of his conversion after he
left Oxford, but by this time it was complete, and he had
resolved to repair to the English college at Douai, there to fit
himself for more effective labors in the Catholic cause. In
mid-channel the ship in which he had taken passage was overhauled
by an English frigate, and Campion, having no passport, and
being, moreover, suspected and denounced by his fellow-passengers
as a papist, was taken off and carried back to Dover. The captain
appropriated all his prisoner's money, and then set out to
conduct him to London. It was soon evident, however, that the
officer cared more for the purse than the captive; and without a
word being said on either side, Campion understood that he might
run away provided he said nothing about the money. This was
enough. He escaped in one direction while his guard pretended to
pursue him in another; and having obtained a fresh supply of
money from some of his friends, succeeded at last in making his
escape over to France.
He staid long enough at Douai to complete his course of
scholastic theology and to be ordained sub-deacon. After the
lapse of a little more than a year, he resolved to go to Rome
with the purpose of becoming a Jesuit. His biographers generally
attribute this determination to the remorse which he still felt
on account of his Anglican deaconship; but Mr. Simpson is
inclined to lay rather more stress upon a disagreement between
Campion and Dr. Allen, the president of Douai College, upon
political questions. The friendly and even affectionate relations
of these two eminent men were never interrupted; but Dr. Allen
had many opinions which his disciple could not share. Campion,
devoted as he was to the church and the Holy See, was always
loyally obedient to the civil powers of his native country, save
when the laws were in conflict with his conscience. Allen, who
had been many years in exile, was a devoted servant of Philip of
Spain, and was thick in the plots for the overthrow of Elizabeth
and the various schemes for foreign invasion. It is not
impossible that a divergence of sentiment on some such point as
this may have influenced Campion's decision, if not wholly, at
least in part. However it was, the two friends bade each other an
affectionate farewell, and the future martyr, in the guise of a
poor pilgrim, set out afoot for Rome. In shabby garments, dusty
and footsore, he entered the holy city in the autumn of 1572,
only a few days before the death of St. Francis Borgia, third
general of the Society of Jesus. A successor to the saint was not
chosen until April, 1573, and meanwhile Campion had to wait. He
was the first postulant admitted by the new general. Father
Mercurianus, and soon afterward he was sent to Brünn in Moravia
to pass his novitiate. In a letter which he wrote to his brethren
there, after he had taken his vows, we find a pleasing picture of
the humble and happy life which he spent in that retreat. "O dear
walls!" he exclaims, "that once shut me up in your company!
Pleasant recreation-room, where we talked so holily! Glorious
kitchen, where the best friends--John and Charles, the two
Stephens, Sallitzi, Finnit and George, Tobias and Gaspar--fight
for the saucepans in holy humility and charity unfeigned! How
often do I picture to myself one returning with his load from the
farm, another from the market; one sweating stalwartly and
merrily under a sack of rubbish, another under some other toil!
...
{293}
I have been about a year in religion, in the world thirty-five;
what a happy change if I could say I had been a year in the
world, in religion thirty-five!" There is something very touching
and instructive in the record of his first years in the Society
of Jesus; and the chroniclers of his order, who reckon it among
the chief glories of the brotherhood in Bohemia that the English
martyr received his religious training among them, and taught
them at the same time by his illustrious example, have set down
that record with careful and affectionate minuteness. How the man
whom Oxford had revered as a guide was content in a moment to
become the humblest of pupils; how he by whom the young nobility
of England had set the fashion of their thought, their reading,
their elocution, their very walk and manner, was happy in the
privilege of being allowed to put on a dirty apron, roll up his
sleeves, and scour saucepans in the scullery--these are the chief
points in the story of his life at Brünn, and afterward at
Prague, whither he was sent to teach rhetoric. It is a strange
life to read about, yet it probably differed little from the
ordinary life of his brethren in religion, and hundreds of Jesuit
houses to-day exhibit no doubt the same model of industry,
devotedness, and humility. For a certain number of hours daily he
was in the class-room; when his pupils went to play, he went to
wash dishes in the kitchen. He was called upon for poems,
orations, and sacred dramas, to celebrate the college festivals;
for funeral discourses on the death of great persons. He taught
catechism to the children; he visited the hospitals and prisons;
he preached; he heard confessions; he spent incredible pains in
preparing the young Jesuits for the work of disputing
successfully with heretics when they should be sent out to their
various fields of duty. His brethren were amazed that any one man
should have strength to carry so many burdens. He seems, however,
to have borne up well under them. "About myself," he writes to
Father Parsons, "I would only have you know that from the day I
arrived here I have been extremely well--in a perpetual bloom of
health, and that I was never at any age less upset by literary
work than now, when I work hardest. We know the reason. But,
indeed, I have no time to be sick, if any illness wanted to take
me." It was while Campion was thus occupied at Prague, that Sir
Philip Sidney, who had known him at Oxford, came over from
England as ambassador. The young nobleman had many an interview
with his old friend, and seems to have awakened in Campion a
strong hope of his conversion--a prospect to which his friends
and political associates were by no means blind; for they watched
him so closely that the interviews between the ambassador and the
Jesuit were not managed without a great deal of difficulty.
Campion writes to one John Bavand, commending "this young man, so
wonderfully beloved and admired by his countrymen," to the
earnest prayers of all good Catholics. He saw what an effect upon
the faith in England the conversion of a nobleman of Sidney's
brilliant parts and distinguished position must have, and the
re-establishment of the faith in his native island was something
which he had especially at heart. His letters are full of anxiety
on this score. He speaks of catching and subduing his recreant
countrymen "by the prayers and tears at which they laugh;" but we
find no political allusions, and it is plain enough that, in the
various schemes for Catholic insurrections and for foreign
invasions, he had neither share nor heart.
{294}
He had been between five and six years at Prague when he was
summoned to Rome to take part in the mission about to be sent
forth for the conversion of England. The little band of heroes
comprised Dr. Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph, who had long been
residing on the continent, several English secular priests, old
men who had been in exile, and young men fresh from their
studies, a few zealous laymen, and three Jesuits, Campion,
Parsons, and a lay brother named Ralph Emerson. To assist them in
their labors, collect alms for them, and find safe hiding-places,
a Catholic Association had just been organized in England by
George Gilbert, a young man of property, whom Father Parsons had
converted in Rome the preceding year. The Jesuits were furnished
with a paper of instructions for their guidance.
Father Parsons was a younger man than Campion, and had been a
shorter time than he in the Society; yet there were good reasons
why he should be appointed the superior in the mission. He was
not only zealous and devout, but he had a good knowledge of men
and affairs, he was well versed in the ways of cities; he was
adroit, versatile, and prudent; and he was somewhat familiar with
the schemes of the pope and other Catholic powers against the
government of Elizabeth. A knowledge of these secret designs
would have been but a sorry safeguard had he fallen into the
hands of the authorities of the crown, and the consciousness must
have heightened his sense of the danger incurred in the
expedition; but Parsons had all the courage of a martyr, though
he did not win a martyr's crown. The party left Rome on the 18th
of April, 1580, and were not more than fairly started on their
journey when the English Secretary, Walsingham received from his
spies a full description of them and a list of their names.
Passing through Geneva, they resolved to have an interview with
Theodore Beza; and the account of it gives a curious picture of
the state of society in those times, and of the manner in which
theological controversy mingled with the ordinary affairs of
life. The travellers made no secret of their religion, though
they disguised their persons and calling. Campion dressed himself
as an Irish servant, waiting on Mr. John Pascal, a lay gentleman
of their party, and the only one who failed in the final day of
trial. Sherwin, one of the secular priests, used to relate with
uncontrollable merriment how naturally Campion played his part.
Beza, under one pretext or another, got rid of them as politely
as possible, and promised to send to their inn an English scholar
of his, the son of Sir George Hastings. Instead of young
Hastings, there came his governor, Mr. Brown, and a young
Englishman named Powell, and we have a strange account of the
priests disputing hotly in the streets of Geneva with the two
Protestants until almost midnight, and challenging Beza to a
public controversy, with the proviso that he who was justly
convicted in the opinion of indifferent judges should be burned
alive in the market-place! Powell had known Campion at Oxford, so
the _soi-disant_ servant kept out of his sight, and when the
former gentleman offered to accompany the missionaries a little
way on their road next morning, Campion was sent forward in
advance. But meeting on the road a minister studying his sermon,
the temptation was too strong for the enthusiastic Jesuit, and he
buckled with him at once.
{295}
The rest of the party came up while they were still at it, hammer
and tongs, and Powell recognized Campion, and saluted him with
great affection. After that, the missionaries made a pilgrimage
of eight or nine miles over difficult paths to St. Clodovens in
France, by way of penance for their curiosity.
We have said that Parsons was privy to some of the political
expeditions against England; but he had no knowledge of the one
which set out about the same time that he did, and the news,
which he learned on his arrival at Rheims, filled him with
dismay. The queen had issued a proclamation which plainly
indicated a purpose to proceed against the Catholics with
increased severity, and the peril of the undertaking had become
greater than ever. It does not appear, however, that one of the
company faltered. Dr. Goldwell had been obliged to turn back and
defer his voyage--which, indeed, he never made at all; but others
joined the mission, and among them was a fourth Jesuit, Father
Thomas Cottam. At Rheims, the party broke up to find their way
across to England by different routes. Campion, Parsons, and
Brother Ralph Emerson were to go by way of St. Omer, Calais, and
Dover. Parsons crossed first, disguised as a soldier returning
from the Low Countries, and in his captain's uniform passed
inspection so easily and was so well treated by the searcher at
Dover that he bespoke that officer's courtesy for his friend,
"Mr. Edmunds, a diamond-merchant," who was shortly to follow him.
He reached London without trouble; but his dress was outlandish,
and people were unusually fearful and suspicious, so he was
turned away from the inns. He knew of a Catholic gentleman,
however, who was held in the Marshalsea prison for his faith, and
he applied to see him. Through him he was brought into
communication with George Gilbert and the Catholic Association,
who had apartments in the house of the chief pursuivant, where up
to this time, thanks in part to the connivance of influential
friends, they had managed to have a daily celebration of Mass.
Father Parsons had induced the friendly searcher at Dover to send
over a letter for him to "Mr. Edmunds," at St. Omer, bidding him
make haste to London with his diamonds, and Campion, as soon as
he received it, set out with Brother Ralph. But, in the mean
time, the English officers had grown more strict; the searcher
had been reprimanded for letting certain persons pass who were
supposed to be priests; and there was a report, moreover, that a
brother of Dr. Allen was coming over, and his description agreed
pretty well with Campion's appearance. The two Jesuits were
accordingly arrested and taken before the mayor; but they were
dismissed after a short detention, and the next day were welcomed
by the association in London.
This pious club was such an admirable illustration of the truth
that the salvation of souls is not the exclusive duty or
privilege of the priesthood that we may spare a moment from our
survey of Campion's life to glance at its history and character.
The missionary career is open to all. Members of religious
orders, secular priests, men of the world, soldiers, lawyers,
shop-keepers, doctors, laborers, farmers, the beggars on the
street, the fashionable lady in her carriage--we can all do
something for the advancement of the great cause; and if we only
knew how to systematize our efforts, how to economize our zeal,
the Catholic Association of Campion's day is an evidence of the
enormous service we might render to the church.
{296}
The founder of the association, George Gilbert, had been anxious,
immediately after his conversion, to expend his first fervor in a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem; but Father Parsons persuaded him rather
to return to England and spend his money there in advancing the
Catholic cause. He drew together a number of young men of his own
rank in life and with somewhat of his own spirit. They hired
rooms together; they bribed officers whose vigilance they could
not elude; they gave shelter to priests; they furnished places
for the celebration of Mass; they kept the Catholics in
communication with each other; they supplied the missionaries
with money; and they organized the tours which the priests made
through the country. The Catholics were beset with spies, and the
government held out strong inducements to weak brethren to betray
their pastors. It was necessary, therefore, that the priests
should be extremely cautious to whom they trusted themselves; and
since they could not carry credentials, it was necessary, too,
that the gentlemen who harbored them should be quite sure whom
they were receiving. This perfect intelligence could only be
obtained by a thorough organization of the Catholic gentry; and
it was not the least part of the duty of the association to see
that, whenever a priest travelled, some one should be with him as
at once an endorser and a guide. It was their part, likewise, to
undertake the preliminary work of converting heretics. In those
fearful times a doubting Protestant could not be admitted to see
a priest until he had given some evidence of the sincerity of his
search after truth. The members of the club took him in hand
first, and brought him to the priest when they felt it to be
safe.
When Campion reached the asylum of their rooms in London, Parsons
had already gone on a tour in the country, leaving word for his
companion to await his return. There was a great desire among the
Catholics who had learned of the arrival of the missionaries to
hear the famous preacher with whose eloquence years ago Oxford
had resounded, but it was no easy matter to find a place where he
might speak in safety. At last, arrangements were made for a
sermon in the servants' hall of a private house, and there, while
trusty gentlemen watched all the avenues of approach, Campion
delivered a discourse with which all the Catholic circles of
London were soon ringing. The faithful and the wavering rushed to
him in crowds. The government got wind of what was going on, and
redoubled their exertions to entrap him. Several priests were
captured, and many Catholics were thrown into prison. The danger
of remaining in London soon became too pressing to be
disregarded. So, after a council had been held, several questions
of discipline settled, and each man's special work assigned, the
priests all went away to different parts of the kingdom.
The pursuit was much hotter after Campion than after any of his
brethren, and it was intensified by the imprudence of a Catholic
layman who had allowed a document entrusted to his care by the
missionary, to be made public. This was a paper drawn up by
Campion on the eve of the separation of their little company,
setting forth the reasons of their coming to England, and
inviting the Protestants to a public conference. It was intended
to be used only in case he should be arrested; but Thomas Pounde,
to whom, for greater surety, he had given a copy, thought it too
good to be kept entirely secret, and thus it soon came to the
hands of the government.
{297}
This, of course, increased their anxiety to capture a man whom,
by his personal influence, his eloquence, and his still brilliant
reputation at Oxford, they felt to be especially dangerous.
Proclamation followed proclamation; the pursuivants were
unceasing in activity; spies were sent into every quarter of the
kingdom; some of the Catholics themselves were corrupted;
watchers were set about the houses of the principal Catholic
gentlemen. Many a time was the Mass or the sermon interrupted by
the coming of the officers and the priest compelled to take
refuge in the woods. Once, when the pursuivants came upon him
suddenly at the house of a private gentleman, a maid-servant, to
make them think he was merely one of the retainers, affected to
be angry with him and pushed him into a pond. The disguise was
effectual, and the good father escaped.
All this while he was engaged in writing his famous book against
the Protestants, known as the _Decem Rationes_. It was
finished about Easter, 1581, and sent to London for the approval
of Parsons, who had a private printing-press in a hidden place,
whereat he had already published certain writings of his own. By
great efforts a number of copies were got ready for the
commencement at Oxford in June; and when the audience assembled
at the exercises, they found the benches strewed with the books,
to the reading of which they gave far more attention than to the
performances of the students. The title-page bore the imprint of
Douai, but the government was not long in ascertaining by the
examination of experts that the work had been done in England.
Campion had gone to London while his book was passing through the
press, to superintend the correction of the sheets; but the
danger was now so imminent that Parsons ordered him away into
Norfolk, in company with Brother Ralph Emerson. The two fathers
rode out of the city together at daylight on the 12th of July,
and, after an affectionate farewell, parted company, the one
going to the north, the other back into the town.
The Judas who was to betray him, however, was on the alert. This
was one George Eliot, formerly steward to Mr. Roper in Kent, and
latterly a servant of the widow of Sir William Petre. He was a
Catholic, but a man of bad character, and had been for some time
a paid informer to the Earl of Leicester. How he knew of
Campion's visit to Lyford is not certain; but he had been looking
for him at several Catholic houses in the neighborhood, and on
the 16th, armed with a warrant and attended by a pursuivant in
disguise, he presented himself at the gate just as Mass was about
to begin, and applied for admission. One of the servants knew him
for a Catholic, but little suspected his real character; so with
much ado he got leave to pass in, having first sent off the
pursuivant to a magistrate for a _posse comitatus_. He heard
the Mass, he heard Campion's sermon; but he was afraid to make
the arrest until the magistrate arrived. As soon as the service
was over, he hurried off. The company--comprising some sixty
persons besides the members of the household--were at dinner when
word was brought that the place was surrounded by armed men.
After a long search, Campion and three other priests were found
concealed in a closet, and taken prisoners.
{298}
The prisoners were carried up to London and committed to the
Tower, making their entrance into the city through the midst of a
hooting mob, Campion leading the procession with his elbows tied
behind him, his hands tied in front, his feet fastened under his
horse's belly, and a placard on his hat, inscribed "_Campion,
the seditious Jesuit_." The governor, Sir Owen Hopton, at
first placed Campion in the narrow dungeon known as
"Little-ease," in which one could neither stand nor lie at
length. He remained there until the fourth day, when, with great
secrecy, he was conducted to Leicester's house, and courteously
received by the earl and several other persons of mark, and
shortly found himself in the presence of the queen. He gave a
truthful account of his motives in coming to England; he
satisfied Elizabeth, as it would appear, of his loyalty; and
could he have accepted the conditions proposed to him, he might
have been dismissed with honors and riches. As it was, Hopton
received orders to treat him more leniently. It was now the
purpose of the government to coax him into compliance.
Failing to shake his constancy, the next thing was to destroy his
reputation. It was given out that he was on the point of
recanting; that he had betrayed his friends; that he had divulged
the names of the gentlemen who harbored him. To give color to
these charges, a great many Catholics were arrested, in
consequence, it was said, of Campion's confession. For a while
these infamous charges, fortified with plausible confirmation,
were generally believed; but it was soon ascertained that the
betrayal had been wrung from some of Campion's companions on the
rack. To render the missionary contemptible, it was thought
necessary to answer his challenge for a public disputation in
some way or another, and a large number of the most eminent
Anglican divines were appointed to meet him in a public hall and
discuss the chief points of controversy. They had all the time
they wanted to prepare, free access to libraries, and every
possible favor. Campion was not informed of the arrangement until
two hours before the assembly opened. Then, with his limbs still
smarting from the torment of the rack, he was placed in the
middle of the room, without books, without even a table to lean
upon, with no assistance whatever, except the assistance of
heaven. The dispute continued several days. It was distinguished,
as might have been supposed, by gross unfairness and bad language
on the part of the Protestants, while Campion conciliated all
honest-minded listeners, not only by the acuteness of his
answers, but by his mild and affectionate spirit. Though he had
been educated to a familiarity with dialectics, and lived in a
day when controversy was an almost universal passion, he was far
from being a disputatious man, and the _odium theologicum_
had no place in his warm and tender heart. With all the advantage
given to the Protestant side, it was evident that the Catholics
were profiting by the conferences, and the government abruptly
closed them. But it was too late. Campion's fame was restored;
the slanders against him had been refuted; and the popular
enthusiasm broke forth in ballads, of which Mr. Simpson gives a
sample.
Nothing remained now but to try him for treason. It was first
proposed to indict him for having on a certain day in Oxfordshire
traitorously pretended to have power to absolve her majesty's
subjects from their allegiance, and endeavored to attach them to
the obedience of the pope and the faith of the Roman church; but
this was too plainly a religious prosecution.
{299}
A plot was therefore forged, which it was pretended that Campion,
Allen, Morton, Parsons, and fourteen priests and others then in
custody, had concerted at Rome and Rheims to dethrone the queen
and raise a civil war. On this charge Campion, Sherwin, Cottam,
and five others, were arraigned at Westminster Hall on the 14th
of November. When Campion was called upon, according to custom,
to hold up his hands in pleading, his arms were so cruelly
wounded by the rack that he could not lift them without
assistance. The trial took place on the 20th. The principal
witnesses for the crown were George Eliot and three hired
wretches named Munday, Sledd, and Caddy, who pretended to have
observed the meetings of the conspirators at Rome; but their
testimony was so weak, and the answers of Campion so admirable,
that when the jury retired it was generally believed in court
that the verdict must be one of acquittal. Court and jury,
however, had been bought beforehand. The prisoners were all found
guilty, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Then
Campion broke forth in a loud hymn of praise, "_Te Deum
laudamus_" and Sherwin and others took up the song, until the
multitude were visibly affected.
After he had been remanded to the Tower, the traitor Eliot came
to his cell, and Campion received him so sweetly, forgiving his
offence, and offering to provide for him an asylum with a
Catholic noble in Germany, whither he might escape from the odium
and danger which haunted him at home, that the keeper, who
witnessed the interview was induced by it to become a Catholic.
The few days which intervened between conviction and death were
passed by the holy man in fasting and other mortifications. The
execution was appointed for the 29th of November. Campion,
Sherwin, and Briant were to suffer together. At the execution
Campion was interrupted by a long dialogue respecting his alleged
treason, and subjected to a great deal of questioning. Somebody
asked him to pray for the queen. While he was doing so, the cart
was drawn away, amid the tears and groans of the multitude, and
his body left dangling in the air.
So ended the good fight. Sherwin and Briant met their fate with
like joy and constancy, and many another good priest and devoted
layman trod afterward in the same awful but glorious path. And as
it has been since the days of St. Stephen, the blood of the
martyrs proved the seed of the church. Henry Walpole estimated
that no fewer than ten thousand persons were converted by the
spectacle of Champion's death. That is probably an exaggeration;
but it is certain that the execution had a marked effect upon the
progress of the faith in England, and covered the Anglican clergy
with an odium from which they were long in recovering.
Of the life by Mr. Simpson, upon which we have so freely drawn
for the materials of this hasty sketch, we must not close without
a word of praise. Written originally for a monthly periodical,
and long interrupted by the failure of that publication, it lacks
the neat finish and compactness which the author would probably
have given it, had it been composed under more favorable
circumstances. But it has evidently been prepared with great
industry; it is written in a good style; and with a little
judicious pruning and rearrangement, it will make one of the most
interesting of modern religious biographies.
----------
{300}
The Catholic Sunday-School Union. [Footnote 56]
[Footnote 56: _First Report of the Catholic Sunday-School
Union_, of the city of New York. January 1, 1868.]
Few of the evidences of the zealous spirit which is stirred up in
these latter days, have given us more unfeigned pleasure than the
information which this report conveys. The Sunday-School Union
began as all Catholic works begin, has prospered thus far as they
prosper, and will share in their triumph. A few earnest souls,
observing how much more good could be accomplished in the
catechism-classes if the exercises and methods of teaching were
made more systematic and co-operative, met together, on the
evening of July 9th, 1866, debated the subject, formed
resolutions, went to work, and now the catechetical education of
the 20,237 children reported from eighteen Sunday-schools of this
city, (about one half of the whole number,) is practically under
the control of this admirable association. The good fruits of
their labors are already noticeable in the more regular
attendance of the children, the conferences of teachers for
mutual instruction and encouragement, the better regulated
programme of exercises, and the increased interest manifested in
the schools by all who are in any way connected with them.
The competent knowledge which our people, as a mass, have of
their religion, of the dogmas of faith--knowledge which they are
bound to have under pain of sin--and that other "knowledge unto
salvation" which is shown in the faithful performance of their
Christian duties, depends, as all know, upon the catechetical
instruction they receive in youth. Priests may preach sermon
after sermon, and each and every such discourse may be well
calculated to enlighten the mind and move the heart; but as a
rule, all sermons nowadays suppose the hearers to be already in
possession of Christian principles, and disciplined to the
practices of a Christian life. Sound and thorough catechetical
instruction is, then, one of the primary duties of a pastor of
souls. That each pastor should assume the whole of this labor to
himself is simply impossible. Those of the laity who by their
character and education are fitted to be his coadjutors in this
pastoral duty, must therefore be called upon to aid him in it.
The time when it is feasible to assemble children together for
religious instruction is on Sunday. Hence the Sunday-school and
its corps of lay teachers; both of necessity, as experience has
shown, for every parish, if the people are to have, as they ought
to have, a befitting knowledge of their religion--if they are to
be indoctrinated with its spirit, and receive its ministrations
by a devout, conscientious attendance upon its worship, and a due
appreciation of, and worthy preparation for, the holy sacraments.
The first thought which naturally presents itself in reference to
these lay coadjutors of the clergy, is that of their competence
and fitness to teach. We do not care to send our children to be
educated by any and every schoolmaster. We not only ask, Is he
capable? but we ask, Who is he, and what is he? If these
questions may be very properly put concerning a teacher of
geography and arithmetic, we may be pardoned for asking them
concerning one who professes to teach Christian doctrine and
morality.
{301}
Is he well versed in the truths of faith himself, and, if you
please, what is his own moral character?
The Sunday-school is an excellent institution, a necessary
institution in our times; but if it is to be of any value,
teachers, who are in the first place competent for the task, and
who in the second place are practical Christians, must be
secured. In small parishes, the pastor may possibly find a
sufficient number who possess all the requisite qualifications,
(although, so far, our experience has been to the contrary,) but
in large and populous parishes, such as are found in all our
cities, it is plain that a sufficient number are not easily
obtained for the purpose, nor will those who are in all respects
fitted for the work and are ready to answer the call of the
pastor, be able to control and reduce the heterogeneous elements
of a city Sunday-school to any order or regular observance of
rules laid down by the pastor, or devised by themselves, without
mutual co-operation, counsel, and a systematic organization.
Besides, into a corps of such teachers, who are not themselves
subjected to some organized form of association, persons wholly
incompetent or deficient in moral standing will intrude, and
prove either a hinderance to others, or do positive harm.
When chance-comers offer their services as teachers in his
Sunday-school, it is difficult if not impossible for the pastor
to examine them in order to test their knowledge before accepting
them, and it may be equally difficult for him to find out what
may be their moral worth. Their daily lives are, as a rule,
better known to the members of his congregation than they are to
him. In the ill-regulated voluntary system which has hitherto
been so common amongst us, many evils have resulted from this
which were unavoidable. Teachers of religion ought to be
themselves good exemplars of it. Children learn at the
Sunday-school a good deal more than the verbal answer to as many
questions as are printed in the catechism. Those who occupy the
office of teacher exert a moral influence over the children.
Example is the master-teacher, and bad example will teach (we are
sorry to say) quite as well as good example. You cannot gather
grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles. During the time that a
man or woman is engaged in conversation with children, much of
his or her own character is infused into the minds of their
youthful companions by words, gestures, looks, and manner. Shall
I permit my children to be thus placed one whole hour every week,
under the influence of an ignorant man, a non-practical Catholic,
and possibly a person of vicious habits and of vulgar demeanor--a
person whom I could not allow my children to converse with at
all, in the street or elsewhere, outside of the Sunday-school
room? Certainly not. I must have some guarantee that my children
shall have such associations as I can approve of, as well in the
Sunday-school as in any other place where they may happen to be.
One who might make such reflections as the foregoing need occupy
no higher position in society than that of being a good
Christian, watchful over the souls of his little ones, and
anxious to guard them from contamination with persons ignorant of
the faith in which he wishes them to be educated, or such as by
their personal want of piety are certain to damage the growth of
it in the souls of
the children he presumes to instruct.
{302}
If we mistake not, these considerations were in part those which
animated the zealous and worthy founders of the Sunday-School
Union, whose first report lies before us. This appears to us in
the pages of the report, especially under the head of "objects."
We quote:
"The objects of the Sunday-school Union are of a religious,
educational, and social character. The fundamental object is,
of course, the benefit and improvement of the Sunday-schools;
the secondary end is the association of the Catholic young men
of the city, in a manner sanctioned by religion, for purposes
of mutual acquaintance and improvement, and the creation of a
common tie of sympathy and interest, such as should exist
between them as members of the same, One, Holy, and Universal
Church. By the comparisons of systems, and experience, and
through the increased opportunities of receiving advice and
counsel from the clergy, improvements have been introduced in
many of the schools, and the teachers have been led to take
greater interest in their duties."
We need only quote to ourselves the trite old proverb, that
"Birds of a feather," etc., to feel assured that the "Union" will
remove in great part the dangers arising from incompetence and
unfitness on the part of teachers, to which we have alluded. The
leading spirits of an association of this kind will impress their
own character upon the whole body, and we have the utmost
confidence that such persons will be of the right stamp, young
men of solid piety, of sufficient knowledge, and animated by the
highest and purest motives. They will draw to them other young
men of like character and dispositions with themselves.
Association will stimulate exertion, promote harmony, and be
productive of the best and happiest results; not only for the
children, but, what is of no little moment to us, for the young
men themselves.
Under their intelligent direction the Sunday-school will assume a
higher standard of religious education. It has too long been
deemed sufficient to teach the children the catechism as one
teaches parrots, getting them to repeat a certain answer to a
given question, without stopping to consider if the scholars have
any intelligent apprehension of the meaning of either question or
answer. We remember being present in a Sunday-school when the
following instruction was overheard by us:
Sunday-School Teacher.
"Are we bound to obey the commandments of the church?"
Boy.
"A--a, because--a--" (gives it up.)
Teacher, (speaking as rapidly as a clerk of the Senate, and
looking everywhere but at the pupil.)
"Yes, because Christ has said to the pastors of his church,
he that hears you hears me, and he that despises you despises
me." (Then with a savage look at the child,) "Now, sir!"
Boy,(whining.)
"Yes, sir--because--here's you and here's me. He despises you
and he despises me."
Boy's ears cuffed with the catechism.
Yet it must be confessed that the recitation of the answer by the
teacher was pretty faithfully imitated by the child, who aimed at
catching a certain number of sounds and repeating them, without
thinking of their meaning.
It is very well that the children should learn to recite portions
of the catechism which they have learned by rote; but this will
not suffice to give them an intelligent comprehension of the
truths of religion. There is hardly a question and response in
the catechism which does not need some additional explanation and
illustration suited to their capacities.
{303}
This is no easy task, and one that might well engage the highest
cultivated minds. Teachers must therefore themselves be taught.
No one can impart that which he does not possess. We are glad,
therefore, to see that one of the objects of our Sunday-School
Union is of an "educational" character.
The object which is denominated "religious" is also of primary
importance. The Sunday-school teacher is a teacher of religion in
more senses than in imparting a mere verbal knowledge of the
doctrines of religion. It comes properly within his sphere to
edify his pupils by holy words, good counsel, and good example.
If he does not so edify them, he will infallibly do the contrary.
Our experience leads us to assert that there is no middle term
here between edification and disedification. He who has no words
of holiness and sweet Christian counsel in his mouth, is pretty
sure of having words and counsel which smack of the world and its
ungodly principles. Let no one imagine that he can assume for the
time and occasion the tone, speech, and manner of a good, pious
Christian, if he be not one in reality. Children have the keenest
scent for hypocrisy. They instinctively mark and loathe a
Pecksniff or a Chadband. The lessons of piety, the words of
kindly warning or encouragement, the appeals to their Christian
sentiment, falling from the lips of men who have no solid piety,
and whose ordinary daily life is little better than that of a
respectable heathen, if as good, will have no other effect than
to excite the sceptical sneers of youths who are not to be
deceived by sham appearances.
Our Sunday-schools, therefore, urgently demand the aid of
"religious" teachers; we mean teachers who are practical
Christians themselves, and carry out in their lives the lessons
they are desirous of teaching others. They need teachers who are
more than Catholics by profession. In a Sunday-school which is
fortunate enough to possess teachers of religion who are men of
living faith, devout, prayerful, scrupulous, and exact in the
performances of their religious duties, exhibiting in their
manner a deep reverence for holy things, modesty, patience,
benignity, earnestness, and zeal for the glory of God, there will
the children also be found exact types of their spiritual
instructors.
The Sunday-School Union will form a corps of just such men. It
will find itself composed of members who are moved by the Holy
Spirit of God to take some part in this important work, and who
will engage in it as a labor of love, in the spirit of sacrifice
and apostolic zeal. They will, for the most part, bring hearts
well prepared for it; but the Union will itself do much toward
sustaining and advancing the spiritual good of its members. The
most noble spectacle to be presented in this world of temptation
and sin, is a band of young men, strong in the faith and loyal to
the holy traditions of religion emulating each other in the
practice of virtue and works of Christian charity. Such is the
spectacle which this association is striving to present to our
eyes, and our prayers should not be wanting that God may
strengthen them and enlarge the sphere of their holy labors.
The third object spoken of is the "social" character which the
Union proposes. We think we understand this, and have already
hinted at it. They aim at making the tone of their association
high and select. And this is a point worthy of our reflection.
Children naturally imitate the manners of their elders,
particularly of those with whom they are associated in the
capacity of pupils.
{304}
Let the teacher be rough, boorish, and uncouth in his deportment,
negligent in his personal appearance, unceremonious and
irreverent in the church, unguarded in his language, of an
ungoverned temper, tardy in his attendance, and distracted in his
instructions, you will find that the class of which he has
unfortunately the charge will very soon be an exact copy of
himself. We commiserate the Sunday-school where even one such
teacher is to be found. He and his ill-regulated and
worse-behaved class are a positive hinderance to the good order
of the whole school, and the sooner he is got rid of the better.
The Union, by its power of associating like to like, will
eliminate this worthless class of individuals, and substitute in
their stead punctual, earnest, courteous, self-denying, and
reverent-minded teachers, whose very presence in the
Sunday-school will be an example of deportment becoming the
Christian and the gentleman, commanding respect, obedience, and
attention on the part of all the scholars, and the esteem of his
fellow-teachers. What affection, too, the children instinctively
bestow upon such!
The love for these young souls, of which their heart is full, is
abundantly reciprocated, and the influence for good which such
teachers have is beyond measure. They are regarded by these
little ones of Christ in their true light, as coadjutors of the
pastor, and their admonitions are received with humble and loving
obedience. "O ma!" says a little child to its parent on returning
from Sunday-school, "we have the nicest teacher in the world,
_so_ good, and he knows _so_ much, and he is _such a
gentleman!_" Yes; children are quick of observation--none
quicker; and when they have found one who presents all the
qualities which should distinguish a worthy teacher, they from
that moment begin to count the hours which will intervene until
they shall have the happiness of meeting him again. If we aim at
having first-class Sunday-schools, which will not only teach the
children their catechism, and encourage them in the practice of
virtue, but also elevate and refine their manners, and educate
them in that, for which, after all, Catholic children are
remarkable, namely, Christian politeness, we must secure teachers
who, like the teacher of the little child mentioned above, are
_so_ good, know _so_ much, and are _such
gentlemen!_ We have every confidence that the Sunday-School
Union, by its "social" character, will bring this about.
We are making no invidious reflections, and would feel pained to
think we should be thus adjudged. We presume to speak from
experience. We know something of Sunday-schools, and of their
working in small and large parishes, in the city and in the
country. We have had to feel the many difficulties which a pastor
has to surmount in this matter. We aim at encouraging and bidding
God speed to an enterprise which we know is needed, and which we
are certain cannot fail of producing incalculable good.
Among other works which the Union proposes, is that of
establishing Sunday-schools for colored children. That zealous
and apostolic priest, the Rev. Father Duranquet, of the Society
of Jesus, did not shrink from adding this to his many other
labors when it presented itself to him in the course of his
ministry. But just such a power was needed as the Sunday-School
Union affords to reach these much-neglected children, and bring
them under the influence of the Catholic religion, to care for
those of that class who are of her household, to insure a lively,
personal, loving interest being taken in them, and thus to show
that our holy church is the church of all the people, of white
and black, of bond and free.
{305}
We bless God for this effort of theirs. It is very near and dear
to our own heart. The world sneers and scoffs at them, but there
is no caste in the Catholic Church, and they are, as well as we,
souls for whom Christ died.
The Catholic priest and the Catholic Sunday-school teacher can do
more for them, we know, than all the so-called philanthropists
from Dan to Beersheba. God forbid that we should turn aside from
this labor and leave these precious souls to perish!
The Sunday-School Union is formed exclusively of men. "The female
teachers," says the report, "are invited to all the public
lectures and discourses, and to participate in as many of the
undertakings of the Union as possible." This is all very proper.
We know, however, that the ladies have hitherto taken rather the,
shall we say, lion's share in the hardest of the undertakings to
which the young men of the Sunday-School Union can possibly
devote their energies, which is, the work of teaching. In most
parishes they have far outnumbered the male teachers. We refrain
from making any comparison of their efficiency. For ourselves, we
say we do not know how we could possibly have got along without
them, nor do we see how their aid can be dispensed with in the
future. We are not aware that the Sunday-School Union has any
such intention. The ladies do a good by their presence which we
of the stronger, rougher sex may not hope to accomplish, besides
being the fittest persons to teach the female classes. We are
sure that they will cheerfully abide by any rules and regulations
laid down by the Union, and do their utmost to carry out any
suggestions made to them for the better conducting of their
classes. We are not afraid of their resisting the powers that be.
But why may they not also meet together for mutual encouragement,
instruction, and edification? We shall look for some movement of
this kind before long.
As for the Union itself, we look upon it not as a simple local
expedient to meet a local want. It has a national interest, and
sooner or later must find imitation in all our large cities and
towns. We hope soon to hear that such has been the case in many
other places, and then the influence of such associations will be
increased in the ratio of the union of their separate and
distinct bodies, at least, such an union as we trust and pray
will soon be exhibited in all great Catholic works in this
country--the assembly of their members for mutual acquaintance,
cooperation, and debate, in a National Catholic Congress. The
good that is done, the power that is elicited from assemblies of
this kind, is well known to all our readers who have perused our
articles on the Catholic Congress of Malines, in former numbers
of _The Catholic World_. The Sunday-School Union would do
well to consider this matter in the light of their own interest.
In their union they have found strength. Let them seek to extend
their efforts by encouraging, in so far as they are able, any
such associations as may be started, or are in operation, in
other places, inviting a correspondence and offering all their
aid, looking forward, at the same time, to a union with them on a
larger and general basis, and to the discussion of their mutual
interests in a grand congressional assembly.
{306}
We trust that our remarks will be received in the spirit in which
they are meant. They have been prompted by the deep, heart-felt
interest which we feel in the subject, and the entire sympathy
which we have for the noble, holy, Christian work to which our
friends have devoted their energies. They have not begun too
soon. Every year thousands of our children, in this city of New
York alone, leave school to engage in various occupations, where
they are thrown into the society of youths of all religions and
of no religion. Protestantism has practically no influence over
children, and generally leaves them to shift for themselves, and
pick up what scraps of religion they may.
Unfortunately, the mass of them, being totally ignorant of the
blessings and comfort of the Catholic faith, and not having had
any very cheerful experience of religion as it has been presented
to them by the bald, repulsive, unchild-like nature of
Protestantism, break away from its restraints, and run wildly
into the deserts of rationalism or infidelity. Poor children! our
hearts bleed for them. But, while we pity them, let us not forget
that they are to be the daily associates of our own lambs of the
flock. How necessary, then, that we should strive by every effort
to prepare ours for the dangers to which they will be exposed by
giving them, while we may, a thorough knowledge of their holy
faith, and send them forth guarded by a panoply of virtue,
accustomed to a regular attendance upon the divine offices of the
church, and to a frequent reception of the Holy Sacraments. Let
it be our aim to dismiss each and every child from our
Sunday-schools a loyal, devout, intelligent Catholic, whose faith
is firm as a rock, and whose soul is bright and pure with the
indwelling grace of God. Our blessed Lord, the lover of little
children, will not fail to remember our care of those of whom He
said: "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."
--------------
Sonnet On "Le Recit D'une Soeur,"
By Mrs. Augustus Craven.
Whence is the music? Minstrel see we none;
Yet, soft as waves that, surge succeeding surge,
Roll forward--now subside--anon emerge--
Upheaved in glory o'er a setting sun,
Those beatific harmonies sweep on:
O'er earth they sweep from utmost verge to verge,
Triumphant Hymeneal, Hymn, and Dirge,
Blending in everlasting unison.
Whence is the music? Stranger! These were they
That, great in love, by love unvanquished proved:
These were true lovers, for in God they loved:
With God these spirits rest in endless day.
Yet still, for love's behoof, on wings outspread
Float on o'er earth betwixt the angels and the dead.
Aubrey de Vere.
-----------
{307}
Nellie Netterville;
or, One Of The Transplanted.
Chapter VI.
The party from the tower came on meantime at a rapid rate; and,
peeping cautiously from behind her hiding-place, Nellie saw that
they had already reached the foot of the hill where she and her
grandfather stood awaiting their approach. The lady--even at that
distance Nellie fancied she could see that she was young and
pretty, and, though clad in the saddest and strictest of
Puritanic attire, anything but a Puritan in her looks and
bearing--rode in front, with the military-looking personage,
described already, upon one side, and a younger cavalier, with
the air likewise of a soldier, on the other, while a couple of
followers brought up the rear. At first the three foremost of the
party rode abreast, but, as the up-hill path began to narrow, the
lady pushed her horse ahead so as to lead the way, and Nellie
could hear one of her companions shouting to her to ride
cautiously until she had turned the sharp corner of rock behind
which Nellie herself was at that moment standing. The warning
came, as warnings often _do_ come, too late by a single
second. It could have scarcely reached the lady's ears ere she
had dashed round the corner, and her horse, wild and unmanageable
enough already, plunged violently at the unexpected apparition of
Nellie and her grandfather on the other side. If the path had not
widened considerably at that spot, the struggle must have ended
fatally, and even as it was, Nellie expected every moment to see
both horse and rider roll over the edge of the precipice to which
the heels of the former were in such fearful proximity.
The lady, however, sat him to perfection, and after a short,
sharp struggle for the mastery, she succeeded in forcing him to
rush at a wild gallop straight down the path leading to the
valley, the only safe course of action she could possibly have
adopted.
Her companions had by this time reached the spot where Nellie had
watched the contest, and the younger of the two was about to spur
his horse on to the rescue, when his older and wiser companion
shouted to him to forbear.
"Let her be, Ormiston! Let her be!" he cried. "She knows well
enough what she is about, my Ruth. And you will but infuriate her
horse by following at his heels."
Thus adjured, the young man, addressed as "Ormiston," had no
choice but to remain quiet. He drew in bridle, therefore, beside
his chief, and watched as patiently as he could the down-hill
gallop of the lady. The result fortunately justified the
confidence of the elder horseman. No sooner had she reached the
wide bottom of the glen below, than she checked her horse
suddenly, and turning him almost before he had time to suspect
her intentions, galloped him up the hill again with such right
good-will that he was glad enough to stop and breathe of his own
accord by the time she had rejoined her companions.
Relieved from all anxiety on her account, the old Cromwellian
officer, for such his scarf and embroidered shoulder-belt
announced him, turned the vials of his wrath, as even the best
men will upon such occasions, upon those who, however
unwittingly, had been the cause of the disaster.
{308}
In the present case Nellie and her grandfather were only too
evidently the offenders, and the storm was accordingly sent full
upon their heads. They were still standing in the recess formed
by the shoulder of the retreating bank, and as Nellie, by an
unconscious movement of girlish timidity, had retired behind Lord
Netterville, he formed for a moment the chief figure in the
group. Thoroughly roused and wakened up at thus finding himself
unexpectedly face to face with his arch enemies, the old man
stood out upon the foreground like a picture, his eyes sparkling,
his white hair falling on his shoulders, and a grave and noble
pride in his very attitude which belied alike the meanness of his
apparent station and the disfigurement of his stained and
travel-worn attire. The latter indeed consisting entirely of the
so-called "Irish weeds," the Cromwellian officer naturally enough
concluded him to be a native, and addressed him, accordingly, in
such terms of contemptuous abuse as it was too often the Saxon
fashion of those unhappy times to bestow upon the Celt.
"How now, thou 'Irish dogg'? How hast thou dared, thou and thy
wench, to cross our path, and so put the life of the Lord's elect
in danger? Give place at once and let us pass, if thou wouldst
not that I should do unto thee as I did at Tredagh, where my
sword, from the rising even to the setting of the sun, wrought
the vengeance of the Lord on an idolatrous and misguided people."
Lord Netterville, during this agreeable harangue, had stepped
right into the centre of the path, so that the other could hardly
have passed him without a struggle, and he barely awaited its
conclusion ere, with eyes flashing fire, he violently retorted:
"'Irish dogg!' sayest thou? Learn, thou unmannerly Saxon churl,
that my blood is as English perhaps more so than thine own; and
certainly from a nobler fountain! I am of the English pale," he
continued, drawing himself up to his full height, and gaining in
dignity what he lost in passion, "and one of no mean standing in
it either--a Netterville of the old Norman race, since the days
of the first Plantagenet."
"Lord Netterville--father!" said the young Amazon in a low voice,
pushing her horse forward and touching the officer's shoulder
with her riding-whip in order to attract his attention. "It must
be the Lord Netterville of whom there was some question, I
remember, when you were in negotiation for these lands."
"Ha, wench! thou also to blaspheme!" he cried, turning furiously
upon her. "Knowest thou not that there is but one Lord, and that
the pride of them that assume his titles stinks in his nostrils
like the burning pitch of Tophet? And thou," he added, addressing
himself to Lord Netterville, "in vain dost thou boast of thy race
or lineage; for whatever they once were, they have, I doubt not,
been so often renewed in the blood of the Irish as to have little
or naught left of English honesty or honor to bestow upon their
owner."
"Little or much!" cried the old lord furiously, "if thou, black
dog of Cromwell as thou art, will but dismount and bid one of thy
lackeys put a sword into my hands, I will show thee that, in
spite of my seventy years and odd, I have still enough of English
manhood left to chastise impertinence, wherever or in whomsoever
I may chance to find it."
"Sir," cried Nellie, terrified at the turn affairs were taking,
and placing herself between the disputants, "there is no need for
all these taunting words and bandying of harsh challenges.
{309}
In peace have we come hither, and we do but seek to possess our
own in peace--their honors, the commissioners at Loughrea, having
assigned to us our residence amidst these mountains."
"Residence!" cried the officer, roused at once into a far more
bitter and personal feeling than the sort of proud contempt,
which was all that he had hitherto deigned to bestow upon the
strangers. "Residence among these mountains, dost thou say? Nay,
then, young maiden, thou hast mistaken thy mark, and that most
widely, since all these lands, as far as the eye can see--even
this land of Murrisk, which we English call the 'Owles,' with its
upper and its lower barony as well--have been made over to me
already, as mine own inheritance, the land which the Lord hath
given (for the laborer is worthy of his hire) as the fruit of
long service in the battle-field."
"This is my grandfather. Lord Netterville, and we are, as he has
rightly told you, of the old English of the pale," said Nellie,
making one step nearer in order to present her certificate. "At
first, in common with the other inhabitants of Meath, we were to
have been sent into the more eastern baronies of Connaught; but
the numbers set down for transplantation to those parts having
been found greater than could be accommodated on the land, we
were assigned at last our portion in the same barony of Murrisk."
The officer looked at first as if greatly inclined to refuse the
paper which she held up for his acceptance; but suddenly changing
his intention, he snatched it rudely from her hand, and ran his
eye over the contents.
"Humph! ha!" he continued to mutter as he read; and then turning
to Nellie, he said in a voice in which, toned down as it was to
an affectation of cold indifference, her quick ear detected,
nevertheless, a lurking tone of triumph.
"This certificate bears a date, as I see, of some three months
earlier in the year. How, then, is it, maiden, that it was not
presented sooner?"
"It is five months to-day since we left our home--our pleasant
home in Meath," said Nellie sadly; "and "much of that time was
spent perforce at Loughrea. At first we were kept there in sore
suspense as to the settlement of our just claim for land, and
after that we were detained by sickness. Our servant fell ill and
died of the plague; my grandfather suffered also much from the
same malady, and he has in some measure recovered from it; it
has, alas! reduced him from a hale and hearty old age, to the
wreck--mind and body--that you see before you. In this way our
scanty stock of money was soon exhausted, and when at last he was
fit to travel, we had to sell our horses and the best part of our
wearing apparel, in order to satisfy the debts incurred during
his illness; after which there was nothing for it but to finish
the journey as best we could on foot."
"How marvellous are the mercies of the Lord--the mercies which he
has laid up for them that fear him," cried the officer, turning
triumphantly toward his companions, and yet shrinking, in spite
of himself, beneath the angry glances shot at him from the blue
eyes of his daughter. "Surely his hand and his wisdom are visible
in this matter," he added, in a less openly exultant manner; "for
look ye, maiden, had you and the man you call Lord Netterville
come hither at the time when, according to the date of your
certificate, you should have done, you might, peradventure, have
found no one to dispute possession with ye.
{310}
But behold! instead of that, the Lord hath vexed and troubled ye;
he hath forced ye to tarry, even as he forced his rebellious
people to tarry in the wilderness; he hath afflicted ye with
sickness; he hath even visited ye with death, in order that I,
his servant and soldier on the battle-field, might go up and take
peaceable possession of that land which ye vainly fancied to be
all your own."
"But are not these the very lands--a portion of the barony of
Murrisk--which are set down in our certificate?" said Nellie, not
even yet comprehending thoroughly the greatness of the impending
blow. "How, then, noble sir, do you speak of them as yours?"
"Yea, and indeed," replied the officer, "these are of a certainty
those very lands. Nevertheless, maiden, thou hast yet to learn
that, if thou hast a certificate, I also am provided with a
debenture, signed and delivered to me two months ago.
Consequently, my order on the estate being of a later date, doth
override and make void thine own, which, moreover, on looking
closer, I do perceive to be merely a _de bene esse_, a poor
make-shift for the time being, until something more permanent
could be assigned thee."
"God help us, then!" cried Nellie; utterly overwhelmed by this
last announcement. "God help us, then, and pardon those who have
trifled so cruelly with our fortunes! Strangers we are, and
without a place whereon to lay our heads; what then is to become
of us in these deserted mountains?"
"Thou shouldst have looked to all that ere coming hither," he
answered harshly; "as matters are at present, I would counsel
thee to return to Loughrea at thy quickest speed, and to seek
some other grant of land from their honors the commissioners, ere
all that which is left in their hands has been absolutely
disposed of."
"We cannot," said Nellie in a tone of hopeless sorrow, which,
save that of the old fanatic himself, touched the hearts of all
who heard her. "Look!" she added, turning, and with a sudden wave
of the arm indicating Lord Netterville, who, utterly exhausted by
his late excitement, was leaning against the bank in a half state
of stupor. "Look at that old man, and tell me how is he to
retrace his footsteps? Hope, indeed, aided him on his journey
hither, but what hope is left to give him courage to go back?"
"As I have already said, thou shouldst have looked to all that
ere undertaking such a journey," he answered shortly, and
preparing to ride forward; for he saw that in his daughter's face
which made him feel sure that she would not remain much longer
silent. "And now get you both hence at once, I counsel ye; for my
choler is apt to rise in the presence of the enemies of the Lord,
and I may not much longer be able to restrain my hand from
striking--"
"Strike, if you will, but hear me!" cried Nellie, springing
forward so suddenly that she had caught hold of his bridle-rein
ere he was even aware of her intention. "If yonder tower is
indeed your home, give him a night's shelter in it--only one
night--a single night--that he may rest from his weary travels."
"Nay, by the sword of Gideon, not even for an hour!" he cried
furiously. "Let go, maiden, let go! or I will strike thee as if
thou wert a mad dog in my path."
But Nellie was by this time driven to desperation, and she would
not let go. She clung to the bridle-rein, crying out, "Only one
night--one little night.
{311}
God is my witness that if there was but so much as a peasant's
hut within reach, I would die sooner than ask such a favor at
your hands."
Nearly as frantic with passion as she was with despair, he forced
his horse to rear again and again, in order to compel her to let
go; but finding, at last, that he could not shake her off, he
raised his riding-whip, and it would have fallen heavily on her
shoulders if, by a similar and almost simultaneous movement,
Ormiston and his daughter had not hastily interfered.
"Major Hewitson!" cried the former in a warning voice--and,
"Father, you shall not! you dare not!" cried the girl, spurring
her horse eagerly forward, and utterly regardless of the fact
that its heels were actually grazing the edge of the precipice as
she tried to wrest his whip from her father's grasp.
All the tenderness of the man's heart was wrapt up in his
daughter, and even in the midst of that moment of mad passion he
saw her danger, and cried out:
"Have a care, child, have a care! or you and your horse will be
over the precipice ere you know what you are doing."
"Throw away your whip then, or I will back him over it with my
own hands," she cried passionately; "for I would sooner perish at
once than see my own father strike a helpless girl like myself."
"Send the Irish beggar hence at once then, will you?" he answered
furiously, flinging away his whip as he spoke, and, tearing his
rein by main force from Nellie's grasp, he galloped rapidly down
the hill.
Instead of following him, the girl backed her horse further into
the recess in order to make room, and then waved her hand with
the gesture of an empress to the others to pass on. With the
exception of Ormiston they all obeyed, and no sooner had they got
to a little distance than she flung herself off her horse, and,
tossing the reins to her companion, threw herself into the arms
of the astonished Nellie, exclaiming:
"O my God, my God! and these are the deeds that we do in thy
name! When wilt thou arise and come to judgment?"
"Nay, grieve not thus, dear lady," said Nellie, generously
forgetting her own great wrongs at the sight of such voluntary
humiliation. "You at any rate have no cause to grieve, for
willingly you have done no wrong."
"Call me not lady; I am but a girl, a woman like yourself; only"--she
added with a touch of pride so like humility that it was
almost as beautiful--"only, probably, of meaner nature, and
certainly of less lofty lineage. What can I do for you? Alas!
alas! why do I ask, for what _can_ I do? Shelter, except in
my father's house, I have none to offer; and in that, after what
he has said just now, I could not even ensure your lives."
Here the young officer, who had by this time dismounted and
approached the girl, endeavored to insinuate his purse into her
hands; but she shook her head impatiently, and said, "Money!
money! of what use can money be in such wilds as these?"
Nevertheless, on second thoughts, she took the purse, and would,
perhaps, in a hesitating, shame-faced sort of way, have offered
it to Nellie, if the latter had not said decidedly:
"As you say, dear lady, it would be worse than useless. Neither
are we beggars. We did but seek what we thought to be our own.
And now," she added sadly, "we ask still less--even that which
the very beggars are thought to have a right to claim--but a
shelter for a single night."
{312}
"And even that I cannot give you," said the girl disconsolately;
"but at least," she added suddenly, in a brighter tone, "I think
I can tell you where to find that." She pointed with her whip to
a narrow path branching off a little lower down the hill, and
leading apparently in the direction of the sea. "Follow that
path--it is neither long nor difficult--and it will lead you to
the waters of the creek below. At the very foot of the hill,
where the path ends, you will find a hut; if empty, it will at
least give you shelter; if otherwise, its owner will, I doubt
not, make you welcome. He ought at least," she added quickly,
"for he also has lost something. Trust me, you are not the only
ones whom we have robbed for the achievement of our own
greatness. Farewell! and if ever you pray for your enemies, put
us among the worst and foremost."
She turned to her horse as she finished speaking. Her companion
would fain have aided her to mount; but putting him pettishly on
one side, she leaped into the saddle without assistance, and
galloped back by the road which she had come. The officer, thus
repulsed, bowed respectfully to Nellie, and then, remounting his
own horse, followed in the same direction. She cantered on,
however, as if unconscious of his existence, merely urging her
horse to a quicker speed, in order to escape him--a manoeuvre
which he took care, by imitating, to render useless. Finding, at
last, that he would not be shaken off, she pulled up suddenly,
and said angrily, and without even deigning to look round:
"Why do you follow me? Why do you dog my footsteps? Ride back to
my father, will you? He is of your own creed and calling, and
will better appreciate your society that I can."
"Nay, Ruth," he was beginning, but she interrupted him almost
fiercely--
"Call me by my own name if you wish that I should answer you. To
you at least, and to the world, I will still be Henrietta, though
at my father's hands I am compelled to submit to this mummery of
a change of name."
"Well, then, Henrietta," he answered quietly, but very gravely,
"believe me, I did not mean to anger you. I said 'Ruth,' because
that name is so often on your father's lips that it has begun to
come almost naturally to mine. I would not willingly anger you at
any time, and least of all, just now, when, in spite of what I
must call your unkind waywardness toward myself, I love and
worship you, as I never did before, for that nobleness of nature
which recoils, at any cost, from all that savors of injustice."
"Carry your love and worship elsewhere, then, for I will have
none of it," she said, evidently in nowise mollified by his
apology. "What should I care for your good opinion? Do you not
feel in your heart of hearts, or must I tell you, that we are
divided, as far as the north pole from the south, in our most
intimate convictions, and that what you and my father call
religion I consider as fanaticism--or that something which is
worse than fanaticism, or almost than crime--hypocrisy."
"You cannot believe what you are saying," he answered, now
indignant in his turn; "you know how well and truly I have loved
you, and you cannot believe that I am a hypocrite; you
cannot--you could not--you would not so dishonor me in your
thoughts--you who have promised to be my wife!"
{313}
"I retract that promise, then," she answered passionately,
"wholly and entirely I retract it. Never, so help me God, will I
become the mother of a race of fanatics, who will find, for such
deeds as we have seen done today, their pretext in religion."
"Henrietta!" he cried, the blood rushing to his temples, "you
cannot be in earnest!"
"See if I am not!" she answered coldly. "Ride back to my father
now, and let me go my ways alone to the tower."
"I will go to him, Henrietta; but it will only be to tell him
that I am about to return to my appointment in Dublin--unless,
indeed," he added, with a lingering hope of
reconciliation--"unless, Henrietta, you retract."
"I never retract," she answered shortly.
"Then, farewell!" he said, with a half movement, as if he would
have taken her hand."
"Farewell!" she answered, affecting not to see his offered hand,
and shaking the reins loose on her horse's neck.
Ormiston turned his horse's head in the opposite direction, and
went forward a few paces; then he stopped and looked after his
late companion. She was moving on, but slowly, and like one lost
in thought. Stirred by a sudden honest impulse of regret, he
turned and followed her. Henrietta heard him, and instantly
checked her horse, as if determined not to suffer him to ride any
longer at her side.
"Henrietta!" he said.
"What would you?" she asked sullenly.
"Only unsay that one word, 'hypocrisy,' and let things be as they
were before."
"I never unsay what I have said," she answered coldly.
"Neither do I," he retorted, now angry in earnest; "and I swear
to you that I will see you no more until under your own hand and
seal you retract, of your own accord, what you have said to-day,
and tell me to return."
"Farewell, then, for ever," she replied, with rather a bad
assumption of indifference--"for ever, if so it must be."
"Farewell," he answered, without, however, as even in that moment
Henrietta noticed, adding the ominous "for ever." "Farewell, and
God forgive you for so trifling with the honest heart that loves
you, and has loved you from your childhood. Some day--too late,
perhaps--you will do me justice."
And so they parted.
Chapter VII.
Left to herself, Nellie Netterville sat down to collect her
scattered senses. The situation in which she found herself
needed, in truth, a calm sense and courage, not often the
heritage of petted girlhood, in order to bear up successfully
against its difficulties. Happily for herself, the brave Irish
girl was possessed of both in no common degree, and the trials
and troubles of the last few months had ripened these faculties
into almost unnatural maturity. The tale she had just told to
Major Hewitson was free of the smallest attempt at exaggeration,
being, in fact, rather under than over the measure of the truth.
Lord Netterville, in common with many another unfortunate
gentleman of the English Pale, had been kept dancing attendance
on the commissioners at Loughrea until both hope and money failed
him.
{314}
The absence of home comforts told heavily upon a frame already
weakened by age and sorrow; and just at the moment when he could
least bear up against it, he was attacked by the plague, or some
disease analogous to the plague, which at that very time was
making most impartial havoc among the native Irish and their
foes. Thanks to an iron constitution, he recovered, but he rose
from his sickbed, if not absolutely a child in mind, yet as
utterly incapable of aiding Nellie by advice, or of steering his
own way unassisted through the troubled waters on which his ill
fate had cast him, as if he had been in very deed an infant. His
servant was already dead, therefore the whole responsibility of
their future movements devolved upon his granddaughter. She
proved herself, fortunately, not altogether unequal to the
occasion, never losing sight for a moment of the purpose which
had brought her to Loughrea, and tormenting the commissioners
until, less moved by her youth and helplessness than by a desire
to rid themselves of her troublesome importunities, they gave her
the certificate which she had shown to Major Hewitson, and which,
as he had instantly perceived, was rendered worse than useless to
its possessor by the fact of its being merely a temporary
arrangement. Ignorant alike of Latin and law language, Nellie
had, naturally enough, supposed it to be a permanent appointment;
and, selling their horses and every article of value in her
possession, in order to pay the debts contracted at Loughrea, she
had made the rest of the journey on foot, leading, soothing, and
encouraging the old man as if he had been a child, and buoying up
his courage and her own by fanciful descriptions of that home in
the far west, where she trusted his last days might be passed in
peace. She had tried to deceive _him_; she never attempted
to deceive _herself_ as to the nature of their future
prospects; yet unpleasant as her anticipations had been, they
were so much more agreeable than the terrible realities upon
which she had just stumbled, that she felt for a few moments, as
she sat there alone among the hills, as if the very gates of an
earthly Paradise had been closed against her. But it was no
moment for the indulgence of such natural regrets. She looked at
her grandfather, and felt that his life was in her hands. She
remembered, too, her promise to her mother to be son as well as
daughter to his age; and sternly and tearlessly, for tears were
too weak an expression for such desolation as she was feeling
then, she set herself to consider what her next move ought to be.
Food and shelter for the old man--(and it needed not another
glance at his pale face to tell her how much both were needed)
food and shelter--these must be her first object. It would be
time enough after they had been secured to decide as to the
feasibility of a return journey to Loughrea. She rose, and
drawing her hood, which, in her struggle with Major Hewitson, had
fallen back upon her shoulders, once more over her head, she took
her grandfather by the hand, and led him quietly and silently
down the path pointed out to her by Henrietta. It had originally
been a sheep-path, and proved far less difficult than she had
expected, winding gradually round the hills until it reached a
sort of creek or estuary formed by the inrushing, for a couple of
miles, of the waters from the bay beyond. It was a lonely, but a
lovely spot, and Nellie's heart beat more calmly as she paused to
listen to the soft rocking of the waters in their inland bed, and
to feel the fresh breeze which they brought from the ocean
playing on her heated brow.
{315}
There were no visible signs near her of that human habitation of
which Major Hewitson's daughter had so confidently spoken; but at
last, after having searched the landscape steadily in all
directions, she thought she saw something like a blue curl of
smoke rising out of a sort of mound, which, at first sight,
seemed neither more nor less than a cairn of unusually large
dimensions, nearly hidden by clumps of gorse and heather at least
six feet high, and bushy and luxuriant in proportion. On nearer
inspection, however, it proved to be a hut, such a hut as even to
this day may be sometimes seen in the wildest parts of the wild
west, rounded at the gables, built of rough stones, rudely yet
solidly put together, and with a roof laid on of fern and
shingle, carefully secured from the violence of the western winds
by bands of twisted straw. A hole in this roof stood proxy both
for window and for chimney, and the doorway was literally
doorless. A sort of grass mat hung across it from the inside,
being evidently considered by the inhabitants as ample protection
against cold and wet, the only foes which extreme poverty has got
to boast of.
For five seconds, at the very least, Nellie stood gazing on this
frail barrier with a feeling as if it would require more than
human courage to announce her presence to the human beings (she
knew not whether they were friends or enemies) who might be
stowed away behind it. At last, with a shaking hand, she drew
back a small corner of the matting, and, without daring to look
in, saluted the possible inmates, as the natives of the country
salute each other to this day in Irish, "God save all here!"
There was no answer, and, lifting the curtain a little higher,
she looked in.
The hut was empty, though a few embers burning on the floor gave
sufficient evidence of its having been recently inhabited. Of
furniture, save a single wooden settle, Nellie could discover
none; but a gun was standing upright against the opposite wall,
and near it hung a very Spanish-seeming mantle, looking as much
out of place in that miserable abode as its owner would probably
have done if he had been there to claim it. The solitude, and the
sight of that gun and mantle, made her feel far more nervous than
she would have felt if a dozen of the natives of the soil had
been congregated within. It seemed to imply some mystery, and, to
the helpless, mystery always has a touch of fear about it.
Moreover, it made her suddenly conscious that she was an
intruder, an idea which would never have come into her head if
her possible hosts had been of that frank-hearted race to whom
the virtue of hospitality comes so easily that it does not even
occur to them to call it "virtue." On the other hand, her
grandfather's pale face and sunken features seemed to plead with
her against all unseasonable timidity. Hastily, therefore, and as
though she were about to commit a theft, she put aside the
matting, drew the old man inside, and then replaced the screen as
carefully as if she hoped in this manner to hide her audacious
proceedings from the owner of the hut--or rather, if the truth
must be told, from the owner of the mysterious mantle. This first
step fairly taken, Nellie suddenly grew brave, and resolving to
make the most of their impromptu habitation, she drew the settle
nearer to the fire, and made Lord Netterville sit down upon it.
{316}
The sight of the embers seemed to revive the latter, less perhaps
from any need he felt of its warmth on that bright sunny day than
from the home-like associations which it awakened in his mind. He
smiled a wintry smile, with more of old age than of gladness in
it, and stretched forth his withered hands to warm them in the
blaze. Then, as if suddenly waking up for the first time to a
perception of his being foodless, he asked Nellie if supper would
soon be ready, for that in truth he was well-nigh starving.
Starving he must have been, that poor Nellie knew well enough
already; for they had exhausted their scanty stock of food that
very day, and he had tasted nothing since the early dawn. She
soothed him, however, and besought him to have yet a little
patience, and then, with a desperate resolution to appropriate to
his use whatever of food the hut might happen to contain, she
commenced a careful examination of its hidden nooks. There were,
of course, neither shelves nor cupboards, or anything, indeed,
which even suggested the idea of provisions having been ever kept
there; but at last, when she had almost begun to give up the
search in despair, she espied something like the handle of a
basket peeping out from beneath a bundle of firewood which lay
heaped in one corner of the hut upon the floor. Pouncing upon
this at once, she discovered that it contained a couple of
sea-trout, upon which the owner of the mansion had probably
intended making an early dinner, for they were already prepared
for broiling. With renewed energy Nellie took a handful of dried
brushwood, and threw it upon the half-extinguished fire, after
which she proceeded, in her new character of cook, to lay, in a
very leisurely and scientific manner, the fish upon the embers.
So engrossed was she in this occupation, that she never perceived
that the mat curtain over the doorway had been once more lifted
up, and that some one was watching her proceedings from the
outside. This some one was a man, apparently about twenty-five or
thirty years of age, with a figure rather above than below the
middle height, and a face which, full of energy and expression as
it was, was by no means regularly handsome, though the large,
Murillo-looking eyes by which it was lighted up deceived casual
beholders into a conviction that it was.
He was clad in a garb which might have belonged to the native
fishermen of the coast, yet no one could have mistaken him for
other than a gentleman and soldier, as he stood there, holding
back the screen of matting, and gazing, with a look curiously
compounded of amusement and annoyance, at the scene presented by
the interior of the cottage. The latter feeling, however, was
evidently in the ascendant--so much so, indeed, that he had
actually made a half-movement, as if to retreat and leave the hut
to its uninvited occupants, when something--was it a glimpse of
Nellie's delicate profile, as she stooped over the glowing
embers?--induced him to change his mind, and stepping quietly
over the threshold, he dropped the screen behind him with an
energy and good-will which seemed to indicate that, instead of
his premeditated flight, he had made up his mind to accept with a
good grace, and perhaps even to enjoy, this unexpected addition
to his society. The sound of the falling mat warned Nellie of the
advent of a stranger, and, crimson with shame and fear, she stood
up to receive him. He gazed upon her steadily, the half-feeling
of annoyance, still visible on his clouded brow, yielding
gradually to a look of intense but reverent admiration, and
removing his fisherman's cap from his head, he bowed courteously,
and said in English:
{317}
"God save all here, and a hundred thousand welcomes also, if, as
I apprehend, you are fugitives like myself from tyranny and
injustice."
There was an indescribable tact and courtesy in the way in which
he combined this announcement of his being the master of the hut
with a frank and ready welcome to his unknown visitants, which
made Nellie feel at once that she had to do, not only with a man
of gentle birth but of high and polished breeding also. Yet this
fact seemed for the moment rather to add to her difficulty than
to decrease it, and secretly wishing that the fish could be made,
by some magical process, to disappear from the embers upon which
it was comfortably broiling, she placed herself as much as she
could between it and the stranger as she stammered out her
apology for intrusion. Did he see the fish? and did he guess at
the petty larceny she had just committed? Nellie fancied she saw
something like an amused look in his eye, which made her feel hot
and cold by turns with the consciousness of discovered guilt, but
the rest of his features wore no smile, nothing but an expression
of kind and courteous sympathy as he eagerly interrupted her
excuses--
"Say no more, dear lady, say no more, trust me I have not now to
learn for the first time to what dire straits the sad necessity
of these days of woe may bring us. And, therefore, to all who
come to this poor hut, but more especially to those who, for
honor and for conscience sake, have laid down wealth and power
elsewhere, I have but one word--one greeting, and that is the
old Irish one, of a hundred thousand welcomes."
"A hundred thousand welcomes!" repeated a feeble, quivering voice
close to the stranger's elbow. He turned and looked for the first
time steadily at Lord Netterville, of whose presence up to that
moment he had been barely conscious. The old man had risen from
his seat, and stood smiling and bowing courteously, evidently
thinking he was doing the honors of a home, of which--however
humble--he was yet the undoubted master.
"Our house is poor, sir," he went on, "once, indeed, we boasted
of a better; but let that pass. Such as it is--such as our
enemies have made it--you may reckon assuredly upon meeting an
Irish welcome in it."
"Sir," whispered Nellie through her tears, fearing lest the
stranger might break in too rudely on the old man's delusion. "He
is old--he has been ill--he fancies he has reached his home; you
must excuse him."
The unknown turned his eyes upon the girl with a look so full of
reverent sympathy, that it went straight to her heart, never
afterward to be effaced from thence. She felt that her
grandfather would be safe in such kindly hands, and was turning
quietly away when Lord Netterville, still enacting his fancied
character of host, threw a handful of dry wood upon the fire, and
the blaze that instantly ensued fell full upon his features,
which had hitherto been barely visible in the gloom. The stranger
started violently.
"Good God!" he cried, in a tone of irrepressible astonishment.
"Is it possible that I see Lord Netterville, and in such a
plight?"
"You know my grandfather, then?" cried Nellie joyously, feeling
as if the stranger must have been sent by Providence especially
to help her in the hour of her utmost need. "You know my
grandfather?"
{318}
"I ought, at any rate," he answered, with a sad smile, as he took
Lord Netterville's proffered hand. "For we fought together and
were beaten at Kilrush; my first battle, and, as I suppose, his
last."
"Ha!" cried the old man, "Kilrush! Kilrush! who speaks to me of
Kilrush? Were you there, sir? Time must have played sad tricks
upon my memory then, for, truth to say, I do not recognize you."
"Nay, my good lord," said the stranger soothingly, "it would be
stranger still if you had done so, for I was but a beardless boy
in those days. Nevertheless, I remember _you_, Lord
Netterville, and surely you cannot have altogether forgotten the
cheer we gave when you, a tried and veteran soldier, rode up to
serve with us as a volunteer in the regiment of your gallant
son."
"I remember! I remember!" cried the old man eagerly. "It was a
bright and glorious morning, and we charged them gallantly--a
bright and glorious morning, but with a sad and bloody ending.
Alas! alas!" he added, his voice falling suddenly from its
trumpet-like tone of exultation to an old man's wail of sorrow.
"Alas! alas! how many of the best and bravest that we had among
us lay dead and trampled in the dust, as we withdrew from that
fatal field."
He bowed his head upon his breast, and remained for a little
while absorbed in thought, and Nellie took advantage of the pause
to say:
"You knew my father, sir? You must have known him if you were
near Lord Netterville at Kilrush; for father and son charged side
by side, and were seldom, as I have since been told, ten minutes
out of each other's sight during the whole of that bloody
battle."
"Knew your father? Yes, dear lady--if your father was, as I
suppose, Colonel Netterville--I knew him well. He was the bosom
friend of my uncle and namesake, Roger Moore of Leix, who placed
me in his regiment when I joined the Irish army."
"Roger Moore of Leix," cried Nellie, a flash of enthusiasm
lighting up her face; "Roger Moore--the brave--the gifted--the
first leader in a noble cause, whose very name was a battle-cry,
and whose followers rushed into fight, shouting for 'God--our
Lady--and Roger Moore!' Yes, yes; he was my father's friend. I
remember even when I was a child how he used to talk about him.
And _you_," she added, with a sudden change of voice and
manner, and placing both her hands in his, "_you_, then, are
that Roger Moore, the younger, in whose arms my poor father
died."
"At the battle of Benburb," said Moore, in a low voice; "a
glorious battle--well fought, and well won, and yet for ever to
be regretted, for the loss of one of Ireland's bravest and most
faithful soldiers."
"Grandfather," cried Nellie, suddenly withdrawing her hands from
Roger, and blushing scarlet at the inadvertence of her own action
which had placed them in his, "this is Captain Moore, who bore my
wounded father out of the press of battle, and to whom we are
indebted for that last and loving farewell which he sent to us in
dying."
But instead of replying with an eagerness corresponding to her
own, Lord Netterville gazed vacantly upon the stranger, evidently
without the slightest recollection of his name or person, and
repeated, in a low mechanical voice, his previously-muttered
welcome.
"He does not remember!" said Roger. "Alas! alas! for that bright
intellect, once cloudless as a summer's noon!"
{319}
"Hush, hush!" whispered Nellie. "Recollection is beginning to
return." And Lord Netterville did, in fact, seem to be making a
languid effort at gathering up his scattered thoughts, for he
looked at Roger, and said feebly:
"You knew my son, sir?--you knew my son?--then, indeed, you are
very welcome. He was a brave boy, and fought for his king and
country--fought and fell--on the field of--the field of--the
name--which I thought never to forget--has almost escaped me."
"Benburb," Roger ventured to interpose.
"Benburb! Ay, that was the very name--Benburb!--my memory does
not fail me, sir; but I have been much tried of late--or we rode
too far this morning--for I feel very faint."
He tried to draw back from the fire as he spoke, but he tottered,
and would have fallen if Roger had not caught him by the arm, and
made him sit down upon the settle.
"He is faint for want of food," said Nellie hastily; "we have
been wandering all day among the hills, and he has not broken his
fast since morning."
Roger did not answer, but signing to her to support Lord
Netterville, he went straight to some invisible cranny in the
walls of the hut, and drew thence a bottle of strong cordial.
Pouring a little of this into a broken mug, he made the old man
swallow it, and then stood beside him, anxiously watching the
result. Happily it was favorable--in a few minutes Lord
Netterville revived, the color returned to his wan cheek, and
turning to Nellie, he asked her, in a half-whisper, "if supper
would soon be ready?" Shyly, and blushing scarlet, Nellie nodded
an affirmative, and forgetting all her previous shame in anxiety
for her grandfather, she was about to resume her office as cook,
when, with a half-smile on his face, Roger Moore put her quietly
aside.
"Nay, Mistress Netterville, remember that I am master here, and
that I forbid you to lay hands upon that fish? I have always been
cook in my own proper person to the establishment, and I cannot
allow you to supersede me in the office."
"Forgive me!" said Nellie, tears starting to her eyes, and half
fancying in her confusion that he was angry in earnest. "I could
not help it, for he was starving."
"Do not misunderstand me, I entreat you," said Roger, in a voice
of deep and real feeling; "I should be a brute if I objected to
anything you have or could have done; I only meant that I
objected to your continuing in that office; for so long as the
daughter of my old colonel is under my roof, (even though it be
but a poor mud sheeling,) she shall do no work, with my
good-will, unfit for the hands of a princess." He busied himself
while speaking in drawing forth, from that same recess in which
he had found the cordial, some thin oaten cakes, a few wooden
platters, and one or two knives and spoons of such massive
silver, that Nellie could not help thinking they were as much out
of keeping with the rest of the furniture as Roger himself
appeared to be with the hut, of which he was doing the honors in
such simple and yet such courtly fashion. He would not even let
her hold the platter upon which he placed the fish as he took it
from the embers, and he himself then brought it to Lord
Netterville, and pressed him, as tenderly as if he had been a
child, to partake of this impromptu supper.
{320}
The old man yielded, nothing loath, and so, indeed, did his
grandchild; for, though very fair to look at, no goddess was poor
Nellie, but a young and growing girl with the healthy appetite of
sixteen. She accepted, therefore, Roger's invitation without the
smallest affectation of reluctance, and sitting down on the floor
beside her grandfather, shared the contents of his platter with
innocent and undisguised enjoyment. With all her sense and
courage, she was as yet in many things a perfect child, yielding
as easily as a child might do to the first ray of sunshine that
brightened on her path, and accepting the happiness of the
present moment as unrestrainedly as if never even suspecting the
shadows that were lurking in her future. Now, therefore, that she
felt her grandfather was in safe and helpful keeping, she threw
off the sense of responsibility which had weighed her down for
months, and became almost gay. Color rose to her wasted cheek,
light sparkled in her eyes, and she responded to Roger's efforts
to make her feel comfortable and at home, with such innocent and
unbounded faith in his wish and power to befriend them, that he
vowed an inward vow never to forsake her, but to guard her, as if
she had been in very deed his sister, through the trials and
dangers of her unprotected exile. When their meal was over, and
while her grandfather slumbered in the quiet warmth of the
peat-fire, she told Roger Moore her story, simply and briefly as
she might have told it to a brother, beginning at her departure
from her ancestral home, and ending with her encounter with the
English strangers among the mountains.
"It is Major Hewitson," said Roger, "in whose favor I have been
despoiled of my old home. Major Hewitson and his pretty daughter
'Ruth,' as he chooses to call her, in order to blot out the fact
that her name is Henrietta, and that she had a popish queen for
her godmother. She forgets it not herself, however," he added,
with a smile; "for her mother was of noble race, and they say
that she is a true cavalier at heart, and pines like a caged bird
in the network of demure fanaticism which her father has twined
around her."
"She has a lovely face and a kind and honest heart, for certain,"
said Nellie. "She knows you also, now I think of it; for she it
was who directed me to this hut, with a hint that I should here
find a friend."
"Did she?" said Roger, with genuine fervour. "Nay, then, for that
one good deed I needs must pardon her, that she, or her father
for her, have robbed me of my inheritance. And now I think of
it," he added, with a touch of sly malice in his smile, "you
also, if you came hither to seek land, must have been bound on
the same errand; for both these baronies, 'Umhall uaghtragh' and
'Umhall ioghtragh,' is the country of the O'Mailly's, and, in
right of my grandmother, my own."
Nellie blushed scarlet. "Alas!" she said, "I knew not whither or
to whom they sent us; but sure am I, at all events, that we never
would have accepted of any home at the expense of its rightful
owners."
"Nay," said Roger, "I did but jest. Would indeed that it was to
you I had been compelled to yield it! In spite of that fact you
should have had, I promise you, a right royal welcome. And now I
must needs explain. This sheeling, you must know, is not really
my home. It is but a temporary refuge, of which I have two or
three along the coast; for I have fought battles enough against
England's new-fangled government to have deserved the honors of
outlawry at her hands.
{321}
My life consequently has been none too safe at any time these six
months past, and now that yonder gray-haired fanatic, who would
ask nothing better than to seal his title in my blood, has got
possession of these lands, it is of course less secure than ever.
My most permanent home, however, is on an island, facing the bay
on this side, and washed by the waters of the Atlantic on the
other. It is poor enough, God knows, yet capable of giving better
accommodation than such a hut as this is. Will you and your
grandfather be content to share it with me?"
Tears rushed into the dark eyes of Nellie.
"Providence is good," she answered simply--"Providence is very
good, and gives us friends when we least expect them."
"Well, then, it is a bargain," cried Roger gayly; "and now.
Mistress Netterville, come and see the craft in which you will
have to make the voyage."
He pulled down the "mysterious mantle" as he spoke, and Nellie
saw that, instead of covering the bare wall as she had imagined,
it merely concealed an opening into an inner and smaller portion
of the hut, built right over the creek, and made to answer the
purpose of a boat-house. Into this the water rushed, so as to
form a basin deep enough for the floating of a boat, and one
accordingly lay safe within it, concealed by the overhanging roof
from observation on the outside.
It was not flat-bottomed like the native craft, but had been
evidently built both for strength and speed by one who understood
his business, and its chief cargo at this particular moment
seemed to be a quantity of luxuriant heather.
To this Roger pointed with a smile. "If I were a Highlander," he
said, "you might suspect me of second-sight; for I have gathered,
without thinking of it, double the usual quantity of heather,
that which we outlaws perforce use for bedding. I hope you will
not mind roughing it a little."
"I have roughed it a good deal within the last few months," said
Nellie, "and I do not think you will find me difficult to please.
Is the boat quite safe? I have never been out on the real sea
before."
"Safe!" said the young man, with a little pardonable pride in his
dark eyes. "I built her myself, and she has weathered more than
one bad storm since the first day that I sailed her. I call her
the 'Grana Uaille,' after the stout old chieftainess whose island
kingdom I inhabit, and which, with the other lands of which Major
Hewitson has robbed me, I inherit from my grandmother. But the
sun is getting low. Do you not think we had better start at once,
and get the voyage over before night-fall?"
To this Nellie gladly assented, and between them they conducted
Lord Netterville to the boat. Roger arranged the heather so as to
form a sort of couch, and, with the mantle thrown over him to
protect him from the damp, the old man found himself so
comfortable that he settled himself quietly for slumber. Then
Roger put up his sail, and with a fresh and favorable wind they
glided down the creek.
Nellie would not lie down, but she sat back in the boat with a
lazy kind of gladness in her heart, which, rightly interpreted,
would probably have been found to mean perfect rest of body and
mind. Such rest as she had not felt for months! The waters
widened as they approached the bay, and Nellie marked each new
feature in the scene with an interest all the keener and more
enjoyable, that everything she saw was so unlike anything she had
ever seen before.
{322}
Accustomed as she had been to the tamer cultivation of her native
country, the savage grandeur of that wild west, with its poverty
in human life, its wealth in that which was merely animal, took
her completely by surprise, and she gazed with unwearied
interest, now on the undulating ranges of blue mountains which
crossed and recrossed each other like network against the sky,
then on the broad, black tracts of peat and bog land which
covered the country at their feet like a pall; listened now to
the bittern and plover as they answered each other from the
marshes, then to the shrill screams of the curlews as they rose
before the boat, darkening the air with their uncounted numbers;
or she watched a heron sweeping slowly homeward from its distant
fishing-ground--or a grand old eagle soaring solemnly upward, as
if bent on a visit to the departing sun; and her delight and
astonishment at last reached their climax in the apparition of a
seal, which, just as they cleared the creek, popped its head up
above the waves, leaving her, in spite of Roger's laughing
assurances to the contrary, well-nigh persuaded that she had seen
a mermaid. The wind continuing steady, Roger shook out his last
remaining reef, and, responding gayly to the fresh impulse, the
boat sprang forward at a racing pace. They were in Clew Bay at
last, and Nellie uttered a cry of joy--never had she seen
anything so beautiful before. Masses of clouds, with tints just
caught from the presence of the sun, soft greens and lilacs, and
pale primrose and delicate pearly white, so clear and filmy that
the evening star could be seen glancing through them, hung right
overhead, shedding a thousand hues, each more beautiful than the
other, upon the bay beneath, until it flowed like a liquid opal
round its multitude of tribute isles. Opposite, right in the very
mouth of the harbor, stood Clare Island, all alight and glowing,
as if it were in very deed the pavilion of the setting sun,
which, as it sank into the waves beyond it, wrapped tower, and
church, and slanting cliff, and winding shoreline, in such a
glory of gold and purple as made the old kingdom of Grana Uaille
look for the moment like a palace of the fairies. Nellie was
still straining her eyes for a glimpse of the Atlantic on the
other side, when the deep baying of a hound came like sad, sweet
music over the waters, and Roger slightly touched her shoulder.
They were close to the island; in another moment he had run his
boat cleverly into the little harbor and laid her alongside the
pier. A huge wolf-dog, of the old Irish breed, instantly bounded
in, nearly oversetting Nellie in his eagerness to greet his
master.
Roger laid one restraining hand on the dog's massive head, and
removing his cap with the other, said, smiling courteously:
"You must not be afraid of Maida, Mistress Netterville, she is as
gentle as she is strong, and has only come to add her voice to
her master's, and to bid you welcome to the outlaw's home."
Chapter VIII.
Nellie slept that night the peaceful slumbers of a child; but the
habits of long weeks of care were not to be so easily shaken off,
and the first ray of sunshine that found its way through the
narrow window of her chamber roused her from her well-earned
repose.
{323}
Her first impulse was, as it had ever been of late, to spring
from her couch with a painful sense of hard duty to be
accomplished that very day; her next was to thank God with all
the fervor of a young and innocent heart for the haven of safety
into which he had guided her at last. Then she lay back upon her
pillow, and, yielding to the delightful consciousness that there
was now no immediate call upon her for exertion either of body or
mind, glanced languidly round the dimly-lighted room, and
endeavored to make a mental inventory of its contents. It was a
square chamber, forming the second story of the old tower in
which Roger had taken up his abode, and which was all that was
yet remaining of the old stronghold of Grana Uaille. The
apartment had evidently no furniture of its own to boast of, but,
having been used as a sort of lumber-room, was abundantly
supplied with articles brought hither from more favored mansions.
Nellie soon perceived that much of this so-called lumber was of
the costliest description, and represented probably the sum total
of all that had been saved from the wreck of Roger's fortune.
There were cabinets of curious workmanship, a table carved in oak
as black as ebony, a few high-backed chairs of the same material,
ornaments in gold and silver, some of ancient Celtic manufacture,
others in their more delicate workmanship bearing marks of
artistic handling, which, even to Nellie's unaccustomed eye,
betrayed their foreign origin. There were pictures, too, most of
them with the dark shadow of a Spanish hand upon them, and
swords, bucklers, weapons, and armor of all kinds, old and new,
defensive and offensive, piled up here and there in picturesque
confusion in the corners of the turret. Nellie had been amusing
herself for some minutes scanning all these treasures over and
over, and guessing at their various uses, when her attention
became suddenly riveted upon a huge coffer with bands and
mouldings of curiously-wrought brass, which stood against the
wall exactly opposite to the foot of her bed. She was still quite
girl enough to be willing to amuse herself by imagining all sorts
of impossibilities respecting the contents of this mysterious
looking piece of furniture, and she was watching it as anxiously
as if she half expected it to open of itself, when the door of
the chamber was cautiously unclosed, and the old woman, who
represented the office of cook, valet, and everything else in
Roger's establishment, crept up to her bedside as quietly as if
she fancied her to be sleeping still.
"God's blessing and the light of heaven be on your sweet smiling
face," she ejaculated, as Nellie turned her bright, wide-open
eyes with a grateful smile upon the old hag. "Lie still a bit,
a-lannah, lie still, and take a sup of this fresh goat's whey
that I have been making for you. It will bring the color, may be,
into your pretty cheeks again; for troth, a-lannah, they are as
pale this morning as mountain roses, and not at all what they
should be in regard to a young and well-grown slip of a lassie
like yourself."
Nellie took the tempting beverage, which Nora presented to her in
an old-fashioned silver goblet, readily enough; but checking
herself just as she was about to put it to her lips, she said,
gayly:
"Thanks, a thousand times, my dear old woman, but I do not feel
that I need it much, and this whey would be the very thing for my
poor old grandfather. He was always accustomed to something of
the sort in the days when we were able to indulge ourselves in
such luxuries."
{324}
"Lord bless the child!" said the delighted Nora. "If she isn't as
gay as a bird in its mother's nest this morning, for all the
weary worry of her last night's travels. But there's no need to
be sparing of the whey, my honey, for sure I've a good sup of it
left on purpose for the old lord as soon as ever he awakens. So
drink up every drop of this, if you wouldn't have the master
scold me; for he sent it up himself, he did, and it's downright
mad he'd be if it came back to him and it not empty."
Something in this speech, or in old Nora's way of making it,
caused the blood, the absence of which she had been just
deploring, to rush once more into Nellie's cheek; and perhaps it
was partly to hide this weakness that she took the goblet without
another word, and drained it to the dregs, playfully turning its
wrong side up as she gave it back to Nora, in order to show her
how thoroughly her directions had been complied with. Made happy
on this important point, the old woman trotted gayly out of the
room, and then Nellie rose, half-reluctantly, it must be
confessed, and commenced the duties of the toilet. They were
simple enough in her case, yet difficult, also, from their very
simplicity. Her hair, long and smooth and shining, was easily
enough disposed in braids, which, folded tightly round her head,
gave a grace and elegance to her appearance none of the fantastic
head-gear then in vogue could possibly have imparted; but when
she came to inspect the habiliments she had worn the day before,
and which perforce she must wear again that day, she became
painfully, and, perhaps for the first time, fully conscious of
the dilapidations which time and travel had wrought upon them. In
vain she rubbed out mud and grass stains, in vain she plied her
needle. The garments absolutely defied her skill, and, painfully
conscious of the fact, she was about perforce to don them as they
were, when Nora burst into the room with a look of gladness on
her face, which vanished, however, to do her justice, as
completely as if it had never been, at the sight of poor Nellie,
shame-faced and sad, vainly trying to smooth her rags into
something like decent poverty around her.
"God help you, a-cushla!" she cried in a tone of unfeigned
compassion, laying at the same time her withered hand upon the
tattered kerchief which Nellie was trying to fold round her
stately shoulders. "God help ye! and is this all that them black
scum of Saxon robbers left ye when they turned ye out upon the
wide world to seek your fortune?"
"It cannot be helped," said Nellie with a little choking in her
voice, though she tried hard to veil it beneath an assumption of
indifference. "And after all, these rags do but make me seem what
in fact I am--a beggar. Only I hope," she added, with a little
nervous laugh, "I hope that Colonel O'More" (she had learned his
military rank and his real name, Moore being only its Saxon
rendering, the night before from Nora) "will not be utterly
disgusted this morning when he finds out to what a pauper he
extended his hospitality last night."
"The colonel? Is it the master that you mean? The master be
disgusted! Ah! now, listen to me, asthore, and don't be filling
your head with them ugly fancies; for you may just take my word
for it, and don't I know every turn of his mind as well as if I
was inside of it? You may just take old Nora's word for it, that
he worships the very ground you tread on, and would, too, all the
same, if you had never a brogue to the foot or a kirtle to the
back.
{325}
Beggar, indeed! Why, could not he see for himself last night that
you had been just robbed and murdered like out of your own by
them thieving Saxons, and wasn't it for that very reason that,
before he went off to his fishing this blessed morning, he gave
me the key of that big black box, and says--says he, 'Nora, my
old woman, I have been thinking that the young lady up-stairs has
been so long on the road that may be she'll be in want of a new
dress like; so, as there is nothing like decent woman-tailoring
to be found in the island, maybe she'll condescend to see if
there's anything in my poor mother's box that would suit her for
the present.' And troth, my darling," old Nora went on, "it's you
that are going to have the pick and choice of fine things; for
she was a grand Spanish lady, she was, and always went about
among us dressed like a princess."
Nora had opened the box at the beginning of this speech, and with
every fresh word she uttered, she flung out such treasures of
finery on the floor as fully justified her panegyric on the
deceased lady's wardrobe.
Nellie soon found herself the centre of a heap of thick silks and
shiny satins, and three-piled velvets and brocaded stuffs,
standing upright by virtue of their own rich material, and of
laces so delicate and fine, that they looked as if she had only
to breathe upon them in order to make them float away upon the
air like cobwebs.
She was quite too much of a girl as yet to be able to resist a
close and curious examination of such treasures; nevertheless,
her instinct of the fitness of things was stronger than her
vanity, and there was an incongruity between these courtly
habiliments and her broken fortunes, which made her feel that it
would be an absolute impossibility to wear them. Selecting,
therefore, a few articles of linen clothing, she told old Nora
that everything else was far too fine for daily wear, and began,
of her own accord, to restore them to their coffer. Not so,
however, the good old Nora. That _any_ thing could be too
fine for the adornment of any one whom "the master" delighted to
honor, was a simple absurdity in her mind; and she became so
clamorous in her remonstrances, that Nellie was fain to shift her
ground, and to explain that she was bent at that moment upon
"taking a long ramble by the sea-shore, for which anything like a
dress of silk or satin (Nora's own good sense must tell her)
would be, to say the least of it, exceedingly inappropriate."
At these words a new light seemed to dawn upon the old woman's
mind, and, plunging almost bodily down into the deep coffer in
her eagerness to gratify her _protégé_, she exclaimed, "So
it's for a walk you'd be going this morning, is it? and after all
your bother last night! Well, well, you are young still, and
would rather, I daresay, be skipping about like a young kid among
the rocks than sitting up in silks and satins as grave and
stately as if you were a princess in earnest. Something plain and
strong? That's what you'll be wanting, isn't it, a-lannah? Wait a
bit, will you? for I mind me now of a dress the old mistress had
made when she was young, for a frolic, like, that she might go
with me unnoticed to a 'pattern.' And may I never sin if I
haven't got it," she cried, diving down once more into the
coffer, and bringing up from its shining chaos a dress which,
consisting as it did simply of a madder-colored petticoat and
short over-skirt of russet brown, was not by any means very
dissimilar to the habitual costume of a peasant girl of the west
at the present hour.
{326}
Nora was right. It was, as ladies have it, "the very thing!"
Stout enough and plain enough to meet all Nellie's ideas of
propriety, and yet presenting a sharp contrast of coloring which
(forgive her, my reader, she was only sixteen) she was by no
means sorry to reflect would be exceedingly becoming to her
clear, pale complexion, and the blue-black tresses of her hair.
It was with a little blush of pleasure, therefore, that she took
it from the old woman's hand, exclaiming, "Oh! thank you, dear
Nora. It is exactly what I was wishing for--so strong and pretty.
It will make me feel just as I want to feel, like a good strong
peasant girl, able and willing to work for her living; and, to
say the truth, moreover," she added, somewhat confidentially, "I
should not at all have liked making my appearance in those fine
Spanish garments. I should have been so much afraid of the O'More
taking me for his mother."
The annunciation of this grave anxiety set off old Nora in a fit
of laughing, under cover of which Nellie contrived to complete
her toilette. Madder-dyed petticoat, and, russet skirt, and long
dark mantle, she donned them all; but the effect, though
exceedingly pretty, was by no means exactly what she had
expected; for Nora, turning her round and round for closer
inspection, declared, with many an Irish expletive, which we
willingly spare our readers, "That dress herself how she might,
no one could ever mistake her for anything but what she really
was, namely, a born lady, and perhaps even, moreover, a princess
in disguise." With a smile and a courtesy Nellie accepted of the
compliment, and then tripped down the winding staircase of her
turret, took one peep at Lord Netterville as he lay in the room
below, in the "calliogh" or nook by the hearth, which, screened
off by a bent matting, had been allotted to him as the warmest
and most comfortable accommodation the tower afforded, and having
satisfied herself that he was still fast asleep, stepped out
gayly into the open air. She was met at the door by "Maida," who
nearly knocked her down in her boisterous delight at beholding
her again, and she was playfully defending herself from the too
rapturous advances of her four-footed friend when Roger ran his
fishing-boat alongside the pier, and, evidently mistaking Nellie
for some bare-footed visitor of Nora's, called out in Irish:
"Hilloa, ma colleen dhas! run back to the tower, will you, and
tell Nora to fetch me down a basket, and you shall have a good
handful of fish for your pains, for I have caught enough to
garrison the island for a week."
Guessing his mistake and enchanted at the success of her
masquerade, Nellie instantly darted into the kitchen, seized a
fishing-creel which was lying near the hearth, and rushed down to
the pier. Roger was still so busy disentangling the fish from the
net in which he had caught them, that he never even looked at
Nellie until he turned round to place them in her basket. Then
for the first time he saw who it was whom he had been so
unceremoniously ordering about upon his commission. Had Nellie
been rich and prosperous, he would probably have laughed and made
exceedingly light of the matter; but poor, and almost dependent
on his bounty as she was, he flushed scarlet to the forehead, and
apologized with an eager deference, which was not only very
touching in itself, but very characteristic of the sensitive and
generous-hearted race from which he sprung.
{327}
"But, after all," he added, in conclusion, smiling and laying his
finger lightly on the folds of Nellie's mantle, "after all, how
could I dream that, her weeks of weary wandering only just
concluded, Mistress Netterville would have been up again with the
sun, looking as fresh and bright as the morning dew, and
masquerading like a peasant girl?"
"But I am not masquerading at all," said Nellie, laughing, and
yet evidently quite in earnest. "I am as poor as a peasant girl,
and mean to dress like one, ay, and to work like one too, so long
as I needs must be dependent upon others."
"Not if I am still to be master here," said Roger, very
decidedly, taking the fishing-creel out of her hands. "Like a
wandering princess you have come to me; and like a wandering
princess I intend that you shall be treated, so long as you
condescend to honor me by your presence in this kingdom of barren
rocks."
"But the fish," said the laughing and blushing Nellie; "in the
meantime, what is to be done with the fish? Nora will be in pain
about it; for she told me last night that there wasn't a blessed
fish in the bay that would be worth a 'thraneen' if only
half-an-hour were suffered to elapse between their exit from the
ocean and their introduction to her kitchen."
"Nora is quite right," said Roger, responding freely to the young
girl's merry laugh; "and it has cost me both time and pains, I do
assure you, to impress that fact upon her mind. But Maida has
already told her all about it; and here she comes," he added, as
he caught a glimpse of the old woman descending leisurely toward
the pier. "So now we may leave the fish with a safe conscience to
her tender mercies, and, if you are inclined for a stroll, I will
take you up to yonder rocky platform, from whence you will see
the Atlantic, as unfortunately we but seldom see it on this wild
coast, in all the calm glories of a summer day."
To Be Continued.
--------
{328}
Mexico, By Baron Humboldt [Footnote 57]
[Footnote 57: _Essai politique sur le Royaume de
Nouvelle-Espagne_. 2 vols. fol. Chez F. Schoell. Paris.]
Some old books, like some old married couples, deserve a second
celebration. Fifty years are surely long enough to wait for a
rehearsal of nuptials; and a married pair who can for a
half-century live at peace with themselves and the public,
respected and esteemed, receive a merited recognition and a
pleasing recompense. Books that have circulated with an equal
longevity and enjoyed universal appreciation, have also their
rights for a share of the cakes and ale. If the old people have
only a new coat and a new gown, they look young again; if the old
favorite volumes are honored with a fresh binding, their
backbones seems strengthened. It is charming to witness an
ancient dame clinging to the side of her equally ancient husband
for time almost out of mind; and it has a home look to find two
venerable tomes, called Volume One and Volume Two, supporting and
comforting each other on the same shelf in the library. When one
of the aged who have trudged on through life together drops off,
how soon the second follows after; and when one book is lost or
destroyed, its companion pines away in dust, if not in ashes,
till, finally neglected, it mysteriously disappears.
But Baron Humboldt's two folios on New Spain or Mexico indicate
that time, as yet, has written no wrinkles on their brow. They
are good for another lease of life of equal length; their high
state of preservation has imparted a healthy appearance; and
perhaps grandchildren hereafter will be delighted to make their
acquaintance. On the present occasion, the compliments of the
season, and of the editor, must be extended to them. And in the
interchange of courtesies, let us hear what they have to say for
themselves. It is somewhat surprising in modern times that
Humboldt's folios on Mexico should have retained so long their
pre-eminence. The baron wrote upon subjects wherein our knowledge
is continually increasing, where important changes are daily made
by new discoveries, and where a constant demand is kept up for
new books. His great essay is devoted to branches of political
and social sciences, which in their nature are progressive
sciences,--geography, topography, economical and commercial
statistics. But in the case of the baron, an exception is found
in the general law in relation to the rise, reign, and fall of
standard authorities. His supremacy in the department of Mexico
was established in the first decade of the present age; it may
not be destroyed in the last. Yet one fact is truly remarkable:
his essay was published in 1811 in Paris, in the most imposing
and expensive form, in two volumes in folio; it had been
anxiously expected; it was instantly translated into all the
modern languages of Europe; it was received with eulogiums and
commendations; but no second edition was ever called for. This
singular fate of a performance so much extolled, and still
quoted, needs some explanation; and in giving this, the interest
manifested abroad in the situation of Mexico must also be
explained; for in truth, the popularity of the essay was, for the
most part, due to the importance of and attention bestowed upon
that rich province of the king of Spain on the western shores of
the Atlantic.
{329}
Mexico had been a resplendent gem in the Spanish crown from the
time of the conquest by Cortez in 1521; it had been the envy of
rival nations, and often the prize which they desired to win from
its rightful sovereign. England was eager to supply its market
with African slaves, in order to gain access to its ports, and
thereby stimulate the contraband trade. France was perpetually on
guard at the Bahamas to capture its bullion fleets, bearing their
precious cargoes from Vera Cruz to Cadiz. The Dutch defeated the
best of Spanish admirals, and carried off the richest spoils;
while all three, English, French, and Dutch cruisers, partly
privateers, partly public armed vessels with their piratical
captains and crews, in times of profound peace made private war
on every ship sailing under the flag of Castile. The capital of
that far-off country was described in the last century as one of
the wonders of the modern world. We read in _Spence's
Anecdotes_, that a travelled gentlemen who had seen several of
the most splendid courts abroad, stated in the presence of Mr.
Pope, the poet, that he had never been struck so much with
anything as by the magnificence of the City of Mexico, with its
seven hundred equipages and harness of solid silver, and ladies
walking on the paseo waited upon by their black slaves, to hold
up the trains, and shade with umbrellas their fair mistresses
from the sun. But this New Spain had nothing attractive beyond
its wealth; it had no arts, sciences, or history; no literature,
poetry, or romance. With the death of Hernando Cortez, these had
died out. No one desired more on these subjects. But everybody
wished to learn all that could be learned of its prolific
revenues, and of its enormous resources in the precious metals,
then supplying the commerce of all nations with coin. Nothing was
talked of, listened to, or considered, when discussing the
condition of that country, except its vast production of silver.
"Thank you," said Tom Hood, when dining with a London Amphictyon,
who was helping his plate too profusely, "thank you, alderman;
but if it is all the same to you, I will take the balance in
money." Interest in Mexico was taken in nothing else.
It must be remembered that credit in commerce is of recent
origin, and paper currency of still more recent creation. Both,
comparatively speaking, were in their infancy at the close of the
last century. Precious metals were then the sole, or at least the
great, medium of commercial exchanges; and consequently, silver
and gold performed a more important part in the markets than they
do now. They were more highly appreciated and sought after. Then
it was, that the Mexican mines yielded the far greater portion of
the total product; and, of course, the control of these mines was
supposed to afford the control of the commerce of the world.
Economists and statesmen, therefore, turned their gaze upon that
strange land beyond sea, as the only land in that direction
worthy of their notice. But the notice bestowed upon it was
absorbing. Napoleon, availing himself of the imbecility of the
king of Spain, and of the venality of the Prince of Peace,
endeavored to divert the Mexican revenues from the royal House of
Trado at Seville to the imperial treasury of France. Ouvrard,
also, the most daring speculator in the most gigantic schemes
under Napoleon, the contractor-general for the armies and navy of
the French empire, undertook, on his own responsibility, to enter
into a private partnership with the Spanish sovereign to
monopolize the trade of Mexico, and divide equally the profits.
{330}
Napoleon assented to this arrangement; English bankers took part
in the negotiation; and the British government under William Pitt
gave it their sanction and aid. Yet, strange to relate, all this
transpired while England was at war with France and Spain, and a
British fleet blockaded the harbor of Vera Cruz. These hostile
nations were drained of money, and wanted an immediate supply.
France had anticipated the public revenues to meet the imperial
necessity; the Bank of England had stopped specie payments;
Madrid was threatened with a famine from a series of failures in
the crops at home, and no funds were in the royal coffers to
purchase wheat abroad. Thus all were clamorous for coin, which
Mexico only could produce. It was known that fifty millions of
silver dollars were on deposit in the Consulado of Vera Cruz,
awaiting shipment to Spain; and it was well known, also, that, if
shipped, the greater portion of the amount would soon find its
way to Paris and London. In this state of affairs, the emergency
became so pressing upon the belligerents, that their war policy
was compelled to succumb; the blockade was raised and the bullion
exported. We shall not soon forget how a similar exigency in the
late war compelled the Lincoln administration to permit
provisions being furnished to the Confederates, in order to
procure cotton to strengthen our finances. Cotton was king of
commerce in 1864, Silver was king in 1804.
England, at the same time, was meditating seriously upon the
resources and riches of New Spain. Aware of the importance
attached by the British cabinet to the subject, Dumouriez, the
distinguished French republican exile, then in London, addressed
Mr. Windham, the Secretary of War and for the Colonies, a paper
advocating its conquest. The general called attention to the fact
that, once in English occupancy, "the commerce of the two seas
will be in your hands; the metallic riches of Spanish America
will pour into England; you will deprive Spain and Bonaparte of
them; and this monetary revolution will change the political face
of Europe." It seems Mr. Windham entertained the project, and
referred it to Sir Arthur Wellesley. In the sixth volume of the
_Wellington Supplementary Dispatches_, the proposition is
examined.
While such was the state of public opinion in Europe, finding
expression daily in high quarters, and of which the above are
only isolated examples, Humboldt undertook his scientific
expedition to Spanish America, and was preparing his great essay
on New Spain. He landed in Mexico in March, 1803, and remained in
the country for one year, engaged in the study of the physical
structure and political condition of the vast realm, and in the
investigation of the causes having the greatest influence on the
progress of its population and native industry. But no printed
work could be found to aid him in his researches with materials,
and therefore he resorted to manuscripts in great numbers,
already in general circulation. He had also free, uninterrupted
access to official records; records which for the first time were
permitted to be examined by a private gentleman. Finally, he
embodied his topographical, geographical, statistical, and other
collections, into a separate work on New Spain, "hoping they
would be received with interest at a time when the new continent,
more than ever, attracts the attention of Europeans."
{331}
The original sketch was drawn up in Spanish for circulation, and
from the comments thereon, he informs us, he "was enabled to make
many important corrections." The _Essay_ reviews the extent
and physical aspect of the country; the influence of the
inequalities of surface on the climate, on agriculture, commerce,
and defence of the coasts; the population, and its divisions into
castes; the census and area of the intendencias--calculated from
the maps drawn up by him from his astronomical observations; its
agriculture and mines, commerce and manufactures; the revenues
and military defences. But Humboldt very candidly confesses, as
incident to such an undertaking, that, "notwithstanding the
extreme care which I have bestowed in verifying results, no doubt
many serious errors have been committed." It can be readily
imagined what attention was given in Europe to the first rude
sketch of statistics published by him in 1804-5, The cupidity and
ambition of merchants, statesmen, and military men were aroused
by this first authentic revelation of Mexican revenues and
resources. All nations were anxious to learn more; all classes of
people listened in wonder to this true account respecting the
prodigious production of the precious metals. In this pleasing
excitement, Humboldt was preparing his complete _Essay_, to
satisfy the public desire. Having learned caution from the
inaccuracies pointed out in his first rough publication, he was
in no great haste to send forth the final result of his labors.
Thus, he waited for four or five years; and, unfortunately for
his own profit, he waited too long. The interest in Mexico had
gone by; the golden visions of its boundless opulence had
vanished; its fascinations, that had charmed for years, like some
castle raised by magic in a night, resplendent with gems of ruby,
amethyst, and jasper, had passed away; the spell of enchantment
was broken. For the rebellion burst out in 1810, and commerce,
revenues, industry, all perished in the general ruin it created.
It was now, in common estimation, one of the poorest colonies of
Spain; and what cared the public for more Spanish poverty beyond
the Atlantic, when too much of it already was visible in the
peninsula? The great _Essay_, therefore, when finally
published, was not purchased with impatient eagerness; it fell
flat on the market. For Mexico was now ruined, the public
thought; and so does the public continue to think, even unto the
present day. Thenceforth, Mexican antiquities only were
attractive. The _Edinburgh Review_, in 1811, writing on the
essay, commences: "Since the appearance of our former article on
this valuable and instructive work, a great and, for the present
at least, lamentable revolution has taken place in the countries
it describes. Colonies which were at that time the abode of peace
and industry have now become the seat of violence and desolation.
A civil war, attended with various success, but everywhere marked
with cruelty and desolation, has divided the colonists, and armed
them for their mutual destruction. Blood has been shed profusely
in the field and unmercifully on the scaffold. Flourishing
countries, that were advancing rapidly in wealth and
civilization, have suffered alike from the assertors of their
liberties and from the enemies of their independence." The
_Quarterly Review_ did not notice the _Essay_, making
no sign of its existence.
{332}
It is true, some learned gentlemen gave a look into the work, and
scientific men studied it well. But the learned and scientific
were only a small, select number in the general mass of readers;
and Humboldt had not designed his information for, and waited not
the approbation of, the select alone, but of all classes alike
that could read. Europe closed the map of Mexico when the
revolution broke forth, and shut out all further inquiry into its
political and industrial condition. Then it was that, instead of
a cordial greeting with open arms at every fire side, which
Humboldt reasonably anticipated for his production, the door was
almost rudely slammed in his face. He never forgot that treatment
of the book; he never wrote more upon Mexico; never furnished to
the learned or unlearned a new edition, with emendations and
corrections, notes and new maps. As it went from the hands of the
author then, we receive it now.
At the moment, however, when Europe closed the map, America for
the first time seriously opened it; and just in proportion with
receding time, as Mexico has faded into insignificance from
European view, in the same proportion with advancing time has
Mexico loomed up into importance with us. They refused to
Humboldt then the high consideration his _Essay_ merited; we
bestow upon him now more respect and veneration than his
_Essay_ deserves. To the European mind, Humboldt's New Spain
was Mexico no more; to the American, Mexico is the same New
Spain--changed, to be sure, but still the land for enterprise and
riches. It was not altogether unknown to us before our
revolution. It had a consideration while the States were English
colonies; for Northern merchants sometimes smuggled into its
ports, and sometimes, too, our fillibusters buccaneered on its
coasts, like other loyal English subjects sailing under "the
brave old English flag." When our revolution came, aid was
invoked from Spain as well as from France; for the Spanish
sovereign had a personal insult to avenge on the British, and
Spanish supremacy on the seas to maintain. But Spain, though
willing, had, first of all, to concentrate her fleets. One armada
was contending with the Portuguese in South America; another was
acting as convoy for the galleons, with cargoes of silver,
proceeding from Mexico to Spain. Treaties with Portugal were
hastily patched up, and "the ordinanza of free trade" liberated
the convoy from protecting the ships laden with the silver. The
policy of that ordinance Humboldt, and many respectable Mexican
writers after him, have much misunderstood; and they are greatly
mistaken in their estimate of its beneficial effects on mining
prosperity. After the United States became an independent nation,
Spain, in order to be rid of the Louisiana incumbrance, which was
dependent upon the revenues of Mexico for support, transferred
that territory to France; and Napoleon, in turn, sold it to the
American government. But did its boundaries extend to the Sabine
or the Rio Grande, on the south? And did they extend to the
Russian Pacific possessions on the north? These were uncertain
questions, and hence from this purchase originated those many
diplomatic complications, and no less numerous domestic
controversies, which have been the fruitful source of change in
cabinets and of defeats of national parties, with the downfall of
not a few distinguished men. Hence, also, the first settlements
in Texas; next the American colonists, and the question of
annexation; the war with Mexico; the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,
and the acquisition of California. Before these measures were
decided, however, Colonel Burr had already, with his band of
adventurers, undertaken that mysterious enterprise in the same
direction, whose object seems to have been as vague as the
boundaries to be invaded were uncertain.
{333}
Ouvrard, also, had solicited and effected the co-operation of
leading merchants in Northern cities, in his joint speculation
with the king of Spain, for the vast Mexican commercial scheme.
And herein was given the great impulse to amassing those large
private fortunes, by Mr. Gray of Boston, Mr. Oliver of Baltimore,
Mr. Girard of Philadelphia, and the Parish family. Subsequently
came the Mexican revolution, protracted for twelve years, during
which period the commerce of that country, previously a Spanish
monopoly, was completely under the control of Americans. At the
close of the Napoleon wars Spain desired the monopoly restored,
in order to transfer it to France. This movement called forth, in
favor of free commerce, the celebrated message announcing the
Monroe doctrine. The message gave umbrage to Russia in reference
to her American possessions, and fixed their ultimate destiny. It
also forced England to disclose her claim for the first time, and
to exhibit her title to the Vancouver country south of the
Russian--a title until then unheard of and unknown to American
statesmen. The Missouri Compromise grew out of the acquisition of
Louisiana, and its repeal grew out of the acquisition of
California. As a supplement to the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,
was concluded the treaty for the Messilla Valley, which
negotiation sprung from a mistake in Humboldt's maps, faithfully
copied by Disturnell, in giving a wrong location, in longitude
and latitude, to El Paso on the Rio Grande. The invasion of
Mexico by France in 1862, nearly kindled a desolating war between
the United States and the French empire. Unforeseen obstacles,
however, induced Louis Napoleon to pause in the conquest; for he
had, in its inception, been deceived respecting the condition of
Mexico and the Mexican people, and misled as to the easy
development by France of the abundant resources of the country.
The moral support, moreover, extended to the liberal party by the
American government compelled the French to abandon an expedition
which was properly appreciated in all its imposing magnitude by
the emperor, but which so many to this day do not comprehend.
No one can fail to be astonished in contemplating the large space
occupied by Mexico in American affairs; the immense acquisition
of territory made from within her ancient landmarks; the princely
private fortunes accumulated from her commerce; the vast
treasures discovered in her former mines; the rich agricultural
crops gathered from her Louisiana valley, her Texas loamy soil,
and her California plains; while, upon the margin of the
Mississippi river, a city, created by Mexican aid and
contributions, has grown into an opulent mart of commerce,
surpassing all other American cities in the value of its exports,
in the happy era of our greatest prosperity. Nor can that
prosperity ever return until New Orleans once more becomes the
leading emporium for the outlet of the great staples of this
republic. It is no less surprising to recall the fate of so many
statesmen, and others of mark, who have risen to distinction, or
who have been forced to retire, from questions growing out of
their policy toward Mexico.
{334}
It is no longer disputed that the first fatal error of the first
Napoleon was his invasion of Spain, thereby to control the
Mexican revenues; perhaps it will soon be conceded that the first
fatal error of Louis Napoleon was, in too closely following in
the footsteps, in the same direction, of his illustrious uncle.
Colonel Burr, the Vice-President of the United States, from his
ill-starred adventure, fell into disgrace and sunk into an
infamous notoriety. General Wilkinson, once upon the military
staff of Washington, was both the accomplice and ruin of Burr,
and died in obscurity in a voluntary exile. The Missouri
Compromise destroyed the aspirations of many Northern statesmen
who opposed its adoption, and shattered the popularity of others
who afterward advocated its repeal. The question of annexing
Texas was the fatal rock upon which were wrecked the hopes of
President Van Buren for renomination; it defeated Mr. Clay; it
elected Mr. Polk. In succession to the presidency, were elected
General Taylor and General Pierce, from their distinguished
positions in the war with Mexico. To the like cause, Colonel
Frémont was indebted for his popular nomination, nearly crowned
with success. Winfield Scott was made a Brevet Lieutenant-General
for his meritorious services in the Mexican campaign, and many of
the greatest generals in the recent strife, both Federal and
Confederate, received their first practical lessons in the art of
war on the same distant field. To all of these historical
celebrities, the crude statistics or the elaborate _Essay_
of Humboldt were well known; for Humboldt's publications were the
only source of authentic information on Mexico of much value.
Other foreign authors, who followed after, copied extensively
from him, and native writers have not failed to quote from the
same source. But although foreign authors have drawn more from
the _Essay_, they have been less circumspect in verifying
the accuracy of its statements; while the Mexican writers,
availing themselves sparingly of extracts, sometimes, at least,
favor the public with interesting corrections. Travellers too
often have given us too much of Humboldt. Indeed, it may be said,
they have fed upon him; they have imbibed him with their pulque,
and taken him solid with their toasted tortilla. His _Essay_
has been pulled apart leaf by leaf, to be reprinted page after
page in their, for the most part, ephemeral productions. Humboldt
in pieces has been dished up to suit all customers. An oyster
could not be served in more varieties of style. Even foreign
embassies have supplied some of these literary cooks. None of
them seemed to know that man, even in Mexico, must have more than
Humboldt. In a fervid imagination, they thought he could be
improved upon, by reducing the _Essay_ to sublimated
extracts. But Doctor Samuel Johnson hinted, long ago, that
extracts from a work are as silly specimens of its author as was
that by the foolish old Greek, who exhibited a brick from his
house as a specimen of its architecture. Mr. Prescott, on the
contrary, in his celebrated history of the Conquest, with his
usual discriminating judgment, has properly availed himself of
the _Essa_y to afford his readers a vivid and veracious
picture of the natural configuration of the country. And to
understand the country properly, this is the primary lesson to be
attentively studied. But it is much to be regretted that Mr.
Duport, in his standard French work on the production of its
precious metals, was misled by errors existing in the maps
accompanying the _Essay_. In consequence, he has made
serious mistakes in describing its geological structure, in the
run and inclinations of the strata in the silver rock, in the
silver-bearing region.
{335}
Whoever desires to comprehend the political condition and the
industrial or commercial resources of Mexico, ought to commence
as Humboldt commenced. It is only through a strict investigation
of its material interests that Mexico can be understood. To begin
with an examination of its political history is to begin where
the labor should end. Mexico, for three hundred years, was a
colony, and, like other colonies, had no history, no policy of
its own; no armies, no navies, no wars; nothing of statesmanship
peculiar to itself; for all were absorbed in the history of the
mother country. When emerging from a colonial chrysalis, it did
not become a nation; it may be somewhat doubted if it has even
yet reached that position. As a republic, its federal government
has been without a policy, its administrations without stability,
its finances without an exchequer; its armies unable to conquer
abroad, or contend with foreign invaders at home; it has no navy;
it is almost destitute of all the essential elements that
constitute a people. True, Mexico has had great vicissitudes of
fortune, with changes, frequent changes, and for the most part
violent overthrows, of the federal rulers. But these convulsions
have produced no serious results. The storms passed over without
indications of wide-spread disaster. Sunshine came again without
any visible improvement; no signs of increasing intelligence, no
symptoms of decay to the superficial observer; for these petty
conflicts originated in personal motives, and so ended. Having no
political object, they are devoid of grave consideration, of any
interest or profit. Their civil wars have been of regular
periodical return, but these wars are of no more historical
significance than the wars of the Saxon Heptarchy. Mexico, for
many reasons, must still be contemplated, while a sovereign
nation, as she was viewed when a viceroyalty of Spain. The
country now appears in Christendom as an enigma full of strange
anomalies. In the erroneous estimation of most men, it is
hastening on to ruin and decay: calamities that came upon the
people in their revolt from Spain, and which will cling to them
until their race is extinct. The royal finger of scorn, too, is
pointed at the republic, as a reproach and warning to all
republican governments of their ultimate failure. It would be
vain to waste time on its political records, to elucidate Mexican
questions. These annals are dumb. But to the mountains, the
mines, the mills, where the rich minerals are produced and
industry is developed, the inquirer must go to find out what
Mexico really is. In observing the people in their private
pursuits, he will imperceptibly be led to comprehend their
political institutions. In daily contact with the distinct
classes, divided into castes, he will in like manner be soon
conversant with the most noted men. Enigmas will vanish upon
nearer approach and on closer inspection; anomalies will no
longer embarrass. Perhaps previously formed opinions may be
shocked, rudely assailed, and demolished. He may see many
lingering remnants of Astec superstition in one caste, where they
often disobey the priest; and much affectation of infidelity in
another, where they kneel as suppliants at the confessional to
crave a blessing. He will perceive marks of seeming decay
everywhere, amid indications of progress. The federal government
will be pronounced not only bad, but bad as government in a
republic can be; yet will he find some consolation in knowing
that the viceregal government was far worse. In the dregs of a
popular polity, some protection for the people will be manifest,
which was denied under a king.
{336}
He will hear Spain, on all sides, spoken of with reverence and
respect; he will soon understand, on all sides, that Spaniards
are detested. He will be gratified with the cordial welcome
bestowed upon Americans; and wonder at the common hatred, in all
classes, to the United States. While he is aware that millions
upon hundreds of millions of dollars, from outlying provinces
torn from the nation, have been yielded to their neighbor on the
north, he will also discover that the heart of the Mexican
territory has not been reached. Nor need he be surprised when the
truth is revealed, that the Liberal executive will sooner forget
the hostile invasion by France, than forgive the moral support
extended to the native cause by that American neighbor.
On the whole, he may conclude that the Mexicans, after all, are
somewhat rational and sensible, not entirely deficient in
refinement and intelligence, or in energy and industry. But these
opinions can only be formed by pursuing the method of Humboldt,
and bearing his elaborate production in mind. By constant
comparison of his statements with more recent publications from
the Mexican press on the same subjects, not only greater accuracy
in details will be reached, along with later information, but the
advancement in knowledge and wealth will be made apparent. It is
thus a just estimate of Mexico at present with Mexico of the past
can be formed; and while many imperfections in the parts of the
_Essay_ will be detected, no one can fail to admire and
appreciate its general excellence.
--------
One Fold.
"And there shall be one fold."
Disciple.
"One Fold! Good Lord, how poor thou art,
To have but one for all!
Methinks the rich with shame will smart
To stand in common stall
With ragged boors and work-grimed men;
And ladies fair, with those who when
They pray have dirty, hands.
Dost think the wise can be devout
When, close beside, an ignorant lout
With mouth wide-gaping stands?
{337}
I would thou wert a richer Lord,
And could an hundred folds afford
Where each might find his place.
Look round, good Lord, and thou wilt see
Most men the same have thought with me,
And herd with whom they best agree
In fashion, creed, and race."
Master.
"Good child, thou hast a merry thought!
But folds like mine cannot be bought,
Nor made at fancy's will.
If any find my fold too small
'Tis they who like no fold at all,
The same who heed no shepherd's call,
Whom wolves will find and kill.
_My_ fold alone is close and warm,
Shielding its inmates from all harm--
Its pastures rich and sweet.
Hither, with gentle hand, I bring
The peasant and the crownèd king
Together at my feet.
Here no man flings a look of scorn
At him who may be baser born,
For all as brothers meet.
The wise speak kindly to the rude;
The lord would not his slave exclude;
Proud dames their servants greet.
My fold doth equally embrace
The men of every clime and race,
And here in peace they rest.
Here each forgets his rank and state.
And only he is high and great
Who loveth me the best.
The rich, the poor, the bond, the free,
The men of high and low degree,
My fold unites in one with me--
With me, the Shepherd, called The Good,
Who rules a loving brotherhood.
Therefore, in that my fold is one,
Believe me, it is wisely done."
------
{338}
Translated From The French Of M. Vitet.
Science And Faith.
Meditations On The Essence Of The Christian Religion,
By M. Guizot.
Some time ago political life seemed to be the prominent
occupation in France. M. Guizot was then cautiously defending his
opinions, and was really wearing out his energy and his life in
this work. At that time, we have heard it wished more than once,
not that the struggle should cease, but that death might not
surprise him with his mind occupied solely with these passing
events. He needed, as a last favor and at the end of an ambitious
career, some years of quiet and retreat to meditate upon the
future, and to revive the faith of youth by the lessons of riper
years. He required this for himself, for the interest of his
soul. Nothing then foretold that he would soon be engaged in the
arena of metaphysical and religious controversy. The disputes
about these questions seemed almost lulled to sleep. Not that
doubt and incredulity had surrendered their arms; they followed
their accustomed work, but without noise, without parade, and
without apparent success. This was a truce which had allowed
Christian convictions to become reanimated, to increase, and to
gain ground. The proof of this was seen in those gloomy days,
when the waves of popular opinion, which threatened to destroy,
bent, completely subdued and submissive and with an unlooked-for
respect, before sacred truths and the ministers of religion. This
was the natural result of that bitter struggle which had lasted
for fifteen years. The aggressors could not undertake two sieges
at one time, and so political power became the target against
which all their efforts were directed.
It is not the same now. Power is protected by an armor which has
disheartened its adversaries; and the more surely it is guarded,
the more exposed and compromised are other questions, which equal
or even exceed it in importance. The spirit of audacity and
aggression compensates itself for the forced forbearance from
politics, imposed upon it by the political power. It sees that in
religious matters the ground is not so well protected; it feels
more at ease there and not nearly so hard pushed. From this fact
there arises a series of bold attacks of a new order, which
scandalize the believing, and astonish the most indifferent, when
they think for a moment of the preceding calm. It is no longer
men or ministers, it is not a form of government, it is God
himself whom they attack? We do not ask that the government
should place the least restriction on the rights of free thought,
even should it be to the advantage of the truths that we venerate
the most. We desire to state the fact, and nothing more. It may
be that these attacks are not important enough to cause as much
anxiety as they have done.
{339}
They are passionate, numerous, and skilfully arranged; but they
cannot shake the edifice, and will serve rather to strengthen it,
by summoning to its aid defenders who are more enlightened, and
protectors who are more vigilant. Still, they are a great source
of trouble. The restlessness, the distress, and the vague fears
that the agitation of political affairs seemed alone capable of
producing, now arise in the heart of the domestic circle and in
the depths of the individual soul from these new discussions. It
is not personal interests that are now risked, but souls that are
in danger; and if the crisis is apparently less violent and
intense, it is really graver and more menacing, and no one can
remain neutral in the struggle.
And so M. Guizot wishes to take a part, and has entered the fray.
He is of the number who, at certain times and upon certain
subjects, do not know how to be silent. In politics he held back
and he forbore. He saw the events, but he did not say what he
thought of them. His debt in politics is now amply paid; all the
more since he owed it to himself, as well as to his cause, to
reestablish the real sense, the true physiognomy of the things he
did. He had to explain clearly his views, his intentions, his
acts; to interpret them and to comment upon them, we can almost
say, to finish them during his own life; to give the true key to
his future historians; in a word, to write his own
_memoirs_. This was his duty, and he has acted rightly in
not delaying it. It was not less for other ends, and in the
design of a greater work, that he wished for twenty years'
solitude and repose at the end of his life. His desire was heard.
The days of calm and retreat have come, not, perhaps, at the time
that he desired, and still less under conditions that he would
have chosen, but for his glory they are such that he can well
think them fruitful, worthy, valuable, full of vigor and of
ardor. Happy autumn! when the recollections of the world and the
echoes of political strife are only the recreation of a soul
incessantly engaged with more serious problems. It is in these
heights, in these serene regions, while he is questioning himself
on his destiny and on his faith, that war has come to seek him;
not the personal war of former times, but another kind of war,
less direct and more general, yet perhaps more provoking. He is
not the man to refuse the contest. Under the weight of years that
he bears so well, stronger, more resolute, younger than ever, he
has entered the arena; he will be militant until the end.
What will he do? What is his plan? What position will he take?
The volume which is before us is an answer to these questions. It
is only a first volume; but it is complete in itself, it is a
work that one cannot study too closely, nor diffuse too widely.
The developments, the additions, and the supplements which the
three remaining volumes will soon add to the work, will, without
doubt, make it still more comprehensive and solid; but as it is
now, we consider it, without any commentary whatsoever, to be a
most effective reply to the attacks which have recently been
levelled against Christian doctrines, or, to speak more
correctly, against the essence of all religion.
Before entering into the work, let us say something of the manner
in which it is written. We are not going to speak of the author's
style. We would announce nothing new to the world by saying that
M. Guizot, when he has time and really tries, can write as well
as he speaks.
{340}
His pen for many years has followed a law of progress and of
increasing excellence. He has shown in these _Meditations_ a
new skill, perhaps higher than in his _Memoirs_ even, in the
art of clothing his ideas in excellent language; learnedly put
together, yet without effort or stiffness, true in its coloring,
sober in its effects, always clear and never trivial, always firm
and often forcible. Something more novel and more characteristic
appears in this book. It is in reality a controversial work, but
a controversy which is absolutely new. It is more than courteous,
it is an _impersonal_ polemic. The author has, certainly,
always shown himself respectful to his opponents; he has ever
admitted that they could hold different opinions from his in good
faith; and even at the rostrum, in the heat of contests, his
adversaries were not persons, they were ideas; but the people he
disputed with were always, without scruple, called by their
names. Here it is different; there is not a single proper name,
the war is anonymous. In changing the atmosphere--in passing, if
we can be allowed the expression, from earth to heaven, or, at
least, from the bar to the pulpit, from politics to the gospel,
he changes his method and takes a long step in advance. He
endeavors to leave persons entirely out of consideration, for
they only embarrass and embitter the questions. He forgets, or at
least he does not tell us, who his adversaries are; he refutes
them, but he does not name them.
Is not this discretion at once, good manners and good taste? It
is also something more. Without doubt, by speaking only of ideas
and not of those who maintain them, one loses a great means of
effective action. In abstract matters, proper names referred to
here and there are a very powerful resource--they arouse and
excite attention, they give interest and life to the argument;
but what is gained on one hand is frequently lost on another. The
use of proper names, though it may have nothing to provoke
irritation, still always incurs the danger of causing the debate
to degenerate into a personal dispute. The questions are reduced
to the capacity of those who sustain them. Better take a plainer
and more decided path, and keep persons completely out of view.
M. Guizot has done well. In no part of his book is there reason
to regret the vivacity and attraction of a more direct polemic;
whilst the urbanity and the omission of names, without really
changing or diminishing the questions, spread a calm gravity
throughout the work, almost a perfume of tolerance, which gains
the reader's confidence and disposes him to allow himself to be
convinced. It is true that this kind of polemics can only be
maintained when greatness of thought compensates for the lack of
passion. It is necessary to take wing, mount above questions,
conquer all and enlighten all. Such is the character of these
_Meditations_. The comprehensiveness of his views, the
greatness of his plan, and the clearness of his style, alike
impress upon it the seal of true originality.
It is not a theology that M. Guizot has undertaken; he has not
written for doctors; he discusses neither texts nor points of
doctrine; he does not attempt to solve scholastic difficulties;
still less does he wish to mingle in the discussion of incidental
events, to descend to the questions of to-day, and to follow,
step by step, the crisis which agitates the Christian world at
this time. He has grappled with more weighty and more permanent
questions.
{341}
He wishes to show clearly the truth of Christianity in its
essence, in its fundamental dogmas, or rather in its simplicity
and innate greatness, without commentary, interpretation, or
human work of any kind, and consequently before all disunion,
schism, or heresy. He has tried to expose the pure idea of
Christianity, so that he can be more able to demonstrate its
divine character.
Such is his intention. What has he done to attain it? The book
itself must answer this question. But in these few pages how can
we speak of it? How can we analyze a work when one is tempted to
quote every paragraph? And on the other hand to give many
extracts from a book, is only to mutilate it and give an
incorrect idea of its real value. Let us only try, then, to say
enough to inspire our readers with the more profitable desire of
studying M. Guizot himself.
I.
The beginning and the foundation of these _Meditations_ is a
well-known truth, which the author establishes with absolute
certainty, and which at this time it is useful to keep in mind.
This truth is, that the human race, since its first existence and
in every place where it has existed, has been engaged in trying
to solve certain questions which are, so to speak, personal to
it. These are questions, of destiny, of life rather than science,
questions it has invincibly tried to determine. For example, Why
is man in this world, and why the world itself? Why does it
exist? Whence do they come, and where do they both tend? Who has
made them? Have they an intelligent and free Creator? or are they
merely a product of blind elements? If they are created, if we
have a Father, why, in giving us life, has he made it so bitter
and painful? Why is there sin? Why suffering and death? Is not
the hope of a better life only the illusion of the unhappy; and
prayer, that cry of the soul in anguish, is it only a sterile
noise, a word thrown to the mocking wind?
These questions, together with others which develop and complete
them, have excited the deepest interest of the human race since
it first existed upon the earth, and it alone is interested in
them. They speak only to it; among all living creatures, it alone
can comprehend and is affected by them. This painful yet grand
privilege is the indisputable evidence of its terrestrial
royalty; it is at once its glory and its torment.
This series of questions, or rather mysteries, M. Guizot places
at the beginning of his _Meditations_, under the title of
_Natural Problems_. Man, indeed, possesses them by his very
nature; he does not create or invent them, he merely submits to
them. We do not mean by this that for humanity in general these
problems are not obscure and confused, without a distinct form or
outline, surrounded with uncertainties and frequently rather seen
than clearly apprehended. This must be true of the great mass of
mankind, who live from hand to mouth, who go and come and work,
absorbed in petty pleasures or occupied with dreary toil. Still
we think that there is not a single one, even among these
apparently dull and heedless men, in whatever way he may have
lived and whatever hardships he has had to sustain, who has not
at least once in his life caught a glimpse of these formidable
questions and felt an ardent wish to see them solved. Make as
many distinctions as you please between races, sexes, ages, and
degrees of civilization; divide the globe and its inhabitants by
zones or climates; you will no doubt discover more than one
difference in the way in which these problems are presented to
the soul; you will find them more or less prominent, and more or
less attention paid to them; but you will find a trace of them
everywhere and among all people. It is a law of instinct, a
general law for all times and places.
{342}
If such is our lot, if these questions necessarily weigh upon
minds, these questions which are "the burden of the soul," as M.
Guizot calls them, are we not really compelled to try to solve
them? It is on our part neither vain curiosity, nor capricious
desire, nor frivolous habit which leads us to attempt it. It is a
necessity, quite as serious and as natural to us as the problems
are themselves; a need we feel in some way to have lifted from us
the weight which oppresses. We must have a reply at any cost; who
can give it to us?
Faith or Reason? Religion or Philosophy? At every moment we see
in what a very limited manner reason, science, and all purely
human resources suffice to satisfy us. It can be said that, from
the very infancy of human society up to the present day, it has
been from the various religions, thought to be divine and
accepted as such by faith, that humanity has asked these
indispensable responses.
We readily see from this, what a deep interest is attached to
these natural problems. Who will presume to tell us that religion
proceeds from an artificial and temporary want, which men have
gradually overcome, if the problems to which it answers are
inherent in the race and can only perish with it? It is the
constant work and watchword of every materialistic and
pantheistic system to distort the character of these problems and
make them simply accidental and individual, the result of
temperament or of circumstances. Farther than this, they had not
yet gone. They did not dare to deny, in the face of universal
testimony, the continued existence of the problems themselves.
They disguised their significance, they did not aspire to destroy
them. Now they take another step. In order to get the advantage
in answering, they begin by suppressing the questions. This is
the characteristic feature, the first step of a system which
makes a great deal of noise in the world to-day, although it only
claims to reproduce efforts which have been already more than
once defeated. It has, however, this kind of novelty, this
advantage over its associates which, like it, have issued from
pantheism, that it is not vague. It sets forth its opinions
clearly and without equivocation, and by this fact this school of
philosophy has gained the title by which it is commonly known. We
need hardly say that it is to _Positivism_ that we are
alluding. This promises with the greatest seriousness, if we will
only lend it our attention, to free humanity from these untoward
problems which now torment it.
Its remedy is extremely simple: it simply says to the human race,
Why do you seek to know whence you have come and what is your
destiny? You will never find out a word of this. Do then your
real duty. Leave these vain fancies. Live, become learned, study
the _evolution_ of things, that is to say, secondary causes
and their relations; on this subject science has wonders to
reveal to you; but final causes and first causes, our origin and
our destiny, the beginning and the end of the world, these are
all pure reveries, words completely without meaning! The
perfection of man as well as of society consists in taking no
notice of these things. The mind becomes more enlightened, the
more it leaves in obscurity your pretended natural problems.
{343}
These problems are really a disease, and the way to cure it is,
not to think of them at all.
Not to think of them! Ingenuous proposition! Wonderful ignorance
of the eternal laws of human nature! "Our age," say they,
"inclines to these ideas: but let us not be disturbed by this."
Men will not be persuaded by speaking to them in such a clear
way, any more than Don Juan could overcome Sganarelle by his
discourses on "two and two are four." Positivism not only
attempts the impossible, but it frankly acknowledges it. Let us
suppose for a moment that by some miracle it should triumph; that
man, in order to please this system, should cease to pay any
attention to the problems which beset him, should renounce the
idea of fathoming these questions, and should despise every
attempt at a religious or even a metaphysical solution, every
inspiration toward the Infinite. How long does any one believe
this would continue? We do not think that the human mind would
consent to be thus mutilated and imprisoned for two days in
succession. Were this system far more fascinating, the human soul
would still rise above the limit to which Positivism would
confine it, and would say with a great poet:
"Je ne puis, l'infini malgré moi me tourmente."
And so we see, whatever may happen, Positivism is not destined to
give us the solution of these natural problems. After, as before,
its appearance, the mystery of our destiny claims the attention
of the human race.
M. Guizot describes another attempt, of an entirely different
character. It is apparently less bold, for its aim is not to
suppress inquiry, but merely to elude any definite solution of
these natural problems. It cannot be properly called a system; it
is rather a state of the individual soul, which not unfrequently
is found among cultivated minds; it is a tendency to substitute
what is called religious sentiment for religion itself. They do
not deny the great mysteries of life, but consider them as being
very serious and extremely embarrassing. But in the place of
precise solutions and categorical replies, which could be
required of a system maintaining fixed and clearly defined
dogmas, they content themselves with frequent reveries and long
contemplations. "This is," say they, "the religion of enlightened
intellects; we care for no solutions, for they only serve to
agitate and annoy." It offers a complete contrast to Positivism.
That recommends us, as a sort of moral hygiene, never to think of
invisible things; but these "enlightened minds" would have us
reflect much, if not continually, upon them, but always with the
proviso that we must come to no conclusion.
The human race will not be satisfied with these modes of
interpreting its destiny. It requires something more than the
blind negations of the one, or the vague aspirations of the
other. Man is not merely an intellectual or an emotional being;
he is both united. He requires real answers, and not beautiful
dreams; he requires true replies, which satisfy his intellect as
well as his heart, which point out the way he must take, which
sustain his courage, which animate his hope and excite his love.
The ideal that he seeks is a system of facts, of precepts, and of
dogmas, which will correspond to the wants that he finds within
himself. Let us search for it, for it is the great question for
us all. As we have already said, there are two sources from which
we may hope to learn the truth, one entirely human, the other
half divine. Does the first suffice? Let us see.
{344}
II.
If science can reply to the appeals of our souls, if by its own
power and light it can reveal to us the end of this life, can
make us see clearly the beginning and the end, so much the
better; we will cling to science without asking for anything
more. We have this exact and sure guide completely within our
control; why should we seek adventitious aid and inexplicable
revelations? It is true that everybody cannot be learned, but
everybody believes in science. However scanty her proof may be,
the most rebellious yield as soon as she has pronounced her
decision. There is no schism or heresy with her. If sometimes the
_savans_ quarrel, which they can do perhaps even better than
other men, they are not long in finding a peacemaker: they take a
retort, a microscope, or a pair of scales; they weigh, compare,
measure, and analyze, and the process is terminated: until new
facts are ascertained, the decree is sovereign. What an admirable
perspective opens before humanity if these hidden questions,
which now puzzle and confuse, will in the future be cleared up
and accurately determined by the aid of science. Time and the law
of progress give us an easy way of putting an end to our
perplexities. The fruit of divine knowledge, the old forbidden
fruit, we can now pluck without fear, and we can satiate
ourselves without danger of a fall!
Unfortunately, all this is only a dream. In the first place, the
authority of science is not always admitted. It has more or less
weight, according to the subject it may treat. In the
investigations of natural things, in physics, and in mathematics,
its decisions are law. But when it leaves the visible world, when
it turns to the soul, interminable controversies arise. Its right
to be called science is then disputed; for it appears to be only
conjectural, and half the time its principal efforts consist in
trying to demonstrate that it has the right to be believed. This
is exactly the kind of science with which we have to do. The
questions which disturb man are not the problems of algebra or
chemistry; they are the secrets of the invisible world. We cannot
expect unanswerable solutions of these doubts, for science, in
the field of metaphysics, has none such to give us.
Can science gratify its fancy in these investigations with
perfect liberty and without limit? No, an impassable barrier
opposes and imprisons it in the invisible universe, as well as in
the breast of physical and material nature. All science, whatever
it may be, has its determined limit in the extent of finite
things. Within this limit, everything is in its power; beyond it,
everything escapes it. Could it possibly be otherwise? It is the
product of our mind, which is finite; how then could human
science be anything but the explication of the finite? Induction,
it is true, transports us to the extreme frontier of this
material world, to the door of the infinite, and the results of
induction are with reason called scientific; yet what does this
wonderful faculty, this great light of science, really do?
Nothing else than to put us face to face with the unknown
mysteries which are completely closed to us. It shows them in
perspective, it makes us see enough to persuade us that they
really do exist, but not enough to make known any truth
precisely, exactly, practically, or experimentally--in a word,
scientifically. The invisible finite, that is to say; the human
soul, the dwelling of the human _Ego_, science is capable of
explaining; the invisible infinite, the supreme, creative spirit,
escapes it completely.
{345}
But this is exactly what must be penetrated and thoroughly known,
if we expect to resolve the great problems which concern our
destiny in a scientific manner. It is then impossible, it is more
than an illusion--it is folly to hope for a solution of these
questions from human science.
Is this equivalent to saying that philosophy is powerless to
speak to us about natural problems? that it has nothing to say to
us about our duties, our hopes, our destiny? No, certainly not.
It is qualified, it has the right to treat of these questions; to
_treat_ concerning them, not to resolve them. The most
daring effort of spiritual philosophy can never span the abyss;
it can only make the borders more distinct. Noble task, after
all! A sound philosophy, which abstains from useless hypotheses,
which gives us that which it can give, namely, the clear proof
that an invisible order does exist, that realities are behind
these mysterious problems, that they justly disturb us, that we
are right in wishing to solve them; all this, certainly, is not
worthless knowledge nor a trifling success for the human race. As
soon as this philosophy flourishes in a place, if it be only
among a small number of generous spirits, the perfume is spread
abroad, and, little by little, one after another, the whole
people feel its influence, and society is reanimated, elevated,
and purified. And religion, we do not fear to say it frankly, is
badly advised and wants prudence, no less than justice, when, in
the place of accepting the aid of this system and welcoming it as
a natural auxiliary, seeing in it a kind of vanguard, which is to
prepare minds and overcome prejudices, she keeps it at a distance
almost with jealousy, combats it, provokes it, places it between
two fires, and loads it with the same blame and bitter reproaches
as the blindest errors and the most perverse doctrines receive.
If these unfortunate attacks had not been made, perhaps we should
not see certain reprisals, an excess of confidence, and a
forgetfulness of its proper limits that its friends do not now
always avoid; for if it is true that we should be just toward it,
it is no less true that it should be held in check. M. Guizot, as
a real friend, has frankly rendered it this service. Perhaps no
one before him has traced with so sure a hand the limits of
philosophical science. He claims for it the sincerest respect,
and ably sustains its legitimate authority, but clearly points
out the limit that must not be passed.
More than one, its adherents will complain: "You discourage us.
If you wish us to maintain the invisible truths against so many
adversaries, do not deprive us of our weapons; do not tell us in
advance how far we may go; let us trust that some day this gate
of the infinite, at which we have struggled for so many
centuries, will at last be opened."
We could answer: "If you had only made some progress during these
centuries, we could hope for more in the future. We would not
have the right to say, 'So far shall you go, but no farther.' But
where are the advances of metaphysics? Who has seen them?
Possibly there has been a progress in appearance, that there is
now more clearness and more method. In this sense, the great
minds of modern times have added something to the legacy of the
philosophers of ancient history; but the inheritance has ever
remained the same. Who will presume to boast that he knows more
of the infinite than did Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato? The
natural sciences seem destined to increase.
{346}
Feeble at first, they gradually go from victory to victory, until
they have created an empire, which is constantly increasing and
always more indisputable. Metaphysical science, on the contrary,
is great at its birth, but soon becomes stationary; it is
evidently unable ever to reach the end it is ever seeking. If
anything is needed to prove this immobility of metaphysics, it
will be done by referring to the constant reappearance of four or
five great systems, which in a measure contain all the thousand
systems that the human mind has ever, or will ever invent. From
the very beginning of philosophy, you see them; at every great
epoch, they are born again; always the same under apparent
diversities, always incomplete and partial, half true and half
false. What do these repeated returns to the same attempts,
ending in the same result, teach us, unless the eternal inability
to make a single advance? Evidently man has received from above,
once for all and from the earliest times, the little that he
knows of metaphysics; and human work, human science, can add
nothing to it."
If, then, you rely on science to pierce the mystery of these
natural problems, your hope is in vain. You see what they can
attain--nothing but vague notions, fortified, it is true, by the
firm conviction that these problems are not illusory, that they
rest upon a solid foundation, on serious realities.
Is this enough? Does this kind of satisfaction suffice for your
soul? What does it signify if a few minds, moulded by philosophy,
comprehending everything in a superficial manner, remain in these
preliminaries, contented with this half-light, and need no other
help to go through life, even in times of the most severe trial?
We are willing to grant what they affirm of themselves, but what
can be concluded from this? How many minds of this character can
be found? It is the rarest exception. The immense majority of
men, the human race, could not live under such a system; it is
too great a stranger to the philosophical spirit; it has too
limited a perception of the invisible. All abstraction is Hebrew
for it. And even supposing that the vague responses that come
from science were to be presented in a more accessible form;
still the essential facts would be for most men without value or
efficacy, and a most inadequate help.
What is the human race going to do if, on one side, it cannot do
without precise responses and dogmatic notions concerning the
invisible infinite, and if, on the other, science is the only
means of attaining this end? If it aspires to learn truths which
transcend experience, and yet takes experience for its only
guide? If, in short, it will only admit and accept the facts that
it observes, confirms, and verifies itself? How shall we escape
from this inextricable difficulty?
To Be Continued.
-----------
{347}
Cowper, Keble, Wordsworth; Or, "Quietist"
Poetry, And Its Influence On Society.
The Spanish priest, Michael Molinos, who spent the last eleven
years of his life in the prisons of the Inquisition, was destined
to exert considerable influence over many of the most thoughtful
and gifted spirits of his age. It was in 1675, and in the heart
of Rome, that he published a _Spiritual Guide_, in which he
pointed out various methods calculated to raise the soul to a
state of contemplation and quietude, in which she makes no use of
her faculties, is unconcerned about all that may happen, and even
about the practice of good works and her own salvation; reposing
on the love of God, and, through his presence, safe,
all-sufficient, and entirely blest. It can be easily imagined how
acceptable the unction of ascetic eloquence might render such
doctrine to minds mystically disposed. Multitudes in every age
are ready to run after any quack of human happiness who is
ingenious enough to hide his fallacies under a show of reason;
and Molinos had this advantage over many charlatans, that before
deceiving others he had completely deceived himself. He was
honest, therefore, and certainly a great advance on the Quietists
of the 14th century, called in Greek Hesuchasts, who in their
monastery on Mount Athos passed whole days in a state of
immobility, "contemplating," as their historians say, "their nose
or their navel, and by force of this contemplation finding divine
light." Molinos found many partisans in Italy and in France,
where his system was fervently embraced by the celebrated poetess
and mystic, Madame Guyon, who conceived herself called from above
to quit her home and travel, inculcating everywhere the gospel of
quietism. Fenelon, whose sweetness and goodness flung a charm
around every opinion he expressed, adopted in part the theories
of Molinos, and Madame de Maintenon herself is numbered among
Madame Guyon's converts to the Spaniard's novel and dreamy creed.
The inmates of Port-Royal, and the Jansenists in general, had, as
may be conjectured from the example of Fenelon, strong affinities
for quietism; and the sympathy entertained for their sufferings
by English Calvinists in the last century, sufficiently accounts
for the poet Cowper becoming an admirer of Madame Guyon's
writings, and imitating in the _Olney Hymns_ many of her
fervent compositions.
Without falling into the errors of the Quietists, Cowper imbibed
much of their spirit, and transfused it into his verses very
happily. His poetry is essentially of a quietist description,
provided the term be understood in a favorable sense. His mind
was naturally tranquil, and even during the melancholy of his
later days, his mental aberration partook of the original
placidity of his character. His rhythm is musical, his language
choice, and the flow of his thoughts calm and tranquillizing. He
discards stormy and passionate themes from instinct rather than
resolve. He delighted in such subjects as "Truth," "Hope,"
"Charity," "Retirement," "Mutual Forbearance," and
"Domestic happiness, the only bliss
Of Paradise that has survived the Fall."
{348}
And he has clustered around them all the graces of poetry and
charms of Christian philosophy. In that work in which his powers
are exhibited to most advantage and at greatest length--_The
Task_--he has touched on every topic that is most soothing,
and in verses, many of which have become proverbs, has expressed,
with unrivalled precision and ease, thoughts and feelings common
to every Christian who is
"Happy to rove among poetic flowers,
Though poor in skill to rear them."
He is never obscure, his emotions are never fictitious, his humor
is never forced, nor his satire pointless. Hence he became
popular in his generation, and has lost no particle of the credit
he once obtained. Brighter stars than he have in the present
century come forth and dazzled the eyes of beholders, by the
intensity of their radiance and the boldness of their career; but
they have not thrown the gentle Cowper into the shade. He still
shines above the horizon, "a star among the stars of mortal
night," of heavenly lustre, unobtrusive, steadfast, and serene.
He still exerts a wholesome influence on society, still refreshes
us in the pauses of the battle of life, still refines the taste,
fills the ear with melody, elevates the soul, and fosters in many
those habits of reflection from which alone greatness and
goodness spring. The "Lines on the receipt of his Mother's
Picture" have rarely been surpassed in pathos. There never was a
poet more sententious or a moralist more truly poetic. "He was,"
says one of his biographers, "an enthusiastic lover of nature,
and some of his descriptions of natural objects are such as
Wordsworth himself might be proud to own." His poems, observes
Hazlitt, contain "a number of pictures of domestic comfort and
social refinement which can hardly be forgotten but with the
language itself." Of all his encomiasts, none has spoken of him
with more fervor than Elizabeth Barrett, afterward Mrs. Browning,
and the following stanzas from her beautiful poem called
"Cowper's Grave" deserve to be quoted in connection with the
present subject:
"O poets, from a maniac's tongue
Was pour'd the deathless singing!
O Christians, to your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men, this man in brotherhood
Your weary paths beguiling,
Groan'd inly _while he taught you peace_,
And died while ye were smiling."
But has Cowper had no successor in the peculiar path he so
successfully trod? Was Wordsworth not in one sense a Quietist?
Were the subjects he selected not as passionless as those of his
master, and treated with equal thoughtfulness and calm? No doubt.
Yet there was an important difference between them. The quietude
which Cowper inculcated was to spring from religion; while that
which Wordsworth promoted had its sources principally in
contemplation of the beauties of Nature, and in obedience to her
powerful influences. Each of these gifted minds has benefitted
society, but in different ways; and it is well that, in a
poetry-loving age, there should be some counter-balance to the
morbid excitement and passionate intensity which the school of
Byron, Moore, and Shelley rendered so popular. It is well that
minor and gentler streams should irrigate the ground which has
been desolated by their torrents of impetuous verse. It is well
that divine no less than human love should have its
laurel-crowned minstrels, and that principle and conscience
should be proved no less poetical than passion and crime.
{349}
It is undoubtedly difficult for one who foregoes the passions to
rise to a very high eminence as a poet, since the violent
emotions of our nature are well adapted to verse, and full of
dramatic effect. The bard of Rydal-Mount has, nevertheless,
attained a lasting celebrity, after patiently enduring
years--long years--of neglect and ridicule. He has carefully
eschewed those stormy and harrowing subjects with which poets of
the highest genius had, before his time, generally delighted to
familiarize our minds. He leaves such themes as Prometheus bound
by Jupiter to a rock, with a vulture preying perpetually on his
entrails, [Footnote 58] Count Ugolino devouring the flesh of his
own offspring in the Tower of Famine, [Footnote 59] and Satan
summoning his fallen peers to council in the fiery halls of
Pandemonium, [Footnote 60] to such masters as "AEschylus the
Thunderous," Dante, and Milton, and addresses himself to the
softer and more homely feelings, and to the calmer reason of men.
He is firmly persuaded that a truer and deeper source of poetic
inspiration is to be found in the every-day sights and sounds of
Nature; that the changing clouds and falling waters, the
forest-glades, wet with noon-tide dew, the rocky beach, musical
with foaming waves, the sheep-walks on the barren hill-side, and
the "primrose by the river's brim," supply the imagination with
its best aliment, and effectually tend to calm, elevate, and
hallow the mind. This is his great, his constant theme. His
longer and more philosophical poems ring ever-varying changes on
it, and may be called an Epithalamium on the espousals of Man and
Nature. But for his devoting a long life to the poetic
development of this fundamental idea, we should never have seen
our literature enriched by the productions of Shelley and
Tennyson's genius. In poetry, as in all that concerns the human
mind, there is a law of progress. The poetic harvest-home of one
generation is the seed-time of that which is to follow. Thus
Dante speaks of two poets (Guinicelli and Daniello) now
forgotten, or known only by name, in terms of strong admiration,
as predecessors to whose writings he was considerably indebted.
[Footnote 61] The following lines are but a sample of a thousand
passages in Wordsworth which set forth the agency of natural
scenery in the work of man's education and refinement. It is
taken from the _Prelude_, a long introduction to the
_Excursion_, which lay upon the author's shelves in
manuscript during forty-five years: [Footnote 62]
"Was it for this,
That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved
_To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song_,
And from his alder-shades and rocky falls,
And, from his fords and shallows, sent _a voice_
_That flowed along my dreams?_ For this didst thou,
O Derwent! winding among grassy holms
Where I was looking on, a babe in arms.
_Make ceaseless music, that composed my thoughts_
_To more than infant softness_, giving me,
Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind,
A foretaste, a dim earnest of _the calm_
_That Nature breathes among the hills and groves?_"
[Footnote 58: _Prometheus Vinctus_.]
[Footnote 59: _L' Inferno_, c. xxxiii.]
[Footnote 60: _Paradise Lost_, Book i.]
[Footnote 61: _Il Purgatorio_, xi. 97; xxvi. 115, 142,
92, 97.]
[Footnote 62: 1805 to 1850.]
Wordsworth's life was an exemplification of the doctrine he
taught. Cheerfulness and peace marked his character at each stage
of his eighty years' pilgrimage, and, towards the close of his
career, he had the satisfaction of perceiving that his works were
slowly effecting the result to which he had destined them--making
a lasting impression on the literature of his age, and leading
many a thoughtful spirit from artificial to natural enjoyments,
from the imagery of dreamland to that of daily life, from bombast
to simplicity, from passion to feeling, and from turmoil to
repose.
"O heavenly poet! such thy verse appears,
So sweet, so charming to my ravished ears,
As to the weary swain, with cares opprest.
Beneath the silvan shade, _refreshing rest_;
As to the fev'rish traveller, when first
He finds a crystal stream to quench his thirst." [Footnote 63]
[Footnote 63: Dryden's _Virgil_, Pastoral v.]
{350}
Nor was Wordsworth's love of nature and her soothing influences
dissociated from religious belief. He was no materialist,
maintaining the eternal existence and self-government of the
universe by fixed and exclusively natural laws. He was no
pantheist, worshipping nature as an indivisible portion of the
divine essence--a body of which God is actually the soul. He
believed in other laws besides those which regulate the movements
of the celestial bodies, and the gradual formation and
destruction of the strata that compose the surface of our globe.
The view which he took of the material universe was such as
became a Christian, and is luminously expressed by him in the
following lines:
"I have seen
A curious child applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell.
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely, and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within
Were heard--sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief, the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
E'en such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of faith, and doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things.
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And _central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation_."
It is impossible to read the _Prelude_ and the
_Excursion_ without perceiving that Wordsworth's passion for
natural scenery was no fictitious emotion, assumed for the
purpose of appearing brimful of philosophy and sentiment, and
making an effective parade of moon and stars, flowers and
rivulets, in verse. No, it was a deep and abiding principle--a
feeling of which he could no more have divested himself than
Newton of his bent toward science, or Beethoven of his ear for
music. This unaffected enthusiasm enabled him to speak with the
authority of a master, and to instil into the minds of disciples
the ideas that had taken so strongly possession of his own.
From the poetry of inanimate nature, the transition was easy to
that of simple feelings, particularly in rustic life. In the
innocent plays of children of the cot, and the sparkling dews on
the cheeks of wild mountain maids, Wordsworth found themes for
reflection deep enough to sink into the memory of men. Who has
not felt the inimitable simplicity of the verses in which the
child, who often, after sunset, took her little porringer, and
ate her supper beside her brother's grave, persisted in saying:
"Oh! no, sir, _we are seven_," and in ignoring the power of
death to sever or to annihilate? Purity marks all which this
chief of the Lake School has composed; for how could he soothe
the spirit if, like Moore and Byron, he pandered to vicious
inclinations? Hence his successor as Poet-Laureate congratulates
himself very properly on wearing
"The laurel greener from the brows
Of him that uttered nothing base."
A poet's best eulogy is that which comes from a poet. Having
quoted that of Tennyson, therefore, I shall add that which
Shelley also bestows on Wordsworth:
"Thou wert as _a lone star_, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a _rock-built refuge_ stood
Above the blind and battling multitude
In honored poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty."
The quietude commended by infidel poets is, at the best, that of
despair. It is rest without repose, pathetic but not peaceful--a
spurious and delusive calm, difficult to attain for a moment, and
certain not to endure.
"Yet now despair itself is mild.
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child.
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear." [Footnote 64]
[Footnote 64: P. B. Shelley.]
{351}
Such is their language; so writes one of the most distinguished
of these "apostles of affliction." How different are the feelings
of the Christian "quietist:"
"Nor let the proud heart say.
In her self-torturing hour,
The travail pangs must have their way.
The aching brow must lower.
To us long since the glorious Child is born,
Our throes should be forgot, or only seem
Like a sad vision told for joy at morn,
For joy that we have waked, and found it but a dream." [Footnote 65]
[Footnote 65: Keble. _The Christian Year_. Third Sunday
after Easter.]
Nor is this strain unreal. The writer's life was the best
guarantee for the sincerity of his sentiments, and the response
he has wakened in myriads of hearts is a seal set on the depth of
his convictions. He hymned not the happiness of the Christian,
because the theme suited an ambitious lyre in that it is lofty,
or an ordinary one in that it is familiar, but because he was
persuaded that the poet's highest glory consists in calming the
agitated spirit, as David did when he played cunningly on the
harp in the presence of Saul; and that, while it is incumbent on
us to make others happy, our paramount duty is to be happy
ourselves; that if we are not so, the fault is our own; and that
there are in the religion we profess, in every crisis and
condition, ample provisions for that happiness to which all
aspire.
"O awful touch of God made man!
We have no lack if thou art there:
From thee our infant joys began,
By thee our wearier age we bear." [Footnote 66]
[Footnote 66: Keble. _Lyra Innocentium_.]
This is the key-note of his thoughtful rhymes.
Keble's reputation as a poet was established long before the
leading periodicals of the land called attention to the beauty of
his compositions.
Their publication in the first instance is said to have been
owing to his seeing several of them in print without being able
to conjecture by what means they had found their way to public
light. He soon learned, however, that some of his manuscripts,
which he had lent to a lady, had been dropped in the street and
lost. He therefore resolved on completing and publishing _The
Christian Year_. It was not till nearly twenty years after its
first appearance that it received in the _Quarterly Review_
that meed of applause to which it was justly entitled. The
article which there called attention to its extraordinary merits
was written, we believe; by Mr. Gladstone, whom neither the
bustle of parliamentary life, nor the aridity of financial study,
renders insensible to the charms of those muses who are generally
supposed to haunt woods and caves, and to smile only on the
recluse.
To us Catholics the name of Keble will always be remembered with
interest, because he shared with Drs. Newman and Pusey the
leadership of that great party in the Anglican Church which has
given so many children to the true church, and has spread through
England and through the world many Catholic doctrines and
practices long dormant or forgotten. We think of him with
affection, because he carried on to the end the work of soothing
the troubled spirit by means of religious verse; because he was
through life the friend of that distinguished convert to whose
genius and writings we owe so much; and because he has, both in
prose and verse, laid down, more clearly and explicitly than any
other Protestant writer, the grounds of our veneration of the
blessed Mother of God Incarnate.[Footnote 67]
[Footnote 67: _See Lyra Innocentium_, "Church Rites;"
and _The Month_, May, 1866, "John Keble."]
{352}
He did not, indeed, follow out his convictions to their
legitimate results; he fancied that he responded to them
sufficiently by remaining where he was. But his poems will ever
remain a witness against the church in which they were composed,
because it can never reduce to practice the doctrines he taught
in reference to the holy eucharist, the confessional, and the
communion of saints. Meanwhile they are silently imbuing the
minds of Anglican readers with feelings and arguments favorable
to the divine system of the Catholic Church. Though his
_Christian Year_ is adapted to the services of the Church of
England, and though its chief purpose, as stated in the preface,
is "to exhibit the soothing tendency of the Prayer-Book," the
author's sympathies are with the Book of Common Prayer in its
Catholic, and not in its Protestant aspects. During more than
forty years it has been chiselling the Anglican mind into a more
orthodox shape. It moulds the chaotic elements of faith into
substance, form, and life. It supplies the lost sense of
Scriptures, and lays the foundation of towers and bulwarks it
cannot build. It opens bright vistas of realized truth, and
points to glorious summits from the foot of the hill. It is not
inspired with genius of the highest order; the range it takes is
more circumscribed in some respects than that of Cowper; it
seldom reaches the sublime, and is always pleasing rather than
original. But in spite of these drawbacks, it has wound itself
more and more into public esteem. No poetry is read more
habitually by members of the Established Church. The number of
those is very large who take down _The Christian Year_ from
their bookshelves every Sunday and festival. It rings every
change on the theme Resignation, and presents it in all its
truest and most beautiful lights. It has extracted from the
sacred writings the very marrow of the text, has developed in a
thousand ways the typical and mystic import of Scripture
histories, expressed from them abundantly the wine and oil of
consolation, and conveyed it to us in poetic ducts of no mean
kind.
"As for some dear familiar strain
Untired we ask, and ask again.
Ever, in its melodious store.
Finding a spell unheard before;" [Footnote 68]
so, many Anglicans of the devouter sort recur to Keble's poems
year after year, and end the perusal only with death. Other poets
charm and instruct the mind, he forms it; and while others are
but read, he is learnt. Even the conviction which he cherished of
the heavenly mission of the church of Queen Elizabeth, though
misplaced, added to the sweetness and soothing character of his
verses. But it is deserving of note that his latter volume,
_Lyra Innocentium_, which contains more lamentation than he
uttered before over the shortcomings of his own communion, and
more intense aspirations after Catholic dogma and practice,
evinces at the same time less inward quietude in the writer, and
imparts less of it to the reader. One poem, indeed, called
"Mother out of Sight," on the absence of the holy Mother of God
from the English mind, invoking her, as it did, in a strain of
glorious verse, was omitted, lest it should perplex and disquiet
those who were unused to such invocations, and believed them to
be forbidden by the Anglican Church.
[Footnote 68: _Christian Year_, "Morning."]
To cite passages from Keble's poems illustrative of their
soothing tendency, would be to copy almost all he wrote. They
fell like the dew of Hermon, and were a sign and symbol of the
man himself.
{353}
"His bright, fresh, joyous, and affectionate nature," says one
who knew him well, "was an ever-flowing spring, always at play,
_always shedding a gentle, imperceptible, and recreating dew
upon those who came within its reach. There was a Christian
poetry about him_, a natural gift, elevated and transformed by
his consistent piety and religious earnestness, which gilded the
commonest things and the most ordinary actions, and cast the
radiance of an unearthly sunshine all around him." [Footnote 69]
What wonder that the illustrious author of the _Apologia_
used to look at him with awe when walking in the High Street at
Oxford? What wonder that, when elected a Fellow of Oriel, and for
the first time taken by the hand by the Provost and all the
Fellows, he bore it till Keble took his hand, and then, as he
said, "felt so abashed and unworthy of the honor done him, that
he seemed desirous of quite sinking into the ground"? [Footnote
70] Yet the greater was blessed of the less. For depth and
subtlety of reasoning, for power and pathos in prose composition.
Dr. Newman has surpassed beyond all measure everything which
Keble did or could accomplish. In poetry, the world in general
has awarded the palm to Keble, and the world, we believe, is
right. In the art, at least, of calming the ruffled spirit, the
poet of _The Christian Year_ has outdone his beloved rival
and friend.
[Footnote 69: _The Month_, vol. iv. p. 142.]
[Footnote 70: J. H. Newman's _Apologia_, p. 76.]
The _Lyra Apostolica_ brought Keble and Newman together as
athletes in the arena of poetry; and that series of poems affords
a good opportunity of comparing their several merits, to those
who have the key to the writers' names. They appeared in the
_British Magazine_, signed only with Greek characters
representing the following writers:
Alpha J. W. Bowden.
Beta R. H. Froude.
Gamma John Keble.
Delta J. H. Newman.
Epsilon R. J. Wilberforce;
Zeta Isaac Williams.
By far the greater number of the pieces were written by Keble and
Newman, and almost all by the latter have reappeared this year in
a series, which supplies a poetic commentary on the author's
life. These _Verses on Various Occasions_ range over a
period of forty-six years, and having each of them the date and
the place where composed attached to it, the interest of the
whole is thereby greatly increased. Among the poems is that
remarkable one, "The Dream of Gerontius," which was published in
_The Catholic World_ in 1865. But neither Dr. Newman's
verses thus collected, nor the series entitled _Lyra
Apostolica_ in general, are marked by that repose which is the
prevailing feature of _The Christian Year_. The motto chosen
by Froude for the _Lyra_ was truly combative, and shows the
feeling both of Newman and himself, then together at Rome. It was
taken from the prayer of Achilles on returning to the battle, and
it implores Heaven to make his enemies know the difference, now
that his respite from fighting is over.
[Greek text] [Footnote 71]
[Footnote 71: _Iliad_, [Sigma] 125. _Apologia_, p. 98.]
The scars of warfare are visible even in Newman's hymns. He has
evidently passed through many an inward conflict, and fought
with, many an external foe. He has vacated ground he once
occupied, and he defends principles which he once assailed. He
pierces many heights, and depths, and has to be always on his
guard against his lively imagination.
{354}
He is lucid as any star, but not always as serene. He flashes now
and then like a meteor; he hints and suggests in nebulous light.
He is a pioneer of thought; he shoots beyond his comrades; he
walks "with Death and Morning on the Silver Horns." He sees,
where others grope; he is at home, where others feel confused and
out of place. He is, like Ballanche, [Footnote 72] more satisfied
of the truth of the unseen than of the visible world. Mysteries
are his solemn pastime. He strikes his harp in Limbo, as
Spaniards weave a dance in church before the Holy Sacrament. His
dreams are Dantesque; he is half a seer. The veil of death is
rent before him, and his soul, by anticipation, launches into the
abyss. The chains of the body are dropped, and angels and demons
come round him to console and to harass his solitary spirit in
its transition state. His condition there, like his poetry, and
like himself on earth and in the body, is one of mingled quietude
and disturbance;
"And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,
Had something, too, of sternness and of pain."
[Footnote 73]
[Footnote 72: _Dublin Review_, July, 1865, p. 10.
"Madame Récamier."]
[Footnote 73: "Dream of Gerontius," § 2.]
The happy, suffering soul ("for it is safe, consumed, yet
quickened, by the glance of God,") sings in Purgatory in a strain
identical with that to which it was used in this mortal life:
"Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be,
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn--
There will I sing my sad perpetual strain
Until the morn;
There will I sing and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne'er can cease
To throb and pine and languish, till possest
Of its sole peace." [Footnote 74]
[Footnote 74: Ibid. § 6.]
There is, indeed, one of Dr. Newman's poems, and that one the
most popular and beautiful he has ever composed, which is
singularly pathetic and peaceful. Yet even here darker shades are
not wanting. The angel faces are "lost awhile," and the "pride"
and self-will of former years recur to the memory like spectres.
It was in June, 1833, when becalmed in the Straits of Bonifacio
in an orange-boat [Footnote 75] that Dr. Newman wrote "Lead,
Kindly Light." The _Pall Mall Gazette_--no mean critic--has
said of it recently, [Footnote 76] "It appears to us one of the
most perfect poems of the kind in the language."
[Footnote 75: _Apologia_, p. 99.]
[Footnote 76: Jan. 23, 1868]
"Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom.
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home--
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see
The distant scene--one step enough for me.
"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
Would'st lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears.
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
"So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."
Fond as Dr. Newman is of modern poetry he has not imitated it.
His style is original--a rare mixture of strength, sincerity, and
sweetness, moulded rather after the choruses of Greek dramas,
than the rich creations of Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, and
Longfellow. Hence his poems bear a nearer resemblance to Milton's
_Samson Agonistes_ than to any other English production. His
lyrical pieces, again, often remind us of George Herbert, and of
Shenstone, Waller, and Cowley. They have a clearness of
expression and bright fluency, which makes you love the writer
even when you cannot greatly admire his verse. One of the best
specimens of his poetic faculty in the _Verses on Various
Occasions_ is a poem called "Consolations in Bereavement,"
written in 1828.
{355}
It turns on one idea--the rapidity of death's work in the case of
the dear sister whom he mourns. He solaces himself with the
reflection that the deed was quickly done, and thus derives
comfort from a thought which is in most cases afflictive. Perhaps
Byron's lines were unconsciously running in his head:
"I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade:
......
Thy day without a cloud hath past,
And thou wert lovely to the last;
_Extinguished, not decayed_;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high."
Dr. Newman's poetry did not properly fall within the scope of
this article, but we have been led to speak of it because he was
Keble's colleague in the _Lyra Apostolica_, and because the
verses of the surviving poet have just appeared in England in a
new form, and have attracted general attention and been made the
subject of admiring and affectionate criticism not merely by
Catholic periodicals, but by non-Catholic reviews and newspapers
of every political and religious shade. Indeed, the praise
bestowed on them by such journalists has exceeded that of our own
critics, because it has, generally speaking, been more
discriminating and uttered by higher authorities in the literary
world.
Let us then rejoice that English literature includes three poets
at least--Cowper, Keble, and Wordsworth--who are in a good sense
quietists, and the tenor of whose writings, from first to last,
is tranquillizing. They may not, perhaps, be the authors who will
afford us most pleasure in the tumultuous season of youthful
enjoyment; but as years advance, and the trials of life present
themselves, one by one, in all their painful reality; as reason
matures and reflection ripens; as the probationary character of
our mortal existence becomes more and more clear to our
apprehension; as the discovery of much that is formal and hollow
in society enamors us of rural retreats and sylvan solitudes; as
the inexhaustible treasures of beauty and magnificence in the
material universe unfold before our gaze; as the things unseen
triumph over visible objects in our thoughts and affections, we
shall find in such poetry as we have attempted to describe, more
that is congenial and charming, and shall cherish with fonder
remembrance the names of Cowper, the mellifluous exponent of
Christian ethics and delights; of Keble, the bard of Biblical
lore; and of Wordsworth, the child and poet of nature. Like
skilful tuners of roughly-used instruments, they will reduce to
sweetness our spirits' harsher and discordant tones, and fit us
to take our part in the everlasting harmonies of the boundless
universe. They will each make poetry, in our view, the handmaid
of science and revelation, accepting with rapture the vast,
amazing discoveries of the one, and ever seeking to harmonize
them with the momentous and soul-subduing disclosures of the
other. They will impart to mute matter the voice and power of a
moral teacher, imbue inanimate things (to our imagination) with
life and feeling, inspire us with "a glorious sympathy with suns
that set" and rise, with "flowers that bloom and stars that
glow," with the birdling warbling on her bough, and the ocean
bellowing in his caves; and will lead us by nature's golden steps
to the footstool of the Creator's throne; for, in the eyes of
such poets, earth is "crammed with heaven," and every common bush
on fire with God.
----------
{356}
The Early Irish Church. [Footnote 77]
[Footnote 77: _Essays on the Origin, Doctrines, and
Discipline of the Early Irish Church_. By the Rev. Dr.
Moran, Vice-Rector of the Irish College, Rome. Dublin, 1864.
Pp. vii., 337. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society,
New York.]
The early Irish Church is now the subject of a close scrutiny and
deep study, that bids fair to shed upon it all the light that can
be poured upon the subject by such written material as war,
oppression, persecution, and penal laws have been insufficient to
destroy. There are two schools, and their emulating labors will
allow little to escape, both being well versed in ecclesiastical
history, the Irish language, annals, and literature.
It is needless to say that there are a Catholic and a Protestant
school--the latter of comparatively recent origin. The Anglican
Church in Ireland, studying what it had long despised, now seeks
to hold forth to the world that it is the real successor and
representative of the early Irish Church; while the Catholic
Church in Ireland is simply a papal continuation of the foreign
church, forced on Ireland by Henry II. and Pope Adrian IV., and
their respective successors. Unfortunately, however, the memory
of man records not the fact that, in the sixteenth century and
later, the Thirty-nine Articles and Book of Common Prayer were
presented to the Irish as being the creed and liturgy of its
early saints. Those who burnt the crosier of Patrick broke with
the early Irish Church as effectually as they did with the
romanized Irish Church of later days.
At the beginning of this century, Ledwich, following in the wake
of the wild theories of Conyers Middleton, denied entirely the
existence of St. Patrick, and his theory met with no little favor
among those opposed to the church. Now his existence is admitted,
his life studied and written, and efforts made, with no little
skill, industry, and learning, to show that the Roman Catholic
Church has no claim to St. Patrick or the church which he
founded; a church so full of life, that its missionaries spread
to other lands, and went forth with papal sanction to plant
catholicity or revive fervor on the continent. It is to this
curious phase of controversy that we are indebted for the volume
of Essays which are here contributed by Doctor Moran, and which
evince his learning and research, as well as his fitness for
close historical argument.
That there should be much material for a discussion as to so
early a period as the fifth century may surprise many, especially
those who have always been taught to clear with a bound some ten
or more centuries prior to the sixteenth. And it must be admitted
that it is indeed surprising, when we consider the wholesale
destruction of Irish manuscripts by the English in Ireland from
the time of Henry down to the present century. From the period of
the invasion to the Reformation, though invaders and invaded were
alike Catholic, the English treated the Irish with such contempt
that only five families or bloods were recognized as human, and
even monasteries were closed to men of Irish race. The literature
of the proscribed was of course slighted and despised.
{357}
From the Reformation the literary remains of earlier days were
proscribed and destroyed, not only as Irish but as popish.
In this almost universal destruction, the ecclesiastical books,
missals, sacramentaries, breviaries, penitentials, the canons of
councils, doctrinal books, many historical and biographical
treatises perished. The Irish people and their church hold by
tradition to their predecessors, and claim to be direct
successors of the church and converts of St. Patrick. Nor can the
Anglican party which destroyed so much of Irish literature now
base any argument on the silence of manuscript authority or draw
any inference in their favor from the absence of proofs, for
whose disappearance they are themselves accountable.
The uninterrupted adherence of the Irish nation to the Roman
Church gives it the force of prescription, and it will hold good
against all but the most direct and positive evidence.
No mere inferences can invalidate her claim.
The documents regarding the early Irish Church begin with the
confession of Saint Patrick and his letter to Coroticus, a
piratical British chief, published by Ware in 1656, from four
manuscripts, and by the Bollandists from a manuscript in the
Abbey of Saint Vaast.
The canons ascribed to the saint were published by the same, as
well as by Spelman and Usher.
Of the lives of the saint, the least valuable of all is that by
Jocelin, an English monk, who wrote soon after the conquest. This
is given in the Bollandists and in Messingham's Florilegium.
Earlier and better lives, four in number, were collected and
published by Colgan in his Acta Triadis Thaumaturgae, a work of
which we doubt the existence of a copy on this side of the
Atlantic.
Among these earlier lives, one by Probus is of much value. It was
printed, strangely enough, among the works of Venerable Bede, in
the Basil edition of that father issued in 1563, and, apparently,
the whole work was taken from manuscripts preserved at the Irish
convent at Bobbio.
These are the more important material for the life of the apostle
of Ireland, together with unpublished matter in some very ancient
Irish manuscripts, codices known for centuries, such as the Book
of Armagh, a manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, which
contains a life of Saint Patrick by Muirchu-Maccu-Mactheni; the
Leabhar Breac, considered the most valuable Irish manuscript on
ecclesiastical matters; the Tripartite Life in the British
Museum, the early national annals, etc.
As to the antiquity and value of these ancient codices Westwood
in his _Palaeographia Sacra Pictoria_ (London, 1843-5) may
be consulted.
For the liturgy of the early Irish Church, we have a missal
preserved at Stowe, in England, and ascribed to the sixth
century, but which unfortunately has never been fully and
completely published; a missal preserved in the monastery founded
by Saint Columbanus at Bobbio, and printed by Mabillon in his
_Iter Italicum_; the _Antiphonarium Benchorense_; the
Exposition of the Ceremonies of the Mass preserved in the Leabhar
Breac and a treatise on the Mass Vestments in the same volume, as
well as the Liber Hymnorum, and various separate hymns.
The lives of the Irish saints, many of which have been published
by Colgan, Messingham, the Bollandists, as well as the meagre
Irish secular annals, throw much light on the social and
religious life of the ancient Irish.
{358}
Such is, in brief, the documentary array to be appealed to in the
controversy, as to the origin and character of the Irish Church.
And surely what has come down in fragments shows a church which
the Anglican Church could not but condemn. The warmest advocate
of the identity of the Anglican Church in Ireland with the early
Irish Church, would find the old Irish mass, as preserved in the
Stowe or the Bobbio missal, a very objectionable worship; the
monks and nuns unsuited to our age; and the prayers,
penitentiary, and belief in miraculous powers in the church
utterly inconsistent with Protestant ideas; while the Catholic
Irish would find the mass, if said in one of their churches, so
like that they daily hear, that it would excite scarce a word of
comment; monks and nuns would certainly excite less; and the
prayers of that early day still circulate with the commendation
of the actual head of the Catholic Church, the successor of
Celestine.
The position having been abandoned that St. Patrick never
existed, national pride, which from the days of Jocelin has bent
its energies to prove that he was a Briton of the island of Great
Britain and born in Scotland, now would prove that he was a
genuine Englishman in his total renunciation of papal authority.
In the recent life of St. Patrick by Dr. Todd, this, though
treated lightly as a matter of slight import, is really the
marrow of the book.
The mission of St. Patrick has been uniformly attributed to Pope
St. Celestine, who held the chair of Peter from 422 to 432; and
is intimately connected with a previous one of the deacon of
Celestine, St. Palladius, who made an unsuccessful attempt to
christianize Ireland; and the mission of St. Palladius grew out,
it would seem, of a deputation of Gallic bishops to Britain to
check the progress of Pelagianism.
Todd endeavors ingeniously to break up these connected facts. He
seeks to show that Palladius was a deacon not of St. Celestine,
but of St. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre; that the history of
Palladius and Patrick have been confounded; and that Patrick was
not sent to Ireland till 440, and consequently could not have
been sent by St. Celestine. This would, to some extent, deliver
the early Irish Church from the terrible responsibility of having
received its origin from Rome.
Dr. Moran's work is made up of three essays: "On the Origin of
the Irish Church and its Connection with Rome;" "On the teaching
of the Irish Church concerning the Blessed Eucharist;" and, on
"Devotion to the Blessed Virgin in the Ancient Church of
Ireland."
In the first of these essays he meets the arguments of the Senior
Fellow of Trinity by a careful and close examination, showing
that both Palladius and Patrick owed their mission to Rome and to
St. Celestine, and settles conclusively the date of St. Patrick's
landing in Ireland.
He discusses at length the mission of Palladius; sketches the
life of St. Patrick, and his connection with St. Germain; and
states briefly the proofs of his Roman mission. He then refutes
the array of modern theories in regard to the great apostle from
Ledwich to Todd, and accumulates evidence to show how the early
Irish Church regarded the holy see.
The period when Saint Palladius and Saint Patrick successively
proceeded to Ireland, was not one of obscurity. The church was
full of vitality, and met Nestorius in the east, Pelagius in the
west, the Manichees in Africa, with the power and might of a
divine institution.
{359}
It was the day of St. Augustine, St. Germain, of Vincent of
Lerins, of Cassian, Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Jerome.
St. Basil, St. Ambrose, St. Athanasius, even, and St. Anthony
were still fresh in the memory of those who had heard the words
of life from their lips, or gazed on them in reverence. The
Council of Ephesus was actually in session defining the honor due
to the Mother of God. The canon of Holy Scripture had been
settled thirty-five years before, in the Council of Carthage, and
St. Jerome's version was gradually supplanting the Vetus Itala in
the hands of the faithful.
The monastic life, a vigorous tree planted at Rome by Athanasius,
had already spread over the Latin Church, in its multiform
activity and zeal. It grew under the mighty hand of Augustine,
was nurtured by that St. Martin of Tours, whose reputation was so
widespread. It gave a Lerins, with its school of bishops,
writers, and saints; the abbey of St. Victor at Marseilles, where
Cassian prayed and wrote.
But if this was a great age of the church, the Roman empire
showed no such signs of vitality. It was tottering to its fall.
Along its whole western territory, stretching from Italy to
Caledonia, the pagan barbarians of Germany were pressing with
relentless power, threatening destruction to Roman, romanized
Briton, and romanized Gaul--for all of whom the German had but
one name, still preserved by the race, the Anglo-Saxon terming
the descendants of the Britons Welsh, as the Fleming does the
French or the south of Germany the Italian. A little later this
German race, last in Europe to embrace the faith and first to
revolt from it, overran Britain, establishing the Saxon monarchy,
making Gaul the land of Franks, and giving Spain and Italy Gothic
sovereigns.
Before this torrent burst, the church in Italy, Britain, and Gaul
was closely united. Heresies appeared and gained ground in
Britain. To meet this Pelagian enemy, the insular bishops
appealed for aid to Gaul. The bishops of that country in council,
selected St. Germain and St. Lupus to go to Britain; and Prosper,
in his chronicle, assures us that, through the instrumentality of
Palladius the deacon, Pope Celestine in 426 sent Germain in his
own stead to root out heresy there, and direct the Britons to the
Catholic faith.
But this was not the only work. To recover what was straying was
well; but a new island was yet to be conquered to the faith, one
in which the Roman eagle had never flashed, but which seems to
the eye of faith a field white for the reaper.
Attached to Germain by ties of which there is no doubt, was a man
of Roman-British race, whose whole associations were with the
church of Gaul, who had been a slave for several years in
Ireland, and yearned to return to it as a herald of the Gospel.
He is stated, in the earliest lives, to have been recommended by
Saint Germain to Pope Celestine, as one fitted for such a work.
The pope, however, either to give greater dignity to the new
mission, or to leave no doubt of the Roman character of the work,
chose in 431 Palladius, deacon of the Roman Church, already
mentioned, to be the first apostle to the Scots, as the Irish
were then termed. Saint Germain and Saint Lupus went to Britain
in 429, and labored with zeal and success there during that year
and the next. The ancient Irish writer, who wrote a commentary on
a hymn in honor of Saint Patrick by St. Fiacc, and who is cited
by Irish scholars as scholiast on Saint Fiacc's hymn, states that
Saint Patrick accompanied the Gallic bishops to Britain.
{360}
In itself it would be probable. The intimate relations between
the Bishop of Auxerre and the British priest, would naturally
lead that prelate to choose him as a companion. That Palladius,
who had been the pope's agent in the matter, accompanied them,
also, would seem natural. His selection for the Irish mission
after Saint Germain's return in 430, would follow as naturally.
He was made bishop, and sent to the Scots (Irish) in 431; and
that Saint Patrick was in some manner appointed by the pope to
the same work, or connected with the mission with a degree of
authority, is evident from the fact that, when Saint Palladius,
after an ineffectual attempt to establish a mission in Wicklow,
was driven from the country, and died, as some say, in Scotland,
his Roman companions at once hastened to Saint Patrick, to notify
him as one who possessed some jurisdiction in the matter; and all
accounts agree that on this intelligence, Saint Patrick at once
proceeded to obtain the episcopal consecration, and sailed to
Ireland.
Looking at the whole action of the pope in regard to the checking
of Pelagianism in Britain, and the conversion of Ireland, this
theory, first suggested by Dr. Lanigan, answers every
requirement. It contravenes no fact given by any early author,
and is in perfect harmony with every part. The Rome-appointed
subordinates of Palladius reported to Patrick as a recognized
superior, and it is utterly impossible that between him, the
disciple of Germain and Palladius, the Roman delegate to Germain,
there could have been diversity of faith or ecclesiastical
discipline. The appointment of Patrick to the Irish mission was
simultaneous with that of Palladius, to whom the priority was
given. On the death of Palladius he succeeded, and required but
the episcopal consecration to begin his labors as a bishop in
Ireland.
This would make the Roman origin of the Irish Church too clear
for Dr. Todd to accept it without a struggle. With what might
almost be termed unfairness, he ignores the statement of a
perfect catena of Irish writers as to the character of Palladius,
in order to make him a deacon, not of the pope, but of Saint
Germain.
Later lives of Saint Patrick, written long after the death of the
saint, by introducing vague traditions, have doubtless
embarrassed the question. That some took his appointment by,
Celestine to have required his visiting Rome after the death of
Palladius, was natural; but he would really have been appointed
by Celestine, even though consecrated in Gaul after the death of
that pope, if this was done in pursuance of previous orders of
the holy see. It would not be strange to Catholic ideas that
Saint Patrick had what would be now termed his bulls unacted
upon, either from humility or some other motive; and the history
of the church contains many examples where bulls have been so
held, to be acted on ultimately only when the necessity of the
church made the candidate feel it a duty to assume the burden
from which he shrank.
Dr. Moran proves that Patrick drew his mission from Rome by a
solid array of authorities, which embrace some of the most
ancient Irish manuscripts extant. The Book of Armagh contains two
tracts, one the _Dicta Sancti Patricii_, expressing his wish
that his disciple should be "ut Christiani ita et Romani;" the
other the annals of Tirechan, written about the middle of the
seventh century, stating absolutely that in the thirteenth year
of the Emperor Theodosius the Bishop Patrick was sent by
Celestine, bishop and pope of Rome, to instruct the Irish.
{361}
The Leabhar Breac, styled by Petrie "the oldest and best Irish
manuscript relating to church history now preserved," furnishes
us evidence no less clear and decisive. The second Life of Saint
Patrick, ascribed to Saint Eleran, (ob. 664;) the scholiast on
Saint Fiacc, the Life by Probus, are all equally explicit,
showing it to have been a recognized fact in Ireland within two
centuries after the apostle's own day.
Dr. Moran, besides these, accumulates other authority of a later
period, some hitherto uncited, and due to the researches of
German scholars among the manuscripts still extant, due to the
hands of the early Irish apostles of their land.
One argument of Dr. Todd was based on the silence of Muirchu
Maccu Mactheni in the Book of Armagh; but Dr. Moran answers this
fully by showing that part of that early writer's work is
missing; and that, as the Life of Saint Probus follows, word for
word, the parts extant, we may assume that Saint Probus followed
him in other parts; and in regard to Saint Patrick's mission,
Saint Probus is clear and plain.
The church in Ireland, then, was the spiritual child of Rome and
Gaul. Her great missionary, a Breton, came from the schools of
Gaul, with authority from Rome, and the church which he founded
was in harmony with the church in Britain, Gaul, and Italy. What
the faith of the church in those countries was, admits of no
doubt; and were there no monuments extant to give explicit
evidence of the faith of the Irish Church, this would give us
implicit evidence sufficient, in the absence of any contradictory
authority, to decide what its faith, doctrines, and liturgy were.
The vice-rector of the Irish College marshals his authorities
again and shows that the church founded by an envoy from Rome
retained its connection with the holy see and its reverence for
the See of Peter. He adduces hymns of the Irish Church, various
writings of successive ages, express canonical enactments
regarding Rome, and finally the pilgrimages to the holy city, in
itself an irrefragable proof of the veneration entertained for
Rome; but he crowns all this by adducing the many extant cases in
which Irish bishops and clergy appealed to Rome.
But it may be thought that the terrible changes caused by the
invasion of the barbarians which in a manner isolated Ireland may
have led insensibly to differences of faith or practice in that
island, cut off from the centre of unity by the pagan England
that had succeeded Christian Britain, and the pagan France that
replaced Christian Gaul.
Have we aught to prove what the Irish Church believed and taught;
at what worship the faithful knelt; how they were received into
the body of believers; what rites consoled them in death?
Fortunately there is much to console us here, as well as to
convince us. One of the most important parts of the work we are
discussing is the clear and distinct manner in which he proves
the Irish character of the missal found at Bobbio, and reproduced
by Mabillon in his _Iter Italicum_. Having, by what light we
possessed, come to the conclusion that it was in no sense Irish,
we examined this portion with interest, and must admit that the
proof is clear. Bobbio was a monastery founded by St. Columbanus,
and its rich library gave much to the early printers, and yet
much still remains in the Ambrosian library at Milan.
{362}
This missal has no distinctive Irish offices, and its containing
an office of St. Sigebert, King of Burgundy, seemed to refute any
idea of its being Irish. Yet we know that St. Columbanus founded
a monastery at Luxeu before proceeding to Bobbio, and in both
places retained his Irish office. The adding of a local Mass
would not be strange. In itself this missal corresponds with that
Irish missal preserved at Stowe in many essential points, and
with no other known missal; the orthography and writing are
undoubtedly Irish; the liturgy in itself is not that of Gaul; it
resembles it in many respects, but the canon is that of Rome.
This striking feature appears in the Stowe missal. Mabillon, from
its antiquity, himself infers that Saint Columbanus brought it
from Luxeu, and it is as probable that he brought it from
Ireland.
It gives us the Mass of the ancient Irish Church, and Curry gives
in his lectures a translation of an "Exposition of the Ceremonies
of the Mass" from the Irish in the Leabhar Breac. The Mass and
the exposition place beyond a doubt the belief of the Irish
Church in the Real Presence. The exposition is as distinct as if
written to meet any opposition. "Another division of that pledge,
which has been left with the church to comfort her, is the body
of Christ and his blood, which are offered upon the altars of the
Christians; the body even which was born of Mary the Immaculate
Virgin, without destruction of her virginity, without opening of
the womb, without the presence of man; and which was crucified by
the unbelieving Jews out of spite and envy; and which arose after
three days from death, and sits upon the right hand of God the
Father in heaven." (_Curry's Lectures_, p. 307.)
The words of the Mass are no less explicit, and the Bobbio missal
contains these words: "Cujus carne a te ipso sanctificata, dum
pascimur, roboramur, et sanguine dum potamur, abluimur." The
whole early literature, the lives of the saints, and other
monuments teem with allusions to the sacrifice of Christ's body
and blood, and the saying of Mass is not unfrequently expressed
by the term "conficere Corpus Domini."
The proofs adduced by Dr. Moran on this point extend to sixty
pages, showing the most exact research and learning, and
accumulating evidence on evidence, meeting and refuting
objections of every kind.
The sacrament of penance and its use is no less apparent; nor is
the devotion to the blessed Virgin and the saints a point on
which the slightest doubt is left.
Dr. Moran's work is certainly, since the appearance of
_Lanigan's Ecclesiastical History_, (4 vols. Dublin, 1822,)
the most valuable treatise on the early Irish Church, and
completely sets at rest the theories set up by W. G. Todd, in
_A History of the Ancient Church in Ireland_, London, 1845;
and with great learning and skill by James H. Todd, in his
_Saint Patrick, Apostle of Ireland: A Memoir of his Life and
Mission_, Dublin, 1864.
We need now a popular treatise embracing the result of his labor,
in a small volume, like the work of W. G. Todd, and a volume
containing the Bobbio missal, (that at Stowe is probably sealed,)
with the treatise on the Mass and vestments from the Leabhar
Breac, and a selection of the prayers and hymns of the early
church that have come down to us. With these common in the hands
of the clergy, to familiarize them with what remains of the
church of their fathers, we may hope to see the old Irish Mass,
the "Cursus Scottorum" or Mass of the early Irish Church, chanted
by the cardinal archbishop of Dublin on the great patronal feast,
as the Mozarabic liturgy is in Spain, or the Ambrosian at Milan.
It would be a living proof that, if the Irish and other churches
laid aside their peculiar liturgies to adopt exclusively that of
Rome, it was not that the former were objectionable; but that
unity was too desirable to be postponed.
--------
{363}
My Angel.
"He hath given his angels charge over thee."
There's an angel stands beside my heart,
And keepeth guard.
How I wish sometimes that he would depart,
And its strong desires would cease to thwart
With his stern regard!
But he never moves as he standeth there
With unwinking eyes;
And at every pitfall and every snare
His silent lips form the word, "Forbear!"
Till the danger flies.
His look doth oft my purpose check
And aim defeat.
And I change my course at his slightest beck.
'Tis well, or I soon would be a wreck
For the waves to beat.
------
{364}
Translated From The French.
An Italian Girl Of Our Day. [Footnote 78]
[Footnote 78: _Rosa Ferrucci: her Life, her Letters,
and her Death_, By the Abbé H. Perreyve.]
[The first Italian edition of the _Letters of Rosa
Ferrucci_ appeared at Florence in 1857, a request for their
publication having been made to her mother by his Eminence
Cardinal Corsi, Archbishop of Pisa. The pious prelate was not
less desirous of seeing the account of so edifying a death
published, when he had learned the circumstances from the Prior
of San Sisto, who had attended Signorina Ferrucci in her last
moments.
A second edition appeared in 1858, enriched with numerous
details, at the express request of Monsignor Charvaz,
Archbishop of Genoa.
During a brief stay which I made at Pisa, Monsignor della
Fanteria, vicar-general of the diocese, spoke to me of the
profound impression which the death of Signorina Ferrucci had
left on all memories, and of the edification which he hoped
from her _Letters_. He expressed a wish that they should
be made known in France, and even urged me to undertake their
translation myself.
Authorities such as these, and the testimony of persons of
undoubted judgment as to the good this little work has already
done, have determined me to publish it for the second time. May
it edify yet again some young souls, by showing them in
Christianity an ideal too often sought elsewhere.
_December_, 1858.]
The following are the circumstances which led to the publication
of the _Letters_ here presented to the reader.
Toward the end of April, last year, (1857,) as I was returning
from Rome, I stopped at Pisa. The hand of God conducted me then
into the midst of a family, of whose unclouded happiness I had
been the witness only a few months before, but which had now,
alas! been visited by death. It was one of those sudden,
heart-rending bereavements which make one falter on the desolated
threshold of his friend, and which chill on one's lips the
tenderest words of consolation.
What would you say to the father and mother who lose an only
daughter--their joy, their life, and, moreover, the pride and the
edification of a whole town? Better be silent and ask God to
speak.
Happily, in this case, God did speak; and the noble souls whose
sorrows are to be recounted here, were of the number of those who
know his voice.
After the first tears and the first outpouring of a grief which
time rendered only the more poignant, the poor mother asked me to
accompany her to the house where her daughter had died, and which
she herself had quitted from that day. A servant belonging to one
of the neighboring houses had the keys of this funereal dwelling,
and he opened the doors for us. We expected to find only the
presence of death and the vivid remembrance of the sorrows of
yesterday in the silence of those deserted chambers; but
Christian charity had watched over the spot, and from our first
steps a delicate perfume of roses betrayed its loving attentions.
{365}
Indeed, we found the chamber of the dead girl strewn with
flowers. They were fresh, some faithful hand having renewed them
that very morning. This unlooked-for spectacle awakened in our
minds the thought that the Christian's death is not so much a
death as a transformation of life. Therefore it was that, when,
kneeling near the poor sobbing mother, I asked her if she wished
me to recite the _De Profundis_, she answered in a firm
voice and almost smiling, "No, let us recite the _Te Deum_."
The hymn concluded, I led the pious woman from that room where
her sorrow seemed changed into exultation, and I said to her on
the way: "From all that I know, from all that I can learn of your
daughter, she was a saint. The delicate piety of your neighbors
attests how powerful is still the recollection of her: the
example of her life, and the details of her holy death, must not
be lost. You must preserve them for the edification of her
companions; for the edification of the town which has known her,
loved her, venerated her; for the edification of ourselves also,
who must one day die, and whom the examples of all holy deaths
encourage and support." I was not the first to express this
desire; many friends had anticipated me in begging for a history
which they believed well calculated to reflect honor on our holy
religion.
Before I left Pisa, I had obtained the desired promise, pledging
myself, at the same time, to make known in France, to some
Christian readers, this history, wrung from the anguish of a
mother by the single desire of promoting the glory of God. Some
months later, the book appeared at Florence, with the following
title, _Rosa Ferrucci, and some of her Writings, published
under the supervision of her Mother_. It remains, then, for me
to fulfil, on my part, the pious obligation I have contracted.
Rosa Ferrucci was the daughter of the celebrated Professor
Ferrucci, of the University of Pisa, and of the Signora Caterina
Ferrucci, a lady well known in Italy for her poetry, and for some
excellent works on education. It is little more than a year since
this young girl was, by her brilliant intellectual gifts and the
holiness of her life, the honor of the city of Pisa. The grave
habits of a Christian family, all the veils, all the precautions,
all the fears of modesty, had not been able to shield her from a
sort of religious admiration which she inspired in all who saw
her. How prevent mothers from pointing out the holy child to
their daughters, or the poor from blessing her as she passed?
Rosa possessed natural talents of a high order, and her education
was singularly favorable to the full development of every gift of
mind and heart. At six years of age she read Italian, French, and
German. At a later period she knew by heart the whole of the
_Divine Comedy_. She read in the original, under the
direction of her mother, Virgil, Cicero, Tacitus; and, among
modern authors, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fenelon, Fleury, Milton,
Schiller, Klopstock. I mention at random the authors' quoted by
her in her letters to her friends, passing by writers of our own
day. She has left a correspondence in three languages--French,
German, and Italian. The greater number of the Italian letters
are addressed to a young gentleman of Leghorn, Signor Gaetano
Orsini, a distinguished lawyer and perfect Christian, to whom
Rosa was betrothed, and whose hopes have been shattered by her
death.
{366}
Each part of her correspondence is remarkable, but it is of the
last-mentioned letters that I propose particularly to speak.
Independently of her correspondence, Signorina Ferrucci wrote
many short treatises on religion and Christian morality, several
of which have been published since her death.
Here, then, we find in a young girl a degree of mental
cultivation--a depth of learning, I might say--which would be
remarkable in a man even of distinguished education. To dwell
long on gifts so rare would interfere with the object I proposed
to myself in writing this little history. I will, then, remark
here, once for all, that, having for several weeks lived on terms
of intimacy with this excellent family, I have witnessed in this
extraordinary girl only a child-like modesty, which made her
always skilful in self-concealment.
I omit, then, all that relates to this intellectual culture, and
to this taste for classical learning--a taste which was so pure,
so exalted, in this young Christian maiden. Understood and
accepted in Italy, this literary turn of mind would seem strange
in France, where there exists an extravagant fear of raising
woman above a certain intellectual level. I prefer, therefore,
having said on this point merely what was necessary, to speak
henceforth only of the virtues of the saintly girl.
Even of these I shall specify but one. I leave it to pious
imaginations to guess what there must have been of meekness, of
purity, of obedience, of modesty, of angelic devotion, in such a
soul. I shall speak only of her charity. Love for the poor was
with her a passion, and that from her tenderest years. Certain
souls seem to come into this world commissioned by God to do
honor to a particular virtue; everything in them converges to
that as to a divine centre. The voice of a mother and the voice
of the church have but to quicken the germ of holiness committed
to such souls before their terrestrial journey, and, as soon as
the development of reason allows them to act, they tend quite
naturally to the end which the finger of God had pointed out to
them from above. Rosa Ferrucci brought with her a tender and
unbounded love for the poor. From the little birds which, while
yet an infant, she used to feed in winter-time, to the poor
beggars of Pisa, whom she relieved by denying herself in dress
and amusements, and the neglected graves to which she carried
flowers, "because," she used to say, "I feel a pity for neglected
graves," all poverty touched her heart. Her mother relates some
affecting incidents of her great charity. During a severe winter
her parents remarked that she no longer ate bread at her meals,
although she never failed to pick out the largest piece for
herself. They affected not to know her motive, which she
explained, blushing: "Have I done wrong? Indeed, I did not know
it was wrong; but bread is so dear this year, and this piece
would be sufficient for one poor person."
If she met in her walks a poor woman tottering under the weight
of a load of wood, her first impulse would be to run to help her,
and it was difficult to restrain this charitable eagerness. She
would then complain, declaring that she could never get
accustomed to seeing poor people toiling so hard.
On her birthday she ran to her mother and said to her: "Gaetano
is indeed all that I could wish! We have just formed a project
which makes me quite happy. We have promised that on our
birthdays and saints' days, instead of making each other
presents, which are often useless, we will give a large alms to
some poor family."
{367}
She was a good musician, and knew how to interpret truly the
sentiment of the masters. One day she went to Florence,
accompanied by her brother, to purchase some pieces of music. But
just as she was entering the town, she met a poor family, who
seemed to be in the last extreme of wretchedness. Their rent must
be paid the next day, or these poor people would be homeless.
Farewell to the pieces of music! And on her return home, when her
friends, to conceal their real joy and admiration, affected to
chide her, she answered: "What would you have had me do? I could
not help it. Tell me yourselves how I could have done otherwise
than I did? Now, you see well that it was impossible!" O holy
_impossibilities!_ which embarrass only those who can never
be resigned to the sufferings of others.
Innumerable are the incidents of this kind which might be related
of Rosa; for charity is never weary, the more good it has done,
the more it desires to do; but I leave this subject--reluctantly,
indeed--to dwell at more length on the two episodes of this
Christian life, in which I think may be found the most solid
edification and the best encouragement for souls. I speak of a
love and a death, both transfigured by the cross.
The transfiguration of the life and heart of man in chastity, in
hope, in sacrifice, is a palpable glory of Christianity and one
of the surest marks of its divinity. Jesus Christ, when he came
to sanctify the world, did not destroy the natural conditions of
human life. Since, as before, the shedding of his blood, man is
born in suffering; he weeps, combats, loves, and dies. And yet,
if he is a Christian, all is changed for him. From his cradle to
his grave he walks in a marvellous light, which transfigures all
things in his eyes and thoroughly changes the meaning of life. He
suffers, but each day he adores suffering on the cross; he weeps,
but he has heard that, Blessed are they who weep! he combats, but
with his eyes fixed on heaven; he loves, but in all that he
loves, he loves God; he dies, but then only does he begin to
live. Nay, even the entrance into beatitude is for the Christian
not the last transfiguration; for a blissful eternity is but a
continuous transfiguration in a glory ever increasing, and, as it
were, the eternal flight of created love toward Infinite Love.
This divine flight finds in heaven its region of glory; but it
must not be forgotten that its starting-point is earth--that
before finally gaining the eternal heights, it must first cross
"the fields of mourning, _lugentes campi_." [Footnote 79]
[Footnote 79: Virg. AEn. i. 4.]
Hence it is, that for the saints there is no interruption between
heaven and earth; the same path that conducted them yesterday
from virtue to virtue, will lead them to-morrow from glory to
glory, and their death is but an episode of their love. Hence,
also, perhaps that mysterious fraternity of love and death which
is the soul of all true poetry; men catch a glimpse of it and
chant it in their own tongue:
"The twin brothers, love and death,
At the same time, gave birth to fate." [Footnote 80]
[Footnote 80: Léopardi.]
But only the saints know its true secret: "Having a desire to be
dissolved and to be with Christ." [Footnote 81]
[Footnote 81: Phil. I. 23.]
When the young soul of whom we now speak had reached a certain
elevation in her flight toward God, she, too, met the sweet and
austere company of those two strong-winged angels--Christian love
and death. She loved: almost as soon she presaged death, and she
died. But she loved as a child of God loves, and she died as a
saint.
{368}
I have, then, little more to do than to translate her
_Letters_, in which shines gloriously the beauty of
Christian love, and to give an account of that death worthy of
the church's brightest days. As I have already remarked, these
_Letters_ are addressed to a young gentleman of Leghorn, to
whom Rosa had been betrothed for two years before her death; a
truly noble character whom heaven seemed to have made worthy of
her. A profound and tender love united these two kindred souls.
The simple and sweet manners of good Italian society allowed
their seeing each other often, and did not forbid their almost
daily correspondence. An entire conformity of faith, of piety, of
holy desires, blended into a still closer union those hearts
already so strongly bound to each other; but a more celestial ray
was continually passing from the soul of Rosa into that of
Gaetano. Through her joys, her hopes, the festive preparations
for her wedding, and the dreams of the future, this pious young
girl always saw God. One idea, immense and insatiable, was
dominant over all her desires, the idea of perfection. She gazed
through the veil of her joyous dawnings on the divine sun of
eternal beauty. Her happiness embellished earth to her, but the
earth thus embellished immediately reminded her of heaven;
earthly love put a song on her lips, but the song soon became a
hymn, and always ended with God. It is this insensible and almost
involuntary transition, of which she herself seems unconscious,
from an earthly affection to ardent longings after divine love
and perfection, which constitutes all the beauty of her
_Letters_. The reader must not forget that they were written
by one who was little more than a child, and that whatever there
was of maturity in her young soul was derived from that sun of
Christian faith whose warm rays ripen the intellect, in the
continued childhood of the heart.
I would fain believe that this young Christian's sisters in the
faith, will find in her _Letters_ something more than a
subject of poetical dreaming. In truth, no life is so really
practical as that of a saint; and, through the veil of beautiful
language, we may discover in the letters of Rosa Ferrucci many
duties faithfully performed by her, many lessons of duty
faithfully to be performed by ourselves. I would then beg of
those young persons to read the following pages with
recollection, and, in order to penetrate their true meaning, to
enter as much as possible into this young girl's ardent desire of
perfection.
I have spoken of the eternal soaring of souls toward God. Have
you ever, in the beginning of autumn, watched those flights of
birds which, lengthening out in a long train, follow, to the very
last, the same sinuosities? 'Tis said that the strongest, flying
in advance, cleaves the air; and that the weaker, coming after,
enter with ease the aerial furrow. Ah! too feeble that we are to
attempt alone the road to heaven, let us at least learn to enter
the furrows of the saints. Their strong and certain wing will
draw us onward in their track; and when we shall see them so
lovely because they were so loving, we shall advance with less
fear toward Him who was the supreme object of their love.
{369}
Rosa To Gaetano.
Pisa, April 6, 1856.
I can never thank God enough for giving me in you, Gaetano, an
example and a guide for my whole life. I cannot refrain from
often saying so to my mother, and I say it because it is in my
heart. Spite of all the faults and imperfections which have so
many times prevented me from remaining faithful to the good
resolutions which I constantly make before God, I have so high an
idea of the perfection of a Christian wife, and of the duties I
shall soon have to fulfil, that I should indeed be terrified if I
did not confide in the goodness of God, who can do all, and who
will aid me who can do nothing. I often speak to my mother of the
holy respect with which the sacrament we are going to receive
inspires me; and I earnestly beg of you to ask our Lord for the
graces which are necessary to make me what I ought to be. I
promise you to use all my efforts for this end; and I will
dedicate the prayers of the month of May to this intention, for I
have great confidence that the Blessed Virgin will obtain for me
what I still lack. I believe that we shall have made great
progress toward perfection when we come to detest sincerely all
those little daily faults which seem trifles to us, but which
must be so very displeasing to the infinite perfection of God. In
all this, be sure that I will receive your counsels and
admonitions as they ought to be received from him who, by the
will of God, takes the place of father and mother.
April 17.
I am persuaded that the true means of preparing ourselves to
receive the sacrament by which we shall be united for time and
eternity is, to use all our efforts to attain that state of
Christian perfection to which God calls us; and I am also sure
that, if we cannot arrive absolutely at that degree of perfection
which we ardently desire, we can at least kindle in our hearts
the flames of that divine love which is itself the whole law. In
this you will be my guide and my example, Gaetano; we two shall
have but one will, one love also, loving each other in God, in
whom all affections become holy. Our affection did not spring
from outward accomplishments, nor from fleeting beauty, that
flower of a day. It was a stronger tie that bound our souls
together. We love each other because we love God. In him does our
union consist, because in him is all the strength, all the purity
of our love; because in him also is our supreme end. Hence come
those alternations of joy and sadness, according as we approach,
or seem to be receding from, that ideal type of perfection which
is the object of our desires. Ah! how good God is; and how often
I bless him for having put such desires and such hopes into our
hearts. For me, I now see in God not only the eternal power which
created heaven and earth, or the eternal love which redeemed us,
but also that sweet mercy which has given me in you, as it were,
his crowning blessing.
April 25.
Forgive me, Gaetano, my eternal repetitions; but what can I do?
For some time I have been able only to say the same things over
and over again. This very day reminds me of another day, a dear
and solemn one to me. I recollect with unspeakable pleasure the
solitary walk I took, with my mother to speak of you. The
stillness of the country, the fresh aspect of all nature, the
distant voices of the peasants, which alone from time to time
broke the profound tranquillity of the scene--all seemed new to
me, all spoke to my heart. I shall never forget the humble little
church in which, for the first time, I ventured to pray to God to
bless these new thoughts--thoughts which held me suspended, as it
were, between doubt and hope, but which found my heart firmly
resolved to do the divine will in all things.
{370}
From that day I have implored, and still unceasingly implore, the
graces which we need in order to lead together a truly Christian
life. Do you do the same, Gaetano; and let me assure you that I
cannot now pray to God for myself, without at once finding your
name mingled in my supplications.
April 30.
He only is worthy of a reward who has merited it. Do you not know
that combat--and what is life but a continual combat?--must
precede victory? No, Gaetano, we will not be like cowardly
soldiers who would fain have the honors of a triumph without
having seen the face of the foe. Let us rather strive to lay hold
on eternal felicity, which alone can satisfy our desires, by
faithfully performing all our duties; by supporting, for the love
of God, all the trials of life, heavy or light; by devoting
ourselves as much as possible to good works; then the desire of
heaven will not be for us a dreamy ideal or subject of vague
speculation, but it will enter into our daily life to sanctify
it. May your life be prolonged to serve the cause of God by
strong and constant virtues!
May 2.
I believe that, without proposing to ourselves a too ideal and,
as it were, an unattainable type of perfection, we can effect
much by earnestly striving to strengthen our will. Let us keep a
watch over it, and never allow it to incline toward what is evil,
even in the smallest things. Let us always bear in mind those
beautiful words of the _Following of Christ_: "If each year
we corrected one fault, how soon we should become better!" Yes,
strength of will is always necessary, and not less in small
trials than in great ones. In this, it seems to me Christian
perfection really consists; for what can be more pleasing to God
than to see our will always conformed to his? [Footnote 82]
[Footnote 82: The desire of Christian perfection had inspired
Rosa Ferrucci with the idea of collecting some short maxims,
which were well exemplified in her pious and innocent life.
Among her papers were found this little selection, which
seems to us worthy of translation.
"To see God in all created things. To refer all to God. To
remember always 'God sees me.' To have a tender love for
the holy Catholic Church. To unite my actions to those of
Jesus Christ. To keep alive in my heart the desire of
heaven. To beg of God the faith and the constancy of the
martyrs. To have an unwavering confidence in the efficacy
of prayer. To succor the poor for the love of God. To watch
and pray. To do good to all. To obey my father and mother.
To be gentle and docile to my teachers. To be silent as
soon as I perceive in my heart the first motions of anger.
Never to read a doubtful book. To have a scrupulous regard
to truth. Never to speak ill of any one. To view in the
best light the actions of others. To subdue all feelings of
envy. To pray often for humility. Never to slight God's
holy inspirations. To work and study diligently. Frequently
to raise my heart to God. To forgive all, at all times and
in all things. To seek my happiness in the performance of
Christian duties. To do whatever is my duty, and for the
rest trust to the goodness of God. To fear sin more than
death. To ask for the sacraments at the beginning of a
serious illness. To speak to God as a tender and beloved
father. To unite my death to that of Jesus Christ."]
May 30.
No affection which has not its source in the love of God can ever
make us happy. Let us be well convinced of this, and let us
dedicate our whole life to Him who has done all for us. As for
me, I believe that just as the external pomp of worship is
valueless in the sight of God if it is separated from interior
devotion, so works can do nothing to merit grace unless they are
inwardly animated by a pure intention and the desire of pleasing
God alone. We must, then, always pass from what is without to
what is within, and it is this that I mean when I tell you that I
often seek in visible things a lever to raise me toward the
invisible; discerning in all that meets my eyes here below an
image of that Eternal Beauty which unveils itself only to the
intelligence and to the heart. Thus nothing remains mute to me.
{371}
How many things the mountains tell me, and the stars, and the
sea, and the trees, and the birds!--things which I should not
have known if this mighty voice of nature had not taught them to
me. Oh! how admirable is the goodness of God, who thus by a
thousand ways leads back our souls to the thoughts and the holy
affections for which they were created.
I have been reading in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, this
beautiful idea of Jean Paul Richter: "When that which is holy in
the soul of the mother responds to that which is holy in the soul
of the son, their souls then understand each other." This thought
has made a great impression on me; and it seems to me to contain
a grand lesson for all mothers engaged in the religious education
of their sons. It shows us, moreover, the nature of those close
ties which unite us to our relations and our friends. And,
indeed, why do we love one another with such a true and constant
love? Because what is sacred to your soul is sacred also to mine.
Why am I so deeply moved when I hear of some noble action? when I
contemplate the greatness of this world's heroes, and, above all,
the greatness of the saints and martyrs? Why do I weep as I think
of the sacrifices they made with such self-devotion and
fortitude? Because what they held sacred I also hold sacred.
Could more be said in so few words? Yes, every man ought to keep
alive that celestial fire which God has kindled in his heart.
Unhappy he who lets it languish and die out! He loses it for
himself, and is himself lost for his brethren, since he has
broken the bond of love which would have united him to them for
ever. As the flame ascends on high,
"Which by its form upward aspires,"
SO by nature our souls tend to rise toward God, and if they
return again toward earth, there can be no longer for them either
hope of peace or hope of happiness.
July 10.
Let us not be discouraged, Gaetano, let us always hope; our good
God will help us to become better; for, if we lack strength, at
least we are not wanting in good desires. They are a gratuitous
gift of him who wills our good; of him who has given us the most
living example of humility; of him who knows, and will pardon,
the weakness of our poor nature, if only we will combat with that
perseverance which alone has the promise of victory. Ah! if we
truly loved the Lord, we should think of him alone--of him who is
holy and perfect, instead of always thinking of ourselves, weak
and miserable creatures; and we should end by forgetting
ourselves, by losing ourselves, to live only in him so worthy of
our love; and then we should indeed begin to know that we are
nothing, and that he is all.
Jesus wishes us to be gentle with ourselves, and would not have
us fall into dejection when, through the frailty of our nature,
we fail in our good resolutions. At times when we are too much
dejected at the sight of our miseries, Jesus Christ seems to say
to us, as to the disciples going to Emmaus: "What are these
discourses that you hold one with another as you walk, and are
sad?" He who is called the Prince of Peace would have us pacific
toward ourselves, and full of compassion for our own infirmity.
When, therefore, we are seized with sadness at sight of our
poverty and of the dryness of our souls, let us say simply and
humbly this little prayer of St. Catharine of Genoa: "Alas! my
Lord, these are the fruits of my garden! Yet I love thee, my
Jesus, and I will strive to do better in future."
{372}
July 19, (Feast of St Vincent de Paul.)
Do you know what we ought to desire? Neither honors, nor riches,
nor any such earthly vanities, which could add nothing to our
peace. Do you know to what end our will, strengthened by love,
ought to turn? Yes, you know it well, and often have you taught
it me; we ought both to aim at realizing in our life something of
that perfection which, after all, can be but partially obtained
on earth. We ought to look at the things that are immortal and
eternal, rather than at those that are temporal and subject to
change, living in such a manner that a true love of God may
actuate our hearts and our thoughts, develop our sentiments
toward what is good, and direct all our actions to a holy end.
How many touching examples of virtues are recalled to our minds
by this day and the festival which it brings! What indefatigable
and universal charity in St. Vincent de Paul! What lively and
ardent piety! What unbounded compassion for all the errors, all
the faults, all the misfortunes, all the sufferings, physical and
moral, of men! What exhaustless patience! And who among us will
dare to say that he cannot reproduce in himself some shadow of
those beautiful virtues? If we cannot, like this illustrious
saint, relieve the sufferings of a great number of our
fellow-beings, at least we can be humble, patient, and animated
by that true religion which is ever forgiving, ever loving,
because it loves Him who is all mercy and all love.
To Be Continued.
--------------
The Episcopalian Confessional.
It is with great satisfaction that Catholics behold the adoption
by any class of Protestants of their peculiar rites or
ceremonies. It is an indication of an approach to the doctrines
so vehemently renounced at the Reformation, and ought, by strict
logic, to result in the return of many to the old faith. And
though, unfortunately, there are men who play with religious
doctrines as if they were of no practical consequence, there are
always some who are in earnest, and are found ready to make
sacrifices for the sake of truth. From the use of Catholic
ceremonies, which are really all founded on vital doctrine, some
conversions must certainly flow; and the Protestant Church, which
moves in such a direction, is drifting from its old moorings, and
floating toward the safe waters where the bark of St. Peter rides
out every storm.
If there be any of our practices which are essentially a part of
our religious system, surely that of confession is one which is
absolutely _peculiar_ to the Catholic Church. It cannot
lawfully exist without the faith which we hold, and when used, it
drags along with it, irresistibly, our whole moral system. It is
hard to see how any one can confess his sins to a priest, without
accepting the sacerdotal and sacramental system, which can have
no life out of the Catholic communion. Besides, the practical
influence of such confessions leads directly to those habits of
devotion which have no home in Protestantism.
{373}
In the few remarks we are now to make, we do not intend to lose
sight of these convictions, while it is our object to consider
briefly the adoption of the confessional in the Protestant
Episcopal Church, the logical consequences which flow from it,
and even the dangers which attend it. Surely the subject is one
of great moment. If it be of any importance at all, it is of
_vital_ importance. It is either necessary to the soul, or
it is an assumption of powers prejudicial to the interests of
true religion. It cannot be looked upon as an indifferent matter,
which may be used or neglected, according to the taste of the
individual. To a few reflections, therefore, upon it, we
earnestly invite the attention of the honest reader.
1. There is no doubt that there is quite a party in the Episcopal
Church which upholds the practice of auricular confession, and
seeks to extend it. There are ministers of that communion who are
anxious to set up the confessional, and disposed to teach its
necessity. In the city of New York, it is well known that the
clergy of St. Albans' are solicitous to hear confessions and love
to be styled _Fathers_, on account of their spiritual
relation to their penitents. The Rev. Dr. Dix, the respected
rector of Trinity Church, the oldest and most influential
corporation of his denomination, is said to have quite a number
of penitents, and to be the most popular confessor, especially
among the higher class. We presume he makes no secret of his
practice, while his position as the spiritual director of the
"Sisters of St. Mary" is notorious. How general is the custom of
confession in Trinity parish we have no means of knowing, nor do
we know how many of the assistant ministers follow in the wake of
their rector. We have heard of one or two others who are disposed
to be confessors, and there are probably many such ministers
whose names are not brought before the public. We cannot suppose
that any high-minded clergyman would be willing to hear
confessions in an under-hand or secret manner, and we must
believe that they who do so are not ashamed of it, nor unwilling
to have their practice made public. No offence is therefore
intended by the mention of names, and we will rest satisfied that
none is given. How many of the bishops favor auricular confession
does not appear. So far as we have heard, no one has openly
recommended it; but the Right Reverend Dr. Potter, of New York,
has allowed a manual to be dedicated to him, in which the
practice is strongly urged, and devotions for its use are
extracted from Catholic prayer-books. While he has rebuked the
Rev. Mr. Tyng for preaching in a Methodist church, he goes openly
to St. Alban's, and, to say the least, gives sanction to
Ritualistic performances. We have a right, then, to conclude that
he favors the confessional, and is willing to see it set up in
the churches which he superintends. It will be observed that this
confession in the Episcopal Church, is not simply consulting a
clergyman in a private conversation about spiritual matters, but
the humble acknowledgment of sins in detail, in order to receive
absolution from one who thinks himself authorized by Almighty God
to give it. It is certainly a sacrament in the true definition of
the term, an outward sign of an inward grace, administered by one
pretending, at least, to bear a commission from Christ. Those who
go to the Episcopalian ministers to confess their sins, surely go
under this belief, and no argument is necessary to show that they
would not go, unless under the conviction that their offences
against God could be forgiven in no other way.
{374}
The Ritualists have made of this a most important matter in their
devotional books, where can be found questions for examination of
conscience, tables of sins, and prayers to excite contrition and
improve the great gift of absolution. When, then, we speak of the
confessional in the Protestant Episcopal communion, we are not
drawing upon fancy, but touching upon a fact which must have an
important effect upon the body which it especially interests.
2. The first remark we have to make upon this acknowledged fact
is almost a truism. It is, that auricular confession is not a
Protestant practice, but quite the contrary; and that they who
adopt it cut themselves off from all sympathy with the doctrines
of the reformation. We hardly need to prove that there is not one
Protestant church which approves of the custom of which we speak,
or believes that its ministers have the power to remit and retain
sin. If the Church of England be adduced against us, we have only
to point to the incontrovertible fact, that she declares that
penance is not a sacrament, and therefore conveys no inward
grace. The absolutions left in her daily services are only
declaratory of God's willingness to forgive the repentant sinner,
and could be as well used by a layman as by a minister. For who
cannot say that "God pardoneth and absolveth all who are truly
penitent"? And as for the absolution in the office of the
visitation of the sick, we have only to say that it is a relic of
by-gone days which is seldom used, and that whatever be its
meaning, it cannot, contrary to the article, be presumed to
confer grace. The English Church certainly did never consider it
a matter of any necessity, otherwise it would have said so. The
Episcopalians in the United States have not this form to refer
to; for the compilers of their liturgy have expunged it
altogether, at the same time that they omitted the Athanasian
creed. In the form of the ordination of priests, a substitute was
also provided for the old words, "Receive the Holy Ghost; whose
sins you shall remit, they are remitted unto them." The reason of
this substitution we leave the honest reader to imagine. We are
informed that very few of the bishops are willing to use the old
form, and an Episcopal minister of Puseyitical views once told us
that he was very anxious to have the bishop who ordained him use
it, but was restrained from asking this favor by the assurance of
one of the prelate's intimate friends that, if he said anything
about it, he would get a flat refusal, together with a good
scolding. While thus the articles of faith in the Episcopalian
body deny the power of absolution, the practice of that
denomination of Christians is entirely against it. The ministers
who hear confessions and the people who make them, live in a
"dreamland," about which once we read a very pretty piece of
poetry. This "dreamland" is not very extensive or tangible here,
and we wonder if now there are any somnambulists in or about
Buffalo. We yield the right to every man to do as he pleases, and
call himself what he likes, only we object to his having two
contradictory characters at the same time. It is not quite
reasonable; and we say, with the good common sense of mankind,
"My dear friend, choose for yourself, but please be either one
thing or the other."
{375}
But we go further, and assert that the practice of confession is
the assumption of a sacerdotal power which was the very first
point attacked by the reformation, and which is really the
central point of the Catholic system. Once admit the great power
of absolution, and you receive at the same time logically the
doctrine of priesthood as it is held by the Church. This doctrine
does not and cannot stand alone; it brings with it the church in
her unity, and the necessary safeguards which divine wisdom has
thrown around the exercise of so great a gift. Who has the power
to forgive sins? Not every man, nor every one who may choose to
call himself a priest. There must be some external call to so
high an office; and as it is Christ's priesthood which is
exercised, there must be some way of authenticating the power
delegated, and articulating it to the great head of Christianity.
The Catholic Church alone maintains the practice of confession,
and if she is good for this, she is good for everything.
Eclecticism may be advisable in matters of science, but in divine
revelation it is both absurd and impossible. The foundation of
faith is in the word of God. The church is no teacher if she be
not guided by supernatural light; and if she be thus guided, her
authority is universal. Episcopalians may believe that their
ministers can forgive their sins, but they have no reason for
such a belief. Their own church surely does not say so, while the
Catholic voice expressly denies it. It will be hard to see how
they can prove it from Scripture as applied to their particular
communion. Not only is the unity of the church connected
logically with the idea of priesthood, but also that of
sacrifice, and of sacramental grace. And these doctrines bring
with them the Tridentine system of justification, which is
diametrically opposed to the Lutheran theory which underlies all
consistent Protestantism. We do not believe that any one can go
to confession for any length of time, and not feel the truth of
these remarks. He will be irresistibly borne to the gates of the
Catholic Church with whose faith his religious life will be in
sympathy, and he will, day by day, lose his love and respect for
his own communion.
3. So far, therefore, we have reason to rejoice in the adoption
of the confessional by the Episcopalians, and to renew our
prayers for their conversion to that truth which at a distance
proves so attractive to them. Yet there are dangers in regard to
which the sincere ought to be forewarned, and serious evils to
many souls may result from the incapacity of confessors who have
never been trained for this most delicate and difficult work. It
is in the spirit of Christian charity that we revert to these
dangers.
In the first place, we hardly need say that no one but a duly
authorized priest of the Catholic Church has the power to give
absolution. As we are addressing chiefly those who believe in
some ecclesiastical system, we have only to advert to the fact,
that to such a power both orders and jurisdiction are necessary.
The Episcopal Church does not admit the existence of this power,
and the whole Christian world which does accept it, unites in the
opinion that the Episcopalian clergy have no orders whatever, any
more than the Methodists or Presbyterians. Any layman is as good
a priest as the most distinguished Anglican minister. Such is the
decision of the Catholic Church, and of every sect which has
retained the apostolical succession. Is this decision of no
consequence to the Ritualists who pretend to believe in authority
and antiquity? But orders are not sufficient for the exercise of
the power of absolution.
{376}
Jurisdiction is also required, because they who believe in the
priesthood must also believe that Christ has left this great
office in order, and not in confusion. The bishop is the supreme
pastor of his diocese, and no priest, without his permission, can
validly either hear confessions or give absolution. This
principle of jurisdiction is one which does not seem to penetrate
the heads of High-Church Episcopalians; but if they will reflect
for a moment, they will see its absolute necessity to the
existence of the church. Suppose that valid orders are alone
required to the exercise of the priesthood, and the communion of
the faithful, and what is to prevent any priest from going off at
any time, and carrying with him all the essentials of the church?
Then there would be as many churches as there are dissenting
priests.
No intelligent man would form a society on such principles, and
surely our Lord Jesus Christ did not do so foolish a thing as
found a church containing in itself the very seeds of
self-destruction. We have heard that an excommunicated priest,
who bears, to his sorrow, the ineffaceable character of
priesthood, is willing to hear confessions since his apostasy.
But though he has valid orders, he is no more able to give
absolution than his associate ministers who have never been
ordained, because he has no jurisdiction from Christ. What do
these "Fathers" among the Episcopalians pretend? Do they ask
jurisdiction from their own bishops, who, having none, have none
to give? Or do they profess to have the whole Catholic Church in
their own persons? If so, history has seen nothing so strange in
all its curious record of ecclesiastical devices.
It is then a sad thing for a man to confess his sins and go
through the humiliation of opening his whole life to another; and
then receive no pardon for the sins he so anxiously confesses. We
beg the attention of such earnest hearts to this point, and say
to them, "If you really wish to confess, why not go at once where
there is no doubt that Christ has left the power of forgiveness?"
Secondly, there is danger in the way and manner in which we are
told that the Episcopalian ministers hear confessions. They
ought, for their own sake, and for the sake of their penitents,
to adopt the rules and safeguards which the experience of the
church has thrown around so important a work. It is not prudent
to hear the confessions of ladies in the minister's private room.
The presence of a plain cross, or crucifix, does not remove the
objection. It is too much of a burden to expect a lady to go
through with all this unnecessary trial, especially when she has
the additional conviction that she is doing something which she
would not wish the world to know, or which she would not be
willing to tell her husband or friends. The Catholic Church has
wisely provided that the priest shall sit where he need neither
see nor distinguish the penitent, and this is a safe rule to be
imitated. The same objection arises to the method, said to be in
vogue at St. Alban's, where the minister sits in the chancel, and
the penitent kneels at his back. If there be others in the
church, there is too much exposure, and if the church is locked,
there is too much privacy. The Episcopalian clergy who become
confessors ought to erect confessionals in their churches, and
sit there at given hours publicly and openly.
{377}
We understand, also, that in some cases, at least, the penitent
is obliged to write out his confession in full, and we consider
this a dangerous and far too painful practice. We have been
informed that Dr. Pusey wishes the general confessions which he
hears to be written out carefully and left with him for his
private study some days before the confession is made. We are
certain that such a course has been sometimes imitated in this
country, much to the disgust of ladies, who have even spoken to
us of it. A sinner will do much, no doubt, in the fervor of
penitence, but no such thing as this ought to be done. It is
against the practice of the Catholic Church, and in violation of
instinctive delicacy and propriety. No one is obliged to expose
himself, even to obtain the pardon of sin.
Again, it is unfortunate for the Protestant clergy that they hear
confession only by reason of their _personal_ influence over
their penitents; that they do not understand the nature of the
seal of secrecy; and that they have no fixed system by which to
direct their penitents. The same results follow, as if a doctor
should essay to be a lawyer, or a blacksmith a dentist.
Personal influence is, no doubt, an instrument of much good; but
when it alone or principally governs the relations of confessor
and penitent, serious dangers may be imminent. Most of those who
go to confession in the Episcopal Church are led to this step by
reason of their confidence in the individual to whom they go, and
through the attraction of his piety or zeal. They would hardly go
to any one else, and if he were to die or be removed, they would
be left without a director. It is not so much the priest to whom
they unburden their conscience, as the favorite preacher whose
good qualities have made strong impressions upon them. This is
not a healthy state of things, and leads to sentimentality, which
is often mistaken for piety. In the Catholic Church, the habit of
confession is as universal as prayer, and the priestly character
overshadows the individual. Among Protestants the contrary is
notoriously true, and this difficulty in the way of the
Protestant confessor can hardly be removed until he shall have
brought about in his communion the state of feeling which is
second nature to Catholics. This he can never do. He may lead
individuals to the church; he cannot convert the whole body with
which he is identified.
With the best intentions in the world, he does not and cannot
understand the seal of secrecy which for ever closes the lips of
the priest. He is disposed as a man of honor not to betray
confidence, but experience teaches us that very few human secrets
have been kept. He has not been taught the sacred nature of his
obligation, nor the various ways by which he may expose his
penitent, and as he has assumed an office to which his church did
not call him, he stands or falls in human strength. No motive
higher than that of honor binds him, and complicated as he is
with the world, and generally with matrimonial relations, he
really does not know how to act. The Catholic priest not only is
bound by the fear of terrible sin, but is also aided by the
system which surrounds him, in which he is trained and by that
supernatural power which we know upholds the seven sacraments. He
is not an individual resting upon his unaided powers, but the
creature of his church, the agent and representative of a vast
power which girdles the Christian world. Years of study and
discipline have taught him the nature of his obligations, while
he himself is as much bound to confess his sins as to hear the
burden of other consciences.
{378}
What an anomaly, for a man who never confesses his own faults, to
undertake to listen to the accusations of others! If they need
the confessional, much more does he need it. Is it not
Pharisaical to bind burdens upon others, which we touch not with
one of our fingers?
Let men say what they will, we believe, and from experience we
know, that God upholds the confessor in his difficult task; that
he gives him superhuman wisdom; that within the tribunal of
penance a divine shield is over him to protect him against the
weakness of humanity, that he may walk unharmed where otherwise
angels would fear to tread. Here we pity the poor and isolated
Ritualist, going forth upon a dangerous sea, in a frail bark,
with no trust but the strength of his own arm. Cast out by his
own church, and refusing communion with the great Catholic heart,
how long will he stand the fury of the storm?
Finally, how shall he direct his penitents, and by what system
form their spiritual character? Moral theology is an extensive
and subtle science. The infallible church has given clear
decisions upon all essential points of fact and morals, and her
doctors, by years of patient labor and centuries of experience,
have matured the colossal system which has such mighty influence
over the religious heart. But what is all this to the Protestant
confessor? He cannot avail himself of this without confessing the
authority of the church; and if he begins with such a confession,
where must he conscientiously guide his penitents? If he deny
this authority, and by his own fallible wisdom choose the
principles of his morality, in what respect is his opinion worth
more than that of the humblest layman? Can there be a more
pitiable spectacle, than that of a Protestant minister with St.
Liguori as his guide in leading the souls of others? His
spiritual life is surely made up of contradictions which must vex
and perplex his conscience if he be an honest man. And will he
not unavoidably make grievous mistakes, in the use of tools
without experience, in the details of a work for which he has had
no preparation?
Moreover, there are often decisions which have to be made, and in
these he must either be a despot, or he must make equivocal
answers. If a Catholic accuses himself of unbelief or doubt, the
reply is easy; for God's revelation is, according to our faith,
in and through an unerring church. If the Protestant falls into a
like danger, how shall he find direction, since for him there is
no infallible church? Must he not go on his weary way of
investigation, and is not, by his principles, doubt his normal
state? If a Catholic doubts the truth of any decision of his
church, he commits a sin against his own creed; but since the
Episcopal communion openly disclaims infallibility, how shall the
Episcopalian confessor tell his penitent not to doubt his church
which herself tells him he ought to doubt her? Then it comes to
this, that he will either make him no reply, or rule him with a
rod of iron, and bind him by his inflexible _ipse dixit_.
What has been the result, in more cases than one, of this
arbitrary despotism in the hands of individuals who neither by
their own church, nor by any other, have the right to direct
souls? Loss of the moral sense, failure to discern the first
inspirations of faith, and, sometimes, insanity. We draw from the
testimony of facts. It is bad enough to be under a civil despot,
but it is worse to be under a religious autocrat.
{379}
Then in the choice of penances we have heard of most frightful
mistakes, where the good of the penitent was in no way consulted,
but the vindication of the absolutism of the confessor. Think of
a penance to blood for one lie, or for the great error of
attending Mass in a Catholic Church. Think of penances which
cover months and burden years with the chains of obligatory
prayers and exercises. But all this is really nothing compared to
the morbid and unhealthy religious life which they engender, in
which slavish fear of God is the principal ingredient, where
sighs and solemn faces, instead of cheerfulness and natural
joyousness, are the exhibitions of their piety. To us, (and we
have had occasion to know the interior of more than one,) they
seem to be perpetually toiling up a steep ascent under the weight
of heavy burdens from which it would be wrong to expect relief.
Forced to confess their sins as if doing some stealthy action,
they kill in their souls the bright light and, elasticity of
spirit which the great Creator gave them. God is not a tyrant,
but a merciful and beneficent father, whose smiles of love are
ever around his children, and his priesthood are agents in the
work of love to bring into even the erring heart the sunlight of
a father's truth and mercy. The confessor is no minister of
justice, but like his Master, the good Samaritan to bind up the
wounds of the broken heart, to preach deliverance to the captive,
and joy to the mourner.
In what we have said, we make no accusations against the good
intentions of these Protestant confessors, for whom we especially
pray. We believe that they mean well, and that they hope to
sanctify their people by borrowing fruit from the garden of the
church, and transplanting it where it cannot and will not grow.
And as their only friends--for in their own communion they have
few friends--we warn them of the risk they run, and of the
dangers to which they expose their penitents. It is a fearful
responsibility for them, for which they must answer alone, and in
which no church will shield them. Some will, through their
incapacity, lose their hold upon all religion, and either live
without hope or die without consolation. Others will shut their
eyes to the plainest deductions of reason, and having eyes, will
see not, having ears, will hear not. Many through divine grace,
and the honest heart which pursues principles to their legitimate
results, will find their way to that one faith where all things
are in harmony, where the aspirations of the soul are met with a
full answer, and the needs of the heart are filled from God's own
fulness. O children of men! how foolish it is to enter upon the
province of God, and by human hands to make a religion, when the
all-merciful Father, who alone knoweth our frame, has made one
for us, which in its completeness answereth to every want of our
being.
--------
{380}
Sketches Drawn From The Life Of St. Paula,
By The Abbe Lagrange, Vicar-general Of Orleans.
In Three Chapters.
Chapter I.
"If all the members of my body should be changed into as many
tongues, and should assume as many voices, I should still be
unable to say enough of the virtues of the saintly and venerable
Paula."
It is in these words of pious enthusiasm that St. Jerome, himself
so holy a man, and accustomed to the guidance of so many noble
souls, begins his biography of Paula, when, at the instance of
her daughter, Eustochium, and to dry her tears, he undertook to
record her mother's virtues.
Placing himself with awe in the presence of God and his angels,
St. Jerome says: "I call to witness our Lord Jesus Christ and his
saints, and the guardian angel of this incomparable woman, that
what I say is simple truth, and that my words are unworthy of
those virtues celebrated throughout the world, which have been
the admiration of the church, and which the poor yet weep for.
Noble by birth, more noble still by her holiness; powerful in her
opulence, but more illustrious afterward in the poverty of
Christ; of the race of the Scipios and of the Gracchi; heiress of
Paulus Emilius, from whom she takes her name of Paula; direct
descendant of that famous Martia Papyria, who was wife to the
conqueror of Perseus, and mother of the second Scipio Africanus;
she preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and the humble roof of a poor
dwelling to the gilded palaces of her ancestors."
Paula was born in Rome, about the middle of the fourth century,
the 5th of May, of the year 347, in the reign of Constantius, and
of Constans, the sons of Constantine, seven years after the death
of the latter prince. Julius was then Pope at Rome. Paula
belonged, through her mother, Blesilla, to one of the most
ancient and illustrious families of Rome; and it seemed as if
Providence wished to unite all earthly distinctions in this
child, for the purest blood of Greece mingled in her veins with
the noblest blood of Rome. At this time nothing was more common
than alliances between the Roman and Greek families, as is proved
by the Greek names which we find in the Roman genealogies. The
father of Paula, Rogatus, was a Greek, and claimed royal descent
from the kings of Mycaenas; and Agamemnon himself is said to have
been his direct ancestor.
St. Jerome gives no further detail of the family of Paula,
excepting that he mentions casually that their possessions were
vast, including very important estates in Greece near Actium,
besides their domain in Italy. "If," says St. Jerome, "I take
note of her opulence and wealth, it is not that I attach
importance to these temporal advantages, but in order to show
that the glory of Paula in my eyes was not in having possessed
them, but in having laid them at the feet of Jesus Christ."
{381}
A more real advantage of her birth was, that her noble family
were Christians, although a portion of them still remained
pagans. This intermingling of creeds must not surprise us; for
the resistance to conversion was great, and throughout the fourth
century it was a common thing to see worshippers of the true God
and of Jupiter under the same roof.
Rome, in truth, presented then a great contrast. Christian Rome
and pagan Rome stood face to face, and pagan Rome, as yet
untouched by barbarians, still wore an imposing aspect. The
Capitol still stood in pride, crowned with the statues and
temples of the heathen gods. Opposite, on the Palatine, stood the
ancient dwelling of the Caesars, with its marble porticoes; and
at the foot of the two hills the old Forum surrounded with pagan
temples. Further still, and separated from the Forum by the
Sacred Way and the Amphitheatre of Flavius, rose the immense
Colosseum; and at the other extremity the great circus and the
aqueducts of Nero. On the borders of the Tiber was the mole of
Adrian, the mausoleum of Augustus, with temples, theatres, baths,
porticoes, etc., on every side; indeed, every monument of luxury
and superstition, showing how deeply rooted paganism still was in
the capital of the empire.
Nevertheless, by more than one sign it was easy to recognize that
all this pagan grandeur was fast fading away before another
power; and if polytheism still found strong support in old
traditions and customs, institutions and monuments, it was the
influence of the past, which was lessening every day. The future
belonged to the church, and Christianity was daily gaining the
upper hand. The pagan temples which were still standing were
empty, the crowd now disdaining sacrifices. Silence and solitude
reigned around the gods, while the new faith, spreading out its
magnificence in broad daylight, covered Rome with superb
basilicas. At the same time, Rome, deserted by the emperors for
political reasons, which served the divine purpose, seemed given
up to the majesty of pontifical rule; and the popes, brought out
from the Catacombs and placed by Constantine in the imperial
palace, already gave a foreshadowing to the world of the glory
which should henceforth invest the Holy See.
At this time there sprang from the bosom of the church a soul who
was destined to exercise a vast influence upon the religious
orders throughout the universe.
The blood of the martyrs and early Christians had not been shed
in vain. It was just at this epoch in the history of Christianity
that Providence gave being to a child destined by her holiness to
be one of the marvels of the age.
We have sufficient data to know what her education was and under
what influences she grew up to womanhood. The old Roman spirit
and the Christian spirit were both fitted to form a character of
the highest order. Austere honor, severe self-respect, noble
traditions of ancient customs, were early inculcated in the mind
of Paula. She came of a race of whom St. Jerome said: "Remember
that in your family a woman very rarely, if ever, contracts a
second marriage." Besides the holy books which were her first
studies, her reading was vast and extended, embracing both the
literature of Greece and Rome. We shall see how in after-life
this early culture developed in her the rich gifts of nature,
establishing equilibrium between her intellect and her character.
{382}
Paula was brought up by her mother with that ardent love for the
practice of her religion, which in all its perfection belonged
especially to the days when persecution made these observances
most precious to the early Christians. She followed Blesilla to
the basilicas and to all feasts of the church, and also to visit
the tombs of the martyrs and to the Catacombs. This last devotion
was peculiarly dear to the Christians of the fourth century. They
sought to glorify those victorious soldiers. "See," cried St.
Chrysostom, "the tomb of the martyrs! The emperor himself lays
down his crown there, and bends the knee."
There was not, perhaps, a family of Christians in Rome, which did
not have some loved member among the glorious dead lying in the
long galleries of the Catacombs. Saint Jerome speaks of the pious
attraction of these sanctified asylums in the great city of the
martyrs.
In this atmosphere of love for the church, and of faith in Christ
and in the divine origin of Christianity, young Paula grew up. It
was in those days the custom for the daughters of noble houses in
Rome to marry young; and when Paula was fifteen years of age, her
parents gave her in marriage to a young Greek whose name was
Toxotius.
He belonged, on his mother's side, to the ancient family of the
Julians, which boasted, as we know, of going back to the time of
AEneas:
"Julius, à magno dimissum nomen Iülo."
_Virgil's AEneid._
Toxotius did not have the faith of his bride. These mixed
marriages were not rare in those days; witness Monica and
Patricius, the parents of St. Augustine.
Christianity had tolerated such marriages from the beginning, in
the hope that the infidel husband might be won by the wife to her
belief. When, robed in a white tunic of the finest wool,
according to custom, her brow covered with the _flammcum_,
Paula laid her trembling hand in that of Toxotius, who can tell
with what holy emotion, what elevation of thought, what purity of
feeling and of hope, her soul was filled! On the other hand,
Toxotius does not seem to have been unworthy of his Christian
bride, and the uncommon affection Paula bore him ever afterward,
her inconsolable grief for his loss, all proves that their
marriage was among those which the world calls happy. God blessed
this union. Four daughters were successively born to them.
The eldest, called Blesilla after her grandmother, seemed gifted
with a vivacious and most interesting character; her health was
delicate, but her full, rich nature gave early promise of that
rare beauty of mind and soul, which developed perfectly in
after-years to the joy of Paula.
Paulina, the second, had also a fine nature, but the very
opposite of Blesilla's. Her light was not like her sister's, a
shining flame; but with less brilliancy of wit, and less vivacity
of character, she possessed great good sense and solid judgment,
giving promise of being as strong in character as her sister was
brilliant.
As for the third of these young girls, called by the graceful
name of Eustochium, borrowed from the Greek, and meaning
_rectitude_ or _rule_, she was a gentle child, modest,
reserved, timid. One would say she was like a flower hiding
within herself her own perfume; but this perfume was sweet, and
on a nearer view one could not avoid seeing in this young soul
all the treasures which would one day flower and bloom. It is
difficult to picture to ourselves Rufina.
{383}
She appears but once in the history of her mother, at the moment
of the departure of Paula for the east, sad, bathed in tears, and
yet silent and resigned; stamped, even in childhood, with that
painful charm which belongs particularly to those beings not
destined by providence to mature, but to fall away and die young.
Paula's married life was passed in the midst of all the
magnificence which marked the decline and fall of the empire. She
passed through the streets of Rome, as did the other patrician
ladies, in a gilded litter, carried by slaves. She would have
feared to put her dainty feet on the earth, or to touch the mud
of the streets. The weight of a silk dress was almost too much
for one so sensitive to carry; and had a ray of sunshine intruded
into her litter, it would have seemed to her a _fire_.
"_Et solis calor incendium,_" etc., etc.
_Epist. ad Pammachium_.
In those days she used rouge and cereum, like other women of her
rank; she passed much of her time at the bath, which consumed so
great a part of life in Rome; she spent the winter, according to
usual custom, at Rome, and the summer in some villa in the
country, passing her time most agreeably between her books and a
chosen circle of friends.
In the midst of all this luxury, leading a life far removed from
the virtues which she practised later, Paula was yet known and
respected as a woman of great dignity of character and
irreproachable conduct. And if, during these happy years, the
young wife of Toxotius did not always sufficiently bear in mind
the maxim of the apostle, which teaches us to use the things of
this world, without giving them our affections inordinately; if
she tasted too freely of its pleasures and dangerous vanities, in
the trials which she was soon to encounter, there was
compensation to be made for this self-indulgence, and, in her
austere penance, a super-abundant expiation. Saint Jerome tells
us that Paula had none of the barbaric arrogance common to the
Roman women--that which made them purse-proud, cruel to their
slaves, passionate, and impatient, which Juvenal describes so
admirably in his imperishable satires. In Paula all these bad
passions gave place to gentleness, softness, goodness. "This
wealthy daughter of the Scipios," says St. Jerome, "was the
gentlest and the most benevolent of women--to little children, to
plebeians, and with her own slaves. She possessed that excelling
goodness, without which noble birth and beauty are worthless, and
which is especially characteristic of a lofty nature. This
sweetness of mind, combined with her austere sense of honor, were
the two features of her soul which, by their contrast, made her
countenance most charming.
It is easy to conceive how such a woman performed the delicate
social duties that devolved upon her. Her associations were of
two kinds. She was intimate with all the celebrated women in the
church, such as Manilla and Titiana; at the same time the pagan
relations of Toxotius all loved her, and she received them
frequently at her house, bearing in mind the duty of the
Christian woman to let them see her religion in such a light as
would lead them to respect and honor it. And so it was that, by
her fireside, Paula was the happiest of wives and of mothers. Her
young family grew up joyously around her, filling her with bright
hopes for the future.
She had long wished to give her husband a son and heir. Her
prayer was answered; and she gave birth to a son, her last child,
who received the name of Toxotius, after his father.
{384}
This is all that history tells us of the first phase in the life
of Paula. We see her thus with every happiness at once, "the
pride," says St. Jerome, "of her husband, of her family, and of
all Rome."
We know no more of her life up to the age of thirty. The Paula of
history, the saint whom God was to give as an example to souls,
is not the woman of the world, nor the happy woman; she is the
woman struck as if by lightning, blasted in her happiness; and
from this trial rising up generously, and by a great flight
soaring far above common virtues and the ordinary condition of
pious souls, up to those heroic acts which only emanate from
great sorrows. It would seem as if God had been pleased to
accumulate upon her, for thirty years, all the felicity of
earth--to adorn, as it were, this victim of his love, and to make
us comprehend the better by the subsequent destruction of this,
how vain is earthly happiness.
It is here that the historian takes hold of Paula, and that the
veil is lifted from her. Now begins her true history, the history
of her soul.
Paula was only thirty-one years of age when Toxotius died and she
became a widow. The blow to her was terrible. In the first
moments of her grief she was completely stunned and powerless. It
was feared by her friends that she would not long survive the
shock. Nothing could stop her tears. She could not be comforted.
From day to day the void was growing deeper and deeper into her
heart.
There is a decisive turning-point in the life of every one, on
which the future depends. This moment had now come for Paula. Two
ways lay open before her--the world on one side, God on the
other. She determined, in her sorrow, to give up the world, to
lead for ever afterward the life of a Christian widow, and to
seek for consolation in this resolution.
After the first outburst of grief, when she came to herself, her
decision was irrevocably made. Human things were never more to
regain the hold they had had over her up till now. She understood
what God wanted of her; namely, "to accept the sacrifice and
change her whole life." So, as St. Francis de Sales tells us,
"the heart of a widow who could not give herself all to God
during the lifetime of her husband, flies in search of celestial
perfumes, when he has been taken from her."
Paula was surrounded with many noble examples. Marcella lived in
her palace on Mount Aventine, where she had gathered together a
band of widows and virgins from amongst the noblest families of
Rome, who gave great edification by their virtue and charity. How
and for what purpose had Providence permitted this community to
be formed, which gave such an impetus to the religious life? It
is necessary that we should answer in some detail, for this is
the key to the whole life of Paula.
The church, resting from the earlier persecutions, which inflamed
zeal and devotion, was now in great peril from the growing
influence of security and wealth, in spreading a pagan and Roman
love of indolence and indifference. The empire was declining, and
its moral fall was hastened by political troubles. The degenerate
Romans consoled themselves for their abasement, by the melancholy
enjoyments of luxury and vice. Luxury and debauchery were already
creeping into the Christian lines, thus attacking the most vital
parts of the church. False widows and virgins no longer scrupled
to show light conduct beneath the veil.
{385}
There must be a remedy found equal to the evil. God failed not to
bring succor to his church, and the spirit of holiness became all
the more manifest in her faithful children, in proportion as the
peril was great.
The reaction commenced in the east, with the great monastic
foundations, which rose up in opposition to the world, performing
prodigies in the way of austerities and moral improvement. At
Rome, strange to say, the reform began where it was least to have
been expected, namely, in the midst of the patricians. The signal
was given by women. They threw themselves with ardor into the
heroic path, and soon their husbands followed them. This
regeneration was one of the most memorable in history, as well as
in the annals of the church. It was started by St. Athanasius,
who brought it with him from the east. Thrice exiled by Arian
persecution, the great patriarch three times sought refuge in
Rome. He had brought with him the revelation of the wonders
realized by the fathers in the deserts of Egypt and on the banks
of the Nile. His biography of the great Anthony took hold of
every imagination, and gave new zeal to monastic life. Athanasius
had passed seven years in the Theban deserts; he had known
Anthony, Ricomius, and Hilarius, and told of the astounding
graces of their supernatural life.
In one of these journeys of Athanasius to Rome, a noble Christian
widow, named Albina, had the honor of receiving him as her guest.
Albina had a daughter, Marcella, on whose noble soul the
conversation of the great bishop made an extraordinary
impression. Seated at his feet, the young girl drank in every
word that fell from his lips. Some months after, out of deference
to her mother's wishes, Marcella consented to marry; but when, at
the end of seven months, she became a widow and was free, she
made up her mind never to contract a second marriage, but to
devote herself in Rome to the humble imitation of those virtues
which Athanasius had taught her to venerate and admire.
Nevertheless, her youth, her wit and great beauty drew around her
many admirers. Amongst others was Cerealio, of high birth and
large fortune. "I will be more her father than her husband," said
he to Albina, who greatly desired the marriage, "I will leave her
all my wealth, being already advanced in years." But Marcella was
inflexible. "If I wished to marry again," said she to her mother,
"I would marry a husband, and not an inheritance."
Cerealio was refused, and this discouraged all other suitors.
Marcella now gave up the world and made a desert of her
magnificent palace. There she lived austerely, doing good works.
She bid farewell to jewels, and even laid aside the seal ring
always worn by the patrician women; and rising above their
prejudice against the religious state, and particularly the
coarse garb of the monks, she was the first who dared to assume
the abased dress, and publicly imitated what St. Athanasius had
taught her to believe good in the sight of God. The example soon
became contagious, giving her many followers, who astonished Rome
by their austerities and penances.
There was also at Rome, at this time, a young patrician lady
whose name was Melanie. Suddenly, when only twenty-two, she lost
her husband and two children, and laid them in one tomb on the
same day. Accepting this dispensation of the divine will, Melanie
resolved to devote her whole life to the shining virtues of which
Marcella was so bright an example.
{386}
To increase her faith further, she started on a pious pilgrimage
to the east, where Athanasius still lived. She saw him at
Alexandria shortly before his death. After having visited the
monasteries of Egypt and the Holy Land, Melanie was unwilling to
return to Rome and its corruptions. She therefore founded for
herself a monastery on the Mount of Olives, where she lived an
austere and good life.
This example still further inflamed the souls of the Roman women,
and numberless were those now in search of perfection; some
remaining at home in their own houses, like the virgins and
widows of the first centuries; others preferring to congregate
together, and, without any fixed rule, make the trial of
community life. The centre of all this movement was Marcella, who
possessed in an extraordinary degree the power of attracting
others to her. She was truly the standard-bearer of this noble
band, of whose hearts grace had taken possession. The venerable
Albina was like the revered ancestress of the little community
formed on Mount Aventine. The most prominent of those who joined
Marcella were Sophronia, Felicitas, and Marcellina. The latter
was daughter of an ancient governor of the Gauls. Outside of
Marcella's house, the names best known among those who had
devoted themselves to a life of austerity and virtue, were Lea, a
holy widow whom the church has canonized; the admirable Asella,
and Fabiola, who was of the ancient family of Fabius. All this
movement toward religious life was greatly encouraged by the
pious pontiff who then filled St. Peter's chair. At the time
Paula became a widow. Pope Damasus was nearly seventy-five years
of age. He was one of the noblest of the early popes, and one of
those who did most for Christianity and for the development of
Christian piety. He had a sister named Irene, who, consecrating
herself to God, died at the age of twenty, in honor of whom he
composed a most touching epitaph.
Such was the group of souls and the array of virtue which Paula
had around her, and which attracted her, when she became a widow,
to seek a more perfect life.
In the words of St. Jerome, Marcella, like an incendiary, blew
upon these lighted cinders and set them in a blaze. She found
words to bid those eyes, so dimmed by tears, to turn to heaven;
and she urged that bruised spirit to rise up and seek God. All
this Marcella did with a sister's tenderness. Her solicitude
extended to the children of her friend, and she begged that
Eustochium, who already showed a predilection for the religious
life, might be confided to her care. Paula acceded to this wish
with joy, keeping with her Blesilla, Paulina, Rufina, and
Toxotius. Then she began with ardor and faith the new life she
had marked out for herself, and she soon outshone all others in
virtue. There was a sudden and admirable expansion of greatness
in her soul. With her this rupture with the world was but a
higher flight toward God.
Her first step in advance was a new and great love of prayer; for
so it is, that the more the heart is closed to earth, the more it
opens to heaven. Her love of God and of celestial things grew
stronger each day. She lived most austerely, practising every
Christian mortification. All the habits of luxury of other days
were thrown aside, and the very comforts of life diminished. She
slept on the bare floor, and rivalled in abstinence and fast the
ascetics of the desert. She often wept over the thought of the
self-indulgence of her former worldly life.
{387}
These tears, together with those which she shed for her husband,
Toxotius, flowed so constantly and so abundantly, that her eyes
were injured, and her sight endangered. Paula was the pale one,
pale with fasting and almost blinded by tears.
Paula's heart was inflamed with charity. She found in the poor
another outlet of love for an ardent nature; and as she surpassed
Marcella and all others in austerities, so she also surpassed
them in charities. All her income was given in alms, and "never,"
says St. Jerome, "did a beggar come away from her empty-handed."
It was now two years since Paula had lived in this holy way, when
great news reached the little community of Aventine. In 382, Pope
Damasus called to Rome the Catholic bishops in council, and many
venerable bishops were expected there from the east. The object
of the council was to decide several questions of faith, as well
as to put an end to the long pending schism of Antioch. A few
bishops only answered the call of the Roman pontiff, the greater
part excusing themselves in a letter which is celebrated in
ecclesiastical history. Among those who came were Paulinus, one
of the bishops of Antioch, and St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamina
in the island of Cyprus.
It is easy to imagine the emotion produced among these recluses
by the arrival in Rome of such personages as these holy bishops,
who came from the mysterious east where the Catholic faith had
been cradled. They had seen Jerusalem and the Holy Land; they
knew the fathers of the desert, whose fame filled the world. What
lessons of wisdom would they not be able to gather from such
visitors!
Paula obtained from Pope Damasus the honor of having St.
Epiphanius as her guest, and it was in her daily interviews with
him, as well as with Paulinus, that the desire to see the east,
which she was one day to realize, first sprung up in her mind.
History has preserved few details of this council of the year
382. The great work to be brought about by these eastern bishops
at Rome was the new impetus which their presence was to give to
religion among the Christians of Rome already in the way of life
and truth. There came from the east, in company with the holy
bishops, a man destined to exercise great influence over the
future life of Paula and her friends. This man was St. Jerome. We
must pause a moment and not pass by one who is perhaps the most
striking, the most original, and the grandest figure of the
fourth century. He stands alone in his strength--different from
St. Hilarius of Poitiers, the profound theologian; from Ambrose,
the sweet orator; from Augustine, the great philosopher, or
Paulinus, the Christian poet. His features are marked and stern,
his character is austere and ardent; the burning reflection from
an eastern sky rests upon him; he is laden with the learning of
the Christian and the pagan world; the indefatigable athlete of
the church, he whose powerful voice moved the old world when they
listened to his pathetic lament over the fall of Rome, and which
moves us still when we read it now after the lapse of centuries!
Such was Jerome; yet is this picture incomplete, for we have not
mentioned his special gift for the direction of souls. He was
their guide, their father. He it was who began this divine
guidance, entrusted afterward to St. Bernard, and by him to St.
Francis de Sales, from St. Francis de Sales to Bossuet and
Fénélon, and so on down to our own times. It is this special gift
which gives him so prominent a part in the history of Paula.
{388}
Pope Damasus wished to detain him in Rome after the departure of
the bishops for the east, in order that Jerome should expound the
holy Scriptures and give answers to those who came to Rome from
all parts of the globe for explanations of the dogmas and
discipline of the church. A great friendship had sprung up
between the sovereign pontiff and St. Jerome. The study of the
holy Scriptures bound their affections together. "I know of
nothing better," wrote the holy father to him in one of his
letters, "than our conversations about Scripture; that is to say,
when I ask questions, and you answer; and I say like the prophet,
that your voice is sweeter to my heart than honey to my lips."
After the departure of Epiphanius and Paulinus, Marcella and
Paula sought for Jerome and entreated him to explain the
Scriptures to them at Mount Aventine. The austere monk resisted
them long, but at last yielded, and crowds came to hear him. He
would read the text, and then make his comments. The listeners
were captivated by his eloquence, and his language was peculiarly
strong, clear, and forcible. His monk's attire, his cheeks,
sunken by penance and browned by the eastern sun, and his deep
voice, all combined to throw a strange spell over his hearers.
He, too, soon discovered that he spoke to noble souls, and thus
was his abiding interest awakened by his own delight in opening
such treasures to those so capable of appreciating them.
Such was the ardor of Paula and her friends in studying the
Scriptures, that Jerome was in admiration at their labor and
perseverance; and it excited him to further efforts, and made him
feel the necessity of undertaking a complete translation of the
entire Bible, which, indeed, was the work of his life from that
time afterward, without remission; being begun on Mount Aventine,
among his favorite disciples, and only ending many years later,
with his life. Jerome now undertook the spiritual direction of
Paula, Marcella, Asella, and their friends. Many of his letters
to them have been preserved, a monument of this wonderful
direction. He wrote to them unceasingly, and what remains to us
of this vast correspondence suffices to show the noble light in
which he viewed Christian duty. Their moral elevation is
marvellous, and when from theory he came to practice, he seemed
to trample under foot all human weakness and to expect from these
high-born and gently nurtured patricians the abstinence and
fasting of the Anchorites of the Theban deserts.
This direction of St. Jerome wrought wonders in the soul of
Paula. She daily grew in grace, and became a still more noble
example of austerity, of prayer, of abundant charities, and good
works, and of the fruitful study of the Scriptures.
"What shall I say of the worldly goods of this noble lady, almost
entirely spent on the poor?" exclaims St. Jerome. "What shall I
say of her universal charity, which made her love and succor
beings she had never even seen? What sick person was not nursed
by her? She sought the afflicted throughout the great city, and
ever thought she had met with a loss if the sick or the hungry
had already found assistance before hers."
{389}
This is what the love of Christ brought about in imperial and
corrupt Rome when, for the first time, such Christian heroism
burst forth from the midst of the patricians, their admirable and
pious daughter shedding new lustre upon those glorious old pagan
families.
To Be Continued.
----------------
Bound With Paul.
The warden's wife followed her husband down the steps leading to
the prison. "'_O caro Duca mio_,' is there an inscription
over the door?" she asked; "for I have brought hope with me, and
will not let it go."
Not having anything to say, the warden kept silent. He was used
to his wife's fanciful ways of speaking, and liked to hear her
pleasant voice, though her meaning might escape him. For
education had emphasized the difference which nature had
pronounced between these two--a difference which William Blake
has defined in a word: the man looked _with_ his eyes, the
woman looked _through_ hers.
Besides, the warden's attention was at the moment fully occupied.
The prison-bell had rung the second time, and the convicts had
finished their day's work. Mr. and Mrs. Raynor stood just within
the great entrance of the prison, and watched the sluggish
streams of crime that oozed from the doors of the different
shops, joined in the yard, and crept toward them--an Acheron, in
which human faces presently became visible; but faces bleached,
unwholesome, and expressionless. Perhaps their souls had been
scorched up in the baleful flames that had wafted these men
hither, or mesmerized in the leaden to-and-fro of their lives.
Or, more likely, retired to some secret recess of the brain,
their restless wits might be working out new designs of evil. An
occasional spark in some sidelong eye favored the latter guess.
"Now for explanation," the warden said, keeping a strict eye on
the advancing line, yet aware of a hand stealing toward his arm.
"Be careful, dear! my revolver is on that side. Your man will go
into the furthest cell in the first ward. His name is Dougherty;
his nationality, of course, a mystery. He was sentenced ten years
for assault and highway robbery, and has now but two months to
stay. Excepting this one affair, he has always borne a good name,
and there couldn't be a better prisoner. He might have been
pardoned out long ago if he had tried, but he never asks favors.
When he came here, his only brother, a decent fellow, went to
California. He couldn't stand the disgrace. But he writes once a
month, a very good letter, too; and when the ten years shall be
up, will come or send for his brother. They say that Dougherty
behaved very well by him when he went away, and gave him all his,
Dougherty's, money. I shouldn't wonder. The fellow has the
strongest sense of duty I ever knew in a man. That's what is the
matter with him now. He told the deputy yesterday that he should
never go to chapel again. He had before been in doubt about it,
he said; but when the chaplain praised Martin Luther, and called
the church some ugly name or other, then he
knew that it was a sin for him to listen.
{390}
I don't want to punish the man; but, of course, he must go to
chapel. I can't make exceptions; and half a dozen of the worst
rascals here have some way got wind of the affair, and have all
at once experienced theology. That tall, heavy fellow, who
murdered his mother and his brother, and then set fire to the
house and burnt their bodies up, had his feelings badly hurt when
the chaplain said something sarcastic of the pope's great toe.
But Dougherty is honest, and if he will submit, I can easily
bring the others down. If he should hold out, there will be
trouble; for they will do for deviltry what he will do for
conscience' sake. If you can talk him over, I shall be glad; but
I haven't much hope of it. He is not a man likely to be
influenced by a woman's soft words. He is granite."
The wife smiled saucily. "I have seen a silly little pink cloud
make a granite boulder blush as though it had blood in it," she
said.
At this moment the file of convicts reached the portal, and came
winding through in the slow lock-step, separated noiselessly into
detachments, a part moving toward the lower cells, the rest
climbing the narrow flight of stairs leading to the upper tiers.
The faces of the men caught an additional pallor from the cold,
whitewashed stone of the prison, and a darker shade as, one by
one, they disappeared into the cells, the doors clapping to in
rapid succession behind them, like the leaves of a book run over
in the fingers. In a few minutes the whole line had crumbled
away, and there were visible but the three tiers of iron doors,
each door with a hand thrust through the bars, and a dim face
behind them. Mrs. Raynor glanced up the block to the last cell.
The hand she saw there had a character of its own. The fingers
were not half closed, listlessly waiting to be seen, but firm and
straight, and the thumb was clasped tightly around the bar
against which it rested--a dogged hand. "You think that the
dungeon would have no effect?" she asked.
The warden repeated the word "dungeon" with a circumflex
calculated to give the impression that the apartment in question
was vaulted. "I doubt if even the strings will break him," he
said. "You take a Catholic Irishman born in Ireland, and you
can't hammer nor melt him into anything but a Catholic. He may
lie as fast as a dog can trot, and steal your eye-teeth from
under your eyes; but if you cut him into inch pieces, as long as
he has a thumb and finger left, he will make the sign of the
cross with them. You are losing courage, little woman."
"No!"
"Well, good luck to you! I'm going off."
The lady walked up the ward, nodding to the convicts who pressed
eagerly for recognition, stopping to speak to those who had
requests to make, and, pausing at a little distance from the
upper cell, looked attentively at its occupant, herself unseen by
him.
The warden had well compared this man to granite. He was tall,
thick-set, as straight as a post, had the broad, combative Irish
head, crowned with a luxuriance of dark-brown hair, and square
jaws that promised a tenacious grip on whatever he might set his
mental teeth in. But the face was honest, though hard, and the
straight mouth did not look as though giving to lying or
blasphemy, but had something solemn in its closing. The
well-shaped nose was as notable for spirit as the mouth for
firmness, and the blue-grey eyes were steady, not bright, and
rather small.
{391}
Altogether, a man of whom one might say that, if he was not so
good, he would not have been so bad.
This convict sat on a bench in the middle of his little
whitewashed cell, and appeared to be lost in thought. But in his
attitude there was none of that easy drooping which usually
accompanies such abstraction. He sat perfectly upright and rigid,
the only perceptible motion a quick one of the eyelids, the eyes
fixed--locked, rather than lost in thought.
He rose immediately on seeing who his visitor was, bowed with a
soldierly stiffness that was not without state, and waited for
her to speak.
After a few pleasant inquiries, civilly answered, she told her
errand. It was not so easy as she had expected; but she spoke
kindly and earnestly, urging the necessity for discipline in such
a place, and the unwillingness of the warden to inflict any
punishment on him. "I have no doubt of your sincerity," she
concluded, "though the others mean only mischief. But the
decision must be the same in both cases."
He listened attentively to every word she said, then replied with
quiet firmness, "I am sorry, ma'am, that there is going to be any
trouble about it. But it would be a sin for me to go and hear
Protestantism called the church of God, when it is no more a
church than a barnacle is a ship."
"That is not the question," she persisted. "Admitting that what
the chaplain says may be false, I still say that you ought to go.
You are here in a state of servitude; you have no will of your
own; your duty is obedience to the rules of the place; and the
more difficult that duty, the more your merit. If you should
listen with pleasure, or even with toleration, while your faith
is attacked, that might be sin; but the listening unwillingly and
with pain you can offer to God as a penance in expiation of the
crime which obliges you to perform it. I am speaking now as a
Catholic would. I believe that your priest would say the same."
She paused to note the effect of her words; but his face was
unmoved.
"I have a dear friend who is a Catholic," she added. "For her
sake I should be sorry to have you punished for such a cause."
This plea made no impression whatever. Plainly, the man was not
soft-hearted, nor susceptible to flattery. He merely listened,
and appeared to be gravely considering the subject.
"To yield would be humility; to refuse would be pride," she said.
"You need not listen while in the chapel; you can think your own
thoughts and say your own prayers."
As he still pondered, she again went over her argument, enlarging
and dwelling on it till it reached his comprehension. He listened
as before, but made no sign of approval nor dissent. Either from
nature or habit, it seemed hard for the man to get his mouth
open. But at length he spoke.
"You were right, ma'am, in telling me that my duty here is
obedience," he said; "but you left out one condition--obedience
in all that is not sin. If the warden should tell me to kill a
man, it would not be my duty to obey. I do obey in all that is
not sin. It would be a sin for me to go to chapel."
He spoke respectfully, but with decision; and the lady perceived
that their argument had reached a knot which only the hand of
authority could cut. She sighed, and abandoned her attempt.
{392}
Could she abandon it? Remembering the dungeon and the strings,
her heart strengthened itself for one more effort. She had begun
by marching straight up to the subject, challenging opposition;
it might be better to approach circuitously. "Let me undermine
him," she thought; and, turning away, as though leaving the
captive to silence and loneliness again, let the sense of
returning desolation catch him for an instant, then hesitated,
and glanced backward. It was a good beginning; he was looking
after her. The sight of a friendly face, the sound of a friendly
voice, and liberty to speak, were unfrequent boons in that place,
and too precious to be willingly relinquished,
"The days must seem long to you," she said.
She came nearer, and leaned against the door. "Yes, they are
long; but I thank God for every one of them. My coming here was
the best thing that ever happened to me. I was getting to be
drunkard, and this put a stop to it."
As he spoke, he lifted his face and looked out at the strip of
sky visible through the window across the corridor, and his eyes
began to kindle.
"Have you a family?" the lady asked.
He waited a moment before answering, seemed to break some link of
thought that had a bright fracture, and his expression underwent
a slight but decided change. A light in it that had been lofty
softened to a light that was tender, as at her question he looked
down again. "There's Larry," he said.
"And who is Larry?"
The convict stared with astonishment at her ignorance. And,
indeed, Mrs. Raynor was the only person about the prison who had
not heard the name of this Larry. "He is my step-brother, ma'am,"
he replied. "We had but the one father; but he had his own
mother. When she died, there were two of us left, and I took the
lad and brought him to this country. He was five years old then,
and I was twenty. I was a stone-cutter, and thought to do better
here; and, faith, one way I have, and another way I haven't.
Shame never touched one of us at home."
"Who took care of the child?" Mrs. Raynor asked.
"Myself, ma'am. He ate and slept with me, and I took him on my
arm as often as I put my hat on. He had his little chair on the
table in my shop, or he played about at the end of a long string.
For the lad was venturesome, and I never trusted him but with a
tether."
"He must have been a great care," she said.
"Have you any children, ma'am?" the convict asked.
"No."
"I thought that," he said dryly; then smiled. "Larry was like a
picture. He had red cheeks and black eyes, and his hair was like
gold with a shadow on it. It used to take me half an hour every
morning to make his curls, and they reached to his waist.
Everybody noticed the child, and they'd turn to look after him in
the street. One of the richest ladies in the city wanted to take
him for her own, and me to promise never to see him again; and
when she told what she would do for him, I thought that perhaps I
ought to let him go. The lady coaxed him, and gave him
picture-books and candy, and then asked him if he'd go and live
with her; and faith, ma'am, my heart didn't get such a scalding
when Mary asked her promise back, and said she liked Larry best,
as it did when that child went to the lady's knee and said he
would go and live with her. God forgive me, but I hated her that
minute. Well, I told her that I would think about it, and let her
know the next day.
{393}
That night I dreamed that she had him, and that I saw him far off
at play, dressed in jewels, and his little frock like a fall of
snow. I dreamed that I couldn't speak to him, and that set me
crying; and I cried so that I waked myself up. I put my hand out
for the child, but I couldn't find him. He was a restless little
fellow, and had crawled down to the foot of the bed. For a minute
I thought that the dream was true; and then I knew that I
couldn't let him go. I waked him up, and asked him if he'd stay
and live for ever with his brother John; and I was a happy man
when he put his little arms round my neck and said yes, he would.
And I made a promise to the child that night, while he was asleep
in my arms, that, since I kept him back from being a rich man,
whatever he might ask of me in all his life, if it was my heart's
blood, he should have it! And, ma'am, I've kept my promise."
The tenderness with which he spoke of his brother invested the
convict's manner with the softening grace which it so much
needed, and grew upon his rough nature like a gentian upon its
rock.
"This brother is in California?" Mrs. Raynor asked.
The convict dropped his eyes. "He and Mary went there when I came
here," he said.
"Who is Mary?"
"Mary is Larry's wife," was the brief reply.
"You hear from them?"
"Oh! yes," he said eagerly. "They write to me every month. In his
last letter Larry said that he was coming after me at the end of
my term; but I sent him word not to. I can go alone, and he will
send me the money."
The man seemed to have a jealous suspicion of her thought that he
had been cruelly deserted. "I told them to go," he said with a
touch of pride; "and I shall go and live with them when I get out
of this. They wouldn't hear to my going anywhere else."
He broke off, glanced through the window, and said, as if
involuntarily, "There's the west wind!" then drew back, rather
ashamed when the lady looked to find what he meant. "You see,
ma'am, we don't have much to think of here, and there's only the
sight of stone and iron, and that bit of sky. Three years ago
there wasn't a glimpse of green; but two years ago I began to
catch a flit of leaves when the west wind blew. Last summer I
could see a green tip of a bough all the time, and now in the
high March wind I can see a bit of a twig."
"It is an elm-tree," the warden's wife said; "and the branches
are longest on this side. I think they stretch out for you to
see. You miss many a pleasant sight here, Dougherty."
"What I miss is nothing to what I have seen," he said quickly,
his eyes beginning again to kindle.
"What do you mean?"
He gazed at her searchingly for a moment, as if to read whether
she were worthy to hear; then he looked up at the sky.
Mrs. Raynor tried not to be impressed. "He is a thief, serving
out his sentence in the State prison," she repeated mentally. "He
is a poor, ignorant Irishman, who can scarcely spell his own
name, and who reverences a polysyllable next to the priest."
"I will tell you," he said after a moment, his voice trembling
slightly, not with weakness, but with fervor. "When I first came
here, I had to pray all the time to keep myself from going crazy;
but by and by I got reconciled.
{394}
You know we never have a priest here, and must find things out as
well as we can for ourselves. All I wanted to know was whether
God was angry with me. Sometimes I thought he was; but that might
be a temptation of the devil. What I am going to tell you
happened about six months ago, at nine o'clock in the evening.
The night-watch was in, and had just gone round. He spoke to me,
and I answered him. I was in bed, and I shut my eyes as soon as
he went back to his place. Something made me open them again, and
I saw on the wall of my cell here a little spot like moonlight.
It grew larger while I looked, and the whole cell was full of the
light of it; and it trembled like the flame of a candle in the
wind. There didn't seem to be any wall here; it was all opened
out. I pulled the blanket about me and went down to my knees on
the stone floor. I don't know how long it was before two faces
began to show in the midst of the light; and when they came, it
was still. At first they were faint; but they grew brighter till
they were as bright as I could bear. I couldn't tell whether it
was the brightness in their faces or the thought in my heart,
that brought the tears into my eyes. There was the Blessed Virgin
with the Infant Jesus in her arms, and they both looking at me
and smiling. And while they smiled, they faded away!"
"How probable that would sound if it were related as having
happened in the year of our Lord 62, instead of 1862!" the lady
thought, restraining a smile, awed by the perfect conviction of
the speaker.
"Dougherty," she said, "a man like you ought not to be caught at
highway robbery. How did it happen?"
Some swift emotion passed over his face; but whether of fear or
anger she could not tell. The next moment he smiled grimly. "I
know just how it happened, ma'am," he said; "for didn't the
lawyers tell me? Oh! but they told the whole story so plain you'd
have thought they did the deed themselves; and faith, they made
me almost believe I did it. It is a very convincing way that the
lawyers have about them. They made out that Mike Murray was at
our house one night, and we all played cards and got drunk
together; and when we were pretty high, that Larry and I went out
with Mike to see him home; and that I sent Larry back, he being
too drunk to go on; and that I waited upon Mike out to a piece of
woods, and there I knocked him down and robbed him; and that he
was picked up half-dead the next morning, and I was caught
throwing the money away. They proved that I only did it because I
was drunk, and that I never did a dishonest deed before; and so
they sent me here for ten years. And the pity it was of poor Mike
Murray! It would have brought tears to your eyes to hear that
lawyer go on about him, as if Mike was his own father's son, and
a saint to the bargain, instead of a dirty, drunken blackguard
that Mary was mad to see in the house, and that beat his own wife
with a stool, and kicked her down-stairs every morning; and
that's the way she used to get down. She told our Mary that she
was never without a sore spot on her head, and that when she got
to the top of a flight of stairs, if it was in the church itself,
she'd look behind for the kick that Mike always had for her.
Indeed, ma'am, while the lawyer was talking, I didn't believe he
meant the Mike Murray I knew at all, but a sweet, gentle creature
with the same name, and that never took a sup of anything but
milk. And that's the story of my coming here, ma'am," the convict
concluded, giving a short laugh.
{395}
"You have had troubles enough," Mrs. Raynor said gently; "but now
they are nearly over. Only two months longer, and you will be
free. It won't hurt you to go to chapel for that short time."
"I shall not go," he replied.
She turned away at that, went into the deserted prison-yard, and
stood there a moment recollecting a sermon she had heard not long
before. "Why should we not now have a saint after the grand old
way?" the speaker had asked.
"There is every reason why we should not!" she exclaimed
impatiently. "Those _bizarre_, uncompromising virtues of the
antique time would now scandalize the very elect. We must not
offend against _les bienséances_, though all the saints
should clap their hands. This poor Irishman is unquestionably a
little wrong in his head, and will have to go to the dungeon. For
you, Madge Raynor, you had best return to your _moutons_,
and cease pulling at the skirts of the millennium. What a
quixotic little body you are, to be sure!"
To the dungeon, accordingly, Dougherty was sent the next Sunday
and after a few hours, the warden's wife went to see him.
A door of solid iron opened in the basement wall of the prison,
and let the light into a stone vestibule that was otherwise
perfectly dark. Opposite this entrance was what looked like an
oven or furnace-door, about two feet square, and also of solid
iron. Removing a padlock from the inner door, the guard opened
it, and called Dougherty.
Mrs. Raynor started back as the foul air from the dungeon struck
her face; for, though there was an aperture artfully contrived so
as to admit a little air and exclude all light, it was not large
enough to do more than keep the prisoner from actual suffocation.
"You are acting like a simpleton!" the lady exclaimed when the
convict's pale face appeared at the opening. "Go to chapel next
Sunday, and say your prayers under the parson's nose. I will give
you beads that shall rattle like hail-stones."
"I thank you, ma'am!" the man replied in his provokingly quiet
way; "but I can't go to chapel."
"You expect to enjoy staying here three days, with bread and
water once a day, sitting and sleeping on bare stones, and
breathing air that would sicken a dog?" she demanded angrily.
"That is nothing to what my Lord suffered for me," was the reply.
"You fancy yourself a martyr, and that the officers of the prison
are children of the devil!" she said.
"I don't blame them," he answered. "They do what they think is
right."
"Shut him up!" she exclaimed, turning away. "It's a pity we
haven't a rack for the blockhead. He is pining for it."
Dougherty did not complain nor yield; but he was put to work
again after three days, that being the longest time the rules
allowed a man to be kept in the dungeon.
Mrs. Raynor was annoyed with herself for taking such an interest
in this contumacious thief. Every day she protested that she
would not worry about him, and every day she worried more and
more. When Sunday came again, "I will not go near him," she said.
"I will leave him to his fate. 'What's Hecuba to him, or he to
Hecuba?'" and even while speaking, counted anxiously the last
strokes of the prison-bell ringing for service.
{396}
At that moment the convicts were entering the chapel, all but the
sick, and that troublesome _protégé_ of hers. "I won't go
near him," she said in a very determined manner, and, five
minutes after, was on her way up the prison-stairs.
Letting herself into the guardroom with a pass-key, she found but
one man on guard; but the voices of others came through the open
door of the hospital, and with them a long, agonized moan.
Hurrying into the cell where the punishment called "the strings"
was inflicted, Mrs. Raynor saw Dougherty hanging by his wrists to
a chain run through a ring in the ceiling. His toes touched the
floor and slightly relieved the otherwise intolerable strain on
his shoulders and breast. One of the guards kept the chain up,
while the deputy-warden stood by the convict and watched for the
first sign of submission or of fainting.
The man groaned with pain, and drops of perspiration rolled down
his face.
"Will you give up and go to chapel next Sunday?" asked the
deputy.
"O God! strengthen me," cried the convict. "No, I will not go!"
Mrs. Raynor's pale face flushed as she heard this reply.
The moans became fainter.
"Now, give up like a man," the deputy said. "You've shown your
grit, and that is enough."
"Lord, help me!" came in a broken cry.
"He's going; let him down," the deputy said.
"Dead?" cried the warden's wife, starting forward.
"No, madam; he has fainted."
They applied restoratives, and when his senses had returned, led
him, reeling, out into the guardroom, and placed him in a chair
by the open window.
"Did you ever read a history of the Spanish Inquisition, Mr.
Deputy?" asked the warden's wife.
"Yes'm!" was the immediate reply. "This is just like it, isn't
it?"
"Well, Dougherty, you will be content now, and go to chapel next
Sunday, will you not?" asked the lady, touching the convict's
sleeve.
He lifted his heavy eyes. He was still catching his breath like
one who sobs. "I will die before I will go to hear the name of
God and of his truth blasphemed!" he answered, speaking with
difficulty.
"But if you should be again put up in the strings?"
He shivered, but replied without hesitation, "He that died upon
the cross will strengthen me."
"The fellow is a fool!" muttered one of the guard.
"May God multiply such fools!" cried Mrs. Raynor, turning upon
the speaker. Then to the convict, "I will urge you no more. I am
not capable of judging for you, and you do not need help nor
advice from me. Go your own way."
Dougherty's own way was to persist in his refusal to attend
chapel; and since the officers had no choice but to punish him
for his disobedience, it chanced that for the next four weeks he
was put up in the strings every Sunday morning.
"It shall not be done again," the warden said then. "He has but a
fortnight longer to stay; and, rule or no rule, he shall do as he
likes."
"Only a fortnight," he said to the convict, "then you will be a
free man."
Dougherty's face brightened. "Yes, sir! And I long to set my feet
on the turf again. A man doesn't know what green grass is, till
he gets shut up in a place like this."
"Don't come here again," the officer said kindly. "Let what you
have suffered teach you to resist temptation."
{397}
The convict looked at Mr. Raynor with a singular expression of
surprise, not unmingled with a momentary indignation, and seemed
about to speak, but checked himself.
"It is only to keep from drink," the warden went on. "I don't
believe you would be dishonest when sober."
The convict dropped his eyes. "God knows all hearts," he said.
The next day Dougherty had a cold and a headache; the second day
he was unable to go to work; the third day he had a settled
fever. He was removed to the hospital, where the cells were
larger, and, being next the outside wall, had light and air; a
convict whose term had nearly expired was set to take care of
him, and Mrs. Raynor visited him twice a day.
But the fever had got well fixed before the man gave up, and it
found him good fuel. He burned like a solid beech log, with a
slow, intense, unquenchable heat. His pale and sallow face became
a dull crimson; his strong, full pulses beat fiercely in neck,
wrists, and temples; and his restless eyes glowed with a
brilliant lustre. Mrs. Raynor was sometimes startled, as she sat
fanning and bathing his face, fancying that she had soothed him
to sleep, to see those eyes open suddenly, and fix themselves on
her with a searching gaze, or wander wildly about the cell. But
he lay almost as motionless as the burning log would, locked in
that fierce and silent struggle with disease. Nearly a fortnight
passed, and there were but two days left of Dougherty's term of
imprisonment; but there was no longer a hope that any freedom of
man's giving would profit him. There was scarcely more than the
embers of a man left of him; not enough, indeed, for a fever to
prey upon. The flushes had become intermittent, like the last
flickerings of a fire, and the parched and blackened mouth showed
how he had been consumed inwardly.
It was May, and the sweet air and sunshine came in through two
narrow windows and lightened and freshened the cell where the
convict lay. Everything was clean and in order. The stone walls
and floor were whitewashed; a prayer-book, crucifix, medicine,
and glasses were carefully arranged on a little table between the
windows; and there was a spotless cover on the narrow pallet that
stood opposite. The door was wide open for a draught, and now and
then one of the guard, approaching laboriously on tiptoe, would
put his head into the cell, raise his eyebrows inquiringly at the
convict-nurse who sat at the head of the bed, receive a nod in
return, and retire with the same painful feint of making no
noise. Neither of the two men was quite clear in his mind as to
what he meant by this pantomime; but the result with both was a
conviction that all was right. Presently, as the afternoon waned,
there was the soft rustle of a woman's garments in the corridor,
and a woman's unmistakable velvet footfall. At that sound the
convict-nurse went lightly out; and Mrs. Raynor came in, and
seated herself on the stool where he had sat, and slipped a bit
of ice between the lips of the patient. He had been lying
motionless and apparently asleep during the last hour; but as she
touched him, he opened his eyes and fixed them upon her. "What
does the doctor say, ma'am?" he asked in a tone so firm that one
forgot it was but a whisper.
{398}
"I think that you will want to see the priest," she said gently.
"I have sent for one, and he will come tomorrow."
A slight spasm passed over the sick man's face, his eyelids
quivered, and his mouth contracted for an instant.
"It must come to us all sooner or later," she continued; "and it
is well for us that He who knows best and does best is the one to
choose."
He said not a word, but closed his eyes again; and she kept
silence while he went through with his struggle, her own tears
starting as she saw how the tears swelled under his eyelids, and
the stern mouth quivered, and knew that he was tearing up the few
simple hopes that had taken root in his heart: the setting his
feet on the green grass again, the meeting his brother, the dream
of a cheerful fireside where he should be welcome, the honest
gains and generous gifts, the happy laughter, kind looks, and
sorrows from which love and faith should draw the sting. Simple
hopes; but they had struck deep, and every fibre of the man's
heart quivered and bled at their uprooting.
Presently the watcher spoke softly: "Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord hath mercy on them that fear him!"
"May his will be done!" said the convict. "But, poor Larry!"
"You want me to write to him?"
"Yes ma'am!" he answered eagerly. "Tell him that I was
comfortable here, and that I was willing to die; and be sure to
tell him that coming here was the best thing that ever happened
to me. Don't let him know anything about the punishment. Larry'd
feel bad about that. Don't forget!" he urged, looking anxiously
in the lady's face.
"I won't forget," she said.
He stopped a moment for breath; then resumed, "Tell him that my
last words were, that he should remember his promises to me, and
never taste liquor again. And tell him to be kind to Mary for my
sake. You see, ma'am, I was fond of Mary; but of course she liked
Larry best."
The lady blushed faintly, and laid her cool white hand on his
fevered one. "Dougherty," she said, "nobody but God thanks us for
true love. In this world a light love meets with most gratitude."
"Sometimes I've thought the same," the man said gravely. "Some
are made to give, and some are made to take; but the Lord gives
to all."
The next day a priest came and spent some time with the sick man.
Mrs. Raynor went up for her afternoon visit, and found him still
lingering there, looking gravely and intently at his penitent,
who lay with an expression of perfect peace on his countenance.
"Poor man!" she sighed, glancing toward the bed.
The father looked up with a light flashing into his thoughtful
eyes. "Poor man, madam?" he repeated. "Not so: that man is rich!
It is for him to pity us."
She followed the priest out, and spoke to him in the corridor.
"Dougherty's brother has come from California," she said. "He
reached here this morning. It seems hard to keep him out, but I
hate to disturb a man who is dying."
The priest frowned. "Keep the fellow out for to-day. I have just
given this man the viaticum, and want him to be undisturbed. His
confession has exhausted him, and he mustn't be made to talk much
more. How does his brother appear?"
"Oh! he is frantic. He fainted when I first told him, and I could
hear him crying out in the yard when I got up into the
guard-room. I told him that he couldn't come in till he should
have become quiet."
{399}
"What sort of fellow is he?" asked the priest coldly.
The lady hesitated. In spite of her pity, she did not fancy
Larry; neither did she like the coldness the priest showed toward
him. "He is a very handsome young man," she said presently, "and
very well dressed."
The father shrugged his shoulders. "Oh! then he should be
admitted without delay."
She must, of course, free herself from such an imputation. "He
looks weak and faithless," she said; "but his grief is genuine;
and his having come so far shows that he loves his brother."
"You might tell Dougherty tonight, and let Larry in to-morrow
morning if he behaves himself."
Mrs. Raynor sat by her patient without speaking, till presently
he looked at her and smiled faintly. "May the Lord reward you,
ma'am!" he said fervently. "You've been a good friend to me."
"Here is a note from your brother," she said. "Shall I read it to
you?"
He glanced eagerly at the folded paper in her hand--a note which,
in the midst of his lamentations, Larry had written and entreated
her to take up to his brother.
"Read it!" the sick man said, making an effort to turn toward
her.
"Would you like very much to see your brother?" she asked.
Dougherty's face began to work. "O ma'am! has Larry come?" he
asked tremulously.
"Yes; and presently he is to come in to see you. Of course, he
feels very much grieved, you know. That must be. But when he
shall see how resigned and happy you are, he will take comfort."
Seeing that he eagerly watched the paper in her hand, the lady
unfolded and glanced over it. As she did so, her face underwent a
change. "It cannot be!" she cried out; and, crushing the note,
looked at the man who lay there dying before her.
He did not understand, was too weak and dull to think of anything
but the letter. "Read it!" he said faintly.
She began breathlessly to read the blotted page: "My dear brother
John, for God's sake don't die! I have come to take you back to
California with me, and Mary and I will spend our lives in taking
care of you. We will make up to you what you have suffered for
me, going to prison for my crime."
The sick man started up with sudden energy and snatched the paper
from the reader's hand. "The lad is wild!" he gasped. "He didn't
know what he was writing!"
She tried to soothe him, to coax him to lie down; but he sat
rigid with that terrible suspense, his haggard eyes fixed on
hers, a deathly pallor in his face.
"You won't tell anybody what the foolish boy wrote!" he pleaded.
"It was your brother, then, who robbed the man?" she said.
He sank back, moaning, upon his pillow, "All for nothing!" he
said despairingly. "I've given my heart's blood for nothing! O
ma'am! have you the heart to spoil all I've been trying to do,
and have just about finished?"
It was a hard promise to give, but she gave it. Without his
permission, what she had learned should never be revealed.
"The poor lad wasn't to blame," the sick man said. "It was drink
did it. Drink always made Larry crazy. When he got home that
night, he didn't know what he'd been doing; but in the morning
Mary found the money on him, and the stain of blood on his hand.
I tried to throw the money away, and they saw me."
{400}
He paused, gasping for breath. He was making an effort beyond his
strength.
"Tell me the rest to-morrow," Mrs. Raynor said, giving him a
spoonful of cordial.
But he went on excitedly, clutching at the bed-clothes as he
spoke. "It would have been the ruin of Larry if he had come here.
He would never again have looked anybody in the face. Besides,
Mary's heart was broke entirely. So when I was caught, I just bid
Larry hold his peace. But I didn't tell any lie, ma'am. When they
asked me in court if I was guilty or not guilty, I said 'not
guilty;' and it was true."
She gave him the cordial again, wiped his forehead, and, noticing
that his hands were cold, first lifted the blanket to cover them,
then hesitated, looked at him more closely, finally laid it back.
He lay for a while silent and exhausted, then spoke again. "You
promise?"
"I promise, Dougherty. Set your heart at rest. You are dying; did
you know it?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
After a while he said faintly, "My time will be up to-morrow
morning."
"Yes!"
Twilight faded into night. Mrs. Raynor went into the house for a
while, then returned to sit by her patient, sending the nurse
out. One and another came to the cell-door, looked in, spoke a
word, then went away. The heavy doors clanged, there was a sound
of rattling bars as the prison was closed for the night, then
silence settled all over. The dying man lay perfectly quiet,
breathing slowly, and responding now and then to the prayers read
by his attendant. He felt no pain, and his mind was clear and
calm. He had no complicated intellectual mechanism to confuse his
ideas of right and wrong; there was no labyrinth of sophistry to
entangle his faith, no flutter of imagination to start a latent
fear. He had done what he could; and he held on to the promises
with an iron grasp.
That lonely watcher almost feared for him. Might he not be
presuming on an act of devotion which, after all, rose from a
love that was entirely human?
"My friend," she said, "even the angels are not pure before God.
Perhaps you loved your brother too well."
"If I had loved him less, he would have been lost," was the calm
reply. "I haven't loved him well enough to sin for him."
"Do not be too sure," she said.
"I'm a poor, ignorant man; but I've done as well as I knew how;
and he has promised. I never broke a promise to man nor woman;
and do you think that the Almighty would do the thing that I
would scorn to do?"
"Are you not afraid of presumption?"
"It would be presumption to doubt the word of God."
"Do not rely on your own strength," she urged.
"I have no strength but what he gives me," said the dying man.
While they talked, or prayed, or were silent, the stars wore
slowly and brightly past the open windows of the cell, dropping
down the west like golden sands in an hour-glass, and counting
out the minutes of that ebbing life. Then the dim and humid
crescent of the waning moon stole by in the early morning
twilight; then the air grew alive with the golden glances of the
dawn.
{401}
As the sun rose, the man called Dougherty, a convict no longer,
lay dead on his prison pallet, his face white and calm, the dull
eyes half open, as though the deserted body followed with a
solemn gaze the flight of its emancipated tenant.
"Would you rather have been the angel loosing Peter, or Peter in
chains? I would rather have been Peter!"
----------
Translated From Le Conseiller Des Familles.
The Children's Graves In The Catacombs.
Childhood and the grave! Should these two words be placed
together? Must flowers fall before bearing fruit, and children
also die? This is what mothers think, and the church thinks as
they do, because the church is a mother. In her view children do
not die; they are born again, they are transfigured; and the
grave in which cold death places them resembles the white bed,
whereon, perhaps the day before, you saw them open their eyes to
the sunlight. Do you recollect the ode in which a poet, at the
time eminent, celebrated in beautiful verses the entrance of
Louis XVII. into the heavenly palace to which his father had gone
by the rough road of martyrdom? According to Catholic belief, all
those little beings who die before making a name or obtaining a
place in this world, are also young princes, heirs-apparent of a
kingdom more beautiful than that of France, and who, like Louis
XVII., fall asleep in a prison to awake upon a throne.
This is why the church has no prayers of grief at their burial.
Assured of their happiness, she laments not, but gives praise. By
the grace given at baptism, they are received into glory. She
covers their remains with white drapery, which calls to mind the
vestment which she put over them at the baptismal font. Instead
of mourning, she invites the children of heaven to unite in
praises, _Laudate, pueri!_ The Virgin, who was herself a
mother, receives them at her altar, where the triumphant
procession congratulates the Queen of angels that her empire is
enriched by one more subject--_Ave, Regina caelorum! Ave,
Domina angelorum!_ The funeral mass for little children is
only a thanksgiving to God, who has reserved a favored space for
those _blessed_ beings, _Venite, benedicti Patris_.
Having read the gospel of our Lord, who blessed and caressed
those to whom he promised the kingdom of heaven, the last prayer
of the church which throws a little earth upon the body that is
to rise again, is that we, adult sinners, may one day rejoice
with them in the same kingdom. Read again this funeral service,
and if you have a mourning mother among your friends and
relatives, (who does not know one?) give her these consolations.
She will believe that she hears the voice of God, who stopped the
coffin of the widow's only son and restored him to her.
{402}
But these are, if I may speak thus, only the first caresses of
religion of the remains of children; the honor which she accords
to them is perpetuated in the worship with which she surrounds
their graves.
Paganism took little care of the tombs of those who had not
furnished to their country a citizen or a soldier. We know that
they considered a child's life very unimportant. Virgil alone,
among the poets, uttered a cry for the souls of young infants,
whom he represents as being cut down before the eyes of their
mothers. In those family sepulchres, called by the Romans
_columbaria_, I found several little busts in marble,
representing children, by the side of which were funeral urns,
containing at the bottom several pinches of ashes. This was all
that remained. Among the innumerable inscriptions which cover the
walls of the immense gallery of the Vatican, I saw several
epitaphs coldly stating that Junius Severianus had lived two
years; that Octavius Liberalis died when he was five years four
months and four days old; that Steteria Superba had departed life
at the age of eighteen months. But there was no wish or hope of
meeting them again, and no religious emblem to console the
mourners.
Elysium did not exist for those shades without a name, as they
were called, _sine nomine manes_, and their sepulchre closed
without hope and without glory. The position of children in
heathen times was revealed to me by an epitaph which I found at
Antibes, the ancient Antipolis, to which the fashionable Romans
came to enjoy the fine coast and a sunny sky. A stone detached
from the ruins of a theatre, now almost entirely destroyed by the
action of the weather and the sea, had the following inscription:
"To the divine shades of Septentrion, a child of twelve years,
who danced two days in the theatre and pleased the people"!
[Footnote 83] They made the poor slave-boy contribute for two
days to their delight; but he was overcome, and they applauded--
_saltavit et placuit_. See, then, what society made of this
child--a plaything and a victim! Meditating upon this, I recalled
to mind the time when another infant of twelve years of age
glorified God in the temple at Jerusalem, and also when the
Saviour took the hand of the dying girl and saying unto her,
"Arise!" restored her to her father. I was obliged to leave these
cursed ruins and enter for a moment into the temple of that God
who, to save these little ones, took upon himself the form of a
child--_Custodiens parvulos Dominus_.
[Footnote 83: "Diis Manibus pueri Septentrionis, annorum
duodecim, qui biduo saltavit in theatro et placuit."]
II.
Jesus Christ was born, was an infant; and since that time a
revolution in favor of children began, which is perceptible in
the epitaphs upon their graves. The child becomes a king, almost
a god. It is at least a soul called to heaven and expecting us;
and what new regards surround it for the future in that lapidary
style, which says so much in so few words.
I was at Avignon, and visiting the museum of that city, my
attention was attracted to a grave-stone of one of the first
Christian centuries. It contained the following words:
"_Florentiola, pax tecum!_" Florentiola, peace be with
thee!" By the side was the monogram of Christ, surrounded with
glory. Who was this little Florentiola? The tender diminutive
proved plainly that she was an infant, and a beloved one. The
wish expressed and the sign of Christ the Redeemer gave evidence
that she was also a Christian.
{403}
This little name brought to mind another inscription which I
found somewhere in one of our cemeteries, upon the sepulchre of a
young woman: "She bloomed, blossomed, and died." Of these three
periods of life, Florentiola had passed through only the first;
but the last words expressed the hope that, as she had given to
this world the blossom, she would yield the fruit in another:
"_Pax tecum!_"
But one must go to the catacombs in Rome, and read, in that great
Christian city of death, the delicacies of the affections of
earth, and the hopes of a resurrection, which are radiant upon
the graves of little children. In the cemetery of St. Priscilla,
I observed two epitaphs distinguished above all others by their
brevity. One of them consists only of a single melancholy word,
"_Libera_" that is to say, free. A dove flying away,
carrying an olive-branch, explains the meaning, which to me
appeared sublime.
This captive soul which had passed through the prison of earth
was free at last! The church conveys a similar idea at the
funeral obsequies of little children: "_Anima nostra, sicut
passer, erepta est de laqueo venantium. Laqueus contritus est, et
nos liberati sumus._" (Psalm cxxiii.) "Our soul is escaped as
a bird out of the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken, and
we are delivered."
The other one, which I remarked at the same place, containing
only a word, was quite as beautiful and more
Christian--"_Redempta_," redeemed. This was also expressive
of liberty, but it was a freedom which had been acquired as the
price of a ransom which was the blood of God: _Redempta!_
This last expression alludes to the grace given by baptism, which
liberates the soul held in bondage by the demon. The children's
epitaphs have it often, and prove that the church had conferred
the sacraments upon them at the most tender age. You can find for
instance, in the museum of the Lateran: "Paulina, neophyte of
eight years; Candida, neophyte, twenty-one months old; Zozima,
neophyte, five years, eight months, and thirteen days; Matronata
Matrona, neophyte, one year, fifty-two days."
Upon a grave in the catacomb of Saint Calista, a Grecian
inscription was found by the Canon Profili, consisting of the
following words:
"Dionysius, newly illuminated, one year and four months." This
title of enlightened was given only to those who came into
possession of it by baptism. Saint Chrysostom mentions the
enlightened in no other way.
This one, collected in the cemetery of the new road Salaria, and
preserved at the Lateran, is more explicit:
"Florentius dedicates this inscription to his well-beloved son,
Apronianus, who lived one year, nine months, five days. He was
loved by his grand-mother, and seeing that he was nigh unto
death, she asked the church to make him a Christian before he
should leave the world." [Footnote 84]
[Footnote 84: "Florentius filio suo Aproniano fecit titulum
benemerenti qui vixit annum et menses novem, dies quinque.
Cum amatus fuisset à majore suâ et vidit hunc morti
constitutum esse, petivit de ecclesiâ ut fidelis de seculo
recessisset."]
Baptism, which was conferred upon the newly-born, was a great
consolation to those who witnessed their departure from this
world. "O Magus, innocent child!" said an inscription at the
museum of the Lateran, "thou hast gone to live among the
guiltless. How much more endurable is life! With what joy the
church, thy other mother, received thee, when thou didst leave
the world for her. We will suppress the murmurings of our hearts
and restrain the tears from our eyes." [Footnote 85]
[Footnote 85: "Magus puer innocens, esse jam inter innocentes
coepisti. Quàm staviles (stabilis) tivi (tibi) haec vita est!
Quàm te laetum excipet (excepit) mater ecclesia edeoc (de
hoc) mundo revertentem. Comprimatur pectorum gemitus,
struatur (destruatur) fletus oculorum."]
{404}
Expressions of the most ingenious tenderness are shown in the
last farewell to creatures of whom only smiles are known.
"Cyricus, dear soul, peace be with thee! He lived a year and
sixty-two days!" [Footnote 86]
[Footnote 86: Cyricus, anima dulcis in pace, vixit annum i.
dies lxii.]
"Here reposes our dear soul, named Quiriace, an innocent child,
beautiful and good, who lived three years, three months, eight
days." [Footnote 87]
[Footnote 87: Hic posita est anima dulcis, innoca sapiens et
pulcra, nomine Quiriace, quae vixit annos iii. menses iii.
dies viii.]
The word _soul_, in the Latin language, is a term of great
tenderness. It signifies life as it is visible. But in the
Christian language it has a more spiritual signification. As the
poet says:
"Thou callest me thy life; call me thy soul!
I wish a name more lasting than a day.
Life is of little value, a breath extinguishes the flame;
But the soul is immortal as our love."
Maternal affection creates, in Christianity, a name for children
which becomes as the family name for those beings who pass from
earth, having only glanced at its sorrows. The mother remembers
that the Lord said, the angels of these little ones behold the
face of the Father who is in heaven. This was enough to make so
many angels of those innocent babes by an intentional confusion.
This is hereafter to be their title: and where is now the
afflicted mother who, at the death-bed of her son, has not seen,
like the poet, the radiant face of the angel bending over and
calling the child who resembles him? Primitive epigraphy goes to
show the cause of this synonymy upon the graves of children.
"_Angelica, bene in pace_." "Angelica, child, be happy in
peace," was one inscription of the Catacombs.
Upon another was written:
"Laurentius to his beloved son Severus, who lived four years,
eight months, and five days, and was called by the angels on the
7th of January." [Footnote 88]
[Footnote 88: "Severo filio dulcissimo Laurentius pater
benemerenti qui vixit annos iv. menses viii. dies v.
accersitus ab angelis, vii. idus Januarii."]
One is pleased to recognize in these funereal places, the
remembrances of school days, being the only ones that the
departed youths have left in life. In several catacombs, near the
Cubicula, where the faithful ones assembled for prayer, large
halls can be seen, which have neither altar nor pictures, and no
other embellishment than banks made in the turf, mostly
terminated by one or two elevated seats. It is presumed that the
antiquarians assembled children in school, and instructed them in
the catechism. Near one of these halls can be read the following
epitaph in the catacomb of Saint Priscilla:
"Obrimos to Palladios, his beloved cousin and schoolmate, as a
remembrance."
In the catacomb of the new Via Salaria the school-teacher united
with the mother to write an epitaph upon his pupil, whom he had
adopted in his heart.
"With a holy and pure spirit, this grave has been made to
Florentius, a child of thirteen years, by Coritus, his teacher,
who loved him more than a son, and by Corda, his mother."
[Footnote 89]
[Footnote 89: "In spiritu sancto bono, Florentio qui vixit
annis xiii. Coritus magister qui plus amavit quam proprium
filium, et Cordeus mater filio benemerenti fecerunt.']
{405}
The glass paintings found at the same place are a finished
representation of the education of young Christians in those
days. On a chalice made of glass there is a child, whom the
father and mother are teaching to read the Scriptures. Another
one represents two little children, Pompeianus and Theodora, with
their parents, under the trees. They are holding a copy of the
Gospel, and Pompeianus points to the monogram of Christ which is
erected in the midst of this Christian family. Their father is
discoursing and explaining to them the precepts of their faith.
But once torn from the bosom of their family, who received
children into the world of souls, which they entered astonished?
The epitaphs recommend them to the saints in heaven to attend
them on their entrance into paradise. The mother of Aurelius
Gemellus, who died at the age of eight years, added to the
inscription engraved upon his tombstone the following: "O Saint
Basilla! we recommend to you the innocence of Gemellus!"
[Footnote 90] In former times this was to be found in the
cemetery of Saint Basilla, now of Saint Hermes.
[Footnote 90: "Commendo Basilla, innocentiam Gemelli."]
A similar prayer was addressed to this saint in the same
catacomb, but for another child: "O Saint Basilla! we commend to
thy care Crescentinus, and our daughter Crescentia, who lived ten
months." [Footnote 91]
[Footnote 91: Domina Basilla, commendamus tibi Crescentinum
et filiam nostram ... quae vixit menses x." ...]
More frequently it was to God they directed the loved soul, "Lord
Jesus, remember our child," said a Grecian inscription reported
by Northcote.
Is there not a remembrance of the stammering of a child in
prayer, in the first pronunciation, and in the orthography of the
last word of the epitaph on a little girl?
"Regina, bibas (vivas) in Domino Zezu!" "Regina, live in the Lord
Jesus!"
If life is only a pilgrimage for us, is not this particularly
true of those who have only passed a few days in this world? This
idea has been rendered in the epitaph of a young Christian; and
few have made so great an impression upon me as the following,
simple and short as it is:
"_Peregrina, vixit annos viii., menses viii., dies x. Decessit
de corpore_." "Peregrina lived eight years, eight months, ten
days, then departed from the body."
Did this name of Peregrina, pilgrim, passenger, allude to her
rapid voyage upon the earth, which she hastened to leave? I
incline to this beautiful idea, which a similar inscription
authorizes, not far from there, carved upon the tomb of a
Christian: "Viator!"
Upon the grave-stones of children of the first centuries, it is
not uncommon to see a white dove, carved upon an antique cup,
drinking from the border. Those who repose beneath that stone had
drunk of the cup of life, and taking a taste, not wishing more,
had spread their wings and returned to heaven.
In that better land they become intercessors for their kindred on
the earth. What family has not theirs? And who has not prayed to
those young elect, yesterday our brothers and sons, to-day our
defenders in that place from which they behold us and will prove
their love for us? The following can be read in the Lateran
Museum:
"Matronata matrona, intercede for thy parents! She lived one
year, fifty-two days." [Footnote 92]
[Footnote 92: "Pete pro parentes tuos, Matronata Matrona,
quae vixit an. i. di lii."]
{406}
And upon another stone:
"Anatolius has made this grave for his dear son, who lived seven
years, seven months, twenty-two days. May the soul repose in
happiness with God. Pray for thy sister!" [Footnote 93]
[Footnote 93: "Anatolius filio benemerenti fecit, qui vixit
annis vii. mensis vii. diebus xxii. Spiritus tuus bene
requiescat in Deo. Petas pro sorore tua."]
III.
I must confess that we have preserved little of the architectural
simplicity in the inscriptions upon tombs. It is just to say that
they are of a poor style, laden with lengthy common epitaphs,
emphatic declamations, and warm protestations, contradicted by
the neglected and solitary aspect of those almost forgotten
places. I make an exception of the sepulchres of children. If you
find in a cemetery a grave which is preserved with love, invested
with crowns, and dressed with fresh flowers, you can recognize
the place of a child. In all countries of the world, a delicate
worship is devoted to the mortal remains of innocence. The Indian
graves have become celebrated, since Chateaubriand described them
so charmingly. Now that Christianity has been established in
those parts of the globe, mothers no longer suspend the cradles
of their sons upon branches of trees, but their funerals have
retained much of the simple grace of the time of Chactas.
A missionary has written: "I had to attend the burial of a little
child five or six months old. They brought it to the church,
laying it upon a mat, with garlands of flowers for a
winding-sheet. We should have thought that it was sleeping
sweetly, and notwithstanding its color, I admired its angelic
beauty. After the prayers, which the church addresses to the good
God, they dropped it gently into the grave, as if it had been its
cradle, without covering even the face. Flowers were given in the
place of earth, to throw upon the body. All the assistants did
likewise, and some commenced to weep. It was sad to see the earth
close over this little body so sweetly adorned, and cover that
young face which appeared to smile upon us. It was to become food
for worms; but the beautiful soul was already in heaven with the
angels. I then united with the heavenly spirits to sing praises
to God at the happiness of his little creature. I hope that this
child will not forget the young missionary who celebrated its
deliverance from this world of misery." [Footnote 94]
[Footnote 94: Vie de M. l'Abbé Chopart, p. 188.]
This scene recalls to me a similar one which I witnessed in the
village of Beauvoisis. I met in the street the funeral procession
of a little girl who was being carried to the cemetery. In
advance of the coffin, a child of ten years, concealed under a
floating drapery, was carrying a basket of white flowers. Thus
she walked, gathering and smiling, happy with her part, until
their arrival at the sepulchre; then throwing her basket into the
grave, she disappeared among the trees, delighted at having
prepared this flowery bed for her playmate, who was to sleep
there the long night of death.
Menander said in a celebrated verse, "He whom the gods love dies
young." And Sophocles said before him, "It is good not to be
born; but if once born, the second degree of happiness is to die
young." The ancients considered it fortune to be delivered from
mortal misery. What would they have said if those who left them
had appeared upon the bosom of God in a beatitude and glory
without end? _Bene in pace!_
------------
{407}
Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople. [Footnote 95]
[Footnote 95: _Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople_.
By Emeline Lott. 4th edition. 12mo, pp. 312. Richard Bentley.
New Burlington Street, London. 1867.]
This volume has run through several editions in England within
the last three years. It is destined from its popularity to run
through as many more; but as yet, it has found no publisher on
this side of the Atlantic, although its merits are
well-established in British literature. Observing a new edition
announced by Bentley, it reminds us that the neat, unpretending
little work has not received any recognition from our republic,
nor has any attention been called to it. In truth, the American
public, deeply interested in travellers and travelling in the
east, or in whatever comes from the press illustrating scriptural
scenes and events, have strangely overlooked this production,
which furnishes a better insight into oriental domestic life than
any account published for many years.
Egypt is now what it was in the days of the crucifixion and of
Julius Caesar; it is unchanged, it is unchangeable, in its social
structure, as the pyramids in their architecture, or the sands of
the desert in their external aspect. To understand the condition
of the people now, is to understand their condition when the
Israelites under the direction of Moses went out from among them.
To enter the family circle in the valley of the Nile for the
purpose of learning their present mode of life, is at once an
introduction to all their progenitors who ever dwelt in the same
region in the reign of the ancient Pharaohs. In order to see what
a Roman city was in the first century, it is requisite to put
aside the ashes from a submerged Pompeii, or to remove the
superincumbent earth from a buried Herculaneum. But in Egypt, to
comprehend what was the moral, social, intellectual, religious
appearance of the country when Cleopatra sailed upon the river,
all that need be done is to push aside the mat which serves for a
door to the first mud hovel met with, or pass within the first
portal where heavy hinges grate upon the ear an uncordial
reception.
The same Egypt can be seen which Alexander of Macedon, Sesostris,
and the shepherd-kings beheld. Egyptian institutions were never
buried; or, if buried, their sepulchre is above ground. A living
death is visible on all sides; it is a palsy that struck the land
long before the dawn of history, and may remain as it now is,
when the history of the present century has passed into oblivion.
Although the Egyptian mind and morals will not die in their body,
still no motion is in its limbs, no quickening vitality in its
joints, no trembling in its nerves; the blood is stagnant; a
black pool as destitute of national animation as the waters of
the Dead Sea. Progress is a term never heard of near the
habitation of the Sphinx; and the period of ruins has gone by.
Everything seems running rapidly to demolition; but nothing is
demolished; decay has in that mysterious soil a perennial
existence, a species of recuperation, that renews itself like the
integuments of neighboring snakes, lizards, and toads, which bury
themselves in the same rich slime.
{408}
A book, therefore, on modern harem life in Egypt, is in one sense
a hand-book for historians in their explorations after the
vanities and household troubles of good King Solomon, when his
domestic peace and quiet, his comfort and felicity, were invaded
by many more spinsters than the Levitical law allowed to any one
wise man. This dame Emeline is the very woman to aid them in
their archaeological researches. Her volume furnishes important
hints and information; and if on the title-page nine centuries
before the Christian era were substituted for the date of
publication, instead of nineteen centuries after it, the change
would be so unimportant in a chronological point of view, that no
annalist would be aware of the anachronism. It would look like a
second edition of Herodotus, revised and improved, for the
benefit of the ladies, and far surpassing in truth the first
impression of that ancient Halicarnassian, full of his old
gallinaceous and bovine stories.
Mrs. Lott, an English school-teacher, was engaged in London to
proceed to Egypt in 1862-3, to take charge of the education of
his highness the Grand Pasha Ibraim, five or six years old, the
son of Ismail Pasha, the viceroy, and the grandson of the
renowned and illustrious Ibraim. The lady in due time arrived at
the port of Alexandria, consigned to the delicate consideration
and tender mercies of the viceroy's agent, like any other bale of
valuable and perishable drygoods. Her first glimpse of the land
in the culinary and creature-comfortable line of development was
not favorable. She next proceeded to the city of Cairo by rail,
and was invited to the house of the vice-regal commercial
partner, a German in lineage and language, but with principles
and refinement somewhat neglected from want of proper planting
and propagation in his youthful European culture. At the
residence of this gentleman she was perpetually served with the
same dishes at breakfast, noon, and dinner--boiled and roast
mutton, stringy and dry, vermicelli soup, tomatoes stuffed with
rice, chicory, spinach, and "the whole of the dishes were
swimming in fat;" oranges and coffee followed after. Considering
that the thermometer was raging above 100°, Fahrenheit, this
oriental feed was rather oleaginous, and the lady longed for the
wings of a dove to devour her provender elsewhere. So far she had
learned one important lesson, and thus paints it. She says:
"I can endorse the veracity of the statement made by a
contributor to _Once a Week_, who most naively and
truthfully asserts that 'the land of Egypt is ruled over by
twenty princes: one of whom is the viceroy, eighteen of the
others are known as consuls-general of European nations; but
the twentieth is the most powerful of all, and his name is
Baksheesh, (gift, present, bribery.')"
To the high and mighty Prince Baksheesh, in duty bound we render
all due homage; we bow our lowest salaam, and are pleased to make
his acquaintance. He is not wholly unknown to fame in this
hemisphere; for a popular superstition prevails in the rural
districts that his majesty has many loyal subjects and followers
in our own dearly beloved and dearly governed model republic.
Prince Baksheesh is a power in our institutions, and a party to
much of our legislation. The misfortune of the unprotected female
was, that she did not propitiate the potentate; the superabundant
fat would have been speedily withdrawn from the bill of fare.
{409}
At last the day arrived for her to remove to the harem of the
viceroy on the other side of the river; and she was destined to
leave the hands of the agent in the same sort of consignment in
which she had come into them, that is, amid bales, barrels, and
boxes of merchandise. The dame, therefore, had no opportunity to
take a look into the royal market-basket, to ascertain how Ismail
Pasha provided for his little private family of three hundred
females of different colors, ages, sizes,--and sexes of the
feminine and neuter gender. Although the English governess has an
eye for the ornamental and beautiful, it is nevertheless only one
eye; the other throws its dark splendor upon the useful and
substantial. Sometimes she endeavored to close both against
sights which were neither the one nor the other. The truth of
history, however, compels her to supply her readers with
specimens of all these. She observes:
"The vice-regal standard, the everlasting crescent, floated at
the stem and stern. On they rowed most vigorously, and in less
than ten minutes I was landed at the stairs of the harem. The
building is a very plain structure, the interior of which is
painted like the trunks of the trees of the Dutch model village
of Broeck. In appearance it resembles the letter E, and is a
large pile, composed of five blocks of buildings. Proceeding to
the one which faced the Nile, I entered the _harem_,
('sacred,') passed through a small door--the grating sound of
whose huge hinges still seems to creak in my ears like the
grinding of the barrel-organ of an itinerant Italian or
Savoyard--which led into a court-yard, at that time lined, not
with a corps of the Egyptian infantry, with their shrill brass
bands playing opera airs, but with a group of hard-working
Fellahs and Arabs, toiling away like laborers in the London
docks, and rolling into the immense space hundreds of bales of
soft Geneva velvets, the costliest Lyons silks, rich French
satins, most elegant designed muslins, fast gaudy-colored
Manchester prints, stout Irish poplins, the finest Irish
linens, Brussels, Mechlin, Valenciennes, Honiton, and imitation
laces, Nottingham hose, French silk stockings, French and
Coventry ribbons, cases of the purest Schiedam, pipes of
spirits of wine, huge cases of fashionable Parisian boots,
shoes, and slippers, immense chests of _bon bons_ in
magnificent fancy-worked cases, boxes and baskets, bales of
_tombeki_, and the bright, golden-leaved tobacco of
Istambol, (Constantinople;) Cashmere, Indian, French, and
Paisley shawls of the most exquisite designs; baskets of
pipe-bowls, cases of amber mouth-pieces, cigarette papers, and
a whole host of miscellaneous packages too various to
enumerate, of other commodities destined for the use of the
inmates of that vast conservatory of beauty, all supplied by
his highness's partners. For, be it known to you, gentle
reader, that the Viceroy of Egypt may most appropriately be
styled _par excellence_ the Sinbad of the age, the
merchant-prince of the terrestrial globe.
"Here I was received by two eunuchs, one of whom was attired in
a light drab uniform. ... I was then ushered through another
door, the portals of which were guarded by a group of eunuchs,
similarly attired, but whose uniforms were most costly
embroidered. Their features were hideous and ferocious, their
figures corpulent, and carriage haughty,
"They also salaamed me in the most oriental style. Thence,
passing along a marble passage, I entered a large stone hall,
which was supported by huge granite pillars which led me to the
grand staircase, where I was received by the chief eunuch, who
is called _kislar agaci_, 'the captain of the girls.'
"This giant spectre of a man ... advanced toward me, made his
salaam, and ushered me, the _hated_, despised Giaour, into
the noble marble hall of the harem, which was then for the
first time polluted by the footsteps of the unbeliever. The
scene around me was so singular and strange that I paused to
contemplate it. The hall was of vast dimensions, supported by
beautiful porphyry pillars, and the marble floor was covered
with fine matting. I was now handed over to the lady
superintendent of the slaves, a very wealthy woman, about
twenty-four years of age, with fine dark-blue eyes, aquiline
nose, large mouth, and of middle stature.
"She was attired in a colored muslin dress and trousers, over
which she wore a quilted lavender-colored satin paletot. Her
head was covered with a small blue gauze handkerchief tied
round it, and in the centre of the forehead, tucked up under
it, a lovely natural dark-red rose. She wore a beautiful large
spray of diamonds arranged in the form of the flower
'forget-me-not,' which hung down like three tendrils below her
ear on the left side. Large diamond drops were suspended from
her ears, and her fingers were covered with numerous rings, the
most brilliant of which were a large rose-pink diamond and a
beautiful sapphire.
{410}
Her feet were encased in white cotton stockings, and
patent-leather Parisian shoes. Her name was Anina: she had been
formerly an Ikbal 'favorite.' ... The lady superintendent now
took me by the hand, led me up two flights of stairs covered
with thick, rich Brussels carpet of a most costly description,
and as soft and brilliant in colors as the dewy moss of
Virginia Water. The walls were plain. Then we passed through a
suite of several rooms, elegantly carpeted, in all of which
stood long divans; some of which were covered, with white, and
others with yellow and crimson satin. Over the doorways hung
white satin damask curtains, looped up with silk cords and
tassels to correspond, with richly gilded cornices over each.
... Against the walls were fixed numerous silver chandeliers,
each containing six wax candles, with frosted colored glass
shades made in the form of tulips over them. On each side of
the room large mirrors were fixed in the wall, each of which
rested on a marble-topped console table supported by gilded
legs. The only other articles of furniture that were scattered
about the apartments were a dozen common English cane-bottom
_Kursi_-chairs."
She is next conducted further on to some dormitories, where
bedsteads are wanting, being an article of furniture unused by
the Gypsies. Against the walls were piled up beds in heaps,
covered over with a red silk coverlet. On the divan was placed a
silver tray--both toilet-tables and wash-hand-stands being
unheard-of comforts--containing the princesses' toilet
requisites. In her general inspection the governess is led to the
apartments of the Princess Epouse, the mother of the little boy
for whom Mrs. Lott is engaged. This princess is dressed--but let
dame Emeline describe the scene, as only a lady can do it:
"The Princess Epouse, attired in a dirty, crumpled,
light-colored muslin dress and trousers, sat _à la
Turque_, doubled up like a clasp-knife, without shoes or
stockings, smoking a cigarette. ... Her feet were encased in
_babouches_, 'slippers without heels.' ... In front of the
divan, behind and on each side of me, stood a bevy of the
ladies of the harem, assuredly not the types of Tom Moore's
'Peris of the East,' as described in such glowing colors in his
far-famed _Lalla Rookh_, for I failed to discover the
slightest trace of loveliness in any of them. On the contrary,
most of their countenances were pale as ashes, exceedingly
disagreeable, flat and globular in figure; in short, so rotund,
that they gave me the idea of large full moons; nearly all were
_passé_. Their photographs were as hideous and hag-like as
the witches in the opening scene in Macbeth, which is not to be
wondered at, as some of them had been the favorites of Ibrahim
Pasha. ... Some wore white linen dresses and trousers. Their
hair and finger-nails were dyed with _henna_. ... They had
handsome gold watches ... suspended from their necks by thick,
massive gold chains. Their fingers were covered with a
profusion of diamond, emerald, and ruby rings; in their ears
were ear-rings of various precious stones, all set in the old
antique style of silver. ... Behind stood half-a-dozen of white
slaves, chiefly Circassians."
The mother leaves a favorable impression on the mind of the
governess, who, being finally dismissed from the interview,
pursues her explorations and makes a great discovery neither
complimentary to the princess nor cleanly, where water is
abundant, but where ablutions seem to be abnormal; for it is
written in her journal that
"Thence we passed along a stone passage which leads to her
highness's bath-room. ... The marble bath is both long and
wide, with taps for hot and cold water. The water actually
boils into which their highnesses enter. This only occurs when
they have visited the viceroy, and not daily, or even at any
other time. The bath of the poets is a myth."
The governess at last reaches her own chamber, where she is
destined to sleep and seclude herself in her leisure hours. The
prospect at first is not inviting, nor does a second view afford
more encouragement; an evident sense of disappointment, if not of
dismay, is experienced; and thus she pours forth her vexation:
{411}
"On the right-hand side of the first room was the small
bed-room which was assigned to me as my apartment. It was
carpeted, having a divan covered with green and red striped
worsted damask, which stood underneath the window, which
commanded a fine _coup-d'ceil_ of the gardens attached to
the palace of the viceroy's pavilion. The hangings of the
double doors and windows were of the same material. The
furniture consisted of a plain green painted iron bedstead, the
bars of which had never been fastened, and pieces of wood, like
the handles of brooms, and an iron bar, were placed across to
support the two thin cotton mattresses laid upon it. There were
neither pillows, bolsters, nor bed linen, but as substitutes
were placed three thin flat cushions; not a blanket, but two
old worn-out wadded coverlets lay upon the bed. Not the sign of
a dressing-table or a chair of any description, and a total
absence of all the appendages necessary for a lady's bed-room;
not even--"
Well, well, Mrs. Lott, the "not even" was, in your civilized
opinion, certainly very odd to be sure. But don't mind trifles;
let it be forgotten; let us ramble elsewhere. You were saying
just now something about four broad steps; go on; that's right.
"Four broad steps led down into the garden, close to a plain
white marble-columned gate, on the top of which stood out in
bold relief the statues of two huge life-sized lions. ... Here
and there were scattered rose-trees, the brilliancy of whose
variegated colors and the perfumes of their flowers were
delightfully refreshing; geraniums of almost every hue;
jessamines, whose large white and yellow blossoms were thrice
the size of those of England, and a variety of indigenous and
eastern plants, shrubs, and flowers, which were so thickly
studded about that they rendered the view extremely
picturesque, and perfumed the air, grateful to the senses.
Verbena trees, as large as ordinary fruit-trees; other plants
bearing large yellow flowers, as big as tea-cups, with most
curious leaves; cactuses, and a complete galaxy of botanical
curiosities, whose names the genius of a Paxton would be
perhaps puzzled to disclose, ornamented those Elysian grounds."
This is only one sketch of only one spot in the many gorgeous and
luxurious localities. Space forbids copying more; but the book
states:
"Leaving these neglected scenes of amusement, we proceed along
a path to the right, through a superb marble-paved hall, the
ceiling of which is in fresco and gold. It is supported by
twenty-eight plain pink-colored marble columns, surmounted by
richly-gilded Indian wheat, the leaves of which hang down most
gracefully, on each side of which, and also above ... are some
very handsome lofty rooms, the ceilings of which are also in
fresco, with superb gilded panels. ...
"The grounds of Frogmore, the Crystal Palace, St. Cloud,
Versailles, the Duke of Devonshire's far-famed Chatsworth, and
our national pride, Kensington Gardens and Windsor Home Park,
exquisite, beautiful, and rural as they are ... all lack the
brilliant display of exotics which thrive here in such
luxuriance. The groves of orange-trees, the myrtle hedges, the
beautiful sheets of water, the spotless marble kiosks, the
artistic statuary, are all so masterly blended together with
such exquisite taste, that these gardens ... completely outvie
them."
The princesses were sometimes as highly adorned as the halls of
marbles and frescoes, and as ornamental as the gardens of
blooming exotics. On the festival of the Great Bairam, or on
state occasions, when lady visitors made formal calls to compare
complexions and cashmeres, their highnesses are spoken of with
the highest delight:
"They wore the most costly silks, richest satins, and softest
velvets; adorned themselves with the treasures of their jewel
caskets, so that their persons were one blaze of precious
stones. That crescent of females (for they always ranged
themselves in the form of the Turkish symbol) was then a
parterre of diamonds, amethysts, topazes, turquoises,
chrysoberyls, sapphires, jaspers, opals, agates, emeralds,
corals, rich carbuncles, and rubies. In short, the profusion of
diamonds with which the latter adorned their persons from day
to day became so sickening to me that my eyes were weary at the
sight of those magnificent baubles, to which all women are so
passionately attached."
{412}
But weary as were her British eyes, still she gazed in rapture
when the darling gems were on exhibition; moreover, in the
journal the impressions were faithfully recorded. On another
occasion, when some princesses were coming,
"The Princess Epouse, the mother of my prince, was attired in a
rich, blue-figured silk robe, trimmed with white lace and
silver thread, with a long train; full trousers of the same
material, high-heeled embroidered satin shoes to match the
dress. On her head she had a small white crape handkerchief,
elegantly embroidered with blue silk and silver, and round it
placed a tiara of May blossoms in diamonds. She wore a necklace
to correspond, having large sapphire drops hanging down the
neck. Her arms were ornamented with three bracelets, composed
of diamonds and sapphires, and an amulet entirely of sapphires
of almost priceless value. ... At times my eyes, when looking
at the Peris arrayed in all their gems, have become as dim as
if I had been fixing them on the noonday sun."
What young lady of an enterprising turn of mind would not be
willing, after reading these glowing descriptions, to pack up her
Saratoga trunks, to engage the Adams Express Company, and to
charter the Cunard line of steamers, to aid her on to a glorious
future near the base of the pyramids? Certainly not one of the
ambitious and strong-minded. But they need not ask the English
governess to go with them. She has been there; she will
respectfully decline going again--not she, as Shakespeare's other
old lady in Henry the VIII. exclaims, "not for all the mud in
Egypt." For another part of the story remains to be told; another
side of the picture to be presented; and dame Emeline tells it
truthfully, she paints it lifelike; the rose is beautiful, but
beware the serpent under it.
Mrs. Lott is apparently a gentlewoman, refined, accomplished,
intellectual, with an appreciation of the difference between
civilized society and barbarism. But in the vice-regal harem,
education was not to be found; ignorance was universal,
superstition reigned supreme. None could read, or write, or
sketch, or converse on a rational subject. No one could sing or
perform on a musical instrument; none cared for to-morrow or for
a hereafter. Their daily routine had all the monotony of the
desert with its burning sands, destitute of variety in incident
or shade of change; it was equally unproductive and utterly
worthless. They had nothing to expect with pleasing anticipation;
they had nothing to remember with delight. Physically, morally,
mentally they were unclean and debased. Their passions, when
aroused, were ungovernable; their greatest joy was revenge upon a
rival; and their revenge was deadly, by suffocation or
submersion, poison or the bow-string. Their amusements were all
sensual; their weary hours of listless idleness were passed in
indulgence of some enervating vice alike deleterious to health,
comfort, and color.
The servants were steeped in only a lower depth of dirt and
depravity. The princesses had the power of life and death over
them, and it was a power often exercised; they would put them to
the torture for a trivial fault, the breaking of a plate or the
falling of a cup; and cheeks and arms seamed with parallel rows
of the red-hot iron, attested how often and how unmercifully
cruel had been their punishment. The food of the menials was not
prepared for them, nor given to them; but they purloined by
stealth from the dishes on their way to the princesses'
apartments; and after their repast was ended, the refuse of
chicken and pigeon bones, of mutton, of soup, of rice, of
vegetables, and the rinds of fruit were tossed into a basket in
one loathing mess, mixed up, around which the servants flocked
like carrion birds, and, squatting on the floor, inserted
ravenously their reeking hands to pick out disgusting morsels
with their dripping, unwashed fingers.
{413}
The laundry did not require much water; for the volume informs
us,
"Those who performed the duties of washerwomen were occupied
daily in their avocation, except on the Sabbath, (Fridays.) But
that was not very laborious work, since neither bed, table, nor
chamber linen are used. Thus they were engaged until twelve,
when their highnesses partook of their breakfast separately. It
was served up on a large green-lackered tray, _minus_
table-cloth, knives and forks, but with a large ivory
tablespoon, having a handsome coral handle, the evident emblem
of their rank as princesses. It was placed upon the
_soofra_, a low kind of stool, covered with a handsome
silk cloth. The repast occupied about twenty minutes. Then
pipes, in which are placed small pills of opium, or more often
cigarettes and coffee, were handed to them, and each princess
retired to her own apartment. Thus they became confirmed
opium-smokers, which produced a kind of intoxication." ...
Their common indulgence in opium, with a profuse supply of
European wines and Schiedam gin, produced its natural results,
and is thus depicted:
"Oftentimes after the princesses had been indulging too freely
in that habit to which they had became slaves, their
countenances would assume most hideous aspects; their eyes
glared, their eyebrows were knit closely together; no one dared
to approach them. In fact, they had all the appearance of mad
creatures, while at other times they were gay and cheerful.
"They only combed their hair (which was full of vermin) once a
week, on Thursdays, the eve of their Sabbath, (Friday,
_Djouma_;) when it was well combed with a large
small-tooth comb; and pardon me, but 'murder will out,' the
members of the vermin family which were removed from it were
legion. It was afterward well brushed with a hard hair-brush,
well damped with strong perfumed water. Their highnesses never
wore stockings in the morning, nor did they change any of their
attire till afternoon."
When the summer heats set in, the harem was transferred to the
coast at Alexandria, to inhale the fresh breezes from the sea.
The preparation for flight was attended with some rich scenes and
ludicrous exhibitions. But their transit on the railroad, boxed
up like pigs or poultry on a cattle-train, is indescribable in a
decent print. The prelude to the trip will bear repeating; it is
an amusing contrast with the festal robes on the day of the Great
Bairam; the cutaneous sensation it excites is the penalty to pay
for the knowledge imparted; the company is right regal.
"As soon as orders had been given to the grand eunuch to hasten
the departure of the vice-regal family to Alexandria, ... there
was bustle all day long. One morning when I returned from the
gardens, ... I entered the grand pasha's reception-room; ...
there were their highnesses, the princesses, squatted on the
carpet amidst a whole pile of trunks. They were all attired in
filthy, dirty, crumpled muslins, shoeless and stockingless;
their trousers were tucked up above their knees, the sleeves of
their paletots pinned up above their elbows, their hair hanging
loose above their shoulders, as rough as a badger's back,
totally uncombed, without nets or handkerchiefs, but, pardon
me, literally swarming with vermin! No Russian peasants could
possibly have been more infested with live animals. In short,
their _tout ensemble_ was even more untidy than that of
washerwomen at their tubs; nay, almost akin to Billingsgate
fisherwomen _at home_; for their conversation in their own
vernacular was equally as low. They all swore in Arabic at the
slaves most lustily, banged them about right and left with any
missile, whether light or heavy, which came within their
reach."
At last the governess lost her health. The food was too
unsuitable for a Christian woman, and the atmosphere, redolent of
the overpowering rich perfumes of the gardens mingled with
sickening, stupefying opium smell and smoke, along with other
odors, almost intolerable. After visiting Constantinople with the
harem, she threw up her engagement and returned to England.
This abasement of woman is not to be wondered at; for wherever
the Christian idea of marriage is lost or subverted, woman
becomes the mere object of passion, and degradation is sure to
follow.
-----------
{414}
Translated From Etudes Religieuses, Etc.,
Par Des Peres De La Compagnie De Jesus.
The Flight Of Spiders.
A Paper Read Before The French Academy Of Science,
March, 1867.
About fifteen years ago, I was sitting in an arbor of my garden,
reading, when a little spider fell on my book, whence I could not
tell, and commenced to run over the very line I was reading. I
blew hard to chase him away, but he would not go. He lifted
himself strangely up, and I cannot explain how, but he lodged on
a sprig of verdure just above my head. "Well," said I, "for a
little animal like that, this is a wonderful feat! How has he
accomplished it?" To satisfy myself, I took him up again,
balanced him on my book, and, after assuring myself that he had
no invisible thread to aid him, I blew again, and again the
little fellow did the very same thing. With redoubled curiosity,
I tried him once more, and, to see better, I sat down in the
bright sunlight. Again I balanced him on the book, looked at him
as closely as possible, and, when I felt assured no precaution
could have escaped me, I blew once more. ... Resuming the same
inclined position, the spider as quick as lightning darted the
finest possible thread out of him, raised himself in the air, and
disappeared.
I confess I was stupefied. Never had I imagined these little
animals could fly without wings; so I consulted several works on
zoology, but I was astonished to find there was no mention made
of the flight of spiders, nor of the ejaculatory movement of
which I had witnessed so curious an example. [Footnote 96]
[Footnote 96: In M. Eugène Simon's _Natural History of
Spiders_, the most recent work of the kind, he says,
speaking of the manner in which _l'épéire diadème_
constructs its web: "Several authors suppose that the spider
darts its thread like an arrow, others imagine it throws it
upward in the air while flying as a fly would; but neither of
these explanations rests on observation, and they are, after
all, simple hypotheses." Then, describing his own observation
as to how a spider acts to make fast its great threads, he
says, "It seems to take a horizontal position, and moves
contrary to the wind." M. Simon's work gives us nothing else
to lead us to suppose he has observed the wonders spoken
of.--Tr.]
So there was a new question presented to me, and my vocation to
study the habits of these little animals--which hitherto had
given me no concern--decided for me. I immediately lost all
repugnance, all distaste, and threw away all the unjust
precautions of which the spider is too often the object, and of
which I was as culpable as any one else. And from that time I
welcomed its appearance; was most happy to meet with it, looked
for it, indeed, and studied its habits almost with _furor_.
And I can say that, thanks to this hearty preoccupation, which
never left me, I found every opportunity to follow my
inclination, and knew where to find spiders in all sorts of
unheard-of places.
Such are the singular effects of curiosity once excited, and
still another proof that, in order to study nature well, we need
only a mysterious glimpse of the unknown to redouble all our
energies to explain it thoroughly.
And as in this study, trifling as it may appear, I seem to have
met with facts not known hitherto, but which deserve to be
understood, I here resume the principal ones: those that treat of
the flying of spiders; of the habitation of some species in the
air; and of the gossamer or air threads--a singular phenomenon,
for a long time discussed in vain, but which I believe I have
definitively solved.
{415}
I only ask the naturalists to judge one fairly, not by theory,
but by facts. And I am persuaded, if they will take the pains to
verify what I advance, they will find me exact; and, if they
begin doubtingly, I hope, after they have read my observations,
they will conclude as others to whom I have communicated them.
Mocking and incredulous at first, they have ended by believing
their own eyes, and testifying to the evidence presented to them.
May my labor prove useful, and, above all, contribute to the
glory of the great God, whose just title is, _Magnus in magnis,
maximus in minimis_.
I.
Threads Thrown Out By Spiders.
The first thing that I perceived, and that put me on the track of
the rest, was, as I have just said, that the greater part of
_aranéides_, especially certain varieties of _thomises
lycoses_, etc., besides the thread that they always draw with
them, have the power of darting one or more of extraordinary
length, and of which they make use to accomplish distances, to
fasten their webs from one point to another, and even, as we
shall see further on, to raise themselves in the air and there to
seek their prey. The spider always points his abdomen to the side
where he wishes to go. The thread shoots like an arrow, fastens
itself by the end to the place destined, and the spider passes as
under a suspended bridge. If this thread is cut, it is
immediately replaced by another; and the ejaculation is so
prompt, so rapid, the thread so straight, so tenuous, so
brilliant, that it might be taken, if I may so express myself,
for the jet of an imperceptible ray of light. To perceive this
clearly, the spider must be held on a level with the eyes, which
should be shaded, and examined with one's back to the sun.
The best time for such an observation is in the morning or
evening, when the sun is low in the horizon and the temperature
is mild; for without this latter condition the torpid spider is
more inclined to creep along the earth than to throw out new
threads.
Sometimes, to excite them, they may be held by their ordinary
thread and gently shaken or blown upon--just a few puffs of
breath--which they detest.
I have thus been able to scan closely, while watching their
development, this instantaneous jet of thread, which could not be
less than five or six yards long, that is, fifteen hundred or two
thousand times the length of the spider. What a tremendous
apparatus must be necessary to these little animals for so rapid
an ejaculation, and one so disproportioned to their size! And
especially if we consider that this thread, inasmuch as it
adheres to the animal, has not the appearance of an independent
organ, but seems solely to obey its will. Thus I have seen
spiders, who seemed to miss the end desired with the first
stroke, continue to hold the thread in the same direction, and
actually _palpitate_, if I may so say, while striving to
make it adhere.
But a truly interesting sight, and one obtained at a very
trifling expense, is that which the _thomises bufo_ offer,
described by Walckenaer, in the first volume of his _History of
Insects_, page 506. In truth, these araneides do not only
throw out one thread, but an entire bundle of them, and are
seemingly guided by the smaller threads, just as a peacock
unfolds by degrees his splendid plumage.
{416}
And even in one's own room this sight may be enjoyed. It is only
necessary to collect these _thomises_ and keep them in
separate boxes, and nourish them in winter with one fly or so a
month. Then take the boxes out, put them on a table in a very
warm room, and sit a little in the shade and watch them. Very
soon from each box will appear a multitude of threads, of extreme
freshness and fineness, which the spider throws into the air with
inexhaustible profusion. At certain seasons of the year we can
enjoy this spectacle again, and at even less expense.
II.
Flight Of Spiders.
Another property not less remarkable that these araneides possess
(_thomises bufo, lycoces voraces_, etc.) is that of flying;
that is to say, of elevating themselves in the air, there
sustaining themselves, and travelling about horizontally and
vertically, with or without a thread; in a word, acting exactly
as if in their own element. This fact I have witnessed a thousand
times, and it has been certified to by a great number of people,
who, at first incredulous, and alarmed for the laws of
gravitation, were compelled to confess the reiterated testimony
of their own eyes.
I had some pupils under my charge, and to them this study became
a continued source of amusement. During their recreation, they
found suitable spiders for me, and, when they brought them to me,
I rested them on my fingers and made them mount upward in the
air; and invariably, after having watched them for some moments,
they were entirely lost to sight. But when I made the
discovery--of which I will speak later--of the general migration
which some species make yearly toward certain regions of the
atmosphere, I had no longer any trouble to enjoy this performance
to my heart's content.
The flight of spiders is sometimes very rapid, particularly when
they start. They often escape from one's hands while they are
carefully watched. This happened to me one day with a
_voracious lycose_ that I had for a long time importuned
without success. Just as I was going to give him up as entirely
stupefied, he suddenly escaped from me by a lateral movement, so
rapid that for a moment I lost sight of him; but, when I found
him a moment afterward, he was suspended quietly in the air. I
also remarked that he set out without throwing any thread, and
this was not the only time I made the same observation. I was
experimenting one day with some amateurs in the interior court of
the college where I live, and, having started a _lycose_, we
saw him occupy himself at first with the neighboring galleries,
running up and down for about twenty yards, about a tenth of a
yard from the arch, against which he knocked himself from time to
time, and groped about to look for a passage; not finding one, he
threw himself back into the court, raised perpendicularly, and
disappeared toward the clouds. His thread, if he had one, could
not have been longer than a tenth of a yard. Ordinarily, however,
before they ascend, they throw out a thread which they follow for
a short time; then, arriving at a certain height, they break it,
in order to navigate more easily. If any is left before them,
they wind it rapidly with their feet, throw it aside, and form
those pretty little crowns of white silk in form of
_cracknels_, that we often see flying in the air in time of
gossamers. Again, they balance themselves quietly with a thread
which rises perpendicularly above them, and gives them the
appearance of floating.
{417}
But a peculiarity still more remarkable in the flight of spiders
is the attitude that they take in flying. They generally swim
_backward_, that is to say, the back turned from the earth,
the feet folded on the corselet, and perfectly immovable. How can
such a flight be explained, for they are already heavier than the
air? Plunged into alcohol, they sink quickly; but in the air they
seem to possess an ease, a liberty, a facility of transport, so
admirable that I have never been able to see in them the
slightest motion, nor even an apparent increase of weight. Does
not this fact present an interesting question for the skilful to
contemplate?
III.
How Long They Can Remain In The Atmosphere?
At this portion of my history I have to relate facts the most
curious and unexpected; and, unfortunately for me, more true than
probable. I acknowledge I was loath to publish them, or assume
concerning them any responsibility. But I was firmly convinced,
and therefore hoped to be believed, especially by this generation
of fearless naturalists, who are astonished at nothing in nature,
and who, having often been surprised in the relation of almost
incredible marvels, must certainly make allowances for a few more
in another quarter.
Let us look at, for instance, the wonderful things related of the
_argyronete_, or aquatic spider. [Footnote 97]
[Footnote 97: The _argyronete_ is a spider that lives in
the water where she constructs a charming little edifice that
appears surrounded with a silky mortar. The down that covers
her contains a certain quantity of air for respiration. This
gives her in swimming the appearance of a ball of
quicksilver, from which we have her name.]
I could not tell anything more unlikely, so I will only exact for
the atmosphere a companion to what the Père de Lignac discovered
in the last century for the water. Yes, I pretend there are
spiders that live in the air as well as those living in water,
and that every year, from the earliest days of spring, there is,
unknown to us, a general migration of spiders toward the
atmosphere, where they pass their best season, form their nets,
chase their prey, and only return to earth in the first fogs of
autumn to find their quarters for the winter. I add, also, that
this ascent and descent give rise to the curious phenomenon,
still so badly explained, of the gossamer. And as it was to the
study of this phenomenon that I owe my knowledge of the rest, may
I be permitted here, by way of demonstration, to relate briefly
the path I have followed and the proofs which have led to the
conviction I express?
Attracted, as I was, by all that concerns spiders, I could not
remain indifferent to a fact so important and interesting as the
periodical apparition of those threads which in spring and autumn
we see flying about in long white skeins, clinging to trees, to
hedges, and to the vestments of the passers-by, carpeting the
country in a few hours with more silk, and finer and whiter, than
could be spun in a year by all the reels in the world. Admirable
netting, glistening in the light of the setting sun, and
reflecting the sweetest, softest tints of gold, vermilion, and
emerald, and receiving the pretty and poetical name of "_fils
de la Vierge_." Was there not between this phenomenon and my
preceding observations a secret tie, some mysterious relation? I
seemed to foresee it, and, setting to work immediately, rejected
from the very beginning the usual explanation of this phenomenon.
{418}
How, indeed, can we admit these floating gossamers as merely the
refuge webs of spiders, torn by the violence of the wind from the
trees and forests and carried capriciously through the air? Will
not the slightest observation convince us that they never appear
but in the calmest moments, on days foggy in the morning, but
afterward beautiful, and not preceding a storm; never in summer,
often in the spring and autumn, and sometimes even in winter? If
the winds carry them, why do they not appear in summer? Are
violent winds and spider-webs both wanting? And who has ever seen
one of these webs carried by a hurricane, especially in quantity
sufficient to produce such a phenomenon? For the fall of
gossamers sometimes lasts for almost entire days, and in certain
countries during the middle of the day the fields are covered
with them. Add, too, that violent winds are generally local,
while this phenomenon is universal, and so periodical that in the
same climates it appears at the same epochs, and, when one knows
what produces it, it is easy to predict the time and day of the
apparition.
Discontented, then, on this point with books and their
explanations, I turn completely to the side of nature, and
present all I observed.
From the first appearance of these threads in autumn, I was
struck with the immense multitudes of new spiders met with
everywhere, and which I had not seen during the summer. Little
brown _lycoses_ filled the air, so that it seemed as if it
had rained them. If one walked in the fields, the meadows, the
gardens, on the borders of the woods, among heaps of dried
leaves, scattered all through the forest everywhere, could be
seen myriads of these little brown spiders, jumping up and flying
before me in every direction, and exactly such as I had already
recognized as such excellent swimmers. After having passed the
winter in the earth, in the holes of worms that they completed
with a little silk, they reappeared after the cold in great
numbers, to disappear again entirely in the first bright days of
spring, and as if by enchantment. If one is seen again during the
summer, we may be sure it is some female retarded by laying her
eggs, and dragging laboriously her cocoon after her. Now, what
has become of the others?
For several months I could not satisfy myself on this point,
when, on the 21 St of October, 1856, in the enclosure of the
little seminary of Iseure, near Moulins, I came to a positive
decision, I was observing the fall of a large quantity of
gossamers, which were falling on that day in large white flakes,
when I perceived close to me in the air one of those little black
spiders descending gradually, and as if she were jumping. She
held by an invisible thread to a large flake, which came down
slowly about seven or eight yards above her; but, keeping outside
of it, she hung by the end of the long thread, like an aeronaut
underneath his balloon. My attention once attracted, I noticed so
great a number that I was astonished I had not taken care sooner;
for there was scarcely a flake underneath which there were not
one or two, and this sometimes even before the flake itself was
visible. [Footnote 98]
[Footnote 98: There is an observation which confirms my own.
We read in _Darwin's Journal_, page 159: "Mr. Darwin saw
a large number of gossamers on the ship Beagle, when she was
about 60 miles from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. It was
the first of November, and these gossamers were carried by a
very light breeze, and on each were found an immense number
of little spiders, similar in appearance, about the twelfth
of an inch in length, and in color a deep brown. The smallest
were a deeper shade than the others. None were found on the
white tufts, but all on threads." _Journal of Researches
into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited
during the Voyage of his Majesty's Ship, the Beagle,_
1845.]
{419}
Each one was separated by a slender thread, and followed the
motion of its balloon. If they met a tree or a bush, they landed
upon it; if not, coming close to the earth, they ran along and
were lost in the verdure. If I approached them too quickly or
made a noise, they remounted rapidly by their threads and went to
disembark somewhere else.
I also examined some of the flakes. They were all shining white
mats, appearing as if they had been washed. Several contained
wings and feet of flies, fragments of the case of little
coleoptera, and other remnants of their aerial festivities.
This encounter was for me a revelation. I knew where the spiders,
whom I had seen disappear so brusquely, took refuge, and, however
rash my judgment may appear, I felt assured I had solved an
interesting problem.
But to establish seriously and give to science an opinion so new
and original as that the atmosphere may be peopled with spiders,
I soon felt that more proof was necessary in order to sit down
calmly under my personal conviction. So I concluded I should not
be doing too much if I added to the verification of their descent
that of their ascension, and could surprise them in this new
migration. I waited, therefore, impatiently for the spring.
But that spring, and for five or six that followed it, great was
my disappointment; for, though I perceived several isolated
ascensions, yet nothing in the proportion I had imagined or that
could justify my hypothesis. I began then to doubt seriously my
success, when an incident occurred that relieved my
embarrassment, and proved how trifling sometimes are the causes
which lift the veil from nature. I was looking straight upward,
but sitting close to the earth, and so as to be able as much as
possible to exclude the sun from my eyes. And here, by the way, a
fact is made palpable, by no means microscopic, but which has
escaped so long not merely the observation of the crowd of vulgar
observers, but of those even who are wide awake and study
carefully; namely, that it is not necessary to carry one's nose
always in the air, if I may so express myself, to examine
closely, to investigate, or to render a faithful account of
phenomena.
On looking upward--as an ascension only takes place on very
beautiful days, succeeding generally to bad weather--spiders
cannot be distinguished from the multitude of other insects which
fill the air. But if, on a beautiful day, mild, calm, and
brilliant in sunlight, succeeding as nearly as possible to a rain
warm with the south wind, at about nine or ten o'clock in the
morning, a post is chosen on an eminence of a meadow or an
avenue, and there, as near the ground as may be, and crouching
low, the observer will look horizontally, he will perceive a
series of fire-works, formed of innumerable threads launched from
every direction and inclined toward the sky. This is the prelude.
Soon the spiders detach themselves and mount slowly by their
threads. The most conspicuous are the _thomises bufo_,
because they are the largest, and because they only ascend with
an entire bundle of threads, which gives them the appearance of
small comets.
{420}
Thus have I decided
1st. That there is not only one ascension every year, but
several, at least partial ones; that they do not always take
place in spring, but often in the autumn, and sometimes even in
the winter; and in general, from the descent which has taken
place in the beginning of autumn until the definitive ascension
in the spring, there are but few favorable days of which the
spiders do not profit to make an aerial journey, or at least to
throw out a large number of threads. Thus, in the Beaujolais,
where I have lived for several years, there were partial
ascensions on the 1st, the 19th, and the 28th of November, 1864;
the 21st, the 23d, and especially the 25th of October, the 9th of
November, and the 6th of December, 1865. In 1866, the 18th and
the 30th of January, the 3d of February, the 3d, 14th, and 31st
of October, and the 17th of December. In 1867, the 10th of
February, ... the last, however, less considerable than might
have been predicted by the beauty of the day. The day previous
was so mild, though cloudy, that many of the spiders may have
embarked _incognito_. Many, also, may not have judged it
_a propos_ to fly away, for a great number still remained on
the ground. I forgot to observe the temperature of all the days I
have noted. The director of the Normal School of Villefranche
having had the kindness to show me the meteorological register
which he had kept with great care, I was able to prove that in
calm weather only ten or twelve degrees of heat were necessary to
induce them to mount upward. The least exposed begin; then
immediately the others, so soon as the heat reaches them; but
after three or four o'clock in the afternoon no more ascensions
are perceived, unless they are provoked; and this does not always
succeed,
2d. Before taking their flight, they generally cling to some
elevated object that they meet with easily, such as shrubs,
bushes, props of vines, or blades of grass escaped from the
scythe. To these they affix their threads and warm themselves
well in the sun before commencing their excursion. This is the
happy moment for amateurs to make their observations, for there
is scarcely a blade of grass that does not contain one or more;
and, if the branches of young trees are suddenly struck with a
slight blow, a great number are detached, suspended at the end of
their threads; and very often rare specimens are thus found not
discoverable elsewhere.
IV.
To What Height Do They Raise
Themselves in the Atmosphere?
On this point I have not been able to make any direct
observation. Perhaps I have dreamed of offering objections to the
concourse of intrepid human navigators who undertake such
perilous excursions in the air, and for my interest in the study
I have found two excellent reasons. The first, that it would be
well for them to know that, if they have not had rivals, they
have had precursors, who, for 6000 years, have executed silently
and noiselessly what they have claimed for themselves by every
effort of puffs and publicity. The second, and a still more
serious objection and that I believe will truly interest the
future in this young industry, is that if the argyronete and its
bell has given to science the instrument with which the divers
explore the depths of the sea, why may not the study of aerial
spiders furnish for aeronauts--these divers in air--the complete
apparatus which they require to raise themselves to any height,
direct their movements, and maintain themselves at will? Have not
these little animals resolved this problem for centuries? Yet the
present state of aerostation does not afford ground sufficient
for comparison.
{421}
We are, therefore, reduced to conjecture; and, if I may be
permitted to express mine, this is what I think:
I believe that spiders rise to the same height where on the fine
days of summer one can see the swallows and martins hover, almost
lost to sight, in pursuit of gnats that people these regions of
the atmosphere. I found this belief on the webs of spiders seen
falling in autumn, that seem to come at least from nearly such
heights. They begin to be seen at a hundred or a hundred and
fifty yards, and there is no great temerity in affirming that
they have already traversed a good part of their course. An
observation made in 1864, if conclusive, would tend to make
remoter still the habitation of spiders; for the fog that
determined the fall that year was a _high_ fog, that is to
say, one of those uniform mists that hide the sky for several
days together, and seem to extend to a great height. But, I
repeat, this is all conjecture. One good observation would have
been worth far more.'
V.
Conjectures On The Mode Of Building
Of Spiders In The Air.
Perhaps here I should stop, and, having stated facts, leave to
others their explanation. How do spiders sustain themselves in
the air? How can they so long brave the winds, the rains, the
storms; arrange their webs in emptiness and without apparent
means of support? Prudence counsels me to avoid these questions,
but my _rôle_ of simple observer permits them. However, in
waiting for better things, I decide still to hazard some
conjectures, were it only to prove that a fact once admitted, it
would not be absolutely impossible for the wisest to explain it.
The first idea that came to me was that these spider-webs raise
themselves in the air as the kites of children, and, made fast to
the tops of trees and edifices by long threads, they are
sustained by their own lightness. This idea was suggested to me
by a sight I was witness to one day at the Seminary of Vals, near
Le Puy. From a corner where I was in shadow, I perceived
distinctly on each high ridge of the roof, lightened by the rays
of the sun, long threads which rose perpendicularly in the air,
like large cords, balancing themselves slowly right and left,
without ever going out of a certain field of oscillation. But I
soon gave up this idea. How admit, in truth, that on two or three
threads, and without any other means of support, spiders could
weave their true webs? Would not some of these aerial
constructions tumble down every day, ruined by their own weight?
while it is acknowledged they only fall in autumn, and always
together.
I therefore rather incline to believe that the spiders are
sustained in the air by the distention of an interior vesicle,
analogous to that of fish, and that they ejaculate by their
threads, which are numerous, and pierced with an infinity of
little tubes, large bundles of threads, by which are taken the
insects that serve for their prey; that they resist the winds as
fish do the tossing of the sea, and their threads, being
glutinous, are not dampened by the rain; and also being excellent
conductors of caloric, as is proved by the abundant drops of dew
which they pearl near the earth, on the hedges, etc.; and if
after a calm night they are touched by an autumn fog, these heavy
and moistened threads weaken and fall one over the other, and
form the silky flakes that are seen from ten to eleven o'clock in
the morning, flying about in cloudy days with the spiders who
inhabited them during the summer.
{422}
This, hoping for better, is the explanation I hazard, and I
submit it with the rest to the appreciation of competent men. If
only these pages attract attention to a merited subject, and
provoke numerous observations, which alone can ever fully
elucidate it, the author will be more than repaid for the few
researches he has presented in this article.
--------
Translated From The "Revue Du Monde Catholique."
John Tauler.
By Ernest Hello.
History has an astonishing memory. She records the day and hour
of battles with exact fidelity. She knows a thousand things. She
has recently discovered, if I do not mistake, the name of Julian
the Apostate's cook. She remembers everything of little
importance. The names of celebrated mistresses who have amused or
poisoned renowned personages, are transmitted from age to age.
Erudition has been making strides during the last hundred years,
as if she had seven-leagued boots. To deserve the admiration and
gratitude of mankind, however, she should not have degraded
herself, but taken a higher sphere in her progress. Her memory
indicates greatness of genius; but she is like calumny, she
increases in size as she advances through the centuries. In her
labors, researches, and exploits, she has been mostly busied with
soldiers, and frequently forgotten God and man. She could not
think of everything at once; the hidden history of humanity is
yet to be written; the greatest events of the world are secret to
this very day; and those who reflect on them are men of a special
caste.
If there were question of the battle of Marathon, or of Antony
and Cleopatra, our contemporaries would be found well instructed;
but do they know John Tauler, the German Tauler, of the Dominican
or preaching order?
Master Tauler was a great preacher--powerful and popular. One
day he gave a learned discourse, in which he taught the way of
perfection, with all his characteristic assurance. To become
perfect, he enumerated twenty-four conditions, which he developed
before an attentive and brilliant audience. After the sermon, a
layman, one of the poorest and most ignorant of his hearers, came
to him. History, by one of those distractions so usual for her to
have, when there is question of God, has forgotten the name of
this individual. This simple layman said to Tauler:
"Master, the letter kills, and the spirit gives life; but you are
a Pharisee."
Doctor Tauler: "My son, I am now old, and no one has ever spoken
to me in this manner."
The Layman: "You think I speak too bluntly to you; but it is your
own fault; and I can prove that what I say to you is true."
Doctor Tauler: "You will do me a favor, for I have never loved
the Pharisees."
{423}
Then the layman, probing into the doctor's mental condition,
showed him that he was held captive by the mere letter of the
evangelical law, and devoid of its spirit.
"You are a Pharisee," proceeded the layman, "but not a
hypocritical Pharisee. You are not on the road to hell, but on
that which leads to purgatory."
Doctor Tauler embraced the man, and said to him: "I feel at this
moment as the Samaritan woman must have felt at the well; you
have revealed to me all my faults, my son; you have told all that
was most secret in my soul. Who, then, has told you? It is God; I
am convinced it must be so. I entreat you, my son, by the death
of our Lord, to be my spiritual father, and I, a poor sinner,
will become your son."
The Layman: "Dear master, if you speak thus contrary to order and
reason, I shall not remain with you any longer, but straightway
return to my own house."
Doctor Tauler: "Oh! no. I beg you, in the name of God, to stay
with me, and I promise not to speak thus again."
The docility of Tauler is sublime and touching. His great good
will, which broke the pride of science, led him into the paths of
spiritual contemplation.
"Tell me, I conjure you, in the name of God," said Tauler, "how
you have succeeded in arriving at the contemplative state?"
The Layman: "You ask me a very odd question. I confess to you
frankly that, if I should recount or write all the wonderful
things which God has been doing to me, a poor sinner, for twelve
years, there would be no book large enough to contain them."
The layman then recounted how he had been deceived in his
spiritual life; how, influenced by Satan, he had practised
imprudent austerities, which would have injured both his body and
soul; and how, warned by God, he had returned to the paths of
wisdom.
Both Tauler and the layman were then lifted up to the regions of
contemplation. The unknown monitor then said: "If the God whom we
worship could be comprehended by reason, he would not be worthy
of our service."
But before his great illumination, Tauler suffered during two
years frightful temptations. Abandoned, poor, suffering, that man
of iron was shaken like a reed. The layman comes to his
assistance, and sustains in his time of misery him whom he had
crushed in his period of pride.
"For the first time," said the layman, "God has touched your
superior faculties."
At the end of two years, the doctor again ascended the pulpit.
The crowd which came to hear him was large. Tauler cast his eyes
over the expectant multitude, then drew his cowl over his eyes
and prayed.
The crowd awaited him; but he spoke not a word. Tears filled his
eyes and rolled down his cheeks. Tauler wept bitterly.
What a scene! The audience become impatient. Some one asks Tauler
if he will preach. Tauler continues weeping. He wept and wept;
and the multitude, anxious to hear his inferior oratory, and
incapable of appreciating the higher eloquence of tears, could
not comprehend the doctor's conduct. At last Tauler dismissed the
assembly; for his sobs choked his utterance. He asked pardon of
the people for having kept them uselessly waiting; and they went
home. "Now," said some of them, "we see that he has become a
fool."
{424}
But after five days' silence, Tauler preached before the friars
of the convent, and he was sublime. One of the friars went to the
pulpit and addressed the congregation as follows: "I am requested
to make known to you that Doctor Tauler will preach here
to-morrow; but if he acts as he did last time, remember not to
blame me." "How will he succeed?" said one to another. "I do not
know," was the answer; "God knows."
This time Tauler could control his voice, and _silence_ was
his theme. He had built his eyrie in silence, as an eagle on the
summit of a cliff. His language, worked out in silence, seemed to
long after it; to return to its home, and die away in the high
sombre clouds of complete solitude. Silence is the doctrine of
Tauler; his secret, his food, his substance and his slumber.
Absolutely free from all oratorical finery, his sermons go right
to the mark, without respect for conventionality or the cant of
ordinary discourses. He utters what he wishes to express; praises
solitude, and returns into it. This is the reason why his
external word takes nothing away from his interior recollection.
His words do not betray his soul. Silence is the guardian angel
of strength.
It was doubtless this profound doctrine of silence which gave to
the eloquence of Tauler an extraordinary virtue. This man, who
seemed to come out of a tomb, appeared with a thunderbolt in his
hand. Fifty men, after the sermon, remained in the church as if
transfixed by an invisible hand. Thirty-eight of them were able
to move during the half-hour which followed; but the twelve
others could not stir. Tauler said to the unknown layman, his
adviser: "What shall we do with these people, my son?" The layman
went from one to the other and touched them, but they were as
immovable as rocks.
Tauler was frightened at the paralysis which he had caused. "Are
they dead or alive?" said he to his friend. "What do you think?"
"If they are dead," replied the layman, "it is your fault, and
that of the Spouse of souls."
This fact, which is historical, seems like a legend.
This picture would be magnificent, if an artist should sketch it.
The place where Tauler had just preached was a cemetery, and the
twelve men who were lying on the ground in ecstasy resembled
those who slumbered in death beneath. The orator, walking with
his friend through the audience, who had become almost his
victims; feeling the pulse and the face of his hearers, to detect
in them after the sermon, as after a battle, some sign of life;
passing through the ranks of the vanquished and healing the
wounded, must have seemed something superhuman. At last the
friend of Tauler found that the thunderstruck hearers breathed
still, "Master," said he, "those men still live. Request the nuns
of the convent to take them away from here; for this cold floor
will injure them." One of the nuns, who was a listener to the
fearful discourse, had to be carried to her bed, where she lay
motionless.
The biography of John Tauler, which serves as prologue to his
sermons, says nothing of his exterior life; but dwells specially
on his unhistorical and legendary character. Those who wrote
about him have not deigned even to inquire in what century he
lived. This strange man has dispensed history from its ordinary
inquiries, as if eternity had been the sole theatre of his
terrestrial existence.
{425}
His friends are as strange as himself. The astonishing layman,
who tells his name to nobody, and gives us no means of
discovering it, was not the doctor's only teacher. Another of his
instructors was a beggar, just as extraordinary.
Tauler, according to Surius, petitioned God during eight years
for a master capable of teaching him the truth. One day when his
desire was more than usually strong, he heard a voice saying to
him, "Go to the door of the church. Thou wilt find there the man
whom thou seekest." He obeyed, and met at the appointed spot a
beggar, whose feet were soiled with mud, and whose rags were not
worth three half-pence. They began a dialogue, of which the
following is a portion:
Doctor Tauler. "_Good_ day, my friend."
The Beggar. "I do not remember ever to have had a _bad_ day
in my life."
Tauler. "May God grant thee prosperity."
The Beggar. "I know not what adversity is."
Tauler. "Well, may God make thee happy!"
The Beggar. "I have never been unhappy."
Urged for an explanation, the mendicant affirms that, "by means
of silence, he had arrived at perfect union with God; never being
able to find pleasure in anything less than God."
Tauler. "Whence comest thou?"
The Beggar. "From God."
Tauler. "Where hast thou found God?"
The Beggar. "Where I have left all creatures."
Tauler. "Where is God?"
The Beggar. "In men of good will."
Tauler. "Who art thou?"
The Beggar. "I am a king."
Tauler. "Where is thy kingdom?"
The Beggar. "In my soul."
We need often recall to our minds, in reading Tauler's life, that
he was really a man of flesh and bone, an historical personage.
Surius, Fathers Echard and Touron, have written his real life
circumstantially. He was born in 1294. He was an Alsatian. He
lived at Cologne, and died probably at Strasburg. We cannot fix
the date of his death. It happened May 17th, 1361, says Father
Alexander. Father Echard places it in the year 1379. Another
historian, M. Sponde, puts it in 1355.
Let us now speak of his doctrine.
II.
The doctrine of Doctor Tauler is the practice of divine union.
This union, transcending human thoughts and hopes, is the secret
of his life and the leading principle of his work. His sermons
are full of instruction regarding this union.
His _Institutions_ also teach it. Some writers hostile to
Tauler pretend to have found in his writings the foreshadowing of
quietism. This mistake can be refuted in three ways: by the works
of Tauler, which always affirm human activity to the most
contemplative soul, thus clearly separating the doctrine of the
quietists from that of the German thinker. Secondly, Bossuet,
whom no one will suspect of any leaning toward quietism, says of
Tauler: "He is one of the most solid and exact of the mystical
theologians." Thirdly, Tauler himself predicted quietism in a
remarkable monograph, blaming strongly all that Molinos, Madame
de Guyon, and Fenelon afterward asserted.
A close study of the Alsatian doctor shows that he always gives
to both internal and external activity all the reality and all
the rights which they possess.
{426}
"If any one," says he, "ascends to such a height of contemplation
as Saints Peter and Paul reached; and he perceives that a sick
beggar needs his help to warm his soup, or for any other service,
it would be much better for him to leave the repose of
contemplation, and aid the poor man, instead of remaining in the
sweetness of contemplative life." (_Institutions_, p. 195.)
Here is the plain truth and no illusion. And elsewhere he writes:
"Men should not pay so much attention to what they do, as to what
they are in themselves; for if the core of their heart be good,
their acts will be so also without difficulty; and if their
conscience be just and right, their works cannot be otherwise.
Many make sanctity [to] consist in action; but action is not the
chief element in it. Holiness must be judged in its principle as
well as in its acts. In other words, we must be interiorly saints
before we can perform exterior holy actions. No matter how good
may be our works, they do not sanctify us as works. It is we, on
the contrary, who make them meritorious, in virtue of inner
sanctity which is their producing principle. It is in the bottom
of the soul that we find the essence of a just man."
(_Institutions_, p. 156.)
Here is the truth again. Collate those two passages, after having
studied them separately, and you will find that they throw
complete light on the nature and value of human acts.
The almost continual ecstatic state in which Tauler lived, never
made him forget his smallest duties.
It has been often remarked that grace adapts itself to the
natural qualities of the individual whom it sanctifies. This is
as true of nations as of individuals. In Italy, asceticism has
the color of the sun. Italian ascetics shout, burn with ardor,
and seem full of exaggerated transports to the nations of cooler
blood. The landscape of Italian asceticism presents you a burning
sky, an ocean of fire, and a scorching earth. Sadness is
generally wanting. In Spain, the hue is more sombre. The same
ardor is there; but ardor tempered with jealousy. There is
interior disquietude in Spanish mysticism, and even adoration in
it examines itself as if suspicious of its truth. In Germany,
profound gravity and stern austerity lead the soul into a
horrible place. In Italy, images come crowding together, and
divine love, instead of rejecting them, embraces them. The soul
of the Italian saint holds garlands of flowers in his hands,
offering them joyously to the blessed sacrament. Familiarity and
adoration unite, like the two species of electricity before the
thunder-clap. Familiarity, wedded to adoration, appeared in St.
Francis of Assisi. The greatness of that strange man, who saw
brothers and sisters in everything, and conversed with water,
fire, the birds, and his monks, in the same tone and spirit, is
not immediately manifest to superficial minds. Plain good nature
veils his wonderful character. In Germany, those images which
poetry presents to love are accepted with great precaution.
Adoration is sober in thought and expression; and aspires to
something sublime, whose form and name are intangible. German
adoration is philosophical, meditative, broad, comprehensive,
austere, silent, wrapped up in herself, and self-sufficing. She
borrows only what is strictly necessary from persons and things.
The world is a servant which she employs only with regret. She
holds aloof from all creatures, and her words sound like
concession. She says to no one, "My brother," or "My sister." If
she had a brother. he would be silence. Her sister would be the
mist which surrounds God.
{427}
Tauler is one of the most majestic representatives of Teutonic
asceticism.
A disciple of St. Dionysius the Areopagite and of that layman of
whom we have written, in the wake of those two great characters
he follows, with eye and wing of eagle, into the region of
translucent darkness. He does not flutter there, he _soars_;
or, if he flies, his motion is so high and rapid, that it seems
like the active repose of a sublime and fruitful immobility.
Tauler seems to desire obscurity. The remarkable effects of his
preaching on his audience are less like thunder pealing in his
language, than like the awful presence of the sacred cloud where
the thunder is reposing.
Every man is a universe in himself. Unity and variety are the two
terms of the antinomy, without which there is no life. But
perfection consists in equilibrium between those terms. Such
perfection is very rare. In general the antinomy of life is
replaced by the contradictory, which is death. Man is divided
between good and evil, always attempting an impossible
reconciliation between them. Contradiction is a dead force which
tries to serve two masters. An antinomy is a living force which,
having chosen a master, and obeying but him, desires to serve him
in a thousand different ways always useful. Nothing better
displays the unity of a landscape than the variety of colors
which it presents to the eye at the same time. The lights and
shades, the undulations of the soil, and the accidents of sun,
clouds, villages, forests, and spires, all are harmonized in the
eye of the spectator; and the more numerous, varied, and
unexpected are the details, the more does he experience delight
and a certain dilation of mind and heart in the contemplation of
their unity. If he takes away some of the circumstances, he mars
the effect of the whole; for he cannot even destroy a shadow
without diminishing the sunshine. What is true of a landscape is
also true of a book or a man. But Tauler lost the balance between
unity and variety, for he gave all to one and nothing to the
other. Few individuals, even among the greatest saints, have been
so ardent in the sentiment, love, pursuit, and conquest of unity.
He seeks after it incessantly, and it haunts him. He never seems
to look at the road he is travelling. He fixes his eyes solely on
the goal ever present to his soul. He turns neither to the right
nor the left. He knows not whether there be flowers or thorns on
the borders of his pathway. Do not ask him to imitate St. Antony
of Padua, and preach to the fishes of the streams. He minds
neither fishes nor birds. He seems to regard creation as a
stranger, of whom he had heard tell long ago, but whose
remembrance is now but faintly glimmering in his mind.
His love of unity, his call to unity, his transports for it,
always take the same shape, the same key and accent; and produce
in the end a certain monotony, which is not a question of
doctrine, but an affair of nature and temperament.
Tauler somewhere relates the history of a hermit, from whom a
troublesome visitor begged something that was lying in the cell.
The hermit went in to find the required object, but forgot at the
threshold what was wanted, for the image of external things could
not remain in his head. He went out, therefore, and asked the
visitor what he sought. The visitor repeated his petition.
{428}
The hermit re-entered his cell, but again forgot the request; and
was at last obliged to say to his guest: "Enter and find yourself
what you seek, for I cannot keep the image of what you ask for
sufficiently long stamped on my brain to do what you desire."
Tauler, in narrating this story, unintentionally describes his
own character. In every one of his sermons, he chooses a text and
a subject. This was required by circumstances and by his
audience. But the moment he enters the cell of his contemplation,
he forgets text and everything else, and mounts into the realms
of sublimity where he loses himself in that supreme unity after
which his heart is always aspiring. The moment he begins to fly,
he forgets the course he must take. With one stroke of her wings,
his intellect finds her love, and then soars in her natural
element, with plumes unruffled. Far above modes and forms of
earth, she stretches out her broad wings in the cerulean vault of
her beloved repose. If any should then ask him about some
ordinary detail, he would certainly answer like the recluse above
mentioned: "Enter yourself, and find what you are inquiring
after. I cannot keep the image of material or minor things long
enough in my mind to fulfil your request."
Tauler is continually citing Saint Dionysius the Areopagite. In
fact, these two great men are at home in the same latitudes. The
sermons of Tauler are to the works of the Areopagite what a
treatise of applied mathematics is to one on theoretical
mathematics. Tauler, like St. Dionysius, dwells in the interior
of the soul, that secret and deep abode, the name of which he is
ever seeking without finding, and which he ends by calling
ineffable as God himself.
"It is in this recess of the soul," he preaches, "that the divine
word speaks. This is why it is written, 'In the midst of silence,
a secret word was spoken to me.' Concentrate then, if thou canst,
all thy powers; forget all those images with which thou hast
filled thy soul. The more thou forgettest creatures, the more
thou wilt become fit and ready to receive that mysterious word.
Oh! if thou couldst of a sudden become ignorant of all things,
even of thy own life, like St. Paul, when he said, 'Was I in the
body or out of the body? I know not, God knows it.'" ... "Natural
animation was suspended in him, and for this reason his body lost
none of its powers during the three days which he passed without
eating or drinking. The same happened to Moses when he fasted
forty days on the mountain, without suffering from such long
abstinence, finding himself as strong at the end as at the
beginning."
The desire of Tauler that his hearers should become _Christian
children_, ignorant or forgetful of everything in sublime
ecstasy, shows plainly the nature of his charity. He wished for
them absolute perfection, contemplative and active,
transfiguration, transport, exactness, total accomplishment of
truth, and the plenitude of all heavenly things. The atmosphere
in which he lived favored his hopes and helped the efficacy of
his teaching. He declares that in the monastery when a soul is
suddenly called to some interior consideration, it can leave the
choir in the midst of the exercises, and plunge itself unseen
into the abyss of meditation to which God draws it. He also
affirms that when friars pass several days in ecstasy, they have
no reason to be disturbed at any irregularity of theirs which may
result from such an accident, provided they obey the rule again,
when they become masters of themselves.
{429}
Thus the prodigious transports of true asceticism are ever
strengthening; while those of false mysticism enervate the soul.
Hence it is that Tauler, though he is always speaking of
ravishments, never loses the character of force, and of that
austerity which is the sign of God and the test of true
contemplation.
"Where then does God act without a medium? In the depths, in the
essence of the soul? I cannot explain; for the faculties cannot
apprehend a being without an image. They cannot, for instance,
conceive a horse under the species of a man. It is precisely
because all images come from without to the soul, that the
mystery is hidden from it; and this is a great blessing.
_Ignorance plunges the soul into admiration_. She seeks to
comprehend what is taking place in her; she feels that there is
something; but she knows not what it is. The moment we know the
cause of anything, it has no longer any charm for us. We leave it
to run after some other object; always thirsting for knowledge,
and never finding the rest which we seek. This knowledge, full of
ignorance and obscurity, fixes our attention on the divine
operations within us. 'The mysterious and hidden word' of which
Solomon writes, is working in our minds." (_Sermons_.)
Many men of genius, from the beginning of the world, have studied
the human soul, and many are illustrious for the profundity of
their psychological researches. Yet compared to the great
mystical writers, those philosophers are mere children. Merely
human psychology skims over the surface of the soul, only
analyzing its relations to the interior world. They are ignorant
of the phenomena which take place in the secret recesses of the
mind. The great light, the incarnate Word, alone can throw its
rays into those abysses. It is remarkable that those who study
the soul for curiosity, merely to find out, and consecrate their
life to such investigations, discover very little. While those
who care nothing for simple science, but who act virtuously, obey
and glorify the Lord, see all things properly. Instead of aiding
vision to peer into the soul's _penetralia_, curiosity dims
the light. _Simplicity_ is the best torch in those
catacombs. _Simplicity_, commissioned by God, penetrates
into the abysses of the soul, with the audacity of a child sent
by its father.
The interior and extraordinary efforts by which Tauler rose to
the height of contemplation, gave him, though he knew it not, an
astounding knowledge of the resistance which man makes to man and
to God; of our combats, defeats, and victories; and of those
artifices by which we veil from ourselves our true situation
during the battle. The rounds by which the soul ascends are
counted, and yet the ladder of perfection has no summit.
The gospel, so merciful to sinners, vents all its wrath on the
Scribes and Pharisees. All its charity is for external enemies;
all its severity for interior enemies. Jesus Christ used the whip
once in his life to show men in what direction his indignation
was turned. We have Magdalen and the woman taken in adultery on
the one hand; the money-changers of the Temple, the Scribes and
Pharisees on the other. _There is a line of fire separating
sinners from the accursed_. All Catholic doctrine, all
ascetical tradition, is but the echo of Christ's mercy and
Christ's anger. Tauler teaches like all the great doctors, in
this respect.
He reprobates exterior practices which are devoid of charity, as
the works of hell, most hateful to the Holy Spirit. The fixedness
of his ideas gives a singular solemnity to his repetitions. On
every page his hatred of works done without interior life shows
itself.
{430}
Such works are his abomination. In all his meditations, prayers,
experiences, and contemplations, he condemns them. "This
doctrine," says he, "ought to be attentively meditated by those
who torment and mortify their poor flesh, plucking out the bad
roots which lie hidden around the core of man's heart. My
brother, what has thy body done that thou shouldst scourge it in
that fashion? Those men are fools who act as if they wanted to
beat their heads against the wall. Extirpate thy vices and thy
bad habits, instead of tormenting thyself as thou dost." ...
"There are men in the cloister and in solitude whose soul and
heart are always distracted by a multiplicity of external things.
There are men, on the contrary, who in public places, in the
midst of a market, and surrounded by countless distractions, know
so well how to keep their heart and senses recollected, that
nothing can trouble their interior peace or injure their soul.
These deserve the name of religious far more than the former."
(_Sermons_.)
Tauler goes farther. When those men who place God in external
acts remain apparently virtuous, "the Lord," says he, "turns away
from them. But when, in his mercy, he allows them to fall into
grievous exterior faults, then he returns to them and offers them
forgiveness." Tauler is always in the sky. He never stays long on
earth. "God," says he, "can unite himself to the soul simply,
immediately, _and without image_. He acts in the soul by an
immediate operation; he operates in the depths of the mind where
no image ever penetrates, and which are accessible only to him.
But no creature can do this. God, the Father, begets his Son in
the soul, not by means of an image, but by a process similar to
the eternal generation. Do you want to know how divine generation
takes place? God the Father knows himself, and comprehends
himself perfectly. He sees down to the very source of his being;
and contemplates himself, not by aid of an image, but in his own
essence. Thus he engenders his Son in the unity of divine nature.
In this manner also the Father produces him in the essence of the
soul, and unites himself to her." (_Sermons_.)
All the discourses of Tauler end by a refrain. The chorus of his
song is ever divine unity. Tauler is hardly a man; he is a voice
speaking in the wilderness, calling men to descend into the
depths of their souls. All his doctrine may be resumed in this
word, to which we must give its etymological signification:
_Adieu, à Dieu_. [Footnote 99]
[Footnote 99: The point of these words is untranslatable. The
sense is _adieu_ to creatures; and turn to God--_à
Dieu!_--[Translator's Note.]]
-----------
New Publications.
History of Civilization in the Fifth Century.
Translated, by permission, from the French of A. Frederick
Ozanam, late Professor of Foreign Literature to the Faculty of
Letters at Paris. By Ashley C. Glyn, B.A., of the Inner Temple,
Barrister-at-Law. London: W. H. Allen & Co. For sale by The
Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau street, New York.
{431}
A work like this furnishes the best antidote to the poison
contained in the writings of such sophists and falsifiers of
history as Buckle and Draper. It substitutes genuine philosophy
and history for the base metal of counterfeiters. It exhibits
truthfully what Christianity--that is, the Catholic Church, which
is concrete, real Christianity--has done in creating the
civilization whose benefits we are now enjoying. The translator's
preface furnishes so interesting a sketch of M. Ozanam's life and
literary career, that we are sure of giving a great gratification
to our readers by transferring the greater portion of it to our
pages.
"A few words may be said as to the career of the author,
Frederic Ozanam, whose name has not yet become widely known in
this country. He was born August 23d, 1813, at Milan, where his
father, who had fallen into poverty, was residing and studying
medicine. His mother, whose maiden name had been Marie Nantas,
was daughter to a rich Lyonnese merchant, and it was to that
city that his parents returned in 1816. The father obtained
there a considerable reputation as a doctor, and died from the
effects of an accident in 1837. His son pursued his studies at
Paris with great success, and was destined for the bar. He took
a prominent place in the thoughtful and religious party among
the students, and his published letters show how he became
identified with the movement set on foot by Lacordaire and
others. He was especially distinguished, however, by the
foundation of an association of benevolence, called the Society
of St. Vincent of Paul, which from its small beginnings in
Paris spread over France, and has at the present time its
conferences, composed of laymen, in all the larger towns of
Europe. M. Ozanam showed, even during his student life, a
leaning toward literary pursuits, and a distaste for the
profession of the bar, to which he was destined; but he joined
the bar of Lyons, obtained some success as an advocate, and was
chosen in 1839 as the first occupant of the professional chair
of Commercial Law, which had just been established in that
city. The courses of lectures given by him were well attended,
the lectures themselves were eloquent and learned, and M.
Ozanam seems to have preferred inculcating the science of
jurisprudence to practising in the courts. But in the course of
the following year, 1840, he obtained an appointment which was
still more suitable to his talent, the Professorship of Foreign
Literature at Paris, and which gave him a perfect opportunity
for the cultivation of his favorite pursuit, the philosophy of
history. Shortly after his appointment, M. Ozanam married, and
the remaining years of his life were spent in the duties of his
calling; in travelling, partly for the sake of health and
pleasure, partly to gain information which might be woven into
his lectures; and in visits to his many friends, chiefly those
who had taken an active part with him in upholding the
interests of religion in France. He never entered upon active
political life, though he offered himself upon a requisition of
his fellow-townsmen as representative of Lyons in the National
Assembly of 1848. In politics M. Ozanam was a decided liberal,
in religion a fervent Catholic. His letters show a great
dislike of any alliance between the church and absolutism, and
a conviction that religion and an enlightened democracy might
flourish together. He wrote in the _Correspondant_, which
embodied the newer ideas, and was frequently animadverted upon
by the _Univers_, which represented the more conservative
party in church and state. His more important works were
developed from lectures delivered at the Sorbonne; and his
scheme was to embrace the history of civilization from the fall
of the Roman Empire to the time of Dante. But failing health,
although much was completed, did not allow him entirely to
achieve the great object which he had originally conceived when
a mere boy; and the touching words in which he expressed his
resignation to an early death, when his already brilliant life
promised an increase of success, and his cup of domestic
happiness was entirely full, may be found among his published
writings. M. Ozanam seems to have continued his literary labors
as long as rapidly increasing weakness would permit, but after
a stay in Italy, which did not avail to restore his broken
health, he reached his native country only to die, September
8th, 1853, in the fortieth year of his age, and the heyday of a
bright and useful career. He was lamented by troops of friends,
old and young, rich and poor--the latter indeed being under
especial obligations to his memory. His friend, M. Ampère,
became his literary executor, and undertook the task of giving
his complete works to the public, for which end a subscription
was quickly raised among those who had known and respected him
at Lyons and elsewhere. From the lectures which he had
completed and revised, from reports of others, and his own
manuscript notes, an edition of his complete works was formed
in nine volumes, comprising _La Civilisation au Cinquième
Siècle, Etudes Germaniques, Les Poëtes Franciscains, Dante et
la Philosophie Catholique au Treizième Sièle_, and
_Mélanges_,
to which were added two volumes of his letters.
{432}
"The work which has now been translated forms the first two
volumes of the above series, and was intended by the author as
the opening of the grand historical treatise which he had
designed. As it was delivered originally in the shape of
lectures, and preserves that form in the French edition, it has
been necessary, in order to preserve the continuity of the
historical narrative, to alter the constructions occasionally,
and to pass over a sentence here and there which refers solely
to the audience of students to which the lectures were
originally addressed."
---
The Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library.
First series of 12 volumes, pp. 144 each.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society,
126 Nassau street. 1868.
This is the initial set of a New Illustrated Catholic
Sunday-School Library, now in preparation by the Catholic
Publication Society. It contains 12 handsome volumes, put up in a
neat paper box. The titles of the volumes in this, the first
series, are as follows:
_Madeleine, the Rosière;_
_The Crusade of the Children;_
_Tales of the Affections;_
_Adventures of Travel;_
_Truth and Trust;_
_Select Popular Tales;_
_The Rivals;_
_The Battle of Lepanto and The Relief of Vienna;_
_Scenes and Incidents at Sea;_
_The School-Boys and The Boy and the Man;_
_Beautiful Little Rose;_
and _Florestine, or Unexpected Joy_.
From the above list it will be seen that the set comprises
fiction, history, and adventures. This set of books has been
selected with an eye to give our Catholic youth useful as well as
entertaining reading. The illustrations are good, but might be
better--however, they are a great improvement on the class of
illustrations heretofore printed in our Catholic books. The type,
paper, and binding are excellent. We hope these books will be
extensively used as premiums in our schools, as well as find a
place in every Catholic library in the country.
---
Assemblee Generale Des Catholiques en Belgique.
27 Sept., 1867. Bruxelles: Devaux.
This large volume of 900 royal octavo pages, which has been just
received from M. Ducpetiaux, of Brussels, is a complete record of
the transactions of the late Catholic Congress of Malines. Among
other things it contains the complete report of F. Hecker on the
state of Catholicity in the United States, correctly translated
into French. It is truly surprising to see what an immense amount
of business can be transacted in one week, when all are intent
upon doing the work in hand, and nothing else. Some of our
legislators might learn a valuable lesson in this regard from
this volume. The noisy and vulgar writers for the newspapers, and
the other clamorous declaimers in speech and print, who are
constantly repeating their hoarse outcry of ignorance and
superstition against the Catholics of Europe, would be completely
silenced and put to shame, if that were a possible thing, if the
records of the Congress of Malines could be placed in the hands
of all their intelligent readers. We may safely challenge the
world to produce another similar volume, bearing so clear an
impress of intelligence, good taste, patriotism, philanthropy,
and religious zeal as this. Give us only a sufficient quantity of
Catholicity like this, and we will renovate the earth.
---
Received from Kelly & Piet, Baltimore:
_The Ghost_; a comedy in three acts. Taken from the
French. Pp. 50. Price, 50 cents.
_The Banquet of Theodulus; or, The Reunion of the Different
Christian Communions._ By the late Baron de Starck. New
edition. Pp.204. Price, $1.
From H. M'Grath, Philadelphia: _White's Confutation of the
Church of Englandism, and Correct Exposition of the Catholic
Faith_. Translated from the Latin by E. W. O'Mahony. 1 vol.,
pp. 342. New Edition. Price, $1.25.
---
"The Catholic Publication Society" has in press, and will soon
publish, the second series of the new _Illustrated Catholic
Sunday-School Library_, and a new edition of _Moehler's
Symbolism; Problems of the Age, Nellie Netterville_, and _A
Sister's Story_ are now being printed, and will be ready in a
short time.
----------
{433}
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
Vol. VII., No. 40.--July, 1868.
A Plea For Liberty Of Conscience.
Foreseeing that we shall be obliged, in this present article, to
present some very unpalatable truths to a portion of our readers,
we assure them in the outset that we do not wish unnecessarily to
revive unpleasant recollections.
Facts are facts, however, history is history, and truth is truth;
and so long as we do not cherish a malevolent spirit, or seek to
embitter and envenom the minds of our fellow-men against each
other, there is no reason why we should not have liberty to speak
plainly, even about very ugly and very discreditable things. On
the present occasion, we use this liberty in defence of the weak
and defenceless against tyranny and oppression, in defence of the
rights of conscience and religious freedom in the case of a
considerable number of persons grossly disregarded and violated.
The right which we undertake to defend is the right to embrace,
profess, and practise the Catholic religion; and the wrong which
we wish to contend against is the system of domestic and social
tyranny by which this right is impeded. It may appear to some a
very curious statement, yet we venture to make it boldly, that in
every part of the world where the English race is dominant,
Catholics have been engaged, ever since the era of Protestant
ascendency, in a struggle for liberty of conscience against
spiritual tyranny, either political, social, or both combined. We
do not propose to go back to the period of penal laws, civil
disabilities, and legal persecution in Great Britain and America,
just at present. This is a chapter in history already tolerably
well elucidated and likely to be still further commented upon in
the future. We will let it pass, however, for the present, and
confine our view to a more recent period, during which,
theoretically speaking, in England Catholics have enjoyed full
toleration, and in the United States equal liberty with other
citizens.
Notwithstanding this theoretical liberty. Catholics have been
exposed, as every one knows, to outbreaks of popular violence, in
which their blood has been shed, their churches and other
property burned and destroyed, and their religion made the object
of denunciation, vituperation, and ridicule in a wholesale
manner.
{434}
The primary cause of this state of things is to be found in the
representation which Protestant preachers and writers have made
of the Catholic religion. On this head we will content ourselves
with quoting the language of a Protestant clergyman, the Rev.
Leonard W. Bacon, of Williamsburg, L. I., which we have just seen
in a report of one of his sermons published in the _Brooklyn
Times_ for March 17th, 1868:
"The duty of considering the question now submitted to us has
required me to stand before shelves filled with volumes of
antipapal literature, and to glance from page to page of its
contents. The character of much of that literature is a shame and
a scandal to the cause in which it is uttered. It is full of evil
and uncharitable talk against Romanists and their clergy, and
deformed with bad temper and bad logic and reckless assertion." A
few sentences further on he designates a certain class of writers
against the Catholic religion as the "scurrilous crew of
antipopery-mongers, who make a trade of the prejudices and
passions of the American public, feeding them with vituperation
and invective."
This description applies to a class of writers in England and
Ireland equally as well as to the class designated among
ourselves. We pass over all that the general body of the Catholic
clergy and people have had to suffer from the general prejudice
against them created and excited by the calumnies and invectives
of these writers and declaimers against their religion. We fix
our attention upon one point only, what those persons have had
and still have to suffer from this prejudice who have become
Catholics from conviction and choice, or who have wished to do
so, and would have done so, had they not been deterred by the
violent opposition they have encountered.
In England, a little stream of reconversion began to set back to
the ancient church during the cruel and despotic reign of
Elizabeth, which continued to run during several succeeding
reigns, but at last was either totally or almost dried up. Its
source received a new supply through the influence of the French
clergy who were refugees in England, and at length the current
began to flow more fully and strongly than ever. Within the last
twenty-five years the movement of return to Catholic unity has
been steadily progressing, until it has become so considerable as
to attract universal attention, and awaken general anxiety
concerning its probable results. In the United States, a few rare
and isolated instances of conversion occurred from time to time
during the early part of the present century, which have become
much more numerous within the past twenty-five years, from
various causes which we need not specify. At present, there are
probably fifty thousand converts within the fold of the Catholic
Church of this Republic, a great many more who would gladly
become Catholics if there were no sacrifices to be made in order
to do so, and an indefinite number of persons who are more or
less favorably predisposed toward the Catholic religion or
partially convinced of its truth. From the first day on which
these strayed children of the holy Mother Church began to retrace
their steps to her blessed fold to the present moment, there has
been essentially the same story to tell of the disregard and
violation of that liberty of conscience and right of religious
freedom which Protestants have been so loudly proclaiming ever
since they have had existence.
{435}
In the earlier period of this disastrous epoch, some have
suffered a literal martyrdom, and all along, down to the present
time, many others have endured a moral martyrdom which is perhaps
harder to bear as well as more lingering in its agony. Very many
have needed a virtue and constancy truly heroic or bordering on
the heroic, in order to nerve themselves to the sacrifices and to
push through the opposition which they have been forced to
encounter as the condition of becoming members of the Catholic
Church and following the voice of their reason and conscience.
Those whose memory goes back over the last twenty or twenty-five
years, can recall the storm of indignation and obloquy evoked by
the first remarkable conversions which took place as the sequel
of the Catholicizing movement originating at Oxford. As a general
rule, the converts in England, even though belonging to the
highest classes in society, including the nobility, and well
known for their exemplary moral character, found themselves
ostracized from the circles in which they had been wont to move,
shunned by their most intimate friends, in many instances
excluded from intercourse wholly or in great measure with the
members of their own families. Some persons of high rank were
obliged to go abroad, in order to find the society of persons of
their own class which they needed for themselves and their
families. It was the same in our own country. A convert to the
Catholic Church found himself treated as an individual who had
abjured Christianity, engaged in a conspiracy against his country
and the human race, or as if he had been detected in perjury or
forging notes. Every one was speculating upon the motives and
cause of his strange conduct, as they have been recently, in
England upon the Rev. Mr. Speke's sudden disappearance and
mysterious rambles. Insanity was the most frequent and the most
charitable reason assigned for an act generally considered as
utterly unreasonable and disreputable. Some were excluded from
the bosoms of their own families; some were disinherited by those
whose heirs of blood they would have been; and others, who were
helpless, dependent persons, were thrown upon the world by near
and rich relations, who had hitherto supported them, and would
gladly have continued to do so had they consented to smother
their consciences. Some have been thrown out of business and
employment, reduced to straits in order to gain a living, or even
to extreme poverty and suffering. We do not allude now to those
Protestant clergymen with families who have resigned their
benefices in the Church of England, or given up their salaried
offices in the Protestant Churches of the United States. The
sacrifices made by these individuals, although very great, were
unavoidably necessary, and cannot be attributed to any injustice
or illiberality in the Protestant community. But we refer to
those cases where persons have been deserted and abandoned by
those on whose previous good-will, patronage, or custom they had
been dependent for the means of gaining their living, for no
other reason than the simple fact of their becoming Catholics. We
may add to these more serious matters the infinitude of petty
grievances and annoyances to which many persons are subjected by
their relatives and friends. Their religion is attacked and
ridiculed, without regard to the proprieties of polite
intercourse, as if a Catholic were out of the category of persons
whose convictions and sentiments are entitled to respect.
{436}
Obstacles are placed in the way of their fulfilling the duties of
their religion. Their children are enticed to eat meat on days of
abstinence, to attend Protestant churches, to read anticatholic
books, to shun the society of Catholics, without regard to the
conscience of the child or the authority of the parent. Every
possible influence is brought to bear upon them to make them feel
that their religion places them at a social disadvantage, and
that Protestantism is more genteel and respectable. In short, if
we try to imagine the state of things which converts to
Christianity had to struggle with in Rome and the gentile world
after the laws had ceased to persecute, but before the Christian
religion had ceased to be a despised and unpopular religion, we
shall have a very good counterpart of the present condition of
Catholic converts in England and the United States.
The trials and difficulties of those who are on the way to the
Catholic Church are even greater than those which have to be
encountered afterward. Not to speak of the interior trials which
are necessarily involved in the process of conversion, even for
those who are perfectly free and independent, or even placed
under influences which facilitate the transition to Catholicity,
there are exterior difficulties in the case of most persons of
the gravest and most distressing nature. Besides the opposition
of relatives and friends, in the shape of argument, entreaty,
expostulation, sorrowful disapprobation, which is the more
painful and the harder to be overcome the more kind and
affectionate it is in manner and spirit, the dread of wounding
and grieving those who are dearest and most respected,
disappointing their hopes and incurring their displeasure, there
is often to be encountered the might of spiritual tyranny, the
violence of a parent's or husband's despotic will, and, in short,
a _persecution_ worse to be borne than would be a summary
trial and execution. Unhappily, these trials are often too great
for the courage of those who have received the inward vocation to
the Catholic faith, and who are required to undergo so much if
they would follow it. Some are afraid of losing caste, some of
being turned out of doors, some of losing their livelihood;
others are afraid of encountering the anger and reproaches of
their friends, or the scorn and calumny of the world, or the loss
of popularity. There are those who are deterred by their dainty
and fastidious dislike of mingling with the poor, and who cannot
bring themselves to go to a church which is humble or mean in its
appearance, to receive the sacraments from a priest of unpolished
exterior. But these last have themselves only to blame, although
we may commiserate their weakness, and lay the chief blame of it
on the false maxims prevalent in the community at large.
It would be easy to cite numerous instances in illustration of
all that we have just said upon this subject, from personal
knowledge or the testimony of others; and if it were possible for
the complete history of the conversions to the Catholic Church
which have occurred during the last quarter of a century to be
written and published, it would be, for the most part, only an
extensive commentary upon the statements we have made. Even then
the saddest part of the story must remain untold, unless all
those who have been deterred from obeying the voice of conscience
could be induced to publish their confessions to the world, and
those who have died in perplexity and distress for the want of
those sacraments which their own cowardice or the refusal of
their friends prevented them from receiving, could come back from
the grave to add their testimony to that of the living.
{437}
The writer of these pages was acquainted with a gentleman of
eminent position in the world, who was for a long time a Catholic
at heart, and who on his death-bed desired to see a priest with
whom he was intimately acquainted, that he might receive the last
sacraments from his hands. This priest, who was a man of the
greatest dignity of character and universally venerated in the
community, called at the house several times, was politely
received, but never permitted to see the dying man. When the poor
old man perceived his last hour drawing near, he called his
faithful Irish nurse to his bedside, as the only true friend to
whom he could open his grief, and confided to her the sorrow that
was darkening his dying moments. He told her that he desired to
see a priest, to make his confession and to receive the last
sacraments, but that his request was denied, so that he had given
up all hope of his salvation, and believed himself doomed to die
in despair. The good girl comforted and soothed him, assured him
that he need not distrust the mercy of God, and explained to him
that in his case a perfect contrition for his sins would suffice
for their full remission. He begged of her to teach him how to
make the acts of faith, hope, charity, and contrition, to recite
prayers by his side, and to help him to prepare for death. She
did so, and through her holy ministrations his soul was
tranquillized, so that he died in peace.
The writer was once sent for by a man of unusual intelligence and
plain, respectable standing, who was in reduced circumstances,
and dying of a slow consumption. He learned from the lips of this
man that he had been for some time perfectly convinced of the
truth of the Catholic religion, and was satisfied that it was his
duty to be received into the church. Nevertheless, it was
impossible to persuade him to act on his convictions, because he
was sure that the assistance of certain societies, upon which his
family depended, would be withdrawn. He hoped to recover, and
promised that, if he did, he would profess his faith openly; but
we never heard anything more from him, and have never heard the
conclusion of his sad history.
It is but a few months since a young widow lady, a convert, was
turned out of house and home, not very far from our own city,
after the decease of her father, with whom she had been residing,
by her own brother, for the sole reason that he did not wish to
live in the same house with a papist. We will not multiply
instances; but they will rise up in abundance before the memories
of many who will read these pages; and if a recording angel could
take down what will be remembered, thought, and felt by all whose
eyes will peruse these lines, they would be transformed from a
brief and tame summary into a whole volume of living and pathetic
interest far surpassing the most thrilling tales of fiction;
Tears will be shed, sad memories will throng upon many minds,
many hearts will ache, we are assured, over the words we are
writing in perfect calmness and composure, and without any direct
intention of awakening emotion. Some will think of trials past,
some of trials present, and others will recall to mind their own
weakness and timidity in the hour when they were tried and found
wanting.
{438}
There are many others, however, and will be many more hereafter,
to whom this plea for the liberty of conscience will be, as we
cordially trust, not merely a subject of personal interest, but
also a practical help in surmounting their difficulties. We
allude to those who are now turning or who will hereafter turn
their faces wistfully toward the Catholic Church, but have first
to overcome the obstacles we have described above before they can
enter its portal. For this class of persons we have the most
profound sentiment of pity and sympathy. The rich and
independent, the able-minded and able-bodied, who can take care
of themselves, men who can assert their own rights, and those
generous youths to whom a glorious career is open in the
priesthood, do not claim our sympathy, for they do not need it.
But we pity the helpless and dependent; those who struggle with
poverty and live on the bounty of others, delicate, gentle women,
and all the weak, feeble children of God who would fain follow
their conscience if they were let alone and not interfered with,
but who shrink back appalled when it is a question of nerving
themselves to meet opposition and push their way through trials.
It seems to us that there is something hard and cruel beyond all
other forms of tyranny in that usurped, unjust despotism which is
exercised over these tender consciences. What can be a more
odious or flagrant violation of all right and justice than to
attempt to crush a conscience by force, to quell it by threats,
to wear it out by opposition, to stifle it by fear, or to lure it
by selfish, temporal interests? All will answer this question
alike, and admit, at least in theory, the wrong that lies in the
attempt of any person to violate the rights of any other person's
conscience. The only point really open to discussion is, What
constitutes a violation of just and rightful liberty of
conscience? The question respecting the right or expediency of
enforcing obedience to the dictates of conscience and the
fulfilment of certain moral obligations is quite a different one,
though closely related to the antecedent question. We cannot, in
arguing with non-Catholics on these points, assume the truth of
Catholic principles, or urge any consideration which necessarily
presupposes the Catholic religion to be the true one. Of course,
in the last analysis, we must come back upon the fundamental
principle that the law of God is supreme and must be obeyed at
all hazards, let come what will. No matter what human laws, what
private interests, what dreadful penalties, may stand in the way,
God must be obeyed, conscience must be followed, duty must be
done. The authority of the state must be braved, human affections
must be disregarded, life must be sacrificed, when loyalty to the
truth and to the will of God requires it. Those who reject the
authority of the Catholic Church, however, do not admit that the
Catholic law is the law of God; and we must therefore either make
our sole issue with them on this precise point of the truth of
the Catholic doctrine, which is the same thing as a declaration
of perpetual war, or we must find some middle term common to
both, upon which the peace of social relations can be settled and
the mutual rights and liberties of conscience be secured. We are
obliged, therefore, to waive all claim of right and liberty to
practise the Catholic religion, which is based on its positive
truth, so far as this argument is concerned, and to present only
such claims as a fair-minded person, whether Protestant, Jew, or
infidel, may admit as just and reasonable, without changing in
the least his own particular opinions.
{439}
It is not to be expected that all our arguments will be equally
applicable to every class of persons, whatever their religious
opinions may be; but we will endeavor to furnish at least one or
two for each of the principal classes into which the non-Catholic
community is divided. If some of our Catholic readers are
offended by our seeming to take a tone too apologetic and
defensive, we beg them to remember that the early Christian
apologists were not ashamed to do the like. They vindicated the
Christians of their own time from such accusations as worshipping
an ass's head and drinking the blood of infants. It is painful
and humiliating to be obliged to vindicate ourselves from gross
calumnies; but it is an act of charity toward those who are
deceived by these calumnies, and still more toward these helpless
and defenceless persons who must suffer from them.
We begin on the lowest possible ground by affirming that a person
in becoming a Catholic commits no offence against the laws of
morality or against the civil and social laws commonly recognized
among non-Catholics. There is no treason against society, no
offence against domestic rights, no repudiation of any moral
duties or obligations, nothing to make a person a bad citizen, a
bad neighbor, a bad husband, wife, or child. There is no
disobedience against any lawful external authority which has any
right to inflict any penalties affecting a person's social or
civil rights. There is no reason, therefore, why a person who
embraces the Catholic religion should be treated by his
acquaintances or society in general as a criminal, and made to
suffer in his social and domestic relations. In our heterogeneous
society, everything is tolerated which is not _contra bonos
mores_. That which strikes at the order and peace of the
natural relations binding us together in society cannot be
tolerated even on the pretext of liberty of conscience or
opinion. Therefore, Mormonism has no rights under our laws, and
ought not to be tolerated, and Mohammedanism could not be
tolerated. If the Catholic Church were really what it has been
represented to be by many, it could not claim liberty or even
toleration in non-Catholic states. But it is not what its enemies
have represented it to be. A person who becomes a consistent
Catholic will be a good citizen and respect the laws. He will be
faithful to his social and domestic duties, and strictly
observant of all moral obligations. It is not the spirit of the
Catholic religion to introduce discord or trouble into families
or societies, or to interfere with any just and lawful rights.
The only annoyance which can arise will be the annoyance which
persons wishing to violate the natural laws will meet with from
the conscientious observance of morality by the Catholic party.
Suppose a Catholic lady wishes to go to Mass, to confession, to
devote a part of her time to meditation or charitable works? Does
that necessarily interfere with the perfect fulfilment of all her
duties toward her family and society? Is it any greater liberty
than that which women generally expect to be conceded to them,
and which they take at any rate, whether it is granted with a
good or a bad grace? Let the question be decided by the actual
conduct of those who have become Catholics in their relations
with others who are not of their faith, and we are not afraid of
the judgment which candid and fair judges will render. Certainly,
then, they ought to enjoy the same liberty which is conceded to
those who profess any other form of religion not contrary to the
received standard of good morals, and to those who profess none
at all.
{440}
Those who profess the latitudinarian opinion that all religions
are alike, and who claim unbounded liberty of opinion for all,
ought to be the first to give to Catholics the full benefit of
this privilege.
With those who are more strongly attached to their own form of
religion and hold it to be the only true one, the case is
somewhat more difficult. Such persons may say that a person
brought up in what they call the true, Evangelical, reformed
faith, or in the pure, apostolical, Protestant Episcopal Church,
especially if he has been a communicant, and most of all if he
has been a minister, is an apostate from his faith as a
Christian, a renouncer of his baptism, and therefore a criminal
before God and the church, if he, to use their language, becomes
a Romanist. Let it be so. When argument and persuasion have been
tried and have failed, let the church pronounce her spiritual
censures on the disobedient member. We cannot complain of that.
Let him be canonically deposed if he is a minister. We cannot
complain of that, either. But is there any reason why our
Evangelical or High-Church friends should think it necessary or
expedient to proceed any further? Suppose they do regard the
person in question as a delinquent and as an unfortunate dupe of
error and delusion. Will our Evangelical friends affirm the
principle that none but the elect are entitled to the rights and
privileges arising out of natural and social relations? Will our
High-Church friends affirm the same, substituting for the elect,
consistent members of their own communion? If not, we cannot see
why they may not allow Catholics the same indulgence which they
concede to sinners, heretics, and infidels. We put them the plain
question, whether they have any right to interfere with the
conscience and the religion of another, or to use any kind of
coercion or persecution against any one, whatever may be the
relation in which he stands toward them. Some of them may perhaps
deny that a well-instructed member of that which they deem to be
the true church can become a Catholic conscientiously and
sincerely. But suppose it is so. Where is the authority to compel
him to fulfil his conscientious obligations of a purely spiritual
nature? We are not now speaking of young children who have not
attained to years of full discretion, over whom parents certainly
have an authority which must be respected. But, apart from this
exception, what authority can be claimed for enforcing any
religious obligation by any other means than an appeal to the
conscience itself? If there are any who really think there is a
right of excommunication in their church which extends so far as
to exclude a person from his privileges as a member of society,
and to reduce him to the state of one who is _vitandus_, or
an outcast to be shunned by all, we only desire that they will
act out their doctrine impartially and universally. Is it not, at
least, _inexpedient_ to appeal to it in the present state of
society, while no kind of disability is contracted by those who
profess the principles of Bishop Colenso or Herbert Spencer?
The case may be supposed of persons, influenced by no ill feeling
at all, who would desire to withdraw from all intimacy with
relatives or acquaintances who have joined the Catholic Church,
on the ground that their conversation and influence may be
dangerous to young persons in the family. Such a motive as this
we can respect, for we can and must respect fidelity to
conscience, even when it is an erroneous conscience which is
followed.
{441}
Moreover, no one is bound to keep up any intimate relations which
transcend the bounds of ordinary courtesy with any persons
outside the immediate family circle, unless it is agreeable to
himself to do so. But what is to be said of those who, on a plea
of conscience, sunder the closest bonds of nature, or threaten to
do so? We can easily understand that a Jew, a Puritan, an
old-fashioned Lutheran, a Presbyterian, or an English Churchman
might be so thoroughly absorbed in his religion, and so intense
in his attachment to it, that the conversion of a wife or child
to the Catholic Church would be a far worse blow to his
affections, and a more blighting disappointment to his hopes,
than would be the sudden death of either one, however tenderly
loved. An intelligent Jewish gentleman once told the writer of
this article that he was deterred from receiving Christian
baptism by the fear of causing the death of his aged father; and
this is not an unusual instance either among the descendants of
the ancient Pharisees or the adherents of the "straitest sects"
of Protestant Christians. In such cases, where no softening of
the temper and no modification of the mental condition takes
place, there is no room for argument. The word of our Lord must
be fulfilled--that he came not to bring peace, but a sword. One
who has to choose between submission to the will of another and
the disruption of the most sacred human ties, must choose the
latter when the former involves the violation of a certain and
known law of God. There is, therefore, no other course open to a
Catholic in such a case except the one of professing and
practising the Catholic religion openly, without regard to
consequences. If they are excluded from their homes and abandoned
by their friends, they must try to bear it patiently. We would
scorn to appeal to the mere sentiment of human pity or to the
maxims of indifferentism, in arguing with any man who should say
that his religious principles require him to banish a wife, a
son, or a daughter out of his house. It is our opinion, however,
that in most instances, after persons have had time for cool
reflection, they will not deliberately affirm that their
religious principles do require these harsh measures. No one will
pretend that they require or authorize any kind of tyrannical or
vexatious persecution, or an abandonment of those who have a
natural claim to protection to poverty and suffering. We are
disposed to think that prejudice, passion, wounded pride, and
similar causes have a great deal to do with the line of conduct
alluded to. And one good reason for thinking so is the fact that
so many firm and consistent Protestants, and even bishops or
other clergymen of standing, have acted differently, and have
treated Catholic converts even of their own families with
kindness and courtesy. We have supposed hitherto that we were
arguing with a person who would not admit that a convert from the
religion he himself professes can be sincere and conscientious.
It is impossible, however, to sustain such a position on any
ground which the majority of intelligent non-Catholics will admit
to be reasonable; for it can be sustained only by one of three
arguments. First, that the illumination of the Holy Spirit gives
to the individual reason an infallible certainty of the truth of
some one form of anticatholic belief. Or, second, that some such
form is at least made morally certain by rational evidence of
such a kind as to exclude all probability that the Catholic
religion may be true.
{442}
Or, third, that some certain and unerring authority, to which one
is bound to submit his private judgment, exists in one of the
several communions calling itself the true church of God. The
first argument cannot be brought into the forum of discussion,
because there is no certain, external test by which it can be
proved that such an illumination exists, or by whom among various
claimants it is possessed. The second is refuted by the simple
fact that so many intelligent and learned persons are convinced
by the Catholic arguments. The third is refuted by the fact that
no one of the churches claims infallibility. High-Churchmen claim
a teaching authority for their communion, but it is not claimed
by their church itself in any such sense as to exclude the right
and duty of testing its claims and doctrines by private judgment
on the Scriptures. Those who make the claim of authority in
behalf of this church do not pretend that it is more than a
portion of the universal church, and therefore, by the very claim
they put forth, directly suggest and provoke an examination of
the question what the universal church really teaches. The most
learned and eminent theologians among them distinctly assert that
the doctrines of the Church of England must be interpreted in
conformity with the teaching of the Catholic Church. Will any
reasonable person, then, pretend that one may not examine all the
evidence that can be adduced to prove what that teaching is; or
that he may not conscientiously and sincerely adopt the
conclusion that this teaching is really identical with the
doctrine of the Roman Church? We may cite here the judgment of
Dr. Johnson, who was a staunch Episcopalian, upon this point.
Boswell relates it in these words: "Sir William Scott informs me
that he heard Johnson say, 'A man who is converted from
Protestantism to popery may be sincere. He parts with nothing: he
is only superadding to what he already had. But a convert from
popery to Protestantism gives up so much of what he has held as
sacred as anything he retains; there is so much _laceration of
mind_ in such a conversion that it can hardly be sincere and
lasting.'" [Footnote 100]
[Footnote 100: Boswell's _Johnson_. Edit, Bait., Bond,
1856, p. 168]
In truth, every form of dogmatic and positive Protestantism
presents its lines of fracture from the great mass of Christendom
so conspicuously to the eye, that it is absurd to pretend that
its relation to that mass is not a thing to be examined and
judged of by every one who is capable of judging for himself,
that is, by every one who is responsible to his conscience and to
God for his belief upon those doctrines affirmed by the Catholic
Church and denied by his own detached body. An old-fashioned,
strict Israelite can make a far more plausible claim for
authority over the conscience in behalf of the synagogue, than
any Protestant can make for his church. The Jewish hierarchy had
once authority from God, and has only been superseded by the
sovereign authority of Jesus Christ. We cannot argue with him,
therefore, that a Jew who renounces Judaism violates no
obligation of conscience toward a lawful authority, except by
adducing the evidence that Jesus is the Messias foretold by the
prophets. Upon his own premises he must regard such a person as
an apostate and a rebel. The only reason which could have any
weight with him, why he should continue to show the same kindness
to a member of his family who had been baptized as before, would
be, that it is better to leave such a case to the judgment of
God, and refrain from an exercise of severity which could do no
good, but rather aggravate the difficulty.
{443}
The majority of Jews at present are, however, rationalists. They
place the essence of religion in mere Theism and natural
morality, regarding the peculiarities of Judaism as accidentals.
On their own ground, therefore, they can have no excuse for
obtruding any claim of Judaism over the reason, conscience, or
private judgment of any of their number. Take away a divinely
appointed, infallible authority, and in all matters of purely
religious belief and practice each individual is in possession of
full liberty, for the right use of which he is responsible only
to God. Moreover, in matters of positive, dogmatic doctrine, the
majority of non-Catholics acknowledge that only probability is
attainable. Logic and good sense have brought them to this
conclusion as contained in the premises with which they started.
But in questions of probability and matters of opinion, persons
of equal sincerity and conscientiousness may differ. We are
certain that this will be admitted as an axiom by our
non-Catholic readers. But if this be so, those who profess to be
convinced of the truth of Catholic doctrines ought to be regarded
as sincere and conscientious, which we think most of our
non-Catholic friends will also admit. Every one must see, then,
how contrary to every right and honorable principle it is to
attempt to act on the minds of those who desire to become
Catholics by any other means than argument and persuasion. How
dangerous, how unjust, how mean it is to strive to terrify or
wheedle them into a forced acquiescence in the will of others
through human and worldly motives! It would be almost an insult
to our readers to argue this point gravely. Those who follow the
principles of Demas in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and are in
favor of religion only when she walks in silver slippers, will
not publicly avow and defend any such base maxims, or maintain
seriously that their great objection to the Catholic religion is,
that it is not sufficiently genteel. Even the _New York
Herald_ flouts scornfully the religion of velvet cushions,
which makes the elect to consist solely of the _élite_ of
society.
But at last we come at what is the real _gravamen_ of the
complaint against Catholics on the part of those who are disposed
to be fair and kindly. It is not that we hold certain doctrines
as opinions, or adopt certain modes of worship as suited to our
taste. This could be allowed without difficulty as our undoubted
right, provided we would admit that the Catholic Church is only
the best and most perfect among several forms of religion. But we
maintain its exclusive truth and legitimacy, and proclaim it to
be the only way of salvation. It is unpleasant for one to have
his wife, or children, or near friends, look upon him as a person
excluded from communion with them in spiritual things and out of
the way of salvation. Very true! But what does this prove? It
proves that the ideal of society is only actualized in religious
unity. It makes no difference what your ideal is, whether it is
something purely natural, or, under some form, supernatural.
There must be unity either in some negative or some positive
form. That is, there must be something to give those who are
closely connected on the earth the same idea of the tendency and
end of this earthly life, and of the future life which is to
succeed it. Yet we find that society is not in this ideal state
among us. It is impossible for Catholics to sacrifice their
convictions and violate the dictates of their conscience, for the
sake of a unity which they believe to be chimerical.
{444}
We believe that it is only the Catholic religion which can bring
society to its ideal perfection, and therefore we shall, for this
reason, as well as for higher ones, do all in our power to make
it universal. Probably our Evangelical friends await the
millennium, and other classes of the religious community await
the universal triumph of some kind of church of the future, while
the sceptics look for a millennium of science and common sense.
Meanwhile, it is probable that some time must elapse before any
such epoch shall arrive, and we must live together in all manner
of political and social relations. It is only by a jealous regard
for the personal religious liberty of every individual that we
can live together in peace and harmony. Is it not, then, better
that, if we cannot immediately heal all the wounds of society, we
should at least alleviate them as much as possible, awaiting a
more radical cure at a future time?
We have already, in a former article, expressed our views upon
this point sufficiently, so that we need not dwell upon it any
longer at present. Happily, these are the views which are
practically carried out in a great number of cases, and are
gaining ground more and more. The state of things we have
described is becoming ameliorated even in England, but much more
in our own country. If the just, honorable, and rational temper
of the best class of non-Catholic Americans toward the Catholic
religion and its members were universal, and all persons disposed
to become Catholics were treated with the same delicate respect
for their liberty of conscience which some have experienced,
there would be no occasion for this reclamation in behalf of that
liberty. Those of our readers who can class themselves under this
category may understand, therefore, that with them we have no
controversy; but are combating an enemy as hostile to their own
domestic and social peace and well-being as to our own.
----------
Benediction.
"We go so far, and with so much trouble, to obtain the
blessings of certain holy persons, and of the holy father the
pope; yet here is the Lord of saints, and the God of whom Pius
IX. is only the vicegerent, and we cannot intermit our
socialities or forego our ease to receive his blessing!"
E. A. S.
The Invitation.
The balmy May is breathing on the air,
The rich, red sun sinks slowly down the west.
Come forth, dear soul, and be an honored guest:
One doth invite thee to his house all fair;
One great and good, this eve, doth wait thee there.
Nay, nay, not that dear friend whose hand hath prest
So oft thy own; not any ruler blest.
Of happiest clime: a nobler friendship share.
Ah! no; no poet doth such kindness move;
No wise, nor good, nor grand, nor holy, whom
The race reveres: a better friend would prove
His love; a greater asks thee to his home.
Within the tabernacle of his love,
The Lord of heaven awaits thee: wilt thou come?
---------
{445}
Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.
CHAPTER IX.
To this proposition Nellie joyfully assented, and he led the way
accordingly up a rocky path winding westward toward the cliffs.
Once or twice he turned as if to give her aid, but Nellie skipped
like a young kid from rock to rock, exulting in her independence;
and, finding that she declined assistance, he went on in silence
until they reached a point among the cliffs, high enough to give
them a full sea view toward the west.
The Atlantic lay beneath them, rolling in its mighty volume of
deep waters, and dashing them against the cliffs below with the
strength and calmness of a sleepy giant. Nellie had often seen
the _sea_, that narrow strip of water, namely, which
separated her own birth-home from the birth-place of her kindred;
but of the mighty ocean, with its thousand voices coming up from
the deep caves below, its murmurings and whisperings, its
infinite variety of tints and aspects, its lights and shadows,
its clear green depths and crystal purity, such as no smaller
sheet of water can ever boast of, she had never even dreamed
before; and as her eye roamed over the smooth expanse until it
reached that uttermost point where sea and sky seem to blend
together, a sense of vastness and power fell upon her soul which
almost oppressed her. For a few minutes Roger watched her as she
stood there in hushed and breathless admiration, but just as the
silence was beginning to be oppressive he broke in by saying,
softly, "Yes, yes! it is all bright, and smooth, and shining now;
but I have stood here on an autumn evening, and watched it when
it was black and swollen, brimful beneath the coming storm--when
the wind seemed almost a living power--a thing to be seen as well
as felt--as it swept over that mighty mass of waters, mingling
its hoarse voice with theirs, and forcing on their waves, as a
general forces on his troops, until it dashed them in a very
frenzy of fruitless valor against the beetling cliffs beneath us.
And, in truth, I almost prefer it in those moods," he added, like
one thinking his own thoughts aloud; "for then it looks simply
like what it is, a huge monster ever greedy for its prey,
whereas, now, in this lazy sunshine, it seems to me nothing more
or less than a great smiling treachery, wooing its victims toward
it, only that it may afterward the more thoroughly engulf them."
"It is a great, beautiful terror, even as it is to-day," said
Nellie breathlessly. "What a height we are above it! It makes me
giddy only to look down?"
"Do not look, then," said Roger anxiously, "but rather turn
inward toward yonder isle, which is only separated from the
mainland by a narrow strip of water. There are cliffs upon that
island which look westward over the ocean and rise eighteen
hundred feet above it, and the inhabitants will tell you that,
when the weather is calm enough, you can see from thence, at the
setting of the sun, the 'Hy Brysail'--the enchanted isle, the
'Tir-na-n'oge,' or land of eternal youth and beauty, to which
death and sorrow never come, and where (so the old legend tells
us) a hundred years of this mortal life pass swiftly as a single
day.
{446}
Few, as you may well suppose, are the favored mortals who have
ever reached it, and fewer still, if any, who have ever come back
to tell the tale of their adventures."
"It is a pretty legend," said Nellie, straining her eyes over the
ocean as earnestly as though she seriously expected to discover
the fairy island of which he spoke floating on its bosom. "Have
you ever really seen anything like land in that direction?"
"If you choose, we can go some of these days on a voyage of
discovery," said Roger, smiling at her seriousness; "only, if we
do find 'Hy-Brysail,' I warn you that we shall have to stay
there. Such is the law by which adventurers to its shores are
bound. It does not seem a hard law either, does it? Would you
object to it. Mistress Netterville?' to be young and beautiful
for ever! Sorrow forgotten as if it had never been, beneath the
spells of that magic land!"
Nellie drew a long breath, and her blue eyes grew well-nigh black
with suppressed feeling as she looked westward toward the ocean.
But she did not answer.
"Well," he said, finding she would not speak, "will you try the
adventure with me, or do you still prefer earth and its passing
showers to this land of eternal sunshine?"
Nellie sighed--it almost seemed as if she were making a real
choice; and when he playfully repeated, "Have you decided? which
shall it be--this old kingdom of Grana Uaille or Tir-na-n'oge?"
she quite seriously replied:
"Not Tir-na-n'oge, certainly; though a year ago, perhaps, I might
have chosen otherwise. But youth and its sunshine is not real
happiness, after all, although sometimes it looks very like it;
and even if it were, there is something to me in a life of
happiness, simple and unalloyed, less noble, and less like the
choice of a soul predestined to eternity, than in one of sorrow
bravely borne."
"Sorrow has done its work well for you, at all events," said
Roger, moved to a higher feeling of reverence than, two minutes
before, he would have thought it possible to have entertained for
a creature so young and still so childish."
"Woe to the soul upon which it does it not, once that soul has
been delivered to its guidance," Nellie answered softly, and
almost as it were beneath her breath.
Roger gazed upon her silently. It seemed as if she were changing
beneath his very eyes from a bright, impulsive child into a woman
of deep and earnest feeling--a woman in every fibre of her fine,
strong nature--and yet still in the untried freshness of her
sixteen years as innocent and confiding as a child.
"Then you prefer a happiness which would bring with it the zest
of contrast?" he added, as if to prove her further.
"I would prefer, at all events, a happiness founded upon duty,"
she answered gravely; and then, as if half-ashamed of her own
earnestness, she asked him lightly:
"Is it not strange to find these floating traditions of a
paradise of peace and plenty among a people so completely bereft
of both as these poor creatures, by their very condition as a
conquered race, must necessarily be?"
"For that very reason!" he answered quickly; "for that very
reason! Men despised as savages and treated as wild beasts, will
either brood over schemes of real vengeance or soothe themselves
with dreams of unreal bliss.
{447}
Is it wonderful, therefore, that these poor people, with their
dreamy and imaginative natures, should sometimes look wistfully
over the broad ocean, and fancy they see a land where (if once
only it could be reached) flowers, and joy, and eternal sunshine,
would console them for the misery endured among these barren
rocks, in which they have been forced by their enemies to seek--I
was going to say, a home--it would have been far more correct to
have said--a prison?"
"Nay, but now it is you that are unjust," said Nellie,
smiling--"unjust to this fair land you live in. The kingdom of
Grana Uaille can in no sense of the word be called a prison; and
even were it ten times less beautiful than it is, to me it would
still remain the one bright memory left me to look back to in
this great year of sorrow."
Roger turned quickly round, but Nellie met his eye with such a
look of frank candor and unconsciousness as to the possibility of
any hidden meaning being attachable to her words, that he felt
tacitly rebuked beneath it, and merely said:
"Ay; but, Mistress Netterville, I was talking of a home."
"Home!" said Nellie softly--"home, after all, is but the place
where the heart garners up its treasures. These were almost the
last words my dear mother said to me, and now I feel their truth;
for if she were but once more at my side, the barrenest island in
Clew Bay would become to me, I think, at once as home-like almost
and dear as Netterville itself."
Again Roger seemed on the point of saying _something_, but
again he checked himself and was silent.
Nellie saw the flush upon his brow, and interpreted it her own
way.
"You are not angry. Colonel O'More," she said, with the
simplicity of a child; "surely you do not fancy, because I spoke
of Netterville, that I am ungrateful for the kindness which has
made this island like a second home to me."
"No, indeed," he answered, with a smile so bright that it must
have reassured her even if he had not said a word in answer. "No,
indeed. I was, or at all events I _am_, only thinking how I
can best persuade you and Lord Netterville to consider this
island as your home, even in the absence of its lawful owner."
"Absence," said Nellie; "are you going then, and wherefore?"
"Wherefore?" said O'More quickly. "I marvel that you cannot
guess. Because, Mistress Netterville, though I live upon this
island, and though its inhabitants acknowledge me as their
chieftain, it is yet a sorry fact that I am poor, poorer in
proportion than the poorest of the number; an outlaw besides,
with every man's hand and sword against me, and nothing but the
traditions of past greatness to soothe, or, which much oftener is
the case, to add bitterness to the meanness of my present
station."
"Why call it meanness?" said Nellie, flashing up. "You have
fought and lost for your king and country, as we all have fought
and lost; and your enemies may take your lands indeed, but they
cannot rob you of the glory of the cause for which you have
contended, nor can they make you other than you are, a descendant
of brave old Grana Uaille and the inheritor of her kingdom."
"Kingdom!" said Roger, with a little bitter laugh. "Turn your
eyes inland, Mistress Netterville, and look from the northern
point of Clew Bay southward toward the spot where Croagh Patrick
casts its shade upon the bright waters.
{448}
That was the old kingdom of Grana Uaille, and my inheritance upon
the day that I was born. My earliest recollections therefore are
connected with this wild land, and every rock and cave in its
fair winding coast-line was as familiar to me in my childish days
as the toys in their nursery are to more tenderly nurtured
children. But they sent me at last to Spain for that education
which would have been denied me here, and I only came back (while
still a mere raw boy) to fight under the banner of my kinsman, I
will not trouble you with a history of that war; you know it,
alas, too well already! But when Preston took refuge in Galway,
and the other chiefs of the confederation dispersed in different
directions, I made the best of my way hither, hoping, amid the
wilds and fastnesses of my own country, to be permitted to remain
at peace. Rumors reached me on the way of the great scheme of the
transplantation, and of the numbers flocking from the eastern
counties to usurp, against their will, the possessions of their
poorer brethren in the west. Soon after that, came tidings that
the enemy had reserved the coast-line for themselves, then that
they had swarmed over into some of the Clew Bay islands, and
then, at last, that they had taken possession of and fortified
Carrig-a-hooly, the old castle of Grana and the spot where I was
born. Still I pressed unhesitatingly forward; for I remembered
the 'Rath,' and knowing that it was, or used to be, almost a
ruin, I hoped it would have escaped them, and that I might find
there a refuge and concealment for the moment. Mistress
Netterville, you can guess at the result. I went as you went, and
found as you found, that it was occupied already. Major
Hewitson--"
"What of Major Hewitson?" a voice asked impatiently at his elbow.
Roger turned, and found himself face to face with Henrietta, who
had glided so quietly up the mountain path that neither he nor
Nellie had an idea of her presence until she announced it by this
question.
Remembering her kindness of the day before, Nellie's first
impulse had been to greet her eagerly; her next was to retreat a
step behind O'More, with an uncomfortable though only half
acknowledged consciousness that she herself would be considered
by Henrietta as one too many in the coming conversation. There
was, in truth, a flush on the young lady's brow and a sparkle in
her eye, by no means inviting to familiarity, and without seeming
conscious even of Nellie's presence, she repeated the question
angrily to O'More:
"What of Major Hewitson? What of the owner of yonder castle?"
Roger looked at her steadily, then removing his cap, and speaking
in his most courtly tones, he answered quietly:
"Nothing, Mistress Hewitson, nothing at least, unfit to be said
in the presence of his daughter."
"That won't do!" cried Henrietta passionately, "that won't do. I
heard his name as I came up, and I will know what you were saying
of him."
Roger laughed a bright, merry laugh, which Nellie thought no
ill-humor could have resisted, and he answered frankly:
"Nay, for that matter. Mistress Hewitson, if you insist upon it,
you are quite welcome to hear not only all that I did say, but
all likewise that I was about to say on the subject of your
father. I had just observed to Mistress Netterville (whose person
you seem somehow to have forgotten since yesterday) that I found
Major Hewitson in possession of my last refuge on the mainland,
and I was going to add that, as he had thus made _his_
fortune at my expense, I trusted he would not endeavor to prevent
me seeking mine, where in these days Irishmen most often find
them, under the golden flag of Spain."
{449}
Spain! Nellie's heart leaped up suddenly, and then grew very
still. This, then, was the meaning of that word "absence" which
had already startled and, even against her will, disturbed her.
This was his meaning. He was about to leave Ireland for ever, and
make a home for himself in his mother's land. Nellie's heart
leaped up, and then grew very still!
When she returned to a consciousness of the outward world around
her, Henrietta was saying eagerly:
"Do not wait to know what he may think upon the subject; but go
at once. Remember you are an outlaw, and that an outlaw is one
whom the law permits to be hunted like a wild beast, and slain
whenever or however he may be taken."
"And this, then, is the fate which your worthy father is
preparing for me?" Roger asked in a tone of bantering politeness,
which, considering the circumstances and Henrietta's evident
excitement, Nellie could not help thinking almost unkind. "It is
thus, like a wild beast, as you rightly term it, that he is about
to set upon me and slay me unawares."
"I do not say it! I do not know it!" said Henrietta, almost
sobbing. "I only say--only know that there are fresh troops of
soldiers coming in to-day; that there have been for at least a
week past prayer-meetings and preachings and waitings on the
Lord, things which all portend a coming danger, and one that
probably will point toward you. Colonel O'More, be merciful; take
my warning for what it may be worth, and ask no further
questions. Remember, that if I think not with my father in these
matters, I am still, at all events, his daughter. And now I must
begone, for with all my skill at the oar, and little Paudeen's to
boot, I shall have hard work to get back in time for the mid-day
meal, and the long and weary homily by which it is seasoned and
made pleasant to unbelievers like myself."
Henrietta turned as if to depart, but yet she did not. She seemed
to be struggling hard with some hidden feeling, and at last, with
an effort so violent that it was visible, at least to Roger's
eyes, she flung her arms round Nellie's neck.
"I know nothing of you but your name, young mistress," she said
in a smothered voice; "but I know, at least, that I and mine have
wrought you a great injustice. That injustice unhappily I have no
power to repair; but yet, if ever you have need of any help that
I can give, and will come and ask me for it, believe me, instead
of heaping coals of fire on my head, you will be giving me the
only real happiness I can feel, so long as I know that, by my
residence in these lands, I am usurping the rights of others."
Henrietta almost flung Nellie from, her as she finished speaking,
and then, without another word, either to her or Roger, she took
the down path of the cliff, and was out of sight in a moment.
The two whom she left behind her continued silent, until they saw
the "corragh," or small boat, in which she had come, and which
had been waiting for her beneath the cliffs, gliding once more
out into the open bay; then they also turned their steps
homeward, and Roger, with no small dash of enthusiasm in his
manner, exclaimed:
{450}
"Brave girl! would you believe it, this is the second time she
has given me notice of a snare? only the first time," he added,
with perhaps some intuitive guess at the sort of questioning that
might be going on in Nellie's mind, "only the first time it was
by Paudeen, who sails her boat, and who, she well knows, may be
trusted in all that regards the safety of his chieftain. But what
is the old white-haired gospeller up to now, I wonder? I own I am
fairly puzzled!"
"We are not, I trust, the cause of this fresh trouble to you?"
said Nellie timidly.
"Oh! no. I think not; for your sake I trust not," he answered
thoughtfully. "It seemed to me to be altogether personal to
myself; for if it had been about the priest, I think she would
have said so."
"The priest! where is he?" Nellie asked. "I did not even know
that there was one upon the island."
"Not upon this island, but on another, as you shall see to-morrow
if you choose to make one of his Sunday congregation. But yonder
is your grandfather watching for you: had we not better go and
join him?"
Nellie assented, and quickening her pace almost to a run, she was
in her grandfather's arms ere Roger, who came on more leisurely,
had time to join them.
Lord Netterville gazed lovingly into Nellie's face, and smiled as
he saw the bright color which exercise had called into her pale
cheeks. Then he turned courteously toward his host. Perhaps he
had some vague idea in his old head that the fate of his
grandchild was to be henceforth, in some way or other, connected
with that of Roger; perhaps he was not himself aware of the
significance of his action; but this at all events is certain,
that, instead of relinquishing Nellie's hand, he kept it tightly
in his own, and when the young chieftain approached to greet him,
laid it silently in that of Roger.
There was enough in the action itself, and still more in the way
in which it was done, to send the blood scarlet to Nellie's brow,
and she struggled to release her hand. For one moment, however,
Roger held it, gently but firmly, he even made a movement as if
he were about to raise it to his lips; instead of doing so,
however, he dropped it quietly, and said in a low voice:
"Not now, not yet; but when you are once more at your mother's
side, will you permit me to remind you of this moment, and to ask
for the treasure which I now relinquish, at the hands of her who
is your only lawful guardian?"
Chapter X.
Early the next morning, Nellie found herself gliding over the
waters of Clew Bay in one of the native corraghs of the country,
under the protection of her host. He was captain and crew all in
one, and she was his only passenger; for it had been decided on
the previous evening that Lord Netterville was not in a fit state
to endure the fatigue of such a voyage, and with old Nora to look
after his creature comforts, and Maida to guard him in his lonely
fortress, Roger assured his granddaughter that she need have no
scruple in leaving him during the two or three hours required for
their enterprise. And Nellie had readily obeyed; for, if the
truth must be told, she had begun to rely implicitly upon his
judgment, and to submit to it as unquestioningly as if she had
been a child.
{451}
The little shyness produced by Lord Netterville's thoughtless
action of the day before had entirely worn off, partly because
she herself had striven _womanfully_ against the feeling,
but chiefly because Roger, thoroughly comprehending how needful
it was to her comfort that, during her residence in his lonely
kingdom, she should be entirely at her ease in his society, had
adopted, as if by instinct, precisely the affectionate, brotherly
sort of manner which was of all others the best calculated to
produce this result. Nellie therefore gave herself up without a
thought to the pleasant novelty of a brotherly sort of petting
and protection which seemed to call for nothing more than quiet
acceptance on her part, and she listened to Roger with the keen
and unsated interest of a child as he told her the names, one
after another, of many of the clustered islands and rugged
rocklets, glittering like jewels in the deep bosom of the bay,
almost always contriving to add some little legend or stray scrap
of history, which gave each for the moment an especial, and (if
the expression may be allowed toward inanimate objects) an almost
personal interest in her eyes. At last he turned her attention
toward the mainland, pointing out the graceful windings of Clew's
varied shore, its wave-worn caverns and rocky arches, its cliffs
with their mantles of many-colored lichens which made them look
at that distance as if nature had stained them into an imitation
of most curiously-colored marble; and beyond these again, its
broad tracts of uncultivated bog-land, purple with heath in
autumn, but now yellow with gorse or dark with waving fern, its
hills rising one above another in lonely, savage grandeur, with
Croagh Patrick, the monarch of them all, standing up on the south
side of the bay, and looking down in haughty, cold indifference
upon its waters as they flowed beneath him. Nellie followed his
eye and finger eagerly as he pointed out each individual feature
in the scene before her; but observing that he lingered for a
moment on Croagh Patrick, she turned toward him for explanation.
"It is Croagh Patrick," he said; then perceiving that she was not
much the wiser for the information, he added in some surprise,
"Do you not know the legend, that it was from the cone of yonder
hill St. Patrick pronounced the curse which banished all venomous
hurtful things from Ireland? Had the saint lived in these days,"
Roger added, in that undertone which Nellie had by this time
discovered to be natural to him in moments of deep feeling, "it
is not, I think, against toads and snakes that he would have
directed his miracle-working powers, but against the men who,
coming to a land which is not their own, make war in God's name
against God's creatures, hunting them down with horn and hound,
and snaring and slaying them with as little compunction as they
would have snared or slain a wolf."
"Would he then have expelled me also?" asked Nellie, with a
wicked smile. "You know that I, too, (and more's the pity!) have
blood of the hated Saxon in my veins."
"Certainly not," said Roger promptly, "with your blue-black eyes
and blue-black hair, he would without a doubt (saint and prophet
though he was) have been deluded into believing you a Celt."
"And so I am almost," said Nellie, with childish eagerness; "only
consider, Colonel O'More, we have been in the country almost
three hundred years, and in all that time, until my dear father's
marriage with my mother, (who is unfortunately an Englishwoman,)
it has been the boast and tradition of our race that its sons and
daughters have never wedded save with the sons and daughters of
their adopted land."
{452}
"Remember, then, that it will be for you to renew the tradition,"
said Roger suddenly, and without reflection. He repented himself
bitterly a moment afterward, as he caught a glimpse of the flush
upon Nellie's half-averted face, and in order to undo the evil
which he had done he added hastily, "Yonder is our destination,
that bare, black rock jutting out from the mainland far into the
deep waters."
"It is not then an island?" said Nellie a little disappointed. "I
fancied you said yesterday that it was one."
"Perhaps I did, for it juts out so far and so boldly into deep
water that, from many parts of the bay, it looks almost like an
island. You cannot see the hermitage from this, but yonder is the
church, perched right upon the cliffs above."
"Perched!" repeated Nellie, with a sort of shudder. "I should
hardly say even that it _was perched_, for to me it looks as
if it were actually toppling over."
"And so it is," said Roger; "the tower is out of the
perpendicular already, and I never hear a winter storm without
picturing it to myself as going (as go most certainly it will
some day) crash over the cliff. It is safe enough, however, in
this calm weather," he added, for he saw that Nellie was
beginning to look nervous, "or I never should have thought of it
as a refuge for its present occupant, though, for that matter, it
was but a choice of evils, his life being in jeopardy whichever
way he turned."
"Is he then especially obnoxious?" Nellie asked; "or is it only
that, like all our other priests, he is forced to do his mission
secretly?"
"Especially obnoxious? I should think, indeed he was," said
Roger; "for he was chaplain to the brave old bishop whom they
hanged at the siege of Clonmel, and was present at his death. How
he managed to escape himself, has always been a marvel to me; but
escape he did, and came hither for a refuge. I stowed him away in
the ruined hermitage overhead, with a few other poor fellows who
are outlawed like myself, and in greater danger, and his presence
has never been even suspected by the enemy; so that he might, if
he had been so minded, have escaped long ago by sea. But when he
found us here, without sacraments or sacrifice, (for our priests
have been long since driven into banishment,) he elected to
remain, and now, at the peril of his life, he does duty as a
parish priest among us."
"Brave priest! brave priest!" cried Nellie, clapping her hands.
"He must feel very near to heaven, I think, engaged in such a
mission, and living like a real hermit up there on that barren
rock."
"And so in fact he is; or at least he lives in a real hermit's
cell," said Roger. "It was built in the time of Grana Uaille by a
holy man, in whose memory the rock is sometimes called 'the
hermit,' though more generally known as 'the chieftain's rock.'"
"But why the change of names?" asked Nellie.
"Because," he answered, with the least possible shade of
bitterness in his manner, "because, as often happens in this
wicked world, persons who have been made heroes in the eyes of
men are made more account of than those who are heroes only in
the sight of God. This hermit had lived here for many years in
peace and quiet, when the chief of a tribe of Creaghts, at enmity
with Grana Uaille, having been beaten by her in a battle, took
refuge with him among these rocks.'
{453}
The hermit hid him in the church, which, being an acknowledged
sanctuary, even Grana Uaille, stout and unscrupulous as she was
in most things, did not dare invade in order to drag him from its
shelter. But she swore--our good old Grana could swear upon
occasion as lustily as her rival sovereign your own Queen
Bess--Grana swore that neither the sanctity of his hermit friend
or of his place of refuge should avail him aught, and that,
sooner or later, she would starve him into submission. She landed
accordingly with her men, and surrounded church and hermitage
upon the land side, that toward the sea being left unguarded and
unwatched because, owing to the height and steepness of the cliff
itself, and the position of the church tower, built almost
immediately upon its edge, there seemed no human possibility of
evasion that way. The chief, however, and his hermit proved too
many for her after all; for by dint of working day and night,
they succeeded, before their store of provisions was entirely
exhausted, in cutting through the floor and outer wall of the
church, and so making a passage which gave them instant access to
the cliffs outside. This was by no means so difficult a task as
at first sight it seems; for the floor of the building is only
hardened earth, and its walls a mere mixture of mud and rubble,
the very tower itself being only partially built of stone. I have
often, when a boy, crept through the aperture, but it is nearly
filled up with rubbish now, and almost, or I think quite
forgotten among the people, who have been using the church for
the last twenty years as a storehouse for peat and driftwood for
their winter firing. Useful enough, however, the poor chieftain
found it; for one fine moonlight night he walked quietly through
it into the open air, swung himself down the cliffs as
unconcernedly as if he had been merely searching for puffins'
nests, and finally escaped in a boat left there by his friends
for that very purpose. Next day, the hermit threw the church
gates open, and sent word to Queen Grana that her intended victim
had escaped her. You may imagine what a rage the virago
chieftainess was in at finding herself thus outwitted; but I have
not time to tell you now, for here we are close into shore, and
it is time to think of landing."
Roger had lowered the sail while speaking, and he now began
sculling the boat round a low sandy point which hid the harbor
from their view. While he was occupied in this manner, Nellie,
chancing to turn her head in the direction of Clare Island,
perceived another corragh fast following in their track, and
rowed by a boy, who was evidently working might and main in order
to overtake them. She mentioned the matter to Roger, who
instantly ceased his toil, and turned round to reconnoitre.
"It is Paudeen," he said at once. What, in Heaven's name, has
sent him to us here?"
The boy saw that he was observed, and without stopping a moment
in his onward course, made signs to them to await his coming.
Roger did as he was desired; and in a few minutes more the two
corraghs were lying together side by side, and so close that
their respective occupants could have conversed easily in a
whisper.
"What is it, Paudeen?" asked O'More; "have you any message for
me, or is there anything the matter that you have followed us so
far?"
{454}
"It's Mistress Hewitson who is wanting to see you," said the boy.
"She was prevented leaving as soon as she intended, and she sent
me on before to ask you not to quit the island until she had
spoken to you. You were gone, however, before I could get there;
so, guessing well enough where you would most likely be upon
Sunday morning, I followed you down here."
"But if you came straight from the mainland, how is it that I did
not meet you in the way?" asked O'More suddenly, a strange
suspicion of even Paudeen's simple faith passing rapidly through
his mind.
"Because I didn't come from it at all, at all," the boy answered
curtly. "It is yonder they're staying now," he added, pointing to
Achill Island; "and they do say in the house that Clare Isle will
be the next to follow."
"And is it to tell me this that Mistress Hewitson is about to
honor me with a visit?" Roger answered bitterly. "The formality,
methinks, was hardly needed, considering all that her father has
robbed me of already."
"Sorrow know, I know what she will be wanting; but this at all
events I know for certain, that it is for nothing but what is
good and kind," said Paudeen; adding immediately afterward in a
musing tone, "though how _she_ can be what she _is_,
considering the black blood that is running in her veins, it
needs greater wits than I can boast of to be able to discover."
"Well, well," said Roger, "I believe you are about right there,
Paudeen. So now go back at once, and say to Mistress Hewitson
that she shall be obeyed, and that I will return to Clare Island
in time to receive her at the landing-place."
"Let me go back also," said Nellie, in a smothered voice. "If I
and my grandfather have brought this danger to your door, it is
only just that we should share it with you."
"Share it. Mistress Netterville? Nay, but you would double it!"
cried O'More vehemently. "In the face of anything like real,
present danger, I should infallibly lose my life in anxiety for
yours. In point of fact, however, he added, seeing that she still
looked distressed and anxious; in point of fact, the danger
(whatever it is) cannot be immediate, since it is evident that
Mistress Hewitson expects by her intended visit to give me such
information as may enable me to evade it. Possibly she has heard
further details concerning those plans of the old man, her
father, at which yesterday she obscurely hinted. It may even be,
as Paudeen seems to think, that they intend to put an English
garrison on the island, and she may hope to soften matters for us
by giving me this previous notice. Any way, I entreat you not to
be over anxious; for though I acknowledge that we live in
perilous times and places, yet still, and if only for that very
reason, it behoves us to keep our common sense intact, and not to
allow it to be scared by every passing cloud that seems to
threaten us with storm."
After such words as these, Nellie felt there was nothing for it
but to land the moment the boat reached shore, and Roger helped
her out with a sort of graceful tenderness, which seemed tacitly
to ask forgiveness for the constraint he had been compelled to
put upon her inclinations.
Then he pointed to a scarcely discernible path among the
brushwood, and said hastily:
"That path will take you straight to the church. If any one ask
you any questions, the watchword is, 'God, our Lady, and Roger
O'More.' Farewell! Get as near the altar as you can; tell them
not to wait for me, but I will be back in time to fetch you."
{455}
He waited one moment, to make sure that she understood him, then
pushed the boat out into deep water, and without even venturing
to look back, pursued his way diligently homeward.
The breeze had died away, so that he would, he knew, be
infinitely longer in returning to Clare Island than he had been
in coming from it. As he passed Paudeen, he had half a mind to
hail him, but reflecting that he would probably lose more time by
the stoppage than he could gain by the boy's assistance, he
changed his mind and went on his way alone. It was hot and weary
work, but he put all his strength and will to it, and did it in a
shorter time than he had expected. Not, however, before his
presence was apparently sorely needed; for just as he neared the
harbor, the deep, angry bay of the wolf-dog Maida reached his
ear. This was followed by a woman's voice, endeavoring probably
to soothe the dog, and this again by a long, shrill whistle which
came like a cry for aid across the waters. Thus urged, O'More
pulled with redoubled energy, and next moment was in the harbor.
A corragh, ownerless and empty, was lying loose beside the pier,
and a few yards from the landing-place he saw a girl standing
motionless as a statue, one hand raised in an attitude of
defence, confronting Maida, who, with head erect and bristling
hair, seemed to bid her advance further at her peril. Had she
attempted to retreat, had she shown even a shadow of timidity or
of yielding, the dog would undoubtedly have torn her into pieces;
but, with wonderful nerve and courage, she had so far stood her
ground, and, rebuked by her stillness and unyielding attitude,
Maida, up to that moment, had fortunately contented her sense of
duty by keeping a close watch upon her proceedings. Horrified at
the sight, and dreading lest Maida might mistake even the sound
of his voice for a signal of attack, Roger hastily leaped on
shore. Henrietta heard him, and without even daring to turn her
head in his direction, whispered softly:
"Call off your dog--for God's dear sake, call her off at once!"
Roger made no reply, (for, in fact, he did not dare to speak,)
but he made one bound forward and placed himself between her and
her foe. Maida instantly abandoned her threatening look to greet
her master, and for one half-moment he employed himself in
caressing and calming down her fury. Then he turned eagerly to
Henrietta:
"How is this. Mistress Hewitson? For God's sake, speak! The dog
has not injured you, I trust?"
Henrietta did not at first reply. She was as white as ashes, and
her eyes glittered with a strange mingling of courage and of
desperate fear. "Send away the dog," she cried at last; "send
away the dog. I cannot bear to see her," and then burst into
tears.
Roger said one word, and Maida instantly flew toward the castle.
He was about to follow in the same direction in order to procure
some water, but the girl caught him by the arm, and held him so
that he could not move.
"Calm yourself, I entreat you," he said, fancying she was still
under the influence of terror. "No wonder that even your high
courage has given way. Let me call Nora. She will help you to
compose yourself."
"Call no one," Henrietta gasped.
"Call no one; but tell me, is there not a priest and some other
outlaws in hiding on the chieftain's rock?"
{456}
"What then?" he asked, the blood suddenly rushing to his heart as
he thought of Nellie.
"What then?" she repeated fiercely; "because, (oh! that I had
known it but an hour ago,) because death is there, and treachery
and woe! But whither are you going?" she cried, following him as
he broke suddenly from her grasp, and began to retrace his way
toward the pier.
"Whither? whither?" he answered, like one speaking in his sleep.
"There, of course. Where else? My God, that I should have left
Nellie there!"
"The girl!" cried Henrietta; "and you have been there already,
and have had time to row all this way back? My God, then it will
be too late to save her. The church must be in flames ere now."
O'More made no reply, but leaped at once into the boat. "What do
you want?" he asked, almost savagely, as Henrietta followed him.
"What do you want here--you, the child of her assassin?"
"I want to save her, and, still more, to save my father, if I
can, from this most fearful guilt," she answered promptly. Roger
made no further opposition. Once fairly out of harbor, he rowed
with all the energy of despair, and Henrietta helped him nobly.
They were obliged to trust entirely to their oars, and the delay
was maddening. Roger never cast a single glance toward the spot
where all his soul was centred, but Henrietta could not resist a
look once or twice in that direction.
Suddenly she cried out.
"What is it?" he asked nervously; "what is it?"
"They have fired the church," she said, in smothered tones.
"There is a cloud of smoke; and now--my God!--a jet of flame
going through it to the sky!"
He made no reply, but he bent to the oar until the bead-drops of
mingled agony and toil stood thick upon his brow.
"God help them! They must be trying to escape," she muttered yet
again, as something like a shot or two of musketry reached her
ear.
Faster he rowed, and faster. The boat leaped like a living thing
along the waters. They were close to the cliff at last. Overhead,
the sky was hidden by a canopy of heavy smoke, with here and
there a streak of fire flashing like forked lightning athwart it.
Underneath, the water lay black as ink, in the reflection of the
clouded heavens, as the boat rushed through it. One more effort,
and they were in the cove--another, and they were flung high and
dry upon the beach. Roger jumped out without a word. Was he in
time? or was he not? His whole soul was engrossed in that fearful
question.
"What are you going to do?" asked Henrietta, uncertain as to what
her own share in the enterprise was to be. He had been searching
in the bottom of the boat for something; but he looked up then
with a kindling eye, and said:
"Will you be true to the end?"
"So help me God, I will!" she answered in that quiet tone which
tells all the more of steady courage that it has no touch of
bluster in it. He had found what he wanted now--a cutlass and a
coil of rope--and answered rapidly:
"Take the boat out of this, then, and wait beneath the cliffs.
Wait till I come, or until yonder tower falls, as fall it must,
and soon. After that, you may go home in peace. Yes, peace! For
happen what may, your soul, at any rate, will be guiltless of
this day's murder."
He shoved the boat back into deep water as he finished speaking,
and then, without even looking back to see if Henrietta followed
his directions, strode rapidly up the cliffs.
{457}
Chapter XI.
Happily unconscious of the peril by which her own life was so
speedily to be placed in jeopardy, Nellie stood for a few minutes
after Roger left her, watching his progress through the water,
and speculating anxiously enough upon the nature of the summons
which had been delivered to him by Paudeen. In spite of his
apparent coolness, there had been something in the way in which
he had almost forced her to leave him--something in the haste
with which he had given her his last directions--something (if it
must be confessed) in the very fact of his having rushed off
without even a parting word or look, which made her suspect the
danger to be more real and immediate than he wished her to
suppose it. And now, as she watched him bending to the oar as if
his very life depended on his speed, suspicion seemed all at once
to grow up into certainty, and she bitterly regretted the shyness
which had prevented her insisting on returning with him to the
island. Regrets, however, were now in vain, and remembering that,
if she delayed much longer, she would in all probability be too
late for Mass, and so lose the only object for which she had
remained behind, she turned her face resolutely toward the path
pointed out by Roger. It was less a path indeed than a mere
narrow space left by the natural receding of the rocks and loose
boulders, which lay scattered about in all directions. Such as it
was, it led Nellie in a zigzag fashion upward toward the cliffs,
turning and twisting so suddenly and so often, that she could
hardly ever see more than a yard or two before her, while the
boulders on either side, being generally higher than her head,
and the intervals between them filled up with tall heather and
scrubby brushwood, she might as well, for all that she could have
seen beyond, have been walking between a couple of stone walls.
The congregation had in all probability already reached the
church, or else they were coming to it by another path; for not
the sound of a voice or of a footstep either before or behind her
could she hear, though she paused occasionally to listen. Once
indeed, but only once, at a sudden opening among the boulders,
she fancied she saw something like the glistening of a spear in
the brushwood underneath, and a minute or two afterward the air
seemed tremulous with a low sighing sound, as if some one were
whispering within a few yards of her ear. Nevertheless, when she
paused again in some trepidation to reconnoitre, everything
seemed so lonely and so still around her, that she was obliged to
confess that her imagination must have been playing her sad
tricks. The light which she had seen was, in all probability, a
mere effect of sunshine on some of the more polished rocks, while
the sough and sigh of the waters, as they lapped quietly on the
beach below, might easily have assumed, in that distance and in
the calm summer air, the semblance of a human whisper. Once she
had satisfied herself upon this point, she resolved not to be
frightened from her purpose by any nervous fancies; and
stimulating her courage by the reflection that, if an enemy
really were lurking near, her best chance of safety would be the
church, in which her countrymen and women were already gathered,
she toiled steadily upward until she reached the platform upon
which it was erected.
{458}
A sudden turn in the path brought her face to face with it almost
before she fancied that she was near, and she only comprehended
how heartily she had been frightened on the way, by the sense of
relief which this discovery imparted. It was a low, mean-looking
edifice enough, with the hermit's cell built aslant against the
wall, and forming in fact a kind of porch, through which alone it
could be entered. From the moment it first came in sight, the
path had narrowed gradually until there was barely room at last
for the passing of a single person, and while it appeared to
Nellie to descend, the rocks on either side rose higher, slanting
even somewhat over, so as partially to impede the light. From
this circumstance she was led to fancy that both cell and church
had been built originally below what was now the present surface
of the land, a fact which, joined to its desolate, ruinous
condition, might easily have pointed it out to Roger as a fitting
place for the concealment of his friends. The low door of the
porch was closed and fastened upon the inside, so that she was
obliged, very reluctantly, to knock on it for admittance. A
moment afterward she heard the sound of footsteps, the door was
drawn back an inch or two, and some one from behind it whispered
in Irish, "Who are you, and for whom?"
"For God, our Lady, and Roger O'More," Nellie promptly answered.
"Enter, then, in the name of God," the voice replied; and a
strong hand being put forth, she was drawn within the building as
easily and unresistingly as if she had been a child, and the door
was again closed behind her. The cell into which she had been
thus unceremoniously introduced was very dark, and she could only
just perceive that the person who had played the part of porter
was a tall, soldierly-looking fellow, and therefore, she
concluded, one of the outlaws, of whose residence in the building
Roger had informed her.
"You have been long a-coming," said the man. "Why is not the
chieftain with you?"
"How do you know that he brought me hither?" asked Nellie,
startled by the knowledge he seemed to have of her proceedings.
"We keep a good look-out seaward upon Sunday mornings," he
answered significantly. "Why did he go back?"
"A message--summons from the island," said Nellie; not well
knowing how much or how little it would be prudent to
communicate. "It was nothing of any consequence, I believe; and
he said you were not to wait. He will probably be here before all
is over."
"Good," said the man; "then follow me." He went on as he spoke,
Nellie stumbling as well as she could after him in the dark,
until they reached the thick matting of dried grass which
separated the church from the porch outside. Here the descent
became so sudden that she would inevitably have been precipitated
face foremost into the midst of the congregation, if her
conductor had not caught her by the arm in time to prevent this
catastrophe, and landed her safely on the other side. The
interior of the building, as Nellie saw it in that dim light, had
a much nearer resemblance to a ruinous barn than to a place of
Christian worship. As Roger had already told her, it had been so
long dismantled and forgotten as a church that the people had
come to look upon it simply as a storehouse for their winter
firing, a fact amply attested by the piles of drift and brushwood
which rose in all directions, blocking up the narrow windows, and
forming a gigantic stack against the wall behind the altar.
{459}
This latter was of stone, facing the door by which she had just
entered, and so placed that there was a considerable distance
between it and the wall beyond.
In this desolate-looking building about twenty or thirty people
were assembled, most of them women and young girls, with a
sprinkling of old men and half-a-dozen younger ones, in whom
Nellie fancied she recognized the outlawed soldiers of the royal
army. Two or three of these last stole a curious glance upon her,
as she moved onward toward the altar; but the greater part of the
congregation were so absorbed in earnest and loudly-uttered
prayer, that they seemed absolutely unconscious of the entrance
of a stranger. Passing quietly, so as not to disturb them in
their devotions, Nellie made her way to a spot from whence she
had a full view of the priest as he sat, a little on one side,
engaged in hearing the confessions of those who presented
themselves for that purpose. He was in truth a hero in Nellie's
eyes--the best of all heroes--a Christian hero. He had stood by
that brave old bishop who had gone to death for an act of
patriotism which, in the old heroic days of Rome, would have set
him as a demigod upon pagan altars. Quiet and self-possessed, he
had knelt, amid the thunders of the battle-field, to hear the
confessions of the wounded soldiers. He had plunged into the fell
atmospheres of plague and fever, braving death in its worst and
most loathsome forms in the exercise of his ministerial
functions. He had buried the dead--he had consoled the widow and
orphan, made such by the reckless cruelty of man; and now, when
he had exhausted all the more heroic forms of service to his
Lord, he had come hither, like that Lord himself--like the good
Shepherd of the Gospel--to gather up the young lambs into his
arms, and to comfort a conquered and stricken people; to pour the
consolations of religion upon hearts wrung and disconsolate in
human sorrow; to preach of heaven to men forsaken of the earth,
and to teach them, houseless and hapless as they were, to lift up
those eyes and hands, which had been lifted in vain to their
brother man for mercy, higher and higher still, even to that
Almighty Father to whose paternal heart the life of the very
least of his little ones was of such unspeakable and unthought-of
value that not a hair might fall from one of their heads without
his express permission. Thoughts like these passed rapidly
through Nellie's mind as she watched the old man bending
reverently and compassionately to receive, in the exercise of his
ministerial functions, each new tale of sin or sorrow which, one
after another, the poor people round him came to pour into his
sympathizing ear.
We have called him "old," for his hair was white and his face was
ploughed into many wrinkles; yet Nellie could not help suspecting
that the look of wearied, patient age upon his features was less
the effect of years, than of the toil and suffering by which
those years had been utilized and made fruitful in the service of
his Master. Altogether she felt drawn toward him by a feeling of
reverent admiration, which would probably have found vent in
words, if he had not been so completely occupied in his
ministerial duties as to make it simply impossible to interrupt
him. For in a congregation deprived, as this had been, of a
pastor for many months, there was of course much to be done ere
the commencement of the Sunday service.
{460}
There were confessions to be heard, and infants to be baptized,
and more than one young couple--who had patiently awaited the
coming of a lawful minister for the reception of that
sacrament--to be united in holy wedlock. At last, however, all
this was over, and Nellie had just made up her mind to go and
speak to him in her turn, when, to her infinite annoyance, he
rose from his place and commenced robing himself at the altar.
Kneeling down again, therefore, she endeavored to withdraw her
thoughts from all outward things, in order to fix them entirely
upon the coming service. In spite, however, of her most earnest
efforts, she felt nervous and unhappy at the prolonged absence of
O'More, and she could not help envying the people round her, as
with all the natural fervor of the Celtic temperament, they
abandoned themselves to prayer; prostrating, groaning, beating
their breasts, and praying up aloud with as much naive
indifference to the vicinity of their neighbor, as if each
individual in presence there imagined that he and his God were
the sole occupants of the church. Poor Nellie could obtain no
such blest absorption from her cares. Her eyes would glance
toward the door for the coming of Roger, and her ears would
listen for his footsteps; once or twice, indeed, she felt quite
certain that she heard him moving quietly behind the screen of
matting, which shut in the church from the porch outside, and
became, in consequence, nervously anxious to see him lift it and
take his promised place beside her. He never came, however, yet
the sounds continued, accompanied at times by a slight waving of
the screen, as if a hand had accidentally touched it; and this
occurred so often that Nellie began at last to be seriously
alarmed. She thought of Paudeen's mysterious message to his
chieftain, and her own half extinguished fancy of having seen a
spear among the brushwood recurred vividly to her mind. What if
she had seen rightly, after all? What if an enemy were really
lurking in the neighborhood; or, worse still, crouching behind
that terrible screen, ready to massacre the congregation as they
passed through it to the open air after service? The thought was
too terrible for solitary endurance, and she was just about to
lessen the burden by imparting it to her nearest neighbor, when
she found herself forestalled by a heavy, stifling cloud of
smoke, which rolled suddenly through the church and roused every
creature present to a sense of coming danger. There was a rustle
and a stir, and then they all stood up, men and women and little
children, gazing with wild eyes and whitened faces on each other,
uncertain of the "how or from whence" of the threatened peril.
The priest alone seemed to pay no attention to the circumstance;
nevertheless he felt and comprehended far better than they did
the nature of the fate awaiting them, and hurried on to the
conclusion of the Mass, which was by this time, fortunately,
well-nigh over.
He had hardly finished the communion prayer before the heat and
suffocation had become unbearable. In an agony of terror, the
people made a rush to the gates, and tore down the screen of
matting which separated the church from the porch beyond.
Then arose a wild cry of despair, filling the church from floor
to ceiling--the cry of human beings caught in a snare from
whence, except by a cruel death, there was no escaping. The porch
was already a blazing furnace, filled almost to the roof, with
fagots burning in all the fury that pitch and tar, and other
combustibles flung liberally among them, were calculated to
produce.
{461}
These, then, were the sounds which had disturbed Nellie during
Mass. The enemy had profited by the rapt devotion of these poor
people to build up, unheard and unsuspected, their death-pile in
the porch, after which doughty deed they had retired, closing the
gates behind them, and trusting the rest to the terrible nature
of the ally they had so recklessly invoked.
To attempt a passage through that sea of fire in its first wild
fury would have been instant death; and amid the cries of women
and children, many of whom were well-nigh trampled to death
beneath the feet of their fellow-victims, the crowd swayed
backward.
Then came another horror. An unhappy girl, one of the foremost of
the throng, in her eagerness to escape, had rushed so far into
the porch that her garments caught fire, and, mad with pain and
fear, she flung herself face downward upon a heap of driftwood
near her. It was all that was needed to complete the work of
destruction. The wood, dry and combustible as tinder, ignited
instantly, and in two minutes more was a mass of flame. In vain
some of the men, with the priest at their head, leaped on it in a
wild effort to trample it out before it could spread further. As
fast as it was stifled in one place it broke out in another, the
subtle element gliding along the walls and seizing upon stack
after stack of wood with an ease and speed that mocked at all
their efforts to extinguish it. No words can paint the horrors of
the scene that followed! Heavy volumes of black smoke, ever and
anon rolling upward from some new spot upon which the fire had
fastened, at times shut out the light of day, and made the
darkness almost palpable to the senses. Fire, bright and angry,
flashing at first here and there at intervals, like forked
lightning, through the gloom; then coming thicker and quicker, as
it grew with what it fed on, hurrying and leaping in its exultant
fury, licking up and devouring with hungry tongues all that
opposed its progress--now spreading itself in sheets of molten
flame, now contracting into red, hissing streams, bearing a
terrible resemblance to fiery serpents, but never for a moment
slackening in its work of woe, winding hither and thither, and in
and out, and fastening with all the malice and tenacity of a
conscious creature upon everything combustible within its reach,
until the very rafters overhead were wreathed in flame--and
underneath that awful canopy the panting, shrieking crowd,
struggling in that sulphurous atmosphere of smoke and fire,
rushing backward and forward, they knew not whither, in search of
a safety they knew too well they could never find; for even while
obeying the animal instinct to fly from danger, there was not a
creature there who did not feel to the very inmost marrow of his
being, that unless a miracle were interposed to save him, he was
doomed then and there to die.
Nellie was the only person in the church, perhaps, with the sole
exception of the pastor, who made no vain effort at escaping.
Driven by the swaying of the others, after their first rush to
the door, backward toward the altar, she had remained there
quietly ever since, praying, or trying to pray, and shutting eyes
and ears as much as might be to the terrible sights and sounds
around her. Accident had, in fact, brought her to the only spot
in the building where safety was for the moment feasible.
{462}
The altar was built, as we have already said, of stone, and being
placed at some distance from any of the walls, the space in
front, though stifling from heat and smoke, was clear of fire,
and consequently of immediate danger.
Hither, therefore, the priest, who, having done all that man
could do toward the stifling of the flames, now felt that another
and a higher duty--the duty of his priestly office--must needs
be exercised, endeavored to collect his flock, and hither, at his
bidding, one by one they came, every hope of rescue extinguished
in their bosoms, and scorched, and bruised, and half-suffocated
as they were, lay down at his feet to die. There was no loud
shrieking now--the silence of utter exhaustion had fallen upon
them all, and only a low wail of pain broke now and then from the
white, parched lips of some poor dying creature, as if in human
expostulation with the sputtering and hissing of the flames that
scorched him. Once, and only once, a less fitting sound was
heard--a curse, deep but loud, on the foe that had so ruthlessly
contrived their ruin.
It reached the ear of the priest as he stood before the altar,
sometimes praying up aloud, sometimes with look and voice
endeavoring to calm his people, waiting and watching with wise,
heroic patience for the precise moment when, all hopes of human
life abandoned, he might lead them to thoughts of that which is
eternal.
But that muttered curse seemed to rouse another and a different
spirit in his bosom, and filled with holy and apostolic anger, he
turned at once upon the man who spoke it.
"Sinner!" he cried, "be silent! Dare you to go to God with a
curse upon your lips? What if he curse you in return? What if he
plunge you, for that very word, from this fire, which will pass
with time, into that which is eternal and endures for ever? O my
children, my children!" cried the good old man, opening wide his
arms, as if he would fain have embraced his weeping flock and
sheltered them all from pain and sorrow on his paternal bosom,
"see you not, indeed, that you must die!--with foes outside, with
devouring flames within, all hope of life is simple folly. Die
you must. So man decrees; but God, more merciful, still leaves a
choice--not as to death, but as to the spirit in which you meet
it. You may die angry and reviling, as the blaspheming thief, or
you may die (O blessed thought!) as Jesus died--peace in your
hearts and a prayer for your very foes upon your lips. Have pity
on yourselves, my children; have pity on me, who, as your pastor,
will have to answer for your souls, as for my own, to God--and
choose with Jesus. Put aside all rancor from your hearts.
Remember that what our foes have done to us, we, each in our
measure, have done by our sins to Jesus. Pray for them as he did.
Weep, as he did for _your_ sins (not _his_) upon the
cross, and kneel at once, that while there yet is time I may give
you, in his name and by his power, that pardon which will send
you safe and hopeful to the judgment-seat of God."
Clear, calm, and quiet, amid the confusion round him, rose the
voice of that good shepherd, sent hither, as it seemed, for no
other purpose than to perish with his flock; and like a message
of mercy from on high his words fell upon their failing hearts.
They obeyed him to the letter. Hushed was every murmur, stifled
every cry of pain, and, prostrate on their faces, they waited
with solemn silence the word which they knew would follow. And it
was said at last.
{463}
With streaming eyes, and hands uplifted toward that heaven to
which he and his poor children all were speeding, the priest
pronounced that _Ego te absolvo_, which speaking to each
individual soul as if meant for it alone, yet brought pardon,
peace, and healing to them all. Something like a low "Amen,"
something like a thrill of relief from overladen bosoms,
followed; and then, almost at the same instant, came a loud cry
from the outside of the church--a crashing of doors--a rush--a
struggle--a scattering of brands from the half-burned-out fagots
in the porch--and, blackened with smoke and scorched with fire,
O'More leaped like an apparition into the midst of the people. A
shout almost of triumph greeted his appearance, for they felt as
if he _must_ have brought safety with him. It seemed, in
fact, as if only by a miracle he could have been there at all.
Unarmed as he was, he had rushed through the English soldiers,
and they, having all along imagined him to be in the church with
their less noble victims, were taken so completely by surprise
that they suffered him to pass at first almost without a blow. By
the time they had recovered themselves, their leaders had staid
their hands. It was better for all their purposes that he should
rush to death of his own accord than that they should have any
ostensible share in the business. No further opposition,
therefore, being offered to his progress he easily undid the
gates, which were only slightly barricaded on the outside, and
having cleared the porch at the risk of instant suffocation to
himself, he now stood calling upon Nellie, and vainly endeavoring
to discover her in the blinding atmosphere of smoke around him.
She was still where she had been from the beginning--at the foot
of the altar, faint and half-dead with heat and fear. But the
sound of his voice seemed to call her back to life, and, with a
cry like a frightened child, she half-rose from her recumbent
posture. Faint as was that cry, he heard it, and catching a
glimpse of her white face, rushed toward her. In another moment
he had her in his arms, wrapped carefully in his heavy cloak, and
shouting to all to follow and keep close, he rushed behind the
altar.
Half an hour before this had been the hottest and most dangerous
position in the church, but O'More had well calculated his
chances. The real danger now was from the roof, which, having
been burning for some time, might fall at any moment. Below, the
fire, having rapidly exhausted the light material upon which it
had fed its fury, was gradually dying out, and boldly scattering
the fagots upon either side as he moved on, Roger made his way
good to the only spot in the building from whence escape was
possible. Here the floor sank considerably below the general
surface, and dashing down a heap of brushwood which still lay
smouldering near, he lay bare an aperture effected in the wall
itself, and going right through it to the cliffs beyond.
Through this he passed at once, carrying Nellie as easily as if
she had been a baby, and landing her safely on the other side.
The people saw, and with a wild cry of hope rushed forward. Even
as they did so the roof began to totter. They knew it, and
maddened by the near approach of death, pressed one upon another,
blocking up the way and destroying every chance of safety by
their wild efforts to attain it.
{464}
In the midst of this confusion, a shower as of red-hot fire
poured down from the yielding rafters. Then came another cry (oh!
so different from the last)--a cry of grief and terror
mingled--then a crashing sound and a heavy fall--and then a
silence more terrible even than that cry of terror--a ghastly,
death-like silence, only broken by the hissing and crackling of
the flames above, and the deep sough of the sea below--and all
was over.
To Be Continued.
-------
Translated From The French Of M. Vitet.
Science And Faith.
Meditations On The Essence Of The Christian Religion,
By M. Guizot.
Conclusion.
III.
The way is found. Man has the gift of believing not only the
things he sees and knows by his own intellect, but also those he
does not see and which he learns through tradition. He admits, he
affirms with confidence the facts which are asserted by others,
when the witnesses seem competent and reliable, even in cases
where he cannot verify their truth or submit them to a rigid
criticism. Thus in the authority of witnesses we have that which
constitutes faith; faith properly so called, which is the belief
in the divine truths, as well as purely human faith, which is
confidence in the knowledge of another. Both require the same act
of intelligence; but, if it concerns the affairs of this world,
the authority of the witness is easily established, for he has
only to prove his competence and his veracity; while for
superhuman things it is necessary that he himself should be
superhuman, that he should prove it to us, that we should feel by
the way he speaks that he knows and has dwelt in the heaven of
which he is speaking, and that he has descended from it. If he is
only a man, he is without a claim upon us. Manifest signs of his
mission and authority are necessary; such signs must be unusual
and incomprehensible; they must command respect and force
conviction; they must be miraculous facts entirely beyond mere
human power.
Such is the supreme and necessary condition for every solution of
these natural problems, or, what amounts to the same, for any
great and true religion. The appearance of a being eminently
divine is necessary, who will show the character of his mission
and his right to claim obedience by miracles. Miracles and
religion are, then, two correlative terms, two _inseparable_
expressions. Do not try to preserve one and get rid of the other;
the attempt will fail. If you could effect this divorce, both
would disappear. Religion without miracles is only a human
doctrine; it is simply philosophy, which has no right to
penetrate the mysteries of the infinite, and which can only speak
in hypotheses, without force and without authority.
There is no way, then, to help it: miracles must be admitted.
This is the great stumbling-block.
It is said: "That would be allowed when the world was young, and
when man himself, ignorant and a novice, had not demonstrated for
so many centuries the stability of nature's laws!
{465}
Then he could suppose that there was some hidden power, which at
certain times and for certain ends played with these laws and
suspended them at will; but to-day, in this advanced age, wise as
we are, how can we be expected to bend our enlightened reason to
these uncertainties? how can we give science these injurious
contradictions?"
Yes, you believe yourselves to be extremely learned. You think
that you thoroughly understand the laws of nature, because from
time to time you have wrested some of her secrets from her; and
these being always more or less marvellous, you immediately
conclude that she has spoken her last word! Strange assumption!
Look behind, and you are right, you have accomplished an immense
distance. Look ahead, and the end is as far as in the days of
your fathers, the distance to be overcome remains always the
same, you have not advanced a single step. Far from adding to
your presumption, the progress of your knowledge should rather
make you feel more keenly your ignorance. The more conquests you
make, the more your radical impotence is shown. Yet you presume
to say that the laws of this world allow or do not allow this or
that, as if you completely understood them, while at every moment
new and unexpected facts, which are granted by yourselves, defeat
your calculations, mock your predictions, and derogate from laws
which you proclaim absolute and eternal!
No one doubts that a general and permanent order reigns in this
world; but that this order is inexorably determined in its
trifling details, that nothing can alter it, that it will remain
the same for ever, you cannot say any more than can we; or
rather, you, as well as we, are living witnesses that an
unbending mechanism does not govern all things here below.
Indeed, what do you do, you, a feeble atom, an imperceptible
creature, when you forbid the Sovereign Master the great ordainer
of things, the least deviation, the slightest infraction, of the
laws he has made? Do you not violate these laws so far as you are
able every day, every hour, and in every way? The plant that the
natural order would cause to bloom in summer, you cover with
flowers in winter; you change the flavor and the form of the
fruit, and the color of the flowers; you bend the twigs and
branches, and make them grow against their nature. And it is not
only over vegetation and inanimate objects that you exercise your
caprices. How many living beings have you transformed, and
completely altered their natural mode of life! What unexpected
missions and what strange destinies has your fancy made them
undergo!
It may be said that these are only little miracles; but after
all, how do the greatest ones differ from them? They are both
infractions upon the apparent order of nature. Is the real order
subverted by this? Is the relation of cause and effect broken
because our gardeners derive and propagate from a graft new and
innumerable varieties? No; and since this is true, there can be
no good reason for refusing to admit a series of deviations above
these of every-day experience. The miraculous cures, the
wonderful transitions from extreme feebleness to health, and the
intuitive power of a saint, which enables him to read the very
thoughts of men, can all be effected without compromising or
menacing the universal order. Everything depends upon the degree
of power you grant the Author of these acts, to him who, holding
all things in his hand, can make the exception as easily as the
rule.
{466}
There is but one way to deny absolutely the possibility of
miracles, which has been in all times by instinct and by nature
affirmed by the human race, and that is to suppress God and
profess atheism, either atheism simply in its gross crudity, or
that more delicate and better disguised form which finds favor in
our times, and which honors God by pronouncing his name, but
gives him no other care than the servile protection and the dull
supervision of the worlds he has created, but which he does not
govern. If this is the way in which God must be considered, if
fatalism is the law of the world, let us speak no more of
miracles or of the supernatural; for this is already decided, and
there can be no discussion about it. If, on the contrary,
entering into yourselves, you feel that you are intelligent and
free, ask yourself, Where did I get these wonderful gifts,
liberty and intelligence? Do you get them from yourself? Are they
born in you and only for you? Do you possess them completely? Do
they not emanate from a higher, more perfect, and more abundant
source, in a word, from God himself? Then, if God, if the
Omnipotent, is also the sovereign intelligence and the sovereign
freedom, how do you dare to forbid him to mingle with affairs
here below, to follow with attention the beings he has created,
to watch over their destiny, and to declare his wishes to them by
striking manifestations of his power? He can most certainly do
this, for he is free and all-powerful. With the idea of God thus
presented to the mind, a complete and living God, the question is
completely transformed. And it must be acknowledged that we have
no longer to demonstrate the possibility of miracles: it is for
our opponents to prove their impossibility.
But the great critics of to-day, at least those who have the most
ability, have carefully refrained from attempting this task. They
attack supernatural facts in a different way, not as being
impossible in themselves, but as lacking proof: in the place of
openly denying them, they try to weaken the authority of those
who attest them. What testimony would then be destroyed by them?
Let it be noted that in the historical statement of natural
facts, even those which are extraordinary and more or less
uncertain, the testimony of men, sustained and strengthened by
constant tradition, is allowed to be sufficient; and, indeed, to
what, in most cases, would our historical knowledge amount, if
this sort of proof were not admissible? But for supernatural
facts they are far less accommodating. Many other guarantees are
demanded. They require ocular proof, which must be made in a
proper way and duly announced by them to be certain. This is the
condition upon which they offer to yield; without it, there is to
be no belief. Whence it would follow, that, whenever the Divinity
proposed to do anything beyond the ordinary laws of nature, it
would be bound to give these opponents notice, so that they could
produce their witnesses. The work would then proceed in their
presence, and, when the miracle was accomplished, they would
immediately begin their statement. Perhaps our readers may think
that we are trying to excite a laugh at their expense, or, at
least, that we are exaggerating. Such is not the case; we are
only echoing their own words, and we could quote from the very
page where this system is set forth as the sole method of
establishing the truth of miracles. However, it is useless to
dwell upon this way of asking for impossible proofs and
proclaiming a readiness to believe, but placing one's belief upon
unheard-of conditions. This is only a subterfuge, an attempt to
evade what they dare not solve, and an effort to destroy in
practice that which they seem theoretically to concede.
{467}
There are others more frank, less diplomatic, and perhaps also
less learned, who call things by their right name, and who loudly
declare a new dogma as the great principle of reformed criticism,
and this is the complete denial of supernatural facts. The
manner, the air, and the lofty disdain with which they look down
upon those simple souls, who are credulous enough to believe that
the Almighty is also intelligent and free, should be seen. They
announce that all intercourse between them and us is broken, that
we have nothing to do with their books; they do not care for our
praise or for our censure, since they do not write for us. One is
almost tempted to repay their disdain with interest; but there is
something better to be done. We have just shown that man, with
his limited power and liberty, can modify the laws of nature. Let
us see, now, if God in his infinite sphere has not the same
power, and if there is not some well-known and striking example
of it.
There is one instance which both in time and by its evidence is
the most convincing of all. It is not one of those facts which we
have learned by narration or by testimony, whether written or
traditional. All narratives can be contested and every witness
can be suspected; but here the fact is its own witness, it is
clear and irrefutable. It is the history of our first parents, of
the commencement of the human race; for our race has had a
commencement, of this there can be no question. No sophist would
dare to say of man, as they have said of the universe, that he
has existed from all eternity. On this point science confirms
tradition, and determines by certain signs the _époque_ when
this earth became habitable. Upon a certain day, then, man was
born; and he was born, as it is hardly necessary for us to say,
in an entirely different manner from that in which one is born
to-day. He was the first of his kind: he was without father or
mother. The laws of nature, on this occasion at least, did not
have their effect. A superior power, working in his own way, has
accomplished something beyond these laws, and in a more simple
and prompt manner, and the world has seen an event take place
which is evidently supernatural.
This is the reason why some _savants_ have taken so much
pains to find a plausible way to explain scientifically, as a
natural fact, this birth of the first man. Some would persuade us
that this enigma is explained by the transformation of species--
a singular way of avoiding a miracle, only to fall into a
chimera. Indeed, if anything is proved at all and becomes more
certain as the world grows older, it is that the preservation of
species is an essential principle of all living beings. You may
try, but you cannot succeed in infringing upon this law. The
crossings between closely allied species, and the varieties
produced by them, are smitten after a certain time with
sterility. Are not these impotent attempts, these phantoms of
quickly disappearing creations, the manifest sign that the
creation of a really new species is forbidden to man? Yet would
they try to convince us that in the earliest ages, in times of
ignorance, these kinds of transformations were accomplished
without any effort; while to-day, notwithstanding the perfection
of instruments and of methods, notwithstanding the aid of every
sort that we draw from science, they are radically impossible!
Try, then, to make a man. But, we are answered, this is a matter
of time. It may be so. But only begin, let us see you at work,
and you can have as much time as you please.
{468}
Take thousands of centuries, and yet you can never transform the
most intelligent baboon into a man, even of the most ignorant and
degraded type.
This dream having disappeared, another is invented. The absurdity
of the transformation of species is admitted, and another theory
is adopted, that of spontaneous generation. The intention is to
establish that man can be born either with or without parents;
that nature is induced by various circumstances to choose one of
these two ways, and that one is not miraculous more than the
other. It is well known what vigorous demonstrations and what
irrefutable evidence science brings against this theory; yet, in
spite of its absurdity, it has been often reproduced and
considered worthy of refutation. But supposing that doubt was yet
possible, and that we could believe in the birth of little
beings, without a germ, without a Creator; now could this mode of
production aid us in solving the question of the birth of the
first man? What is the highest pretension of the defenders of
spontaneous generation? In what state would they put man in the
world? As an embryo, a foetus, or as one newly born? For no one
is permitted to believe in the sudden birth of an adult, in
possession of a body, of physical power, and of mental faculties.
Yet this is exactly the way in which the new inhabitant of the
earth must have been created. He must have been born a man, or
else he could not have protected himself, he could not have found
food to prolong his life, and he could not have perpetuated his
race as the father of the human family. If he had been born in
the state of infancy, without a mother to protect and nourish
him, he would have perished in a single day of cold or hunger. If
this theory, then, had been able to answer the tests to which it
has succumbed, it would yet be of no service in clearing up the
question we are discussing. The only way to solve it
satisfactorily is to admit frankly that it must have been
something superior and unknown to the laws of nature. In order to
explain the appearance of the first man upon this earth, the man
of Genesis is necessary, made by the hand of the Creator.
This is not a _jeu d'esprit_, an artifice, or a paradox. It
is the undeniable truth. It must be admitted by every one who
will reflect. Every sound mind, which is in good faith and which
carefully considers this question, is invincibly compelled to
solve it in the way that it is solved in the book of Genesis.
There may be doubts about the complete exactness of certain words
and details; but the principal fact, the supernatural fact, the
intervention of a Creator, reason must accept as the best and
most sensible explanation, or rather as the only possible
explanation of that other necessary fact, the birth of an
adolescent or an adult man.
Here, then, we have a miracle well and duly proved. If this were
the only one, it would be sufficient to justify belief in the
supernatural, to destroy every system of absolute fatalism, to
demonstrate the freedom of the Divinity, and to assert his true
position. But it may be well for us to say, if since the
existence of the human race it had received no proof of the care
of its Creator other than this miraculous act in which it was
created, if no intelligence, no help, or no light had come from
above, what would it know now of the mysteries of its destiny, of
all these great problems which beset it and occupy its attention?
The creation of man does not give us the reason why he was
created.
{469}
This is not one of those miracles from which the light bursts
forth to flood the world. It is a manifestation of divine power:
it does not teach us the divine will. We shall see another fact,
on the contrary, which, though not less mysterious, will speak
far more clearly. This did not happen amid the fleeting shadows
of chaos upon the scarcely hardened earth; but in a completely
civilized world, and at a historical period which can be fully
investigated, this new miracle took place. The clouds will
disappear, and the broad day will gladden all hearts. Blessed
Light! Long promised and awaited, the complement of man's
creation, or, rather, a true and new creation, bringing to
humanity, with love and heavenly pardon, the solution of every
question, the answer to every doubt!
During the long series of centuries which separates these two
great mysteries, these two great supernatural facts, the creation
and the redemption of man, the human race, guided by its own
light, has not for a moment ceased to search after divine truths
and the secret of its destiny. But it has sought ignorantly, it
has groped in the dark, and it has wandered astray. In every part
of the world the people solved the enigma in their own fashion,
each making its own idol. It is a sad, an incoherent spectacle;
and of all these curious and imperfect forms of worship, which
sometimes become impure and disgusting, there is not one which
gives a complete and satisfactory answer to the moral problems
with which one is harassed. Their pretended answers really answer
nothing, and are but a collection of errors and contradictions.
Has man been created for such ends as these? Has not his Creator,
in forming him with his hands, in teaching him by an intimate
communication the use of his faculties, made him to see, to love,
and to follow the truth? Yes; and this explains the instinctive
gleams of truth that are found in every portion of the race; but
man has received liberty at the same time that he received
intelligence, and it is this supreme gift which assimilates him
to his Author, and imposes, together with the honor of
personality, the burden of responsibility. He was tried, he had
the power to choose, and he chose the bad; he has failed, he has
fallen. Clearly the fault was followed by the greatest disorder
and distress, and the offended Father withdrew his grace from the
disobedient son. They are separated: the erring one, because he
fears his Judge; the Judge, from his horror of the sin; but the
father lies hid beneath the judge. Will the exile, then, be
eternal? No; for the promise is made to the very ones whose fault
is punished, and the time of mercy is announced in advance, even
at the moment of chastisement.
Every tie is not yet broken between the Creator and this
unfaithful race. A single bond is maintained, a handful of worthy
servants preserve the benefit of his paternal intercourse. Who
can doubt this? For several thousand years the entire human race,
in all places and in every zone, bows before the works of nature,
deifies them, and adores them. How, then, can it be explained
that one little group of men, and only one, remained faithful to
the idea of a single God? It may be answered that this is
something peculiar to one race; that it embraces more people than
is generally supposed; that it is true of all the Semitic tribes
as well as of the Hebrews. A truly impartial and exceedingly
learned philology, recently published, affirms the contrary. It
is demonstrated that the Jews alone were monotheists.
{470}
Reason certainly cannot forbid us to believe that this unique and
isolated fact was providential, since it was at least most
extraordinary and marvellous. Thus, while the ancient alliance
between man and his Creator continued in a single part of the
globe, a part scarcely perceptible in the immense human family,
while the divine truth, as yet veiled and incomplete, though
without any impure mixture, is revealed as in confidence, and, so
to speak, _privately_ to the modest settlement chosen for
the designs of God, all the rest of the world is abandoned to
chance and wanders at random in religious matters.
Why, then, only in religious matters? Because it was in this that
the fault took place. Man has foolishly wished to make himself
equal to God in the knowledge of the divine, of the infinite, of
those mysteries which no mind can fathom without God's
assistance. It is another thing in regard to the knowledge of the
finite, to purely human science. God is not jealous of this. What
does he say in exiling and chastising the rebel? Work, that is to
say, use not only your arms, but your mind; become skilful,
powerful, ingenious; make masterpieces; become Homer, Pindar,
AEschylus, or Phidias, Ictinus, or Plato. I allow you to do all,
save attaining to divine things without my aid. There thou wilt
stumble, until I send thee the help I have promised to show thee
the way. Thy reason, thy science, and even thy good sense will
not prevent thee from becoming an idolater.
Indeed, is it not remarkable that religion in the world of
antiquity should be so inferior to the other branches of human
understanding? Think of the arts, literature, philosophy;
humanity cannot excel them. They were at the summit of
civilization. All that youth and experience combined could bring
forth of the perfect and the beautiful, you see here. These first
attempts are the works of a master, and will live to the latest
ages, always inimitable. But return for a moment, consider the
various religions, question the priests. What an astonishing
disparity! You would believe yourself to be among uncultivated
people. Never were such dissimilar productions seen to spring
from the same evil at the same time and in the same society. On
one side, reason, prudence, justice, and the love of truth; on
the other, a degrading excess of falsehood and credulity. It is
true that, here and there, under these puerile fables, great
truths shine forth; these are the remnants of the primitive
alliance between God and his creature; but they are only
scattered, and are lost in a torrent of errors. The great fault,
the infirmity of these ancient religions, was not the symbolism
which surrounded them, but their essential obscurity and
sterility. These were not capable of saying a single clear and
definite word in regard to the problems of our destiny. Far from
making them clear to the great mass of men, they seemed rather to
try to conceal them under a thick cloud of enigmas and
superstitions.
This was, however, the only moral culture that the human race,
evidently punished and separated from God, received for thousands
of years. In the place of his priests it had philosophical sects,
schools, and books to tell man his duty. But how many profited by
this help? Who understood the best, the purest, and the greatest
philosophers? How far could their warnings reach? Outside the
limits of Athens, the words of Socrates himself could not
penetrate to relieve a soul, to break a chain, or to make a
virtue take root. Do we say his words? Why, even his death, a
wonderful death, the death of a just man, remained unfruitful and
ignored!
{471}
The time became critical; pagan society was entering upon its
last phase and made its last effort; the empire was just born,
and, although it may be said that it could boast, during its long
career, of many days of repose and even of greatness, it was not
without its revolting scenes; and one can say, without any
exaggeration or partisan feeling, that from the reign of Tiberius
it was shown by experience that all purely human means to elevate
the race were visibly at an end. Then it was that, not far from
the region where primitive traditions located the creation of
man, under this sky of the Orient which witnessed the first
miracle, a second was to be accomplished. A sweet, humble,
modest, and at the same time sovereign voice speaks to the people
of Judea in language before unknown; speaks words of peace, of
love, of sacrifice, and of merciful pardon. Whence does this
voice come? Who is this man who says to the unhappy, "Come to me,
I will relieve you, I will carry your burdens with you"? He
touches the sick with his hand, and they are cured; he gives
speech to the mute; he makes the blind see and the deaf hear. As
yet there is nothing excepting these things; but this man knows
the enigma of this world completely; he knows the real end of
life and the true means of attaining it. All these natural
problems, the vexation of human reason, he resolves, he explains
without an effort and without hesitation. He tells us of the
invisible world; he has not imagined it, his eyes have seen it,
and he speaks of it as a witness who had but lately left it. What
he tells us is unassuming, intelligible to every one, to women,
to children, as well as to the learned. How does he come by this
marvellous knowledge? Who were his masters and what were his
lessons? In his early childhood, before lessons and masters, he
knew already more than the synagogue. Studies he never made. He
worked with his hands, gaining his daily bread. Do not seek for
his master upon this earth: his Master is in the highest of the
heavens.
Is not this the witness of whom we have spoken above, the
superhuman, the necessary witness for the solution of natural
problems and the establishment of true religious dogmas? To say
that such a man is more than a man, that he is a being apart from
and superior to humanity, is not saying enough. We must learn
what he really is. Let us open the candid narratives which
preserve the story of his public mission, of his preaching though
Judea; open the gospels, where the least incident of his acts,
his words, his works, his sufferings, and his bitter agony are
written. Let us see what he says of himself. Does he declare
himself simply a prophet? Does he believe himself to be only
inspired? No; he calls himself the Son of God, not as every other
man, remembering Adam, could have been able to say it. No; he
meant the Son of God in the exact and literal interpretation of
the word, son born directly of the father, the son begotten of
the same substance.
Try to force the meaning and distort the texts to make them say
less than this, but you cannot succeed. The texts are plain, they
are numerous, and without ambiguity. There are only two ways in
which the divinity of this man can be denied: either his own
testimony must be attacked, if the gospels are admitted to be
true; or the gospels themselves must be rejected.
{472}
In order to attack his own evidence, it must be supposed that, by
a lack of sagacity, he in good faith formed a wrong judgment
about his own origin, or perhaps better, by a deceitful
intention, he knowingly attributed to himself a false character.
This being, whose incomparable intelligence forces you to place
him above humanity, this is he who is not capable of discerning
his father. And on the other side, this inimitable moralist, this
chaste and beautiful model of all virtues, this is he whom you
suspect of a disgraceful artifice. There is no middle course:
either this mortal must be the Son of God, as he has declared, or
you must put him in the last rank of humanity, among the innocent
dupes or the cunning charlatans.
Or, on the contrary, do you wish to attack the gospels? Nothing
is less difficult, if you remain at the surface. Arm yourself
with irony, provoke the smile, treat everything in a superficial
manner, and you will certainly gain the sympathy of the scoffers.
But if you wish to investigate the things, and to take, in the
name of science, an impartial view, you will be compelled to
acknowledge that most of the facts in the gospels are
historically established; that they are neither myths nor
legends; that the place, the time, and the persons are absolutely
put beyond all doubt. What right, then, has any one to refuse
credence to this series of facts, where another series, which is
admitted, is sustained by no better witnesses, nor more direct
proofs, nor any other superiority, except a pretended probability
which is determined by each for himself? Nothing can be more
arbitrary and less scientific than this way of making a choice,
deciding that this evangelist should be implicitly believed when
he is mentioning such a speech, but that, when he tells us what
he saw himself, he is no longer trustworthy; and that this one,
on the contrary, falsifies the discourses that he reports, but
that he announces certain facts with the certitude of an ocular
witness. All this is only pure caprice. But it is certain that
the gospels, however closely they may be examined, bear the
criticism successfully, and ever remain imperishable. What book
of Herodotus or of Titus Livius carries such an intrinsic
evidence of good faith and veracity as the recitals of St.
Matthew or of St. John? Are you not charmed with these two
apostles, who frankly tell us what they have seen with their eyes
and heard with their ears? If you, who were not there and who saw
nothing of these things, believe that you can give them a lesson,
and tell them, in virtue of your scientific laws, how all these
things happened without their understanding them, and by what
subterfuges their adorable Master deceived them, it will not be
only the orthodox and faithful who will resent and controvert
your boldness--voices that you dread more, from the midst of
your own ranks, will openly proclaim your falsehoods. [Footnote
101]
[Footnote 101: "The human soul, as some one has said, is
great enough to enclose every contrast. There is room in it
for a Mohammed or a Cromwell, for fanaticism together with
duplicity, for sincerity and hypocrisy. It remains for us to
ascertain if this analogy should be extended to the Founder
of Christianity. _I do not hesitate to deny it_. His
character, when impartially considered, opposes every
supposition of this kind. There is in the simplicity of
Jesus, in his artlessness, in his candor, in the religious
feeling which possessed him so completely, in the absence of
all mere personal designs, of every egotistic end, and of all
cunning; in a word, there is in all that we know concerning
him something which entirely repels the historical
comparisons by which M. Rénan has allowed himself to be
governed."--M. Edmond Scherer, _Mélanges d'Histoire
Réligieuse_, pp. 93, 94.]
After all, suppose they were deceived, that the hero of this
great drama was only a skilful impostor, what do you really gain
by it? The miracles cannot be thrown aside. On the contrary, you
have one miracle more, and one which is more difficult than all
the others to explain. It is necessary to account for this most
wonderful fact, that cannot be suppressed by any critic, the
establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire.
{473}
Take every sentence of the gospels, accept these supernatural
facts without reservation, the cures, the exorcisms, the elements
stilled, the laws of nature violated or suspended: all these
things are not too much, rather they had hardly enough to make us
understand the triumphant progress of such a doctrine, in such a
time, and among such a people. Nothing less than miracles could
transform the world in this manner, changing all the opinions
commonly received, completely altering the moral and social state
of the people, and not only giving them purer and more
enlightened views, but truths which were entirely unknown to
them. If, then, you tell the truth, if this stupendous revolution
rests upon a comedy, if we must consider the partial miracles
false which surround and explain the principal miracle, which
precede and seem to prepare and open the way for the great
miracle, what will be the result? You have not destroyed, and
cannot destroy, the principal miracle: it has become still more
miraculous.
IV.
Let us not lose sight of our argument. We were seeking a
practical and popular way to solve the great problems of our
destiny, and we have proven that human science alone is unequal
to this task. We have seen that there is only one way for man to
attain this end, that satisfactory solutions can only be derived
from faith, that wonderful gift which under the authority of a
superhuman witness makes us believe with certitude things which
neither the eyes of the body nor the eyes of the mind could
immediately comprehend. Has the witness which lies at the
foundation of Christian convictions the wished-for authority? In
other words, is it truly divine? We believe that we have
established it, and the most hasty reading of a single page of
the Bible will demonstrate it far more clearly than we have done.
See also the admirable harmony of the Christian system, and the
responses, as clear as they are sublime, it gives to questions so
long unanswerable. It is by its capacity to penetrate mysteries
to read the invisible, to explain the obscure, not less than by
its miraculous victory, that Christianity demonstrates both the
true character of its origin and the sincerity of its divine
Founder.
We remember on this subject some moving sentences that we will be
permitted to quote. They are from an author who recently received
an eloquent tribute of regrets and praises, and who, for the past
twenty years, has been remembered with grief by all the friends
of sound philosophy. In a well-known lecture, when considering
these same problems of human destiny, M. Jouffroy spoke thus:
"There is a little book that is taught to children, and upon
which they are questioned in the church. Read this little book,
which is the catechism. You will find in it a solution of all
the questions I have asked--of all, without an exception. Ask a
Christian the origin of the human race, what is its destiny,
and how it can attain it, and he can answer you. Ask that poor
child, who has scarcely thought of life and its duties, why he
is here below, what will become of him after death, and he will
make a sublime answer which he may not fully comprehend, but
which is not the less admirable. Ask him how the world was
created and for what end; why God has put animals and plants
upon it; how the world was peopled, if by one family or by
several; why men speak different languages, why they suffer,
why they combat, and how all these things will end; and he
knows it all.
{474}
Origin of the world, origin of man, questions about the
different races, destiny of man in this life and in the other,
relation of man to God, duties of man toward his fellow-men,
rights of man over creation, he is ignorant of none of these
things; and as he becomes matured, he will not hesitate to take
advantage of his natural and political rights, for he knows the
rights of the people, for these come, or, as it were, flow of
themselves, from Christianity. This is what I call a great
religion. I recognize by this sign that it leaves none of the
questions which interest humanity without an answer." [Footnote
102]
[Footnote 102: _Mélanges Philosophiques_,
par M. Th. Jouffroy. Vol. i. 1833, p. 470.]
We love to read again these words of a master and a friend, who
in his youth was nourished with Christian truths, and who,
perhaps, would have tasted them again if the trials of life had
been prolonged for him. Without doubt, it is necessary to avoid
indorsing opinions which are no longer our own sentiments; but
certainly it can be permitted to preserve a faithful and complete
remembrance of their spirit. Even at the time when M. Jouffroy
doubted, when he left his pen and told us with assurance how
Christian dogmas would die, there would have been but very little
necessary to teach him to his cost how they perpetuate
themselves! Faith has its evil days; its ranks seem decimated and
its army dissolved, but it can never perish. In order to replace
deserters, to recruit its strength unceasingly, has it not the
sorrows and miseries of this world, the need of prayer, and the
thirst of hope?
Let us leave this sweet and profound thinker whose brilliant
career we love to trace; let us return to that great and firm
soul who now engages our attention, and to whom we are attached
by so many friendly ties and remembrances. Without having
followed him step by step, we have not lost sight of him. We have
taken a hasty glance at his work in trying to express its spirit.
We must now return to each of these meditations in detail. What
things have escaped us! What brilliant passages, what keen
observations, what profound thoughts! At most, we have only taken
account of that part of the book where the limits of science, the
belief in the supernatural, and especially the marvellous harmony
between Christian dogmas and religious problems, that are innate
to man, are treated with so much wisdom and authority. That which
M. Jouffroy, in the remarks we have quoted, indicates in a single
glance, M. Guizot establishes with convincing arguments by
comparing each dogma with the natural problem to which it
corresponds. No one has yet so accurately explained the
harmonious relation of these questions and these answers. There
are two _morceaux_ which demand particular attention: they
are the two _meditations_ on the revelation and inspiration
of the holy books. There are here ideas and distinctions of rare
sagacity which point out what justly belongs to human ignorance,
without allowing the reality of inspiration of the Bible to
suffer the slightest suspicion. But the chief triumph of this
work, that which gives it at once its most charming color and its
sweetest perfume, are the last two meditations, _God according
to the Bible, Jesus Christ according to the Gospels_.
{475}
These two pictures are in as different styles as the subjects
they contrast. Nothing could be bolder, more striking, more truly
Biblical, than the portrait of the God of the Hebrews; of that
God "who has no biography, no personal events," to whom nothing
happens, with whom nothing changes, always and invariably the
same, immutable in the midst of diversity and of universal
movement. "I am he who is." He has nothing else to say of
himself; it is his definition, his history. No one can know more
of him, even as no one can see him. And if he were visible, what
a misfortune! His glance is death. Between him and man what an
abyss!
It is a long distance to traverse between such a God and the God
of the New Testament--from Jehovah to Jesus Christ. What novelty,
what a transformation! The solitary God goes out from his unity;
he completes everything, yet remains himself; the provoked God
lays aside his anger, he is affected, he is pacified, he becomes
gentle, he gives man his love, he loves him enough to redeem his
fault with his Son's blood, that is, with his own blood. It is
this victim, this Son, obedient even unto death, that M. Guizot
endeavors to paint for us. Sublime portrait, attempted many
times, but always in vain! Shall we say that he has succeeded in
this impossible task? No; but he has made a most happy effort. He
makes us pass successively before his divine model, by showing
the attitudes, if we may be allowed the expression, which enable
us to see the most touching aspects of this incomparable figure.
Sometimes he places him amid his disciples only, that chosen and
well-loved flock; sometimes in the Jewish crowd in the Temple, at
the foot of the mountain, or on the border of the lake; sometimes
among the fishermen or the sedate matrons; sometimes with artless
children. In each of these pictures, he gathers, he brings
together, he animates by reuniting them, the scattered
characteristics of Jesus Christ. His sober and guarded style,
powerful in its reasoning, brilliant in its contests, seems to be
enriched with new chords by the contact with so much sympathy and
tender love. It is not only the impassioned eloquence, but it is
a kind of emotion, more sweet and more penetrating, that you feel
while reading his thoroughly Christian pages.
We understand the happy effect that this book has already
produced upon certain souls. Its influence, however, cannot
descend to the masses. Its tone, its style, its thoughts, have
not aspired to popular success; but from the middling classes and
the higher circles of society, how many drifting souls there are
to whom this unexpected guide will lend a timely aid! Such a
Christian as he is must work this kind of cure. He is not the man
of the workmen; he has neither gown nor cassock. It is a
spontaneous tribute to the faith, and more than this, for it
declares that he too has known and vanquished the anxieties of
doubt. Every one, then, can do as he has done. No one fears to
follow the steps of a man who occupies such a position in the
empire of thought, who has given such proofs of liberty of spirit
and of deep wisdom. It is not a slight rebuke to certain
intelligent but careless Catholics to see such an example of
submission and faith come from a Protestant.
There is yet a greater and more general service that these
_Meditations_ seem to have fulfilled. During the eight or
ten months since they were published, the tone of antichristian
polemics has been much depressed. One would have expected a
manifestation of rage, but there has been nothing of the kind.
{476}
The most vehement critics are reserved, and their attacks have
principally consisted in silence. Hence a sort of momentary lull.
Many causes, without doubt, contributed in advance to this
result, if it were only the excess of the attack and the
impertinence of certain assailants; but the book, or to speak
more properly, the action of M. Guizot, has, in our opinion, its
own good part in this work. So clear and vigorous a profession of
faith could not be lightly attacked. In order to answer a man who
frankly calls himself a Christian, it would be necessary to have
resolved and to declare openly that one is antichristian; but
those who are, no longer care to acknowledge it. It is well known
that our day is pleased with half-tints; it has a taste for
shadows, and is always ready to strike its flag when it sees an
opponent's colors. Christianity itself gathers some profit from
the little noise that is made about these _Meditations_. It
is not the least reward of their author. May he continue in the
same tone, compelling his adversaries to persevere in their
silence. He will embarrass them more and more, while he will
always add fresh courage and power to those who are sustaining
the good cause.
--------
Saint Mary Magdalen.
From The Latin Of Petrarch.
The following lines were written by the great Italian poet,
Petrarch, on the occasion of a visit to Sainte-Baume, near
Marseilles, where tradition points out the tomb of Saint Mary
Magdalen. He inscribed them on the grotto, in which she is said
to have passed the last thirty years of her life.
Dulcis amica Dei, lacrymis inflectere nostris,
Atque meas attende preces, nostraeque saluti
Consule: namque potes. Neque enim tibi tangere frustra
Permissum, gemituque pedes perfundere sacros,
Et nitidis siccare comis, ferre oscula plantis,
Inque caput Domini pretiosos spargere odores.
Nec tibi congressus primos a morte resurgens
Et voces audire suas et membra videre,
Immortale decus lumenque habitura per aevum,
Nequicquam dedit aetherei rex Christus Olympi.
Viderat ille cruci haerentem, nee dira paventem
Judaicae tormenta manus, turbaeque furentis
Jurgia et insultus, aequantes verbera linguas;
Sed maestam intrepidamque simul, digitisque cruentos
Tractantem clavos, implentem vulnera fletu,
Pectora tundentem violentis candida pugnis,
Vellentem flavos manibus sine more capillos.
Viderat haec, inquam, dum pectora fida suorura
Diffugerent pellente metu. Memor ergo revisit
{477}
Te primam ante alios; tibi se priùs obtulit uni.
Te quoque, digressus terris ad astra reversus,
Bis tria lustra, cibi nunquàm mortalis egentem
Rupe sub hâc aluit, tarn longo tempore solis
Divinis contenta epulis et rore salubri
Haec domus antra tibi stillantibus humida saxis,
Horrifico tenebrosa situ, tecta aurea regum,
Delicias omnes ac ditia vicerat arva.
Hìc inclusa libens, longis vestita capillis,
Veste carens aliâ, ter denos passa decembres
Diceris, hìc non fracta gelu nec victa pavore.
Namque famem, frigus, durum quoque saxa cubile
Dulcia fecit amor spesque alto pectore fixa.
Hìc hominum non visa oculis, stipata catervis
Angelicis, septemque die subvecta per horas,
Coelestes audire choros alterna canentes
Carmina, corporeo de carcere digna fuisti.
Translation.
Sweet friend of God! my tears attend,
Hark to me suppliant and defend--
O thou, all-potent to befriend!
Not vain that care thou didst accord--
Thy hands, uplifted o'er thy Lord,
Upon his head sweet odors poured,
And touched his feet with unguents rare--
The kiss of love imprinted there--
And wiped them with thy beauteous hair.
Not vain, when he in majesty
Rose up from death, 'twas given to thee
The first to meet, to hear, to see.
This glory did the Lord divine,
The Christ august, to thee assign,
Made this unending splendor thine.
Unto his cross he saw thee cling,
Unawed by threat and buffeting--
The taunts the furious rabble fling;
For him he saw thee lashed with scorn,
Yet clasping, faithful and forlorn,
Those feet with nails now pierced and torn.
{478}
He watched thy tear-drenched face below--
Thy bosom stricken in thy woe--
Thy long fair hair's dishevelled flow.
All this he saw, while from his side
His other loved ones scattered wide,
And left alone their Crucified.
'Twas therefore, mindful of those sighs,
He, deigning from the tomb to rise,
Sought his first welcome from thine eyes.
And heavenward when from earth he sped,
Through thrice ten years for thee here spread
A feast by angels ministered.
This rugged cave obscure and lone,
Black rock-dews dripping down the stone.
For thee a regal palace shone.
No fields with harvest wealth besprent
Accord such manna as was sent;
Thy needs did heavenly gifts content.
Here through December's frost and sleet.
Thy long hair, falling to thy feet.
Enrobed thee in a robe complete.
No fear appalled; love made thee bold;
Love sweetened sufferings manifold.
The rock, the hunger, and the cold.
Here, hid from mortal eyes, to be
Cheered with celestial company.
Angelic bands encompassed thee.
And still a dweller in our sphere.
Seven hours each day rapt hence, thine ear
The alternate choirs of heaven could hear.
C. E. R
-------
{479}
Glimpses Of Tuscany.
Santa Maria Del Fiore--The Duomo.
I.
We are approaching Florence by rail from Pisa, a dismal, dripping
February morning. It is twelve years since I first saw that
famous Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore. I came suddenly upon it,
as I was trying to find my way alone to the opera at the Pergola,
the first night I got to Florence. I shall never forget the
impression it made on me--an honest, original impression, for I
had never read or heard of the Piazza and its wonders. I only
knew Giotto by his "O." Orgagna, Arnolfo, Brunelleschi, were
names utterly unknown. But the beauty and immensity of that
mighty square, asleep in the starlight, overwhelmed me. It was
like a step, unawares, from time into eternity. No Pergola that
night for me. I crept back to the hotel, bewildered and awed into
something like earnestness; for the Lord seemed enthroned in that
consecrated place, and I was afraid of him as he sat there,
stern, conscious, omnipotent.
But I was younger then; disposed to go into raptures over
everything artistic, especially Italian art. The decade between
thirty and forty diminishes one's enthusiasm dreadfully. I am
almost afraid to meet my old favorite now, lest the spell of a
fine remembrance should be broken for ever. But the train is
rushing on, the road curves, and there's the same Duomo, looking
as if Our Lady of Flowers herself had settled down on the city,
with Giotto's campanile, like an archangel, standing guard beside
her. There she sits in her gray mantle, grayer through the mist
and snow, queen of all the landscape--grander, lighter, lovelier
than ever.
Here we are at the station, and now driving past the baptistery;
but, far or near, that cupola ever full in view like a guardian
presence. You do not wonder here, as before Saint Peter's, what
has become of the cupola; you are not obliged to fall back a
league to see what is nearly overhead. Nave, transept, and
tribune go swelling up, with buttress and demi-cupola diminishing
as they ascend, and all converging into one enormous drum from
which springs the central dome. Dante could see it from his chair
in its very shadow. Arnolfo and Brunelleschi may see it from
their seats of marble scarce twenty yards from the
foundation-stone. Angelo may see it from his home in Santa Croce.
The masons of Fiesole can see it from their hills, the peasants
of San Casciano from their vineyards; and, far down the Arno, the
boatmen from Pisa look up to it as they plod wearily along.
I am domesticated in Florence; the slow Tuscan spring is passing
into summer; and, from being simply a joy, this great cathedral
has become a study. Arnolfo, son of Lapo, or Cambio, was the
great stone-poet who traced that ground-plan, itself an epic. He
was commissioned by those wonderful republicans to construct a
church, as worthy as man could make it of the glory of God and
the dignity of the city of Florence.
{480}
The inclination of Arnolfo's genius was toward the Gothic; but he
was a many-sided and myriad-minded man. His walls of Florence
suggest the Egyptian, his court of the Bargello the Saracenic,
his Palazzo Vecchio a perfectly new idea. He has all the
versatility of Shakespeare. Arnolfo's first conception of Santa
Maria del Fiore may still be seen in fresco, copied from the last
wooden model, in the Spanish Cloister of Santa Maria Novella. Up
to the first cornice, the cathedral, as it now stands, is almost
as purely Gothic as the campanile; and, by reference to the
fresco, you will perceive that Arnolfo's original idea was to
carry this Gothic treatment up to the very cross that crowns the
lantern. For instance, the lantern in the fresco is without
either ball or scroll, the clerestory buttressed, and with
pointed instead of circular lights, the windows of the cupola
pointed. Yet, as it is certain that Arnolfo lived to finish the
clerestory, and to unite (_serrare_) the smaller cupolas and
tribunes, it is clear these variations in his plan, these
departures from the pointed, these approximations to the round,
were deliberately made by Arnolfo himself, or by his direction.
As the work advanced, he felt that something more must be
conceded to the coming cupola. It was not enough to have it
octagonal instead of spherical, and enrich its eight marble ribs
with Gothic tracery; the antagonism between the two styles must
be met and softened from the start. See how gradually this is
done, and at what an early stage these concessions begin. In the
fresco, the blind arches, both over the lower tribunal windows
and just under the lower tribunal cornice, are slightly pointed;
in the building itself they are round; the niches above the
cornice, also, are pointed in the picture and round-topped in the
stone. It is more than probable that these concessions were
dictated by the greater prominence which the cupola was assuming
in Arnolfo's new vision of his temple. Now is it impossible, that
he might have nearly anticipated the exact plan of the heir of
his inspiration and partner of his glory? The tendency is that
way. But, with the completion of the clerestory and the
unification of the smaller cupolas, Arnolfo departs, and, after
an interval of a century and a quarter, Brunelleschi enters.
There they are, seated side by side in marble, close to the stone
that marks where Dante, too, sat gazing at their Duomo. Arnolfo
looks more like a dreamer than a doer, although he was both; in
Ser Brunelleschi's face there is more of the mathematician than
the poet. He could never have traced that ground-plan, never have
dreamed that shining archangel called the campanile; but he did
what neither the pupil of Cimabue nor the son of Cambio could
perhaps have managed as well, he built that matchless cupola.
Brunelleschi had his one great dream, the solution of a vast and
novel architectural difficulty. What Arnolfo had hinted became
his grand ideal. He nursed his dream for years at Rome, communing
with the spirit of classic art; at last he told his dream in
Florence, and with infinite difficulty got leave to act it out.
Since that noble _carte blanche_ to Arnolfo, Florence had
declined; she was no longer up to the proud standard of that
earlier day. The superintendents are slippery and slow in
engaging Filippo; and Filippo himself must _finesse_ more
than a little to secure the engagement.
{481}
There is this difference, to be sure, that the Duomo was the
culmination of Arnolfo's professional career and but the
beginning of his successor's; that the latter, like all gallant
adventurers, had to win his spurs before he could be fully
trusted. Still, the two inseparable elements of self and gain are
more conspicuous here than in the purer Christian ages, whose
architects disdained or forbore to register their names; whose
works preserve no personal memorial of their masters; "so that,"
says Vasari, "I cannot but marvel at the simplicity and
indifference to glory exhibited by the men of that period." There
is, unfortunately, no such simplicity to marvel at now.
As early as 1407, Filippo submitted an opinion to the
superintendents of the works of Santa Maria del Fiore, and to the
syndics of the guild of wool-workers, (powerful gentlemen in
those days,) that the edifice above the roof must be constructed,
not after the design of Arnolfo; but that a frieze, thirty feet
high, must be erected with a large window in each of its sides.
This suggestion, together with the additional thirty feet for the
gallery, comprised the single, sublime conception to which the
Duomo owes its crowning beauty; the rest of the task is chiefly
mechanical. But such immense mechanics require immense genius.
Filippo had supplied the idea, but there was no one found wise
enough to execute it. The wardens and syndics were much
perplexed; and Filippo, after laughing at them in his sleeve,
returned to Rome. He had hardly gone before they wrote him to
return. He came; and after patiently listening to the long array
of difficulties which mediocrity always opposes to the
inspiration of genius, admitted that the most enormous dome of
ancient or modern times must present certain difficulties in its
erection, like other great enterprises; that he was confounded no
less by the breadth than by the height of the edifice; that if
the tribune could be vaulted in a circular form, one might pursue
the method adopted by the Romans in erecting the Pantheon; but
that following up the eight sides of the building to a
convergence, thus dove-tailing, and, so to speak, enchaining the
stones, would be a most difficult and novel undertaking.
"Yet"--and this touch is worthy of Arnolfo's age or any
other--"yet, remembering that this is a temple consecrated to God
and the Virgin, I confidently trust that, for a work executed in
their honor, they will not fail to infuse knowledge where it is
now wanting, and bestow strength, wisdom, and genius on him who
shall be the author of such a project." Nothing can shake
Filippo's joyous trust in himself; he acts as if he carries a
divine commission in his pocket to finish what Arnolfo began, and
can therefore afford to laugh at all human appointments or
interference. With amazing confidence and magnanimity, he
concludes his interview with their worships by exhorting them to
assemble, on a fixed day within a year, as many architects as
they can get together; not Tuscans and Italians only, but
Germans, French, and all other nations, "to the end that the work
may be commenced and intrusted to him who shall give the best
evidence of capacity." The syndics and wardens liked Filippo's
advice, and would also have liked him to prepare a model for
their edification. But with all his piety and self-reliance, Ser
Brunelleschi was a Florentine like their worships, and therefore
keen enough to keep his model to himself. It then suddenly
occurred to these grave gentlemen that money might be an object
to Filippo, as it occasionally is to other men; and so they voted
him a sum, not stated by Vasari, but not large enough to justify
his remaining in Florence. So back to Rome once more marches the
Ser Brunelleschi.
{482}
Meanwhile that noble city of Florence has ordered her merchants
resident abroad to send her at any cost the best foreign masters.
In the year 1420, these best foreign masters, and best Italian
masters besides, and the syndics and superintendents, and a
select number of distinguished citizens, and little Filippo
himself, just returned from Rome, are all assembled in the hall
of the wardens of Santa Maria del Fiore. After listening to a
hundred absurd plans, Brunelleschi unfolds his own at full
length. Whereupon the assembled syndics, superintendents, and
citizens, instead of being at all edified by his remarks,
proceeded to call him a simpleton, an ass, a madman, and bade him
discourse of something else. Which he, instead of doing, stuck to
his point, and finally lost his temper and flew in their faces.
Whereupon they called him a fool and a babbler; and considering
him absolutely mad, arose against him as one man, and
incontinently turned him out of doors by the head and heels.
Imagine the rage of Arnolfo the Goth, after such treatment; or
Angelo the mighty, stalking down the Via Romana; or Dante,
wandering ghost-like into eternal exile! The indomitable,
practical Filippo did none of these things, but prudently shut
himself up at home lest people in the streets should call out,
"See where goes that fool!" "It was not the fault of these men,"
says the sympathetic Vasari, "that Filippo did not break in
pieces the models, set fire to the designs, and in one half-hour
destroy all the labors so long endured, and ruin the hopes of so
many years." But Filippo was less a poet, enamoured of an inward
vision of beauty, than an architect determined to solve an
architectural problem. Plainly enough, since Arnolfo had set the
example in the clerestory, the windows of the cupola were also to
be circular instead of pointed. His inventive faculties were
therefore restricted to the organization of that vast dream, to
the determination of the ascending curves and the conception of
the lantern. It was not the offspring of his soul, but of his
mind, that Filippo had offered the syndics and superintendents;
and the inventor of new combinations and possibilities of matter
is apt to possess a more elastic temperament than the creator of
new forms of beauty. Instead of fretting himself to death or
cultivating the princely revenge of silence, Filippo, strong in
his mission and calculating on the proverbial caprice of his
native Florence, began to experiment on individuals instead of
assemblies; so successfully, too, that another session was soon
convened. Profiting by discomfiture, Filippo modified his
tactics. He salutes the superintendents as "_magnificent_
signors and wardens," and condescends to be more explicit about
his still hidden model. He even goes so far as to prove the
dome-within-a-dome, which had so enraged their excellencies, a
possibility. He spoke with such emphasis and confidence, that "he
had all the appearance of having vaulted ten such cupolas." In a
word, they surrendered at discretion; and, rather in despair than
hope, made him principal master of the works. The man of talents
was victorious where a mere man of genius would have been badly
beaten. But--in these artistic complications there is always a
but--Lorenzo Ghiberti, just famous for his doors of Paradise, was
a favorite in Florence; so Florence resolved to associate Lorenzo
with Filippo. This was a bitter pill to Ser Brunelleschi, but he
swallowed it; and for two years they worked together at the
twelve braccia to which their labors were limited by the wardens.
{483}
But--there was also a 'but' on the right side--when the closing
in of the cupola toward the top commenced, and the masons and
other masters were wailing in expectation of directions as to the
manner in which the chains were to be applied and the
scaffoldings erected, it chanced on one fine morning that Filippo
did not appear at the works. On inquiry, it turned out that he
had tied up his head, called for hot plates and towels, and gone
to bed complaining bitterly. An attack of pleurisy. Most
inopportunely; for at this most critical moment in the enterprise
the whole burthen fell on Lorenzo. Lorenzo was besieged by
practical questions; Lorenzo was persecuted with a thousand
interrogatories; Lorenzo waded completely out of his depth into a
sea of troubles; the masons and stone-cutters came to a stand,
and finally the work stood still. At this juncture, the syndics
and wardens resolved to pay the sick man a visit. They condoled
with him in his illness and also lamented the disorder which had
attacked the building. "Is not Lorenzo there?" asked the
sufferer. "He will not do anything without you," replied the
wardens. "_But I could do well enough without him_,"
murmured the invalid. The wardens withdrew, and sent Filippo a
prescription in the shape of an announcement of their intention
to remove Lorenzo. Filippo instantly recovered, but only to find
his rival still in place and power. Whereupon he made one more
prayer to their worships, namely, to divide the labor as they
divided the salary, and give each his own separate sphere of
action. This was granted: the chain-work assigned to Lorenzo, the
scaffolding to Filippo. The scaffolding proved a miracle of
success, the chain-work a monument of failure. The wardens, and
syndics, and superintendents, and influential citizens, fairly
driven to the wall, made Filippo chief superintendent of the
whole fabric _for life_, commanding that nothing should be
done in the work save by his direction. How much richer the world
would now be in every department of art, had half its men of
genius but possessed a tithe of Brunelleschi's elasticity and
determination.
Left to himself, Filippo worked with so much zeal and minute
attention, that not a stone was placed in the building which he
had not examined. The very bricks, fresh from the oven, are said
to have been set apart with his own hands. So conscientious were
the builders of those days when art was supreme and religion a
practical inspiration. The energy and resources of this model
architect are inexhaustible. Nothing escapes him. Outlets and
apertures are provided, both in security against the force of the
winds, and against the vapors and vibrations of the earth.
Wine-shops and eating-houses are opened in the cupola. High over
Florence, Filippo is undisputed lord and master of a small town
of his own.
And so, for twenty-six years, they wrought under his eyes at this
architectural miracle. He lived to see the lantern carried to the
height of several braccia: it was not finished till fifteen years
after his death. He left plans for the gallery, which were either
lost, stolen, or destroyed. That great, broad belt of dingy brick
and mortar clamoring to earth and heaven for completion, ruins
the effect of the dome and gives the whole edifice a shabby
appearance. Only one of the eight sides is finished.
{484}
This was done in Carrara marble by Baccio d'Agnolo, and would
have been carried all around the dome but for the interference of
Michael Angelo, then omnipotent in Italy, who denounced it as a
mere cage for crickets; adding that he himself would show Baccio
what he _ought_ to do. The old art-dictator made a model
accordingly, which, after long debate, was rejected. So our Lady
of Flowers still lacks her girdle. It is much to be regretted,
since Michael could suggest nothing better, that he did not hold
his peace. The present model may not be faultless, but it is
infinitely better than nothing; and no one else has suggested
anything as good. It was condemned, not as defective in itself,
but unequal to the magnificence of the building; and, also,
because it seemed to violate some secret purpose of
Brunelleschi's in cutting off, as it did, the line of stones
which he had left projecting. Be this as it may, Filippo's
purpose has never been divined and never can be; all the plans of
the great masters are lost; and there seems to be small use in
continuing the interdict of a much over-estimated authority till
doomsday. That cestus of alternate head and garland just under
the colonnade is abominable, but it is difficult to see how the
present design could otherwise be improved. It harmonizes with
all the windows, and niches, and arches in the tribune; it
relieves the blankness of the perforations, and is in sympathy
both with the windows of the lantern and the upper window of the
campanile. It is the sub-dominant without which the blended
Gothic and classic is a discord. Arnolfo might have done it
better, but no one else. It is a poem which Baccio was as well
qualified to trace as any of the rest of them.
Apart from his glorious consummation of the Duomo, I do not like
Brunelleschi. He did more than any other man to repel the Gothic
influences, which, under Arnolfo and others, were penetrating
Tuscany; he insured the triumph of the round arch over the
pointed, and paved the way to the monstrosities of the
Renaissance. But his cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore is the
supreme miracle of architecture. It exceeds the cupola of the
Vatican, both in height and circumference, by eight feet; and
although supported by eight ribs only, which renders it lighter
than that of Saint Peter's, which has sixteen flanked buttresses,
is nevertheless more solid and firm. Unlike the Roman dome, it
has stood unassisted and unstrengthened from the first; so firmly
grounded by the forethought of Arnolfo, so closely knit by the
energies of Filippo, that it has not sunk or swerved an inch in
four centuries. The noblest speech that Buonarotti ever made was,
that he would not copy, but could not surpass it; the finest
compliment ever paid by one man of genius to another was his
dying wish to be buried where he might arise, not in sight of his
own Pantheon in the air, but in full view of the vaulted tribune
of Santa Maria del Fiore. Another name, however, is associated
with the growth of the Duomo--a name not inferior to either
Arnolfo or Filippo. Just beside the vast cathedral is the
wondrous bell-tower Giotto reared--his solitary, or only
conspicuous architectural feat. Before Giotto's time, the modern
painters copied nature about as closely as most actors and
orators now do; that is, their men and women bore only a weak,
conventional resemblance to humanity. The son of Bondone
inaugurated the naturalistic movement which culminated in Da
Vinci and Raphael; unquestionably a most honorable distinction.
But what can all he ever painted, judged as a living fact, amount
to when weighed against the startling splendor of this divine
campanile?
{485}
I have seen something of Giotto, far from all, but enough to know
that, save as undeveloped germs and hints, his pictures are
little more than crudities belonging to the infancy of art,
amazing at his time, but not more than curious at ours. But this
campanile, into which he suddenly ascended without an effort, is
the transfiguration of architecture--the product of an art at its
best and highest. Architecture never had advanced, never has
advanced a step beyond it. It might be added, never can advance;
for beyond a certain recognized point in the realization of
beauty, human genius is not permitted to push its way. Vasari
devotes thirty pages to the consideration of Giotto's pictures,
and but one to the campanile. Yet these pictures are mouldering
in convents or shrouded in chapels, or buried in dim galleries,
scattered far and wide over the world; and, save over some
ambitious student or patient virtuoso, they no longer exist as a
spell or a power. But this lofty campanile is a perpetual
influence; an influence as indestructible as the Iliad--a joy as
unceasing as the joy of sunrise--the joy of a work that is
perfection of its kind. So fair, so frail, and yet so firm! It
does not need the glass case suggested by imperial condescension.
It knows how to take the lightning and the storm. It knows how to
bear the weight and thunder of its mellow bells. Its beautiful
head is at home in the skies, and seems to belong to heaven as
much as the flowers belong to earth.
Giotto's plan would have crowned it with a spire of a hundred
feet; but, whether for true artistic considerations, or because
it was Gothic, or because it was too expensive, succeeding
architects have always advised its omission.
Besides its own independent loveliness, this bell-tower exercises
an important influence over the group to which it belongs, not
only by the development of form, but also by the subtler
qualification of style. But for the pure Gothic of Giotto, the
predominance of the round in the tribunes and cupola would
overwhelm Arnolfo's pointed witchery beneath the clerestory. As
it is, the supremacy of the classic at one end of the stately
pile is balanced by the ascendency of the Gothic at the other.
High up in air the pious rivalry between the two great styles is
continued, each lifting its choicest offering to the very
footstool of the Padre Eterno, each doing its best in honor of
our Lady of Flowers.
The facade of Santa Maria is wanting, like her girdle. Giotto is
said to have finished two thirds of it, subsequently torn down
_to be restored in a more modern style!_ The fresco in the
cloister of San Marco gives only part of it, and I could make but
little of that. As I remember the fresco of Arnolfo's facade, it
was meant to be composed of statues, niches, and
pillars--something as deep and rich as the façade at Pisa.
Whoever may finish it, let us trust that the shallow mosaic of
Santa Croce will be avoided. The baptistery completes this
memorable group; faded, unattractive without, sombre and majestic
within.
The interior of Santa Maria is a disappointment. Glorious stained
glass, splendid arches, but none of the light, the joy, the
shining paradise of Saint Peter's. If we may believe Vasari, the
interior, like the exterior was to have been crusted with
Florentine mosaic, even to the minutest corners of the edifice.
But the days are dead when such a deed was practicable.
{486}
Instead of colored marbles, we have a pale olive overspreading
all the edifice; instead of the mosaic for which Filippo had
provided iron supports, the lack-lustre frescoes of Vasari and
his successors, which Florence ought to have summarily
whitewashed, as suggested in Lasca's madrigal. Fortunately, these
frescoes are the only pictures. Pictures in large churches are
distracting and insignificant; and moreover, you can rarely more
than half see them, try your best. Least of all, has a picture
any business in a Gothic church. For my own part I would as soon
see the pyramid of Cheops hung with pictures as the Duomo. In a
church, you want all the superhuman you can get--nothing human
but human souls. Angels and dragons and effigies are more in
keeping there than the best statues; those ghostly groups and
faces in the old stained glass look better than if they were a
thousand times more natural. The old mosaics harmonize because
they are not only typical, but imperishable as the structure
itself. The decisive objection to a picture in a church is its
apparent fragility.
The outer robes of our Lady of Flowers are dull with the dust and
wear of five centuries. See how those new bits of marble which
the workmen are inserting, green, white, and red, flash and
sparkle in the sun! What a celestial vision it must have been
when all that world of mosaic was fresh and stainless! But even
as she is, faded and unfinished, what an invaluable possession!
What would Florence be without it? It is a central magnet that
holds together her present, past, and future; that unites all her
children in one vast family, making her, in the truest sense of
the word, a community. It stands before her everlastingly, a
memorial of her youthful wealth and power; a monument of present
greatness, a protest against decrepitude to come. It binds her
fast to her renown, her honor, and her faith; it is the solemn,
visible bond between her and God. The Duomo belongs not only to
Florence, but to all the hills and valleys around, to the villas
of Morello, to the cloisters of Fiesole, to the huts on the
Apennines. Every peasant within sight of its cupola, within sound
of its campanile, has a share in its daily benediction. For four
centuries, the generations that people that fair amphitheatre
have found it the most unchanging feature in their landscape. It
is as much the portion of their lives as the stars, their river,
or their own vineyards. In the first blush of every morning, it
rises before the sun; and when the stars and moon are shining,
the lantern of Santa Maria del Fiore takes its place amongst them
as part of the pageantry of the skies.
----------
{487}
The Condition and Prospects of Catholics in England.
By An English Catholic.
Surrounded as we are on all sides by apostles of progress, ever
ready to taunt and ridicule those who linger in the shadows of
the past, it would be distressing indeed to Catholics in general,
and especially to English Catholics, if they could with justice
be reproached as stationary or retrograde. Happily they are of
all men least open to the charge. They advance on a double line.
They share in the common march of society; they adopt every
latest improvement; they fully accept and reciprocate the
blessings of civilization; but their religion also, which is in
itself progress, increases and multiplies throughout the globe,
and particularly in the British empire. It has derived strength
from the world's social and political changes; it is inspired
more than ever with the breath of freedom; and the very means
which accelerate science and commerce supply it with wings and
coat it with mail. It not only advances on a double line, but it
has likewise a twofold nature and a duplex power. This wonderful
religion is both old and new; it unites the weight and authority
of age with the freshness and vigor of youth. To the English it
is both ancient and modern. It _was_ the venerable faith of
their ancestors, and it is, by a gracious revolution in the moral
world, the old religion revived, with all the charms of
novelty--a second spring revisiting the long desolate and wintry
land. It comes back to us with all its time-honored appliances;
with its sacred symbols and solemn rites; its orders,
congregations, and retreats; its colleges, institutions, poor
schools, homes, orphanages, almshouses, hospitals, and
libraries--but it comes, moreover, with means and advantages
proportioned to its difficulties, and such as in old times it
could not boast. It has now in its hands the mighty machinery of
the press, with the Scriptures, the Missal and Church Offices in
the vulgar tongue. It flourishes amid liberal institutions, and
acquires no little vigor from free discussion, persuading where
once it ruled. It affiliates to itself all physical truths, all
discoveries in science, as affording fresh evidence of the power
and wisdom of God. It engages in historical research with
impartiality formerly unknown, relying on documentary proofs, and
scrutinizing all that is legendary. It joyfully accepts and
utilizes the steamship, the railroad, and the telegraph. It finds
in them fresh instruments of good, new links to knit nations
together in a common faith, swift convoys of Christian missions,
and electric tongues of flame to spread the gospel of Christ.
During the last forty years the Catholic _renaissance_ in
England has been rapid beyond all that could have been expected
or was even hoped. It is not to the emancipation act of 1829, to
the increase of the episcopate in 1840, nor to the creation of
the hierarchy in 1850, that this surprising growth is mainly to
be ascribed.
{488}
The removal of political disabilities gave Catholics in England,
no doubt, a respectability and courage which they had not before;
but they would still have continued, on the whole, a despised and
scattered remnant--mere "pebbles and _detritus_" as Newman
says, [Footnote 103] "of the great deluge"--if there had not
arisen in the very heart of the Established Church a little band
of learned and pious men, who, strong in genius and in prayer,
valiantly defended many distinctively Catholic doctrines, and
ended by professing openly or virtually their adhesion to our
entire system of faith and morals. This it was which caused
English Catholics, when they emerged, as it were, from the
catacombs, [Footnote 104] to lift up their heads, to challenge a
new investigation of the grounds of their belief, and to submit
them confidently to every test that history, Scripture, reason,
and experience could apply. The Tractarian movement infused fresh
blood into the church's veins, and it has, during a period of
thirty years, swollen our waters with a confluent stream.
[Footnote 103: _Sermons on Various Occasions_, p. 232.]
[Footnote 104: Card. Wiseman's _Address to the Congress of
Malines_, p. 9.]
The tide thus set in a right direction does not cease to flow,
and it is fed by sources external to ourselves. Scarcely a week
passes but some persons knock at the gates of the church for
admittance, who have learned the elements of Catholicism from
alien teachers. Several high-church periodicals, widely
circulated, such as the _Union Review_ and the _Church
News_, lay down, with extraordinary boldness and precision,
doctrines which the so-called reformers labored to explode.
Rumors are ever afloat of important conversions about to take
place, and thus Catholics in England are constantly encouraged,
while Anglicans are proportionally unsettled and alarmed. The
Establishment is dying by the hands of its own pastors. Three
hundred of them have quitted its pale, forfeited their position
in society, forsaken a thousand comforts, prospects, and
endearments, to follow the church in the wilderness and the
pillar of fire. The largest-minded and the largest-hearted man
Anglicanism ever produced, has long since taken his seat among
the doctors in the true temple, and one whom Anglicans esteemed
for his piety from boyhood upward, is now the primate of the
English Catholic Church, and regarded among its bishops as
_facile princeps_ for learning and ability, both as a
speaker and writer. The talents which were employed in promoting
schism are thus turned into a healthier channel; and a multitude
of able and ingenious converts in every literary guise operate
beneficially on the public mind. The loud demand for unity of
doctrine, a fixed standard of belief and morals, authority in
matters of faith, primitive antiquity, asceticism, symbols,
sacraments, and aesthetics, is being supplied. Catholic
missionaries are covering the face of the land, and they are
welcomed wherever they pitch their tent. Thirsting souls, weary
of broken cisterns, gather round them, and ask eagerly for living
water from deeper wells. Abbeys are raised on ancient sites;
convent-walls crown the hills; church-bells tinkle in secluded
vales; and in the towns and cities, fanes richly adorned and well
served invite with open doors the docile to be taught and the
penitent to be shriven. The genius of the two Pugins, the father
and the son, has revived the love of mediaeval architecture; and
the new churches vie with each other in majestic structure and
ornate detail. The winter is now past, the rain is over and gone.
{489}
The flowers have appeared in our land; the voice of the turtle is
heard. The fig-tree hath put forth her green figs; the vines in
flower yield their sweet smell. [Footnote 105]
[Footnote 105: Canticles, ii, 11-13.]
What a contrast within forty years! then the heavenly dove flying
over England scarcely found where her foot might rest. The waters
were abroad on the whole land, and she returned into the ark. In
1830 only 434 priests ministered through the entire country; and
these were attached, for the most part, to obscure chapels in low
quarters of the town, or to gloomy, old-fashioned houses in the
country. Four hundred and ten unsightly buildings were then
called churches; and England (which in the olden time, before the
Reformation, owned 56 convents of the Dominican order alone
[Footnote 106]) could not at that date claim a single religious
house consisting of men. Sixteen scanty communities of nuns there
were, who sighed and prayed in secret, being but the skirts of
the garment of the Lamb's Bride. A change has come over the
scene; and how great that change is, the following table will in
some degree show:
In 1854. 1864. 1867.
Catholic clergy in England 922 1267 1438
Catholic clergy in Scotland. 134 178 201
Churches, chapels,
and stations in England 678 907 1082
Churches, chapels,
and stations in Scotland 134 191 201
Communities of men in England 17 56 67
Convents in England. 84 173 210
Convents in Scotland. 0 13 17 [Footnote 107]
[Footnote 106: _Fr. Palmer's Life of Cardinal Howard._
Introd. 41-58.]
[Footnote 107: _Statesman's Year-Book for 1867_, p. 238.
_Catholic Directory_, p. 267.]
In the Diocese of Westminster alone there are more than twice as
many religious communities of women as there were in the whole
kingdom (Ireland excluded) forty years ago. The population, it is
true, multiplies rapidly and in an ever increasing ratio, but the
spread of Catholicism does far more than keep pace with this
advance. It outstrips it in a striking degree, and gives
continual promise of further increase. The distance between
churches lessens; the means of grace are more copiously supplied;
the discipline of the church is more fully carried out; the
prejudices of our foes are partly dispelled; their attacks become
less violent; the press is more civil; the state more
conciliating. In many localities, such as Bayswater,
Notting-Hill, Kensington, Brompton, and Hammersmith, in the West
of London, the number of Catholic churches, convents, and
charitable institutions is greater than would be found over an
equal area in many countries where the church is supreme. The
number of persons attached to the congregation of the Oratory in
Brompton exceeds 8000, and upwards of 13,000 attend the services
of St. George's Cathedral in Southwark. The English
"Reformation," happily, did only half its work, and the tap-roots
of Catholicism have never been thoroughly eradicated from the
popular mind. New suckers are ever springing up, and persistent
culture soon obtains its reward.
The vast metropolis is not all included in one diocese. The
Archbishop of Westminster and the Bishop of Southwark both reside
in London, and divide the pastoral care of the great city between
them. One hundred and sixty priests, secular, regular, and
unattached, minister under Dr. Grant, while 221, including
Oratorians and Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo, serve under the
primate. The average attendance of children at the poor schools
of the Diocese of Westminster was, in the year 1857-8, 8648; and
nine years later, in 1866-7, it amounted to 12,056.
{490}
This increase sufficiently proves that great efforts are made to
instruct the Catholic poor children in London. Many of them,
especially those of Irish extraction, pass their days in rags,
filth, and beggary, living like little "Arabs," as they are
familiarly called. In 1866 it was estimated that from 7000 to
12,000 Catholic children were thus wandering through the streets
of the capital; but the exertions of Cardinal Wiseman and
Archbishop Manning have produced the happiest results, and
diminished the evils which want of funds and the difficulties of
the case leave for the present without adequate remedy. It is
certain that the poor children of Catholics have in the English
bishops most able and tender-hearted advocates, and that numerous
monastic bodies of men and women are ready to second their
efforts with devotion truly heroic. It is on the lambs of the
flock that the hopes of Catholic England depend, and just in
proportion as they are educated or uneducated, will they be
ornaments or disgraces to the religion they profess. Nothing but
superstition and vice can be built on ignorance; and the clergy
in England are everywhere earnest in promoting the culture of the
mind. It is almost as vain to teach religion without secular
knowledge, as it would be presumptuous and profane to impart
secular knowledge without religion. Nature and grace alike ordain
that they should go together, and on this principle the Poor
School Committee, or Council of Catholic Education, invariably
acts.
There is in England, at the present moment, a strong tendency to
compulsory education. The leading thinkers of the day incline to
this plan, and press on the legislature the expediency of
providing a state system of education, of which all the poor,
Catholics as well as Protestants, should avail themselves. The
secular instruction would, in this case, be common to all the
children, while the religious instruction would be in the hands
of the ministers of the several religions which the parents might
profess. The Catholic bishops and clergy look with fear and
suspicion on such a project, believing it impossible safely to
separate secular and religious instruction. They are of opinion
that the system would work badly, and prove a failure; that
non-Catholic teachers would insensibly instil false doctrine and
wrong views into the pupils' minds, and that the denominational
system, which provides separate schools for each section of
professing Christians, is the best, and, indeed, the only good
one for Catholic interests. They point to Ireland, where the
"national" education is regarded as a national grievance. They
bid you remark how, in that valley of tears, both Catholics and
Protestants separate their children if they can. They prove to
you that, in national schools with Presbyterian masters,
thousands of Catholic children are taught the Protestant religion
from the lips of Protestant teachers. [Footnote 108] They
complain that while the English receive from the state important
help toward denominational education, to the Irish all such help
is persistently refused.
[Footnote 108: Archb. Manning's _Letter to Earl Grey_,
1868, p. 22.]
It remains to be seen how far their remonstrances will be
attended to, and how far the national education in Great Britain
can be made to harmonize with Catholic. Happily, there is no
disposition on the part of the state to force on any portion of
the people a measure obnoxious to them; and the scheme of
national education introduced into Ireland under the auspices of
the Catholic and Protestant Archbishops of Dublin, (Drs. Murray
and Whately,) having proved abortive, it is the less likely that
Catholics in England will be obliged to accept any conditions to
which they may be decidedly adverse.
{491}
There is, however, great difficulty in adjusting state
concessions to Catholic wants and demands. It is almost
impossible for Protestant rulers to understand our feelings, and
they often run counter to them, even when they are trying to
satisfy them with the best intentions. Thus, for instance, though
the government has thrown open the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge to Catholics, allowing them to matriculate and proceed
to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, difficulties have recently
been raised by ecclesiastical authority respecting their availing
themselves of this opening. The Catholic bishops, in fact, have
recommended parents and guardians not to send their sons and
wards to Oxford and Cambridge; and though their advice does not
amount to a prohibition, it has, nevertheless, a deterrent
effect. Catholic noblemen and gentlemen of large property have,
at present, no other means of giving their sons an education
suited to their rank, and such as will form their minds and
manners for parliamentary and diplomatic service, except by
sending them to these universities, where science is, so far as
they are concerned, entirely divorced from religion, and their
personal faith is in great danger of being compromised. The
Catholic colleges at Oscott, Ushaw, Stonyhurst, and the like,
though admirable for ordinary purposes, do not meet these
exceptional cases. They have not, they do not, and they cannot
produce men equal to the times--men who carefully get up
subjects, read much and study deeply, write and speak in public
with authority, and leave deep "footprints on the sands of time."
[Footnote 109] Such laborious and efficient servants of their
country are not likely to be formed by any _régime_ less
strict and comprehensive than that of our universities; and the
consequence is that, at this moment, there are about a dozen
Catholic young men studying at Oxford (not to mention Cambridge)
in spite of episcopal discouragement.
[Footnote 109: _Dublin Review_, October, 1867, p. 398.]
The principle of mixed education being absolutely condemned by
the church, the want of a Catholic university in England is felt
more and more. But it can only be the result of time, since the
cost of endowments and professorships, not to speak of buildings,
would, as yet, be out of proportion to the number of Catholics in
England and the means they possess. The matter, however, is now
under consideration at Rome, and it is expected that means will
be devised shortly to meet the existing want. Before the
Reformation, sixty-six universities covered Europe, and most of
them sprang from small beginnings, and were built amid
difficulties quite as great as any we shall have to encounter.
[Footnote 110]
[Footnote 110: See _Christian Schools and Scholars_,
vol. ii. chap. i. and ii.]
In the mean time, the government of Mr. D'Israeli favors, to a
certain extent, the denominational system, and proposes [Footnote
111] to charter the Dublin Catholic University, to endow it from
the public treasury, and to grant it the right of conferring
degrees.
[Footnote 111: March, 1868.]
This plan, if carried into effect, will materially aid the Irish
portion of the church, but will not supply the want of university
education which is felt in England. Already the benefits
resulting from the state endowment of Maynooth College for
priests are clearly manifest, and the present race of
ecclesiastics in Ireland differs entirely, in several important
particulars, from that of the past generation.
{492}
They are less Galilean than they were when educated in France,
less disposed to accept of state pensions, improved in manners
and appearance, more priestly, and perhaps more firmly attached
to the Holy See. The old-fashioned "hedge-priest" has
disappeared, and if one of our bishops now dines at the Castle in
Dublin, he has not, as was sometimes the case in days of yore, to
borrow a pair of episcopal small-clothes for the occasion.
The system of mixed education has not taken root in Ireland,
though backed by all the influence of the state. The following
table will prove that neither Catholics nor Protestants there
approve it, and that, though they sometimes submit to it as a
kind of necessity, they avail themselves of it as little as
possible. The table exhibits the entire number of schools in
Ireland under the control of the National Board, and it ought to
be remembered that in these it is not allowable to teach the
Catholic religion, to use Catholic emblems, to talk of the holy
father, use the sign of the cross, or set up a crucifix or an
image of Our Lady. [Footnote 112] The schools are, in fact,
secular, so far as Catholic children are concerned, and their
religious instruction is left to the zeal and labor of their own
pastors.
[Footnote 112: Speech of Card. Cullen.]
Catholic Protestant
Children. Children.
Schools.
2,454 with Catholic teachers. 373,756 none
2,483 with Catholic teachers. 321,641 24,381
1,106 with Protestant teachers only. 29,722 114,726
184 with Protestant teachers only. none. 18,702
131 with mixed teachers. 13,690 13,305 [Footnote 113]
[Footnote 113: _Report of National Board of Education_,
1866. _Report of Meeting of Clergy of Dublin_, 18th Dec.
1867, p. 14.]
In England, grants are made from time to time by the Privy
Council of the Queen toward defraying the expenses of Catholic
poor-schools, for it is only in a hobbling way that public
opinion in this country moves toward religious and political
equality. The oppression of minorities by majorities has been in
vogue so many centuries, that the Houses of Parliament can with
difficulty be induced to administer even-handed justice to all.
The Poor-School Committee, composed entirely of Catholic noblemen
and gentlemen, conducts the affairs of Catholic poor-schools with
the concurrence of the bishops and clergy. The schools which are
subsidized by government are subject also to government
inspection. But this causes no inconvenience, because the
inspectors are Catholics, approved by the bishops, and
comfortably salaried by the state.
The reformatory schools are most useful and interesting
institutions. They date from 1854, when a law was passed to the
effect that juvenile offenders should, after a few weeks of
imprisonment, complete their term of punishment in a reformatory
approved by the secretary of state for the Home Department. By
the exertions of Cardinal Wiseman and others, reformatories were
established for Catholic children, in order that they might be
kept separate from those of other religions, and be duly
instructed by Brothers of Mercy, or other pious and charitable
persons, under the direction of a priest. Reformatory schools
have been followed by schools of industry, to which magistrates
send vagrant children, found by the police in the streets without
shelter or home. These schools also are recognized by the
secretary of state, and the members of the Conferences of St.
Vincent of Paul watch over the children's interests and provide,
as far as may be, for their welfare.
{493}
Allied to these are such schools as St. Vincent's Home for
destitute boys, at Hammersmith, [Footnote 114] where eighty poor
boys are boarded, clothed, and educated for four shillings a week
each, with thirty shillings on entrance for outfit, etc. The
Catholics of England do not wait till they become a rich and
powerful body before they engage in extensive works of charity.
On the contrary, the number of their charitable institutions is
immense, considered in proportion to their means.
[Footnote 114: Now removed to Fulham.]
During the Crimean war the want of Catholic chaplains in the army
was felt painfully. Soldiers and sailors are, of all men, most
careless about their souls, and Catholic soldiers were doubly
abandoned in the hour of sickness and death, having no minister
but a Protestant one to attend them, while in his ministrations
they had no faith. A few volunteer chaplains were therefore
allowed to accompany the troops, and this has led to their being
regularly appointed, and to such chaplains being placed on an
equality with the Protestant in rank, salary, and retiring
pensions. Vessels, also, are moored in the great harbors and
prepared for Catholic worship. A chaplain is specially appointed
to the service of such ships, and to provide for the Catholic
sailors' spiritual wants. The spirit of the Irish tar is no
longer vexed with the thought that he must live, fight, and
perhaps die for a government which abhors his religion, and
deprives him of its consolations. The captains of men of war in
the neighborhood of the floating churches just spoken of, are
obliged to see that the Catholic seamen attend Mass, and are not
now, as formerly, compelled to assist at the Church of England
prayers. The field of labor of Catholic army chaplains gradually
extends; besides being attached to many home stations, such as
Aldershot, Chatham, Portsea, Woolwich, etc., they are found in
foreign stations also, such as Bermuda, Halifax, Mauritius,
New-Zealand, St. Helena, and Malta. The Catholic chaplains, it
may be added, live on the best terms with the officers and with
the Protestant clergymen in the same barracks. "We never
interfere with each other," said one of the former a few days
since to the writer; "indeed, for my part, I would not think of
trying to convert the Protestants; I would rather spend all my
time in striving to convert the Catholics. I am sure that, out of
every hundred of our own men, there are eighty that need to be
converted."
The prisons and union work-houses also, which used to be the
scenes of so much injustice toward Catholic prisoners, paupers,
and children, [Footnote 115] have now assumed a more liberal and
Christian aspect.
[Footnote 115: _The Workhouse Question. Lamp_, Aug. 19,
1865.]
Chaplains are appointed to the larger houses of correction to
minister to Catholic inmates, and Catholic children in the
workhouses enjoy the benefits of instruction in the religion of
their parents. There is in the _Catholic Directory_, which
appears annually, a list of the charitable institutions in each
diocese, and nothing can be more cheering and hopeful than the
view it presents. Thus, in the _Directory_ for 1866, we find
in the Diocese of Westminster alone 3 Almhouses; 1 Asylum for
Aged Poor; 1 Home for Aged Females; 1 Hospital served by Sisters
of Mercy; 1 House of Mercy for Servants out of Place; 1 Night
Refuge; 1 St. Vincent of Paul's Shoe-Black Brigade; 2 Refuges for
Penitents; 1 Reformatory School for Boys; 7 Industrial Schools
for Boys, and 11 for Girls.
{494}
The impression made on society by these admirable institutions is
very great. They receive much countenance and support from
non-Catholics; they instruct and console the ignorant and
afflicted members of our own body; they call forth an abundance
of self-denying labor and charity on the part of our own people,
and tend more powerfully than any arguments to propagate the
ancient faith. They prove that our religion emanates from a God
of love, that we are not mere political schemers nor
superstitious devotees, but sober-minded, practical Christians,
battling with sin, and relieving misery in every shape. The
English public is peculiarly alive to the services of Sisters
devoted to works of Charity. You cannot walk through the streets
now, or travel by railway, without meeting them, and everywhere
they are respected. Their costume provokes no ridicule, their
youth and good looks (if such they have) are secure from insult.
Their crucifix and beads are badges of which all know the import,
and involuntary blessings attend their steps. They are, in their
way, the apostles of England. Their devotion to the sick and
wounded in the Crimea won for them the favor even of their foes.
Few will refuse them alms when they ask it for the poor. They are
types of self-sacrifice, daughters of consolation, angel
visitants. They impersonate the Gospel. Many of them come from
abroad, from France, Italy, and Belgium, impelled by an
invincible desire for the conversion of England. Their looks
bespeak their mission no less than their garb. They are calm,
collected, gentle. Children yearn toward them with instinctive
fondness, and vice itself is shamed by their silent purity. The
names of their several orders tell plainly on what their hearts
are fixed. They belong to the "Good Shepherd;" they are the
"Faithful Companions of Jesus;" they are handmaids of the "Holy
Child Jesus," of "Notre Dame de Sion," of "Jesus in the Temple,"
of "Marie Reparatrice." They are "Sisters of Mercy," of
"Providence," of "the Poor," of "Nazareth," of "Penance," of the
"Holy Family," of "St. Joseph," of "St. Paul," of "the Cross."
They address themselves to the heart rather than to the
understanding, but they are not on that account less powerful
instruments in the work of social improvement. They have broken
down many of the barriers which prejudice had raised against the
Catholic religion, and helped more than any logical triumph to
subdue the hostility and soften the language of the press.
That mighty engine is, on the whole, an auxiliary to the Catholic
cause in England. If it promulgates many falsehoods respecting
us, it is almost always ready to publish their confutation also.
It reproduces our primate's pastorals and all other documents of
public interest that emanate from our bishops. It helps us, in
the main, in the battle we are fighting for the attainment of
equal political privileges, and employs the pens of many Catholic
writers. No respectable periodical taboos a contributor because
he is a Catholic, nor excludes him from its staff if his writing
be up to the required mark, and his conduct in reference to
controversial matters be discreet. Many non-Catholic journals are
edited or sub-edited by Catholics, and this accounts in part for
the altered tone of the press toward us of late.
{495}
Our own literature has recently been marked by fewer
controversial books and pamphlets than it was some twenty years
ago. Then, every convert of distinction, when admitted into the
church, thought it incumbent on him to publish those reasons
which had influenced him most powerfully in so momentous a
change. The library tables in Catholic families were covered by
the writings of Wiseman, Newman, Faber, Renouf, Lewis, Dodsworth,
Northcote, Allies, Ward, and Thompson. Each presented his plea
for Catholicism from a different point of view, and each added
something to the aggregate of arguments derived from Scripture
and antiquity. The controversy is now taking another turn. The
church's historical ground is less violently contested, and she
is drawing from her inexhaustible armory weapons to meet subtler
foes. She faces the sceptic; she probes liberalism with
Ithnriel's spear; she establishes from the very nature of things
the necessity of an infallible standard of faith and morals. She
draws up her line of arguments with a more compact front and
extended wings. She appears at the same time more unbending and
more liberal. She recognizes more freely and joyfully than ever
the workings of the Holy Spirit in communions external to her
pale, while she insists with extraordinary earnestness on her
exclusive possession of the entire and incorrupt deposit of the
faith. Such was the purport of a remarkable letter addressed to
the Rev. Dr. Pusey by Dr. Manning, now Archbishop of Westminster,
in 1864. Never were orthodoxy and liberality more happily united
than in this pamphlet. Never did a Catholic prelate and divine
make larger admissions without sacrificing a particle of Catholic
theology. It is marked by the charity of an apostle and the
accuracy of a logician. The same remarks apply to the
archbishop's work on _England ana Christendom_. "We will
venture to say that there is no one Roman Catholic writer of
eminence in the world who has spoken more emphatically than
he--we doubt if there is one who has spoken with equal
emphasis--on the piety and salvability of persons external to the
visible church." [Footnote 116]
[Footnote 116: _Dublin Review_, July, 1867, p. 110]
The life of Catholicism in England is evinced by its numerous
associations. In every place where it has taken root, Catholics
enrol themselves in societies, confraternities, or institutes for
social, intellectual, and religious purposes. In no diocese do
these flourish more than in that of Westminster. The Archbishop
personally promotes social intercourse by throwing open his
drawing-rooms every Tuesday evening, during the London season, to
such gentlemen as may think proper to attend his receptions.
There, may be met, from time to time, prelates from distant
countries, ambassadors, members of parliament, noblemen, heads of
colleges, artists, men of science, converts, and old Catholics,
with now and then a non-Catholic guest, whom curiosity, respect
for the primate, or yearning toward a calumniated church, draws
into company to which he is little used. The Stafford Club is
another centre of union, comprising about 300 members, and
including among them a large part of the titled and moneyed
Catholics of England, Wales, and Scotland. The archbishops and
bishops of England and Ireland are _ex-officio_ honorary
members, and they frequently avail themselves of the privilege. A
middle class club has lately been opened in the city under the
primate's patronage, and at this lectures are delivered, to
which, as well as to all other advantages, non-Catholic members
are admissible.
{496}
The only condition required of such members is, that they shall
observe the rules of courtesy, and abstain (together with
Catholic members) from unbecoming controversy on religious and
political questions. Lecturing is not so popular a form of
instruction in England as in the United States, yet it is much
more generally in vogue than it was, and it is destined, we
believe, to exert a wide influence hereafter in propagating anew
the Catholic faith through the British empire.
What we need and hope for is the reaction of Catholic Ireland on
Catholic England. Centuries of cruel misgovernment have retarded
the civilization of that unhappy country, and the loss which it
sustains is not its only, but also ours. In knowledge, education,
manners, commerce, industry, liberty, in all that constitutes
national maturity, it is behind England. Reading, lecturing,
mental activity, in Ireland are all in the back ground; and
consequently the church, which there keeps alive the faith in the
heart of a peasant and small farmer population, does not act
indirectly on English Catholic society with that force which
would belong to it under more favorable circumstances. "The
centuries which have ripened England and Scotland with flower and
fruit, have swept over Ireland in withering and desolation;"
[Footnote 117] she has therefore little to give us, much to
receive from us. If England had been bountiful to her, she would,
in return, have been bountiful to England. If we had shared with
Ireland our material prosperity, she would now be imparting to us
more spiritual blessings, communication between the two churches
would be more brisk, and their relations would be marked by more
complete unity of feeling and purpose.
[Footnote 117: Archbishop Manning's Letter to Earl Grey. p. 17.]
The time is probably drawing near when this healthy and
reciprocal action of the Irish and English Catholic Church will
be fully restored. If England is to retain Ireland at all as a
part of the empire, it must be by establishing equal laws,
repealing all penal enactments against Catholics and their
religion, resolving the national system of education into
denominational schools, disestablishing and disendowing the
Protestant Church, and placing on Irish landlords such
restrictions in the tenure of land as will secure the tenant from
misery and hopeless serfdom. She must stanch the bleeding wounds
of emigration, and wipe away the tears of ages. Then, and then
only, can we hope to see Ireland a prosperous nation, her people
thrifty and happy, her civilization raised to a level with other
Christian countries of Europe, and her church putting forth all
its native might to console and instruct its own congregations,
and to aid in the work of recovering England to the faith of the
Apostles. Political and social degradation, such as that which
afflicts Ireland, is incompatible with a free and flourishing
church, with a high moral tone, religious zeal, and exemplary
lives on the part of its victims. Cottiers, and "tenants at will"
of absentee landlords, having no security that their outlay is
their own, and that they will ever reap the advantage of it;
barely earning their potatoes and buttermilk by the sweat of
their brow, and looking wistfully across the Atlantic to the
comparative wealth and luxury enjoyed by five millions of their
fellow-countrymen in America; liable at any moment to be evicted
for political motives, or that their rent may be raised; galled
and maddened by the remembrance of 50,000 evictions in one year;
[Footnote 118] such persons, we say, deprived of the protection
of the law, must be more than human if they do not in many
instances prove themselves lawless. But the day of redress is at
hand, we trust. May the day of retribution be averted!
[Footnote 118: 1849. _Butt's Land Tenure in Ireland_, p.
34.]
{497}
It is, perhaps, matter for regret that English Catholics have now
no political leader. Since the voice of Daniel O'Connell was
hushed by death, no representative of their interests in
parliament has appeared gifted with genius and eloquence of a
commanding order. Mr. Pope Hennessy has been excluded from the
House of Commons by his Irish constituents in consequence of his
conservative principles, which are not popular among them, and
has accepted the governorship of Labuan. His talents are thus
almost lost to the Catholic cause; and though there are more than
thirty Catholic members in the Commons, their influence is not
what it should be. It is neutralized by the many Irish Protestant
members who represent landed interests; and valuable as are the
services of Mr. Maguire, Mr. Monsell, Mr. Blake, and Major
O'Reilly, it is to Protestant rather than to Catholic champions
that we look now for advocacy of Irish tenant claims, and the
redress of Irish wrongs. In the House of Lords we are most feebly
represented. Out of twenty-six Catholic peers, seventeen only
have seats, and none of these are distinguished as debaters.
[Footnote 119]
[Footnote 119: See _Lord Mahon's Hist. of England_, vol.
i. p. 16.]
In the time of Charles II. the Catholic peerage was more numerous
than it is now in proportion to the commoners. Long after that
period, also, the lords and gentry held a higher position than
was in harmony with the scanty number of their poorer
co-religionists. Indeed, we have not yet recovered the blow which
was inflicted on us by the expulsion of the peers [Footnote 120]
under the rule of a sovereign who was even then a Catholic by
conviction, and avowed himself such on the bed of death. But
though the heads of old Catholic families in England do not, as a
rule, shine as public characters, they have a title to respect
which none others can claim. They represent those who suffered a
long period of banishment for conscience' sake, treasuring in
their hearts a faith more precious than courtly splendor. For
this they were outcasts and pariahs, bowed beneath invidious
disabilities and penal laws, deprived of all the material
advantages which spring from good education, brilliant careers,
and fine prospects. Despair of this world had become a part of
their inheritance, and it is no wonder that their successors to
this day are somewhat rustic and unskilled in the ways of
cabinets and courts.
[Footnote 120: _Flanagan's English and Irish History_, p.
665.]
The Catholic revival, in short, in England--a revival of whose
reality and strength we daily see the proofs--is not to be
ascribed to external causes. No zealous autocrat, no lordly
oligarchy, no foreign invasion, no laws, no concordats, have
brought it about. Everything was against it, and everything seems
now to favor it. Penal statutes, as decided and almost as deadly
as those of the Caesars, forbade it; the Revolution of 1688
excluded from the throne any sovereign professing it; George III.
fought against it as stoutly and more successfully than he did
against the American Colonies; Pitt succumbed in his efforts to
obtain for it some measure of justice; Fox abandoned its cause
politically as hopeless; [Footnote 121] and the Grenville
cabinet, with all the talents, was dismissed, because it planned
a trifling concession to Catholic officers in the army and navy.
[Footnote 121: Pellew. _Life of Lord Sidmouth_, ii. 435.
_Jesse's George III_. iii. 476.]
{498}
George IV., like his father, frowned on Catholic emancipation,
and yielded to it only under the pressure of a threatened
rebellion. But though political privileges were granted to
Catholics, it was deemed impossible that their dark, decrepit
superstition should ever regain its footing in England. The book
of common prayer witnessed against it; the preface to the
Protestant Scriptures called its head antichrist; a thousand and
ten thousand pulpits thundered against it Sunday after Sunday;
dissenters scorned and trampled on it as the worn-out garments of
the Babylonish harlot; millions of tracts and volumes pointed out
its supposed errors, and cart-loads and ship-loads of Bibles were
dispersed through the land as antidotes to its poison. Yet it
spread. It triumphed over obloquy. It appealed in its defence to
that very Bible which was believed to condemn it. It courted
inquiry. It asserted its own divinity. It baffled the law, bent
the will of kings and parliaments, scattered the arguments of its
enemies like chaff, and advanced steadily as the tide, sapping
every dam, and levelling every breakwater that opposed its flow.
In the bosom of the adverse church it found advocates, and in
almost every family it made converts. New concessions are made to
it in every session of parliament; higher and higher offices in
the state and in the magistracy are entrusted to its members; the
paltry restrictions which yet remain in force will soon be swept
away, and having once obtained social and political equality, we
have not the remotest doubt that it will obtain, also,
superiority approaching as near to supremacy as will be
consistent with the liberty of every other portion of society.
There is an increasing disposition among sectarians in England to
make common cause with Catholics on a variety of grounds. One of
these grounds has already been mentioned. They would willingly
see national education everywhere made purely denominational, and
many of those among them who are strongly attached to their own
particular form of belief would concur with the Catholic primate
in asking that the schools endowed by the state may, in each
place, be given over to the majority, whether Catholic, Anglican,
Presbyterian, or Dissenting, and that schools required by the
minority may be supported on the voluntary system. [Footnote 122]
There is, however, a difficulty in this proposal which would give
rise to endless jangling. In some places there is no majority,
religious persuasions are equally divided. In others the majority
is small and fluctuating. What is the majority this month may be
the minority in the next. How could their rival claims to
endowment be adjusted in such cases?
[Footnote 122: Letter to Earl Grey, p. 20.]
But again, there is a growing disposition among religious men of
all denominations to make common cause with the Catholic Church
in her warfare against infidelity and social crime, particularly
drunkenness. Their ministers now are constantly coming in contact
with our priests, sitting with them on committees, and speaking
side by side with them on platforms on subjects affecting the
general weal. They are beginning to recognize the great fact that
our war with infidelity is not of yesterday, that we have from
age to age maintained the fundamental truths of revelation in the
face of a world of scoffers, and that if the banner of the cross
could fall from our hands, it would lie in the dust.
{499}
Ritualists imitate our solemn rites; sedate churchmen have a
friendly feeling toward us because we hold the apostolic
succession; Biblical scholars in all sects defer to us as the
mediaeval guardians and copyists of the Bible; Low-Churchmen
endorse our doctrines of grace; Dissenters hold out to us "the
right hand of fellowship," because we also are non-conformists as
regards the Established Church; and even Quakers [Footnote 123]
see in us some hopeful features when they hear us declare that we
are affiliated in spirit to all who desire to know and obey the
truth, and who err only through invincible ignorance.
[Footnote 123: See speech of Mr. Bright in the House of
Commons, March 13th, 1868.]
As time goes on, they will give us more credit for spiritual
acumen. They will see how justly we have estimated the claims of
each successive pretender to religious inspiration and knowledge
of divine mysteries. They will ratify our decision on the
_isms_ of this as of former centuries. They will admit, for
example, that we have divined the true nature of animal
magnetism, with all those extraordinary phenomena which perplex
so many minds in England and elsewhere. To some persons these
manifestations appear wholly impostures, to others they seem real
and useful, and to others again, indifferent, absurd, and
unworthy of attention. The church, on the contrary, after sifting
the evidence adduced concerning them, pronounces them real in
many instances, useless, unlawful, and Satanic. Theologians like
Perrone and Ballerini have devoted long attention to them, and
laid bare their wickedness in its most deadly aspects. Under a
mask of mingled absurdity and terror, they reveal just so much of
the invisible world as may deceive and ruin souls. They are
horrible mimicries of the angelic and spiritual economy of the
church. In all these phases of mesmerism, somnambulism,
clairvoyance, table-turning, table-rapping, and evocation of
spirits, they testify to the truth of divine revelation in
respect to the spiritual world. So far they are of some
advantage, for the evil one is always rendering involuntary
homage to the Gospel which he seeks to pervert. But in exchange
for this, they draw deluded multitudes away from the true and
lawful way of holding communion with the dead, piercing the
mysteries of the world unseen, obtaining divine guidance, mental
illumination, cure of bodily infirmities, signal answers to
prayer, visions, ecstasies, and knowledge of future events. From
none of these things are the faithful debarred in the church, but
in spiritism, or demon-worship, they are attracted to them in
ways which are generally fatal to their morals and their faith.
We have heard from an intimate ally of Mr. Home, now a convert to
the Catholic Church, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred
those who put themselves in communication with spirits by means
of table-speaking, lose their belief in the Christian religion
and adopt a loose mode of life. The political grievances of which
English and Irish Catholics have still to complain, are of old
not of recent origin. They belong to a system now virtually
exploded, and if our statute-book were a _tabula rasa_ they
could not be written in it again. There is full proof of this in
the fact that Great Britain legislates for her colonies more
justly than for Ireland, or even for England. In Sydney and
Melbourne, in Australia, there are Catholic colleges endowed by
the government, and in Canada there is an endowed Catholic
University. Yet Ireland, with 4,500,000 Catholics, has hitherto
asked in vain for the like favors.
{500}
The colonies, moreover, are not burdened with a Protestant
establishment, but lie open to the exertions of Catholic and
Protestant missionaries alike, who receive from the state equal
encouragement and occasional subsidies. The consequence is, that
in almost every colonial dependency of Great Britain the true
church is in full activity, and gives ample proof of her divine
mission. The following table of our episcopate will show how wide
is the field of action afforded to it by the tolerant system
which England has pursued of late years. If she had not at the
Reformation fallen from the faith, there would not perhaps at
this moment be an idol temple in the world. If she should ever
return as a nation to the fold of Christ, her mighty influence
may, with the help of other Christian people, suffice to break in
pieces every fetish and exorcise the races possessed by demons.
The figures here given are of the year 1867; and it may be
observed that in all the twenty vicariates of India, Burma, and
Siam there was an increase of the Catholic population over the
preceding year, with the exception only of those which are under
the Portuguese Archbishop of Goa. In his province there was a
small decrease. [Footnote 124]
[Footnote 124: _Catholic Directory_ 1868, p. 19 to 26.]
Archbishops Bishops Vicars Apostolic
England 1 12 ...
Ireland 4 24 ...
Scotland ... ... 3
Malta |
Gozo | ... 2 1
Gibraltar |
Quebec |
Halifax |
Oregon |
British Columbia | 2 17 2
Harbor Grace |
St. John's, |
Newfoundland |
West-Indies 1 1 2
Africa ... 1 4
India, Burma, ... ... 20
Australia 1 10 ...
New Zealand ... 2 ...
Total 9 69 32
From this it appears that there are now no Catholics in the
British empire invested with the episcopal office. The number is
little short of that of the Anglican Bishops, with all the power
and influence of the state, and a vast Protestant population to
give effect to their exertions. Yet, poor and comparatively
unaided as our bishops are, the results of their labors in the
colonies and among the heathen far exceed anything which rival
missionaries can boast. As to the Russian clergy, their torpor in
regard to idolatrous nations has often been commented on, and
they are strictly forbidden by imperial edicts to endeavor to
make converts among them. [Footnote 125] It is therefore with
Protestant missionaries only that we have to vie, and these,
through their disunion, lose, in great measure, the fruits of
their zeal. The two millions sterling _per annum_, which
their societies in the British isles alone expend, [Footnote 126]
do not enable them to make head against the rapid extension of
the Catholic faith. In China, India, Ceylon, the Antipodes,
Oceanica, Africa, the Levant, Syria, Armenia, and America, they
have signally failed in converting the heathen, and in rivalling
the happy results of Catholic missions. [Footnote 127]
[Footnote 125: Wagner's _Travels in Persia_, vol. il.
204.]
[Footnote 126: _The Times_, April 19, 1860]
[Footnote 127: Marshall's _Christian. Missions_, vol. i.
9-15.]
Every Catholic nation is a vast missionary society, and if
England had been such to this day, her Indian possessions would
be basking in the full light of the gospel. But, alas! how
awfully has she betrayed her trust. The speeches of Burke, the
lives of Clive and Hastings, bear witness against her. Rapine and
cruelty marked the earlier stages of her Indian government.
{501}
During long years she left the Indians to their idols, and then
recruited her treasury by a tax laid upon them, and commanded her
troops to pay homage to the demons of the land. Her efforts for
their conversion, if they can be called hers, are feeble and
unsystematic, while Catholic missions in every part of British
India are steadily conducted on a uniform plan. Eleven years ago
there were about a million Catholics in the wide territory, and
the spirit which guided S. François Xavier, Robert de' Nobili,
John de Bretto, and Laynez, prospered the work of their hands.
Since that time the Madras Catholic Directories show that
constant progress has been made. In some dioceses from 500 to
1000 souls are reclaimed annually from Hindooism, Mohammedanism,
and Armenian sects. The lives of the converts are often most
edifying, and though much ignorance and superstition has to be
weeded out of them, they show forth on the whole the glory of Him
who has called them out of darkness into marvellous light.
Registries of adult baptisms being kept at each of the stations,
it is easy to ascertain the progress made. In 1859, 2614 adults
in the province of Madura were received into the church, and the
native college of Negapatam, frequented by young men of high
caste only, had produced seven priests, eight theological
students, a large number of catechists and school-masters, with
several government officers. The Jesuit fathers had founded five
orphanages and three hospitals, beside convents of Carmelite and
Franciscan nuns, where Hindoo women, under the constraining
influence of divine grace, led devout and austere lives.
[Footnote 128] It has hitherto been the policy of our rulers to
avoid interfering with the religion of the natives, [Footnote
129] but the time, we may hope, is at hand when more righteous
and merciful principles will prevail in the councils of state.
By promoting schism, England delays the conversion of the
heathen. Friends and foes alike testify to the inefficacy of
English Protestant missions. They can destroy faith, but never
inspire it; and those who desire to read the true records of the
triumph of the cross in heathen lands, and especially in the
dominions of Great Britain, must seek them, not in the
publications of London Missionary Societies, but in the Annals of
the Propagation of the Faith, and the writings of Mr. Marshall
and Father Strickland. [Footnote 130]
[Footnote 128: _Mission de Madurt_, par L. Saint Cyr,
S.J. (1859.)]
[Footnote 129: Marshall's _Christian Missions_, vol. i.
412-419.]
[Footnote 130: _Catholic Missions in Southern India_ to
1865.]
The present Earl Grey, though an Anglican, once said to a
gentleman from whom we heard it, that he wished, for his part,
that Catholic bishops only were supported in the colonies by the
English government; for that they alone, in his opinion, were
actuated by pure motives and self-sacrificing zeal. Earl Grey
does not stand alone in his truly liberal sentiments. Indeed, it
is wonderful how generous and enlightened many of our statesmen
have become suddenly, since the Fenians have threatened their
English homes. Impossible as it is for us to defend their
conspiracy, it seems to bear out the assertion that no people
ever obtained their rights by mere remonstrance and petition. The
injustice of maintaining a Protestant establishment in Catholic
Ireland now flashes upon our rulers like light from heaven,
though they have been told of it before a thousand times. Now
they are as eager for its destruction as they were for its
support. Now they see the matter as all Europe, all the civilized
world except themselves, saw ft long
ago.
{502}
Now they quote with approval the question proposed by Sir Robert
Peel: "This missionary church of yours, with all that wealth and
power could do for her, can she in two hundred years show a
balance of two hundred converts?" Now they endorse the opinion of
Goldwin Smith, that "No Roman Catholic mission has ever done so
much for Roman Catholicism in any nation as the Protestant
establishment has done for it in Ireland." [Footnote 131] It has,
to use Mr. Bright's words, "made Roman Catholicism in Ireland not
only a faith, but absolutely a patriotism." It has made the Irish
"more intensely Roman than the members of their church are found
to be in almost any other kingdom in Europe." [Footnote 132]
"Don't talk to me of its being a church!" exclaimed Burke. "It is
a wholesale robbery." "It is an anomaly of so gross a kind," said
Lord Brougham, just thirty years ago, "that it outrages every
principle of common sense. ... It cannot be upheld unless the
tide of knowledge should turn back." "Irish Toryism," wrote John
Sterling, in 1842, "is the downright proclamation of brutal
injustice, and that in the name of God and the Bible!" All this
English statesmen, who long obstinately resisted truth and
justice, now see and acknowledge from a conviction too prompt to
have been inspired by anything but fear. Terror has been known to
turn the hair gray in a night, and to fill the mind with wisdom
in a day. In saying this, however, we do not mean to express any
approval of Fenianism, knowing it, as we do, to be a detestable
conspiracy, secret, unlawful, and condemned by the church.
[Footnote 131: Letter in _Morning Star_, March 30,
1868.]
[Footnote 132: Speech in the House of Commons, March 31.]
The disestablishment of the Irish Protestant Church will directly
affect the condition of the Catholics in England. It will place
their Irish brethren on a social level with Protestants, and thus
add to the respectability of the entire body of Catholics in the
three kingdoms. It will diminish the number and influence of
those Irish Protestant clergymen who cross the channel year by
year to declaim on the platforms of our halls and assemblies
against the supposed corruption of the Church of Rome. It will
remove ten thousand heart-burnings from the people of Ireland,
and enable them, though differing in religion in some districts,
to live together in peace and harmony. It will increase
self-respect in both sections of the community--in the
Protestant, because they will no longer be grasping oppressors;
in the Catholic, because they will no longer be fleeced and
oppressed. The relative merits of their creeds will then have to
be discussed on even ground, and no weapons but those of the
sanctuary will avail in the fight. The voluntary system by which
their ministers will be supported will throw them entirely upon
their moral resources, and every adscititious aid in propagating
their belief will be happily rescinded. The settlement of the
Irish Church question will soon be followed by legal improvement
in the condition of tenants as regards their landlords; and thus
the two crying evils of our Irish administration being redressed,
speculation will be encouraged, commerce will thrive, fortunes
will be made, emigration will be arrested, and emigrants
recalled. The church of Catholics will share in the general
prosperity, and chapels now little better than mud hovels will be
razed to the ground to make room for buildings stately and fair
as the collegiate churches of Windsor, Middleham, and Brecon, in
the olden time, or as the Priory of Stone, the Orphanage of
Norwood, and the College of St. Cuthbert, near Durham, at the
present day.
{503}
There is at this moment a concurrence of events favorable to the
Catholic religion in the British empire, such as never was seen
before since the Reformation. No fires of Smithfield, no renegade
queen like Elizabeth, no Spanish Armada, no Gunpowder Plot, no
Puritan ascendency, no despotic house of Stuart, no Pretender, no
Titus Oates, no French or other foreign invasion, no Lord George
Gordon, no rebellion like that of Robert Emmett and Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, is looming in the distance, marring the prospect, and
nearing us to turn hope into despair. Even Fenian outbreaks are,
we believe, anticipated and virtually undone. Every sun that
shines is ripening the harvest, and were it not that the enemy is
more busy than ever in sowing tares, we might expect that within
a century the whole, or at least the larger part, of the
population of the three kingdoms would be included in the domain
of the church.
What we have most to dread is the spread of unbelief in its
subtlest and most engaging form. It comes among us with stealthy
tread, and with the smile of hypocrisy on its face. It professes
respect for the Christian religion, but with homage on its lips
carries contempt in its heart. It regards all religions as
superstitious, and the Christian as the best among bad ones. It
pervades every branch of our non-Catholic literature, and offers
fruit slightly poisoned to every lip. It combats dogma and the
supernatural in every shape, appeals in all things to the senses,
sets up humanity as its idol, and studiously confounds the
distinction between right and wrong. It maintains the authority
of Scripture, provided all that is supernatural and miraculous be
eliminated. It reveres Jesus Christ when placed by the side of
"the mild and honest Aurelius, Cakya Mouni, [Footnote 133] and
the sweet and humble Spinoza." [Footnote 134] It cites as
examples of men "most filled with the spirit of God," Moses,
Christ, Mohammed, Vincent of Paul, and _Voltaire_. [Footnote
135] It inscribes the name of Christ on volutes in tapestried
drawing-rooms, [Footnote 136] together with those of Socrates,
Columbus, Luther, and Washington. It affirms that "_we can
never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a
false opinion,_" [Footnote 137] and that "no one can be a
great thinker who does not recognize that, as a thinker, it is
_his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions
it may lead._" [Footnote 137 (sic)] It approves of "hearty
good-will evinced toward all persistence of endeavor, whether the
object of that persistence be _good or evil_ according to
moral or religious standards," and it is drawn strongly into
sympathy with such poets as Robert Browning in their "keen love
for humanity as such, a love which is displayed toward
_weakness and evil_ as much as toward strength and goodness,
provided only the attribute be human." [Footnote 138] Such
sympathy with all that is human it accounts "divine." It
worships, in short, the creature more than the Creator; it feels
no need of grace, and still less of atonement. It relapses,
consciously or unconsciously, into the frozen zone where Comte
reigns supreme master of a system of icy negatives called
philosophy--negatives the more specious because veiled under the
term positivism--where all but facts attested by the senses must
be renounced, and all final causes, all supernatural
intervention, scattered to the wind. [Footnote 139]
[Footnote 133: The fourth Buddha.]
[Footnote 134: Renan. _Vie de Jesus_]
[Footnote 135: _Autobiography of Garibaldi_. Edited by
Alexandre Dumas.]
[Footnote 136: In Victor Hugo's House in Guernsey. See his
_William Shakespeare_, p. 568.]
[Footnote 137: John Stuart Mill on _Liberty_, p. 19.]
[Footnote 138: John T. Nettleship's _Essays on Robert
Browning_. Preface.]
[Footnote 139: _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, 1839.
_Politique Positiviste_, 1851-4.]
{504}
Toward this the Protestant mind in England is daily tending with
increasing proneness, that portion only excepted which looks
upward toward Catholic ritual and dogma. Its presence is more and
more apparent among educated men, in Parliament, the
universities, the learned professions, the reviews and journals
of the day. It is an enemy that meets us in every walk, and is
more difficult to grapple with than any definite form of error.
It objects not merely to this or that part of our Creed, as
Lutheran s and Calvinists did on their first appearing, but it
meets us _in limine_ with doubts which pagans would have
been ashamed to profess. Even writers on the whole Christian,
like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, have aided in forming it; but
Neology, Strauss, Comte, Mill, Carlyle, Sterling, Hugo, have
brought it in like a flood. Mazzini propounds it openly in
_Macmillan's Magazine_, while the _Saturday Review_ and
the _Pall Mall Gazette_ adapt it weekly and daily to the
palate of the million. Not that the free-thinkers are agreed
together; they often jeer at each other. "Singular what gospels
men will believe," cries Carlyle, [Footnote 140] "even gospels
according to Jean Jacques." But _this_ is the language of
each, "Adieu, O church; thy road is that way, mine is this. ...
What we are going _to_ is abundantly obscure; but what all
men are going _from_ is very plain." [Footnote 141]
[Footnote 140: Thomas Carlyle's _French Revolution_, ii.
70.]
[Footnote 141: Carlyle's _Life of Sterling_, p. 286.]
These, then, are the two great antagonists, the Catholic Church
and Infidelity in its last and most popular shape of Positivism.
People in England are choosing their sides, and drawing nearer
and nearer to one or the other of these champions. Minor
differences are merging into the broad features which distinguish
the two. To the positivism of Comte there stands opposed the
positivism of the Church. She alone speaks positively,
authoritatively, uniformly, and permanently, respecting the
invisible world, the First Cause, the revelation of God in
Christ, in the Gospel, the Scriptures, and the Church. She bears
witness at the same time of God and of herself, and even those
who cannot accept her testimony admit that of all the enemies of
infidelity her presence is the most imposing, and her language
the most unwavering and distinct. None can accuse her of
hostility to science, for the Holy See in this, as in all past
ages, has repeatedly declared with what favor it looks on really
scientific labors. "It is _impudently_ bruited abroad,"
wrote Pius IX. to M. Mahon de Monaghan, [Footnote 142] "that the
Catholic religion and the Roman pontificate are adverse to
civilization and progress, and therefore to the happiness which
may thence be expected." "Rome," says the _Dublin Review_,
[Footnote 143] "does not aim directly at material well-being; she
does not teach astronomy or dynamics; she propounds no system of
induction; she invents neither printing-press, steam-engines, nor
telegraphs; but she so raises man above the brute, curbs his
passions, improves his understanding, instils into him principles
of duty and a sense of responsibility, so hallows his ambition
and kindles his desire for the good of his kind and the progress
of humanity, that, under her influence, he acquires insensibly an
aptitude for the successful pursuit even of physical science,
such as no other teacher could impart.
[Footnote 142: See _Rome et la Civilisation_. Paris,
1863.]
[Footnote 143: April, 1866, pp. 299, 301.]
{505}
.... It is manifest to all whose thoughts reach below the surface
of things, that the services which Lord Bacon rendered to
philosophy, and Newton to science, were indirectly due to the
Catholic Church."
If the Catholic Church is ever to be rebuilt among us in anything
like its ancient power and splendor, it must be raised on a broad
basis. We do not mean that its real foundations admit of change
or extension. They are the same from age to age. But they must,
to meet the wants of the age, be made to appear as comprehensive
as they really are. Happily, tolerant maxims now prevail in
religion, and liberal views in politics. The divine right of
hereditary kings is exploded, and persecution is no longer held
up as a sacred duty. The Catholic Church, rightly understood, is
the most liberal of all institutions. It is the source and
security of true freedom, and it is only when perverted that it
can serve the cause of despotism. It has everything to gain from
liberty, and everything to lose by adopting tyrannical
principles. Its best friends in England are those who labor to
develop and exhibit its alliance with all that is true in science
and good in mankind, and who rely more upon its heavenly powers
of persuasion than on any excommunications and anathemas, who
conciliate to the utmost without compromise, and relax rules
without ever breaking or warping them. Anti-catholic writers have
labored hard to prove that our religion is the enemy of progress,
and it is therefore our duty and interest to show by word and
deed how utterly false their assertions on this subject are. It
will be a greater triumph for the church to have demonstrated her
superior philosophy after fair discussion, than it would have
been to suppress that discussion or to shirk it. We have really
nothing to fear. Catholicism lies at the root of all sciences,
and it alone makes progress possible.
Such are the views of the wisest and best of those English
Catholics who work in the literary hive. They heartily adopt the
words of M. Cochin, in his speech at Malines. "Christianity is
the father of all progress, of all discoveries." "Every science
is one of God's arguments, and every progress one of God's
instruments." Modern science is but an offshoot of the Gospel, a
result of the Incarnation. It redeems our bodies from a thousand
disabilities and discomforts, as the Cross has redeemed our
souls. The discovery of America, the art of printing, the
telescope, the microscope, the clock, the mariner's needle, the
steam-engine, superseding the slaves who were once the machinery
of the world, gas, telegraphic wires, what are they but minor
gospels and temporary redemptions for the toiling and weary sons
of men? The Church views such improvements with delight, and sees
in them the means, when rightly employed, of restoring the broken
alliance between earthly and heavenly blessings. Is this what you
call material progress? No, no; it is all moral improvement. You
might as well call the press a material improvement as the
railroad and the telegraph. As the one brings thought into
immortal life, so the others redeem man from the sorrows of
intervening distance. The Church affiliates them gladly to
herself, and traces a moral advance in every material gain, a
development of redemption by Christ in the progress of
agriculture, improved machinery, in chloroform, in short-hand,
lithography, photography, the respirator, and ever implement and
utensil which makes labor less irksome and pain less poignant.
{506}
In the science of political economy especially, English Catholics
are anxious to rectify prevalent mistakes, and place that
delightful study on its proper basis. The writings of Ricardo and
Adam Smith, of McCulloch, Senior, and Mill, have familiarized
persons' minds with the subject, but they have failed to show how
every principle and statement of sound political economy rests on
some maxim of the Gospel or of the church.
The Utilitarian doctrines of Jeremy Bentham were as bald and
selfish as those of Malthus on Population were immoral and
absurd. Self-restraint and self renunciation are the soul of
thrift, the source of wealth, the element of labor, the
main-spring of exertion, the corner-stone of the social edifice,
the health of the community, the rectifying principle which keeps
the whole machinery of society in active and harmonious
operation. It would make the rich poor in spirit, and the poor
comparatively rich. It would place a happy limit to the extremes
of wealth and indigence. It is, or should be, the fundamental
principle of the production and distribution of wealth. If duly
carried out, it would promote solidarity in all its branches to a
wonderful extent, and secure liberty as the condition requisite
for the very existence of property and the only possible sphere
of mutual exertion. M. Perin [Footnote 144] has shown with
admirable force and precision how Catholicism establishes
self-renunciation as "the corner-stone of all social relations,"
and guarantees "the greatest freedom to man, and the greatest
security to property." The _Dublin Review_ [Footnote 145]
also has done good service in popularizing M. Perin's arguments
and supplying an antidote to the defective teaching of John
Stuart Mill, and other non-Catholic political economists.
[Footnote 144: _De la Richesse dans les Sociétés
Chrétiennes_.]
[Footnote 145: April, 1866. _Christian Political
Economy_.]
The Academia of the Catholic Religion, founded by Cardinal
Wiseman in 1861, continues to be productive of happy results. Its
main design was to exhibit, in the lectures delivered at its
meetings and published afterward, the alliance between sacred and
secular science. It is affiliated to the Academia in Rome, and
two volumes of essays read before it have already appeared in
print. [Footnote 146] The rich and varied learning of Cardinal
Wiseman, the clear, incisive style of Dr. Manning, the minute
mediaeval lore of Dr. Rock, the calm and affectionate tone of Mr.
Oakeley, the acumen and exhaustive faculties of Dr. Ward, render
these publications very attractive to Catholics who are fond of
argumentative writing. They keep up active thought and
speculation in a highly influential circle, and are valuable
landmarks in the history of the Catholic revival in England. The
meetings of the Academia are held at the Archbishop's residence
in York Place, London.
[Footnote 146: First Series, 1865. Second Series, 1868.
Longmans.]
It is a remarkable fact that at this moment [Footnote 147] there
are two political parties in the state, each of which is bent on
advancing Catholic interests, though in different ways.
[Footnote 147: April, 1868.]
Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone, the heads respectively of the
Conservative and Liberal parties, are seeking to redress one of
the great evils of Ireland, the former by _levelling up_ and
the latter by _levelling down_. The government would, if it
were able, raise the Catholic church in Ireland to a footing with
the Establishment by endowing a Catholic University and the
Catholic priesthood, while the opposition proposes simply the
disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Protestant church.
{507}
In both cases the result would be religious equality in Ireland,
though there can be no doubt that the plan suggested by the
Liberals is the more rational and feasible one. It is the one,
moreover, which is sanctioned by the Cardinal Archbishop of
Dublin and by the Archbishop of Westminster. On Sunday, the 12th
of April, the faithful in London signed a petition in favor of
Mr. Gladstone's resolutions by the Archbishop's express
recommendation. It is pleasant to see the Catholic Primate and
the future Prime Minister of England thus cooperating in the
interests of the Catholic religion, especially when we remember
that they are old friends and were at college together.
The Easter of 1868 has been marked by great increase of spiritual
activity in the churches of large towns. Numbers of Catholics who
had neglected the sacraments have been restored to the use of
them, and Protestants come Sunday after Sunday to hear the
sermons delivered in our churches. [Footnote 148]
[Footnote 148: _Weekly Register_, April 11, 1868.]
The public mind is stirred on the subject of our religion, and
curiosity in very numerous instances ends in conversion. A recent
clerical convert has placed £5000 in the hands of a prelate for
the good of his diocese, and a whole community of Anglican
Sisters of Mercy have yielded to the direction of clergymen who
are priests indeed. The Ritualist parsons are busy fraying the
way for Roman missionaries. Their altars are draped in colors
according to the season, acolytes bend before them and serve,
water is mingled with their sacramental wine, lights are burning
at their communions, the host is elevated, their robes are
gorgeously embroidered, and dense clouds of incense mount before
their shrines, as if they were dedicated to the God of unity
under the patronage of Catholic saints. Many of their flock are
deluded by this empty pomp, but many also are led by it to the
true springs of faith and the observance of a better ceremonial.
During the first half of the present century 260 religious houses
and colleges have been raised in England to repair the loss of
681 monasteries of men and women uprooted at the time of the
Reformation. If we continue and end the century with equal
exertions--and it is probable we shall exceed rather than fall
short of them--we shall by that time have nearly as many
religious institutions as our forefathers could boast after the
sway of the church in England had lasted 800 years under royal
protection.
-------------
{508}
Sketches Drawn From The Abbé Lagrange's
Life of St. Paula.
In Three Chapters.
Chapter II.
God had given great compensation to Paula in the rare natures of
her children. The eldest, and perhaps the most gifted, Blesilla,
combined with delicate health an ardent soul, quick wit, and a
charming mind. Her penetration astonished even St. Jerome. She
was full of those characteristics that make one hope everything
and fear everything. She was but fifteen when she lost her
father, and seventeen when St. Jerome first knew her, in the
first bloom of her youth and beauty. She spoke Greek and Latin
with perfect purity, and the elegance of her language was
remarkable, as well as the quickness of her intellect.
Paula, full of anxiety for such a nature, sought to give her the
counterpoise of solid piety. But Blesilla, though capable of
exalted virtues, was intoxicated by the splendors of the sphere
in which she was born and educated. Like all young girls of her
rank, she loved dress, luxury, and entertainments, and neither
the death of her father nor her mother's example had detached her
heart from the world, neither did her early widowhood; for Paula
had given her in marriage to a young and rich patrician of the
race of Camillus, who died in a short time after, leaving
Blesilla a widow and without children. But even this blow did not
suffice, and, after the usual time given to mourning, the worldly
and frivolous tastes of the young widow again rose to the
surface. She passed many hours before her glass, busy in adorning
herself, surrounded by her slaves occupied in dressing her hair
and waiting on her, and entertainments of all sorts were her
delight.
Paulina, the second daughter of Paula, was, as we have already
said, a great contrast to her sister. Less brilliant, but not
less agreeable, great good sense was her chief attribute, with
sweetness of disposition. Less captivated by the world than
Blesilla, she was more inclined to be pious. The equilibrium in
her nature was excellent. But there was nothing in any way
uncommon about her. She seemed born for the ordinary destiny of
woman. She was now sixteen, and Paula, with an instinct truly
maternal, felt that what she had to do for her child was to give
her a protector worthy of her, in a husband of sound character
and amiable disposition.
But the pearl of Paula's children was her third daughter,
Eustochium, who was sweetness and candor itself, and all
innocence and piety. Her distinguishing feature was her love for
her mother, whom she never for a moment quitted. Marcella kept
her with her for some time, and when the child returned to Paula,
she clung more than ever to her mother, like a young vine. Her
only wish was to follow in the footsteps of Paula and to be like
her, and to consecrate herself also to the service of God with
her young virginal heart. Soft and silent, but hiding under this
veil of timidity a remarkable mind, Eustochium was formed for
high purposes. She was not fourteen when St. Jerome came to Rome.
{509}
Rufina was then only eleven or twelve years of age, and the time
had not yet come for anxiety about her. It was, however,
different with Toxotius, who was younger still, but had not
received baptism, his father's family having assumed his
guardianship; and they were pagans, which grieved Paula, who
hoped to make her son a fervent Christian.
Such was the family of Paula. Her many duties to them had excited
the interest of the austere monk, who, together with Marcella,
wished to do everything possible to aid Paula in her cares.
Blesilla at once filled the mind of St. Jerome with the ardent
wish to save her from the career of worldliness on which she
seemed bent; but in vain did he try to bring her to grave
thoughts. Paulina was easier to guide, for Providence aided the
pious efforts of her friends in the husband chosen for her by her
mother, who was Pammachius, of whom St. Jerome has said that he
was "the most Christian of the noble Romans, and the most noble
of the Christians." He was also the old and tried friend of St.
Jerome, to whom this marriage gave great happiness, as well as to
Paula and Marcella.
As for Eustochium, she continued to expand and bloom under the
influence of her mother. In vain were the rich dresses of her
sisters and their shining jewels spread out before her. Her taste
for religious life was becoming more and more decided every day.
Notwithstanding her great youth, none of the maidens of the
Aventine surpassed her in prayer, or in following St. Jerome in
his laborious studies of the Scriptures. She had learnt Hebrew,
and, like her mother, had inspired St. Jerome with singular
devotion and interest. The increasing vocation of Eustochium
aroused opposition in her father's family; for it was not
possible that the progress of monastic tendencies among the
patrician women should be allowed to take root without resistance
in Rome, where opposition was made by law to anything like
celibacy for men, with open advocacy of matrimony and the honors
of maternity for women.
St. Jerome undertook to modify these ideas with his powerful pen,
and, in his answer to the attack of one named Helvidius, came off
the field completely victorious.
It was about this time, 384 A.D., that Blesilla fell ill of a
pernicious fever, which for a month threatened her life. This
illness brought her wisdom. The following is the story of her
conversion, from St. Jerome: "During thirty days," he says, "we
saw our Blesilla burning with a devouring fever. She lay almost
bereft of life, panting under the struggle with death, and
trembling at the thought of the judgments of God. Where then was
the help of those who gave her worldly counsels? of those who
prevented her from living for Christ? Could they save her from
death? No. But our Lord himself, seeing that she was only carried
away by the intoxication of youth and the errors of her century,
came to her, touched her hand, and cried out to her, as to
Lazarus, 'Arise, come forth and walk!' She understood this call,
and she arose and knew that she owed the boon of life to him who
had given it back to her." She was then but twenty years of age,
when she shone in her new-born beauty of holiness.
{510}
She, who formerly passed long hours at her toilet, now sought
only to find God; and, instead of the ornaments in which she had
liked to appear, she now covered her fair head with the veil most
becoming for a Christian woman. All the money that had been spent
for adorning herself now went to the poor. And this ardent soul,
once consecrated to God, gave itself up entirely, and, passing
with a great flight beyond ordinary natures, at once reached the
summit of human virtue and perfection.
Eustochium and Paula had not more ardor. Jerome was admirable in
his manner of seconding this generous enthusiasm. He now
instructed her in the Scriptures, and she studied first
Ecclesiastes, then the gospels, and Isaiah. She learned Hebrew to
read the Psalms. Her energy was wonderful, for her steps still
tottered from illness, and her delicate neck drooped under the
weight of her young head. But the divine book was never out of
her hands.
How shall we paint the joy of Paula at this change in her beloved
child! Her dearest wishes had been granted. This, too, was a
fruitful conversion; others imitated such an example; and Paula's
house soon became a sort of monastery, which Jerome would call
the _fireside church_. He gives a most beautiful description
of Paula and her children at this period, when the blessing of
God was so visibly on her household. Her fervor increased. She
determined on a complete sacrifice of her worldly goods, and, in
the words of St. Jerome, "being already dead to the world, though
still living, she distributed all her fortune among her
children," thereby entirely initiating herself into the holy
poverty of Christ. Notwithstanding all the consolations God had
sent her, she was still uneasy and dissatisfied; her life was not
yet all that she sighed for. A great disgust toward Rome filled
her mind, and the descriptions Epiphanius had given her of the
East rose up for ever in her, making her soul long for the
monastic life of the desert. The example of Melanie was then to
increase this longing, for Melanie had now been for some years
realizing her dreams in her convent on the Mount of Olives.
There was now nothing to prevent Paula from going. Blesilla, as
well as Eustochium, wished to follow their mother in her
pilgrimage, and many of their friends desired to join them. St.
Jerome, the veteran pilgrim, was to be their pilot to holy
places. He had strengthened them all in the love of God and
nourished them with the Holy Scriptures. His letters to
Eustochium at this time were exquisite. What could be more
touching than the friendship uniting the austere old monk and
this sweet young maiden? "O my Eustochium! O my daughter! O my
sister!" he wrote to her, "since my age and charity alike permit
me to give you these names, if you are by birth the noblest of
Roman virgins, I beseech you guard zealously your own heart and
keep it from evil. Imitate our Lord Jesus Christ, be obedient to
your parents, go out rarely, and honor the martyrs in the
solitude of your chamber. Read often and you will learn much. Let
sleep surprise you with the holy book in your hands, and, if your
head drop down with fatigue, let it be on the sacred pages."
Eustochium was grateful to him for his wise counsels, and,
wishing to express her appreciation of his letters to her, she
gathered courage to send him a little offering of a basket of
cherries, with several of those bracelets called _armillae_
and some doves. The whole was accompanied by a sweet, girlish
letter, full of affection. The cherries, she said, were a symbol
of purity, to remind him of his letters; the bracelets were such
as were given to reward brilliant deeds, and were to put him in
mind of his own victories in controversy; and, lastly, the doves
were emblematic of his tenderness to her from her childhood.
{511}
St. Jerome received with great kindness the little offerings of
his spiritual daughter, and thanked her for them in a letter full
of affection, mingled with the grave counsels which ever flowed
from his pen.
The time was approaching for the departure of Paula for the East.
It was in the autumn of 384 A.D., when Blesilla suddenly fell ill
of the same fever which had once before laid her so low. The news
of her illness filled her friends with consternation, for
Blesilla was tenderly loved by them. She sank so rapidly that
there was soon no hope left of her recovery. This was but four
months after her conversion, and God already judged her ready for
a better life, and called her to himself.
She was but twenty, and was going to die. Her mother, her
sisters, her relations, her friends, Marcella and St. Jerome, all
gathered around her death-bed in tears. Blesilla alone did not
weep. Though the fever was consuming her, a ray of celestial
light illuminated her countenance with a beauty not of earth, and
transfigured her. Her only regret was, that her repentance had
been so short. She turned to those who were around her: "Oh! pray
for me," she cried, "to our Lord Jesus Christ, to have mercy on
my soul, since I die before I have been able to accomplish what I
had in my heart to do for him." These were her last words; every
one present was moved to tears by them. Jerome eagerly offered
consolation. "Trust in the Lord, dear Blesilla," said he; "your
soul is as pure as the white robes you have worn since your
consecration to God, which though but recent was so generous and
complete that it came not too late." These words filled her soul
with peace. And shortly afterward, to use the words of St.
Jerome, "freeing herself from the pains of the body, this white
dove flew off to heaven!"
Her obsequies were magnificent, followed by all the Roman nobles.
Such was the custom of the patricians. A peculiar interest and
sympathy were felt in the fate of this brilliant young woman, as
well as universal compassion for the sorrow of her venerable
mother. The long procession walked through the streets, followed
by the coffin covered with a veil of gold. St. Jerome, though not
approving of this display, dared not interfere to prevent it, as
it seemed a sad consolation to Paula to see the honors paid to
the child so tenderly loved. She undertook to accompany Blesilla
to her last resting-place; but her strength failed, and, having
taken but a few steps, she fainted away and was brought back to
her house insensible.
The days that followed the funeral only increased her grief. She
was crushed by it. In vain did she try to submit to the divine
will, her heart failed her, and Jerome felt that he must make an
effort to give her strength, or else she would succumb to the
pressure. The effort was great on his part, for Blesilla was his
beloved pupil, and this death annihilated all his own cherished
hopes of her. He never found the courage to conclude a
commentary, begun expressly for her, on Ecclesiastes. But feeling
it a duty to help Paula, he wrote to her a letter filled with
true delicacy of feeling and Christian faith. He commenced by
weeping with her over the lost Blesilla, for he said: "While
wishing to dry her mother's tears, am I not weeping myself?"
{512}
He continued this noble letter in these words, alike reproachful
and sympathizing: "When I reflect that you are a mother, I do not
blame you for weeping; but when I reflect also that you are a
Christian, then, O Paula! I wish that the Christian would console
the mother a little."
He reminded her of the children she had left, and with all the
authority of his holy office bid her take care lest, "in loving
her children so much, she did not love God enough." "Listen," he
says, "to Jesus, and trust in him: 'Your daughter is not dead,
but sleepeth.'"
Then Jerome would picture to Paula her daughter in all her
celestial glory. He would suppose Blesilla calling upon her
mother in these words: "If you have ever loved me, O my mother!
if you have ever nourished me from your bosom, and trained my
soul with your words of wisdom and virtue, oh! I conjure you, do
not lament that I have such glory and happiness as is mine here!
What prayers does Blesilla not now offer up for you to God!" And
St. Jerome adds, "She is praying for me also, for you know, O
Paula! how devoted I was to her soul, and what I did not fear to
brave, that she might be saved."
St. Jerome's letter awoke new Christian strength and resignation
in the broken spirit of Paula. The tears ceased to flow, but the
wound bled inwardly and never healed. The void left by Blesilla
in her mother's heart must ever make it desolate. Rome became
insupportable to her, and the pilgrimage to the East, so long
thought of, seemed now the only thing that could interest her.
About this time Pope Damasus died. He was a great loss to St.
Jerome, for his successor had not the same moral courage, and
dared not sustain the old monk in advocating monastic life, which
so enraged the patricians.
Finally, worn out by persecution, and perhaps longing to return
to that solitude he had never ceased to regret, Jerome determined
to leave Rome. This was in the year 385 A.D. His friends were
only waiting for his signal to accompany him in numbers, and many
were the tears shed by his gentle pupils in Rome at his
departure. His farewell letter to them all was addressed to the
venerable Asella, through whom he sent his last greetings to
Paula, Eustochium, Albina, Marcella, Marcellina, and Felicity,
"his sisters in Jesus Christ." Many of these he was destined to
see no more. But the decision of Paula was irrevocable. She had
no longer any earthly tie to detain her. Her son, moved by the
example of his mother and sisters, had received Christian
baptism, and was soon to marry a young Christian maiden, the
cousin of Marcella. Rufina was to remain during her mother's
absence with her sister Paulina and Pammachius, and also with
Marcella, her second mother.
Eustochium was to accompany her mother, as well as a large number
of the pious community of the Aventine. They left Rome in the
autumn of 385 A.D. Paula courageously bid farewell to her
children, and the friends who had followed in troops to see her
embark. Leaning on the arm of Eustochium, she was seen on the
deck of the vessel, her eyes averted, that her strength might not
fail her as she witnessed the sorrow of her loved ones whom she
was leaving. For St. Jerome tells us, "Paula loved her children
more than any other woman."
{513}
The voyage was favorable, the vessel touching at many places of
classic interest. When they finally reached Salamines in the
Island of Cyprus, what was her joy on finding her venerable
friend, St. Epiphanius, waiting on the shore to receive her,
happy in being able to return the hospitality he had enjoyed
under her roof in Rome three years before.
The Island of Cyprus was filled with monasteries and convents
founded and protected by Epiphanius, which were a great
attraction to Paula. Holy hymns were sung where Venus but lately
had reigned supreme; and the grave of the holy patriarch Hilarion
stood near the ruins of the ancient temple of the heathen
goddess.
After leaving Cyprus, Paula went to Antioch. There Jerome and the
priests and monks who had accompanied him from Rome were awaiting
her with Paulinus, the bishop. They wished to detain her; but
since her feet had touched land her ardor to reach Jerusalem had
so increased that nothing could stop her. To follow the footsteps
of Christ, to see where his precious blood was shed, then to
visit the anachorites of the desert, such was Paula's thought.
Eustochium and her companions shared this desire. No time was
lost. A caravan was organized, Jerome and his friends on
dromedaries, Paula and her suite on asses, and they began their
journey together. The road from Antioch to Jerusalem was long and
fatiguing for women so delicately bred. A journey in those days
was full of perils of which we now have no idea. But Paula was
indefatigable, deterred by no dangers and complaining of no
inconveniences, as she crossed the icy plains at this most trying
season of the year. St. Jerome tells of the cities that she saw,
and of the emotions that she felt as her knowledge of Scripture
and of holy books brought up recollections and associations
either of Jewish or of Christian history wherever she went.
Besides, Jerome was there, with his prodigious memory and
knowledge, to throw light on every step.
As Paula approached Jerusalem, her soul was more deeply moved,
than it had yet been. The view of the landscape around the city
was desolate, even as early as the fourth century. She entered by
the Gate of Jaffa, also called the Gate of David and the Gate of
the Pilgrims. The proconsul of Palestine had sent an escort to
meet her, to receive her with honor; but with that sentiment
which later made Godefroi de Bouillon refuse to wear a golden
crown where God had worn one of thorns, Paula refused to lodge in
the palace offered for her convenience, and she and her whole
suite staid at a modest dwelling not far from Calvary; then she
started at once to visit the Holy Places. Who can describe her
feelings as she entered the church of the Holy Sepulchre? In the
fourth century, the stone which closed the entrance to the tomb
of our Lord was still to be seen by the faithful pilgrims. To-day
it is covered by a monument of marble. As soon as Paula saw it,
with great emotion she embraced it; but when she entered into the
sepulchre itself, and went up to the rock on which had laid the
body of our Lord, she could no longer restrain her tears, and,
falling on her knees, sobbed and wept abundantly. All Jerusalem
saw these tears, and were edified at the great piety of this
noble Roman lady, the daughter of the Scipios.
St. Jerome tells us that, while she was in Jerusalem, "she would
see everything," and that "she was only dragged away from one
holy place that she might be taken to another."
{514}
After having visited Jerusalem, the pilgrims travelled all over
the Holy Land, commencing with Bethlehem and Judea, then visiting
Jericho and the Jordan, Samaria and Galilee as far as Nazareth,
and finally, reorganizing the caravan, they set out for Egypt;
not, however, before paying a visit to Melanie, in her convent on
the Mount of Olives, whence they returned to Jerusalem.
Paula would now have fixed herself at Bethlehem but for this
longing to visit the fathers of the desert. They started on this,
the longest and most fatiguing part of their journey, and were
sixteen days in going from Jerusalem to Alexandria. This city was
the Athens of the East. In such an atmosphere of learning, there
had been great intellectual development among the Christians, and
the school of Christian philosophers of Alexandria was renowned
throughout the world. This was what detained Paula and
Eustochium, and particularly Jerome, some time at Alexandria,
where they were received with great hospitality by the bishop,
Theophilus. But even the most interesting studies could not make
Paula forget the principal object of her voyage to Egypt, and her
desire to see and to know the ascetics, that wonderful class of
men, who voluntarily exiled themselves from the world and from
all human ties, and astonished mankind by incredible austerities,
and by consecrating their lives entirely to spiritual things and
to a future existence. At this time the number of these
anachorites had so multiplied, that it was said that in Egypt the
deserts had as many inhabitants as the cities. Monastic life was
then in all its glory. The great anachorites, Paul, Antony,
Hilarion, and Pacomius, were dead; but their disciples lived, as
celebrated as themselves. A great work of organization had been
accomplished among them. The first men who came to the desert
lived alone in caves or cells, each following his individual
inspiration. Paul had lived forty years in a grotto, at the
entrance of which was a spring and a palm-tree, drinking the
water of the spring and eating the fruit of the tree, being his
only nourishment. Antony's life had been more extraordinary
still. But when the number of the hermits increased, they felt
the necessity of community life being established, and the
cenobites began to take the place of the anachorites, though
there remained many of the latter, dividing, as it were, the
hermits into two kinds, the Anachorites and the Cenobites. Large
convents spread out along the banks of the Nile to the furthest
extremity of Egypt.
It was not easy to visit these establishments. In going there,
many years before, Melanie and her companions had been lost for
five days, and their provisions being exhausted they had nearly
died of hunger and thirst in the desert. Crocodiles, basking in
the sun, had awaited with open jaws to devour them, and
numberless other dangers had beset them.
But this did not discourage Paula, and her route being happily
chosen, she accomplished her journey safely to the mountain of
Nitria, where five thousand cenobites lived in fifty different
convents, under the rule of one abbot. The news of her coming had
preceded her, and the Bishop of Heliopolis had come to welcome
the noble lady. He was surrounded by a great crowd of cenobites
and anachorites. As soon as they perceived the caravan, they came
forward singing hymns. Paula was soon surrounded. She declared
herself most unworthy of the honors accorded her, and at the same
time glorified God, who worked such marvels in the desert. The
bishop first conducted the pious band to the church situated on
the summit of the mountain, and there, with that hospitality for
which the monks of the East were ever remarkable, the travellers
were given the best rooms attached to the convent and intended
for the use and convenience of strangers.
{515}
Fresh water was brought to them to wash their feet, and linen to
dry them, and the fruits of the desert to refresh their palates;
after which they were allowed to visit the convents and the
hermits, whose life was very simple and very free, at the same
time holy and austere. Ambitious of reducing the body to
servitude, and to penetrate the secrets of things divine, they
united action with contemplation. Their days were passed between
work and prayer. Some were to be seen digging the earth, cutting
trees, fishing in the Nile, or perhaps plaiting the mats on which
they were to die. Others were absorbed by the reading of, or
meditation on, the Holy Scriptures. The monasteries swarmed like
bee-hives.
After having witnessed the cenobitical life, Paula went to the
desert of cells to see the anachorite life, which there was
carried out in all its austerity and all its poetry. These monks
had no walls built by man, but had retired to the mountains as to
the most inaccessible asylums. Caverns and rocks were their
dwellings, the earth their table, their food roots and wild
plants, and water from the springs their refreshment. Their
prayers were continual, and all the mountain hollows rang with
God's praises. These grottoes did not communicate with each
other, and the isolation of the anachorites was complete. Once a
week, on Sunday only, they left their cells, and, dressed in
robes made of palm-leaves or of sheepskin, they went to the
church of Nitria, where they saw one another, and also met the
cenobites. Paula wished to know and listen to these pious men.
She therefore visited all the grottoes, one by one, talking
always of the things of God to their inmates.
Paula's next visit was through a still more savage country to see
those called by St. Jerome "the columns of the desert." She cared
not for dangers nor fatigue, so that she could contemplate such
men as _Macarius_--the disciple of Antony and Pacomius--a
man so austere that he had astonished Pacomius himself, who had
watched him during the whole of one Lent plaiting mats in his
cell, without speaking to any one, all absorbed in God, and only
eating once a week, on Sunday, a few raw vegetables. None could
surpass this great ascetic. He permitted the pilgrims to
penetrate into his grotto, and delighted Paula with his holy
conversation and instruction.
Jerome admired likewise the prodigies of this pure and austere
life; but more occupied than Paula with the doctrines he heard
discussed, he had perceived that some of the monks were less
enlightened than others. It seems, as it afterward was proved,
that the theories of Origen were already beginning to trouble the
inhabitants of the desert.
There remained now, to complete Paula's insight into the life of
the hermits, but to visit the convents founded by Pacomius, which
she hesitated not to do. There were six thousand monks living in
them, governed by the venerable Serapion. Their rule divided each
monastery into a certain number of families. Their frugal lives
enabled them to extend their charities far and wide. Their
fasting and abstinence lasted all the year round, becoming only
more strict in Lent. Paula enjoyed their hospitality greatly,
learning much from Serapion that delighted her about this
well-organized monastic life which realized her ideal.
{516}
She thought for a moment of establishing herself in the desert,
and of requesting Serapion to admit her colony under the rule of
Pacomius; but the love of the Holy Places prevented her from
carrying out this plan. She said "her resting-place was not in
these deserts, it was in Bethlehem." Already had she lingered too
long! She had now learned all that she wished to learn, enough
for her own guidance. She therefore embarked with her entire
caravan for Maioma, a sea-port of Gaza; and from there, without
stopping on her way, she returned to Jerusalem, and thence to
Bethlehem, with as much rapidity, says St. Jerome, as if she had
had wings.
Here the news awaited her of the death of her daughter Rufina.
The blow was terrible to Paula, but her mind was strengthened by
all she had seen, and the voice of God reached her heart and
comforted her, and gave her stronger hope than she had ever had
in reunion hereafter with her beloved children. She sought to
make herself worthy of immortality, and her faith and her good
works brought her consolation and peace. She resolved to found
two monasteries: one for herself, Eustochium, and her friends
from the Aventine; the other for Jerome and his followers. This
was done without delay, and they at once began the life which
they longed for--a life of labor, of study, and of prayer.
To Be Continued.
-------------
To The Count De Montalembert,
With A Copy Of "Inisfail." [Footnote 149]
[Footnote 149: From a forthcoming volume of Poems, by Aubrey
de Vere, now in press by the Catholic Publication Society.]
Your spirit walks in halls of light:
On earth you breathe its sunnier climes:
How can an Irish muse invite
Your fancy thus to sorrowing rhymes?
But you have fought the church's fight!
My country's cause and hers are one:
And every cause that rests on Right
Invokes Religion's bravest son.
----------
{517}
The Legend of Glastonbury.--A D. 62.
Down in the pleasant west of England a river--the copious
Brue--follows its course to Bridgewater Bay, between the
Sedgemoors and other rising grounds. Somersetshire farmers now
drive their ploughs and graze their cattle where I am going to
describe water: thanks to those Benedictine monks whom they have
so clean forgotten. But at Christmas-tide, some sixty years after
the first Christmas the world ever saw, there were no monks at
Glastonbury; for the simple reason, there were no Christians
there. No one had banked out the waters of the Bristol Channel,
and converted a brackish and unwholesome swamp into fine arable
or pasture land. The Brue had it all its own way, to make
islands, pools, and treacherous bogs with its unrestrained
waters; until it had got so far west as to struggle with the
advancing tide of the bay.
Glastonbury has the holiest memories of any place in England; and
they date from the first moment when the faith was planted there.
The sacred name of our Lord was brought to this marshy district
in a far-off heathen land by one of his own disciples, Saint
Joseph of Arimathea.
Who has not heard of the Glastonbury thorn? A history of Somerset
would be incomplete which did not mention its blossoming every
Christmas that comes round. It was fair and fragrant for fifteen
hundred winters, while all around was sapless and dead. People
try to account for this standing miracle by something peculiar in
the soil, as they would explain away the freedom of Ireland from
snakes and toads, or the healing virtues of St. Winifred's Well.
There were probably Sadducees in Jerusalem who thought the Pool
of Bethesda was all nonsense, or a mere chalybeate. Anything you
like about the powers of nature, but nothing of the marvels of
grace. Chemistry to any extent, but of miracle not one jot.
Thorns blooming at Christmas? It is all a question of earth,
soil, stratum, and the lay of the ground, with those who are "of
the earth, earthy."
But we are now on our way to Glastonbury as Christian pilgrims,
staff in hand. And it is very fit that we should regard the old
thorn (or such suckers and cuttings of it as may be found) with
reverence. For that thorn is a Christian tree, planted by
Christian hands. More than this: it was planted by the hands
whose unutterable privilege it was to unfasten and take down from
the cross, and bear with adoring reverence to the tomb, the body
of God, separated from his soul, united ever with his divinity.
We are accustomed, in our meditations on the passion, to
contemplate the emaciated, agonized form of our Lord stretched
and racked upon the cross; or, after the _Consummatum est_,
when eventide was come, laid stark and bloodless in the arms of
the Queen of martyrs, his most desolate Mother. Naturally we lose
out of sight, by comparison, other agents and events in what
followed his expiring cry. Yet look again. In the growing dusk of
that first Good Friday, at the foot of the cross, and in the
group of five or six persons to whom the eternal Father seems to
commit the lifeless body of his Son, there is the saint of
Glastonbury.
{518}
With the dolorous Mother, and the beloved disciple, and the
saintly, penitent Magdalene, and the other holy women, and
Nicodemus, St. Joseph of Arimathea also bears his part.
To come back to Glastonbury; we must pass over some thirty years
from that sacred paschal eve. Pentecost soon followed it, with
its fiery tongues on the apostles' brows. They were illuminated
and strengthened to preach the faith over the earth lying in
darkness. So they separated on this world-wide mission, each on
the path whereon the guidance of God's Spirit led him. "Their
sound went over all the earth, and their words unto the ends of
the whole world." St. Philip went into Phrygia, and, by some
accounts, was martyred there. Others make him to have preached
the gospel in what is now France, and that St. Joseph was one of
his companions. A better supported tradition has it that St.
Joseph, with St. Lazarus and his two holy sisters, Martha and
Mary, landed at Marseilles from Judea. Anyhow, here comes St.
Joseph of Arimathea to Britain, with a faithful band of eleven
disciples. He has reached the distant region of tin-mines which
the old Phoenicians had discovered and worked in Cornwall,
Scilly, and, perhaps, the Mendip Hills. He is come not for
precious metals, but to bring the priceless word of life.
So, rather more than sixty years after the Incarnation, and while
Saints Peter and Paul are still alive in Rome, though the day of
their martyrdom draws near, we find ourselves on the brow of
Weary-All Hill, a mile or so south-west of the spot where
Glastonbury Abbey will be built.
Weary-All Hill! the name it has been known by for generations
back. But not a likely name to be given it by St. Joseph and his
eleven companions, as they stood on it for the first time,
eighteen centuries ago; as they looked on the marshy plain,
dotted with islands, in and out of which the glassy stream is
winding. Weariness, at least lassitude of spirit, was unknown to
those apostolic men. Had they not come all this way to bring the
everlasting gospel? Had not their feet been "beautiful upon the
mountains" as they crossed them, bearing this message of heavenly
love?--mountains deep in snow, yawning with frightful clefts and
precipices, gloomy with impenetrable forests, to which this
Weary-All is scarcely a mole-hill?
"At length, then," said St. Joseph, when the twelve had paused on
the brow of it to recover breath; for few of them were young, and
it was rather a pull for a Somersetshire hill--"at length we have
reached the end of our pilgrimage."
As he spoke, he pointed with his long staff to the little group
of islands already noticed. A cheery December sun lingered on the
scene, and, though it was evening, still cast a gleam upon the
wide-spread water. The Brue was winding along, noiseless and
limpid, sprinkled with its dark islets, as the shining coils of a
snake are variegated with the spots upon its skin. There was no
ice yet, though it was already the Christmas season. Perhaps the
sea-water that mingled with the marsh from the Bristol Channel
prevented its formation. The leafless thickets that fringed the
slopes of West Sedgemoor, and clothed both islands and marshland
in irregular clumps, allowed a more distinct view of the mirror
of waters than when shaded with summer foliage. There was a kind
of grave and sober animation over the whole scene.
{519}
A short distance further off, to the east, rose a solitary peaked
hill, perhaps even _then_ called the Tor. It has several
scarped lines, or passes, drawn around it, denoting that the
Romans had fortified it as a stronghold, which they occupied from
time to time. Years after, a little chapel in honor of St.
Michael the archangel will be built on its summit. Years later,
again, that little chapel will be enlarged into a stately church,
the tower of which still remains. And nearly fifteen centuries
after St. Joseph first stood on Weary-All, the last abbot of the
stately Benedictine monastery, as Glastonbury had become, was
martyred there with two of his monks. His crime was, that he
rendered to Caesar _only_ those things that were Caesar's,
and refused to acknowledge the tyrant Henry VIII. as head of
God's church in England.
Northward of where we stand, at the distance of five miles and
more, the abrupt range of the Mendip Hills caught at that moment
almost the last beams of the declining sun, as it sank, fiery
red, toward the western ocean.
"The end of our pilgrimage," said St. Joseph again, slowly, and
gazed down on the peaceful spot. "These are the islands of which
the heathen king spoke:--how are we to name him?"
"Arviragus," answered one of his companions, nay, it was the
saint's own nephew, called Helaius.
"Permitting us to set up there a Christian altar, and to proclaim
the names and the praises of Jesus and Mary."
"May the kindness be returned a hundred-fold into his own bosom,"
ejaculated Theotimus.
"Amen," answered St. Joseph fervently. And Joseph his son, and
Simeon and Avitus, and the rest, responded.
Then all knelt there on the brow of the hill; all but Hoel, their
poor pagan guide to the spot. And with Christian psalms, and the
Gloria Patri, and invocations to the court of heaven to assist
them in their praises, they poured out thanksgivings to him who
had permitted their long wanderings to cease, and their
missionary life in this heathen land to begin.
Hoel stood near, leaning on his shepherd's crook. He guessed in
general what it was about; but he understood neither Hebrew nor
Greek.
He is a true Briton of that date, is Hoel; and he might literally
be called "true blue," for he is painted all over in blue
patterns with the juice of the woad, like his northern cousins,
the Picts. His scanty garments are dyed the same hue with the
same plant, which yields its juice plentifully in this part of
Britain.
He looks at the saint, and thinks he is inquiring the name of
that principal island in the group to which his staff points.
"Iniswytryn," cries Hoel, in explanation. "You're Latin scholars,
gentlemen; so I suppose you know what that means--_Glassy
Island_." [Footnote 150]
[Footnote 150: _Insula Vitrea_, the Roman and therefore
the British name (by a slight corruption) of what was
afterward called Glastonbury. _Glas_ is the Celtic word
for grayish blue, [Greek text] and enters into numerous local
names in Ireland, Wales, and the Highlands. Its affinity with
our word _glass_ is probably more than a coincidence of
sound, the ancient glass being mostly of the same neutral
tint. Others derive the name of the place from the
woad-plant, _glaisn_, which grows abundantly in this
watered district.]
Glass, in those days, imported by the Romans into Britain, sorry
stuff as the best of it would now be reckoned in the Birmingham
or St. Helen's foundries, was thought a wonder of rarity and
beauty. So Glassy Island was a name equivalent to our calling
_another_ island that we love very dearly the
"First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea."
{520}
Hoel now spoke again in the same strange jargon as before,
composed of British, or what we should call Welsh, and a little
Latin. It was the dialect of those parts of Britain where the
Romans had established their colonies and introduced their
tongue. Be it noted, we are at this moment near the Roman
colonies of Uxella, or Bridgewater, Ad Aquas, or Wells, and
Ischalis, or Ilchester.
"So you are going to settle down there," remarked Hoel. "Won't
you offer some sacrifice on first sighting the place?"
"We have no means of sacrificing this evening, friend," answered
St. Joseph calmly, "nor to-morrow morning, I fear, unless we
obtain materials, which at present we lack."
"Means!--materials!" said Hoel, musing with himself. "Well, every
nation, I take it, has its own customs. But I know those who
would not be long without providing the materials."
St. Joseph wished to ascertain what was passing in the man's
mind. The zeal which urged St. Paul to become all things to all
men, that he might save all, burned in the holy missionary's
bosom. It made him seek out all that might serve the purpose of
his coming. He had everything to learn: language, habits of
thought, customs of social life, and the very observances of
British heathenism.
"And how," he asked, "would you offer a sacrifice, good friend,
when you had nothing to offer it with?"
"I? Nay, _I_ could not. What good would a sacrifice be from
a peasant like me?"
"To pray is to make an offering, is it not?"
"Yes; but I don't mean that. You know I mean something more; why,
something really sacrificed--consumed, to make the gods
favorable. Have you no such sacrifice in your religion? Then it
can't be the true one, _I'm_ sure!"
"Certainly," said St. Joseph, "we have the one true and adorable
Sacrifice, of which all others are mere shadows, and some of them
very dark, distorted shadows. Every morning we offer to the true
and living God that spotless Lamb who alone can take away sin, or
be a worthy thank-offering to his majesty and his mercy."
"A lamb?" said Hoel, still musing; "why, that's not to be had at
this season. But would nothing else do instead? For example, now,
I've a nice--"
"Do not concern yourself," answered St. Joseph, and smiled again,
kindly. "We shall be able to provide ourselves in a few days,
when we have made acquaintance with the neighborhood. I suppose
they grow wine in these parts?"
"Wine?" repeated the peasant, opening his eyes. "Oh! yes, to be
sure." Then, after a pause: "You're fond of wine, then, after
all, like our own Druids? Well, I should hardly have thought--"
Helaius could hardly repress a smile at his mistake.
Hoel looked at him; then, as if he had hit on the cause of his
amusement, laughed his loud clownish laugh, too.
"Wine? Ah! the very best, if you can buy it of those gray-bearded
gentlemen; and old mead, and metheglin; or cider from our apples
hereabout. We grew a mortal sight of 'em." [Footnote 151]
[Footnote 151: Glastonbury was afterward called by the Saxons
_Avalon_, or the Island of Apples.]
Then he broke out into singing, and a kind of war-dance, to
please his companions, as he deemed:
"All under yon oaks, and the mistletoe sprouting.
When victims have bled in the circle of stones.
We drink down the sunset with sword-play and shouting,
And he that refuses, we'll raddle his bones:
His bones!
And he that refuses, we'll raddle his bones!"
{521}
It was difficult not to smile at his extravagant tones and
gestures.
"Gently, gently," said St. Joseph to his companions, "or we shall
be misleading him, and doing harm."
"Oh! never mind, ancient sir," remarked Hoel encouragingly,
though he had not understood what was said. "All quite right--why
shouldn't one? Only, it strikes me, you've no place to lay in a
stock of it at present. Now, our Druids burrow out caves, 'tis
thought, somewhere under their cromlechs--"
"Listen!" interrupted St. Joseph, laying his hand on the other's
arm. He looked into Hoel's face, and gained his attention in a
moment. "Listen, while I say a thing to you. Bread and wine, the
ordinary food of man in our native land, have been appointed by
him whom we serve, as the materials of that true sacrifice which
he will accept. He requires, and will admit, no other. Animals
were sacrificed to him of old, before he appointed this new and
better way; but now--"
"You spoke of a lamb," interrupted the peasant, growing rather
sulky, "so I just took the liberty of informing you as we'd none
at your service."
It was not the moment to pursue such high and mysterious truths
with him any further. But Hoel himself would not be let off, nor
would he let off St. Joseph. Something seemed to be working in
his mind.
"A lamb is a lamb," persisted he doggedly, though he seemed to
mean no disrespect; "and a sacrifice is a sacrifice; and bread is
bread, I hope; and wine, I'm sure, is wine."
"All things are what they have been created by God," answered St.
Joseph very gently, "until it is his holy will and pleasure to
change them in any way, or even to change them into other
things."
Hoel looked at him, but said nothing. His look, though, meant
inquiry, and this St. Joseph perceived.
"Is not a tree changed into something very different from what it
was before," he went on, "when the warm air of spring breathes
upon it, and the sap rises into it, and it puts forth green buds,
and they swell, and burst, and afterward come leaves and fruit?"
"True," answered he; and then was silent, thinking.
"Did you ever see one of the trees down yonder blossom at this
season?"
For all answer, Hoel laughed, and pointed to the leafless boughs
on the island, and the shores around them.
"Could the gods whom you worship cause them to do so?"
"Not one of 'em all," answered he, with a somewhat scornful
gesture.
"Then, _who_ makes winter pass and spring return; the bud
burst forth, and the fruit ripen?"
A pause. The poor pagan was not prepared to answer.
"Now," continued St. Joseph, "my God, the one living and true,
not only has appointed the laws by which seasons come round with
their produce, and the sun rises and sets. He sometimes,
moreover, changes these things, according to his own all-perfect
will, so that the sun stays motionless in the heavens above, and
the tree blooms in mid-winter on the earth below."
Hoel mused, and mused again, while his eyes wandered from the
speaker to the rest, in whose looks he read confirmation of the
words. Then he turned to take a sweep over the wintry scene that
lay beneath and around. Woods and thickets skirting the slopes of
Sedgemoor, the osiers lining the banks of the Brue, the few
apple-trees that were even then on Iniswytryn--all without sign
of a leaf.
{522}
He bent his eyes to the ground, knit his brows, seemed determined
to hear no more, and to believe nothing of what he _had_
heard.
Still the gentle, persuasive voice of the saint sounded in his
ears:
"What is that, friend, you have in your hand?"
"My shepherd's crook," was the brief and surly answer.
"And see, my pilgrim-staff, that has aided my steps so far. Yours
was cut from a British sapling, out of your moist soil, I dare
say, no longer ago than last autumn. Mine, under a burning sky,
long years since, in Judea, a land you never heard of. It came
from a thorn-brake that had furnished thorns for a crown of which
you know nothing. Which of these two staves would bud the
quickest, if they were planted side by side?"
Hoel looked up, pleased to find something he understood. "Mine
would, of course," he grinned out. "'Tis a right slip of
mountain-ash, and would have leaves next spring, if I struck it
into the ground."
"And what if mine now budded before you could count ten?"
"You jest with me where I see no jest," exclaimed the countryman,
disposed now to be angry, "or you speak as one of the unwise."
"There is no jest here," answered St. Joseph with unruffled look.
You say truly. By no power of mine could the seasons alter, or
the effects of them. My Master has said: 'All the days of the
earth, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter,
night and day, shall not cease!' But what if his power and his
will unite to make some wonderful change in all this?"
"His power is great in the summer," answered Hoel, casting a look
at the declining sun; "but in the winter time he seems further
off, or feebler. He cannot melt the ice, nor draw up the dew, nor
warm my fingers while I stand watching my sheep."
It was plain he was speaking of his deity, then sinking in the
west, lower every moment.
"Ah!" said Avitus, "is it even such darkness as this into which
the land is plunged? Would we had pushed on sooner from Gaul!"
"Courage, brother," whispered Simeon in answer. "There has been
no time lost, Man can do but little, except pray and obey. If he
does these well, he does good all around him. What says the holy
text? 'Well done, good and faithful servant; because thou hast
been _faithful in a little_.'"
Meanwhile St. Joseph had been in silent prayer. By some
inspiration he felt moved to ask for power to work the first
miracle ever wrought in Britain. Our Lord had promised: "These
signs shall follow them that believe. In my name they shall cast
out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up
serpents, and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not
hurt them: they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall
recover." "Amen, amen, I say to you, he that believeth in me, the
works that I do, he shall do also; and greater than these shall
he do, because I go to the Father. And whatsoever you shall ask
the Father in my name, that will I do; that the Father may be
glorified in the Son."
And even while St. Joseph prayed, it seemed as if witnesses of
the miracle, and disciples of the truth, were being given him;
for, stealing up the ascent from various directions, knots of the
wild Britons, in threes and fours, converged on the summit of
Weary-All Hill.
{523}
I do not suspect Hoel of treachery, or that he had meant to lead
the foreigners into a snare. It is likely the rude inhabitants
had perceived them from afar as they stood there, their forms
traced on the hill-top against the red sunset sky. But these
new-comers seemed to have no friendly intention. Most of them
held in their hands the rude weapons of ancient British warfare.
The bare arms of some were stained blue with the juice of the
woad; others were tattooed; they had the wild and savage look we
have seen in prints of the Sandwich Islanders. So, with
threatening aspect and gestures, on they came, brandishing their
lances and _celts_, or bronze hatchets, and beginning a sort
of war-cry.
Yes; the moment was come, and the sovereignty of the true Lord
both over nature and grace was to be manifested in one and the
same moment.
St. Joseph told his companions how strongly the thought had come
into his mind. It had, indeed, guided much that he had already
said to Hoel. As by one impulse, they all knelt again, and
besought our Lord to remember now his promise; so that the soul
that had remained impervious to his word might see his work.
St. Joseph then approached the peasant, who by this time was
surrounded by his countrymen. In a mild voice, yet with an
authority not to be resisted, he said:
"Plant your staff here, upright in the ground."
Hoel was startled, looked at him, then slowly obeyed.
The multitude still gathered, their gestures more threatening
every moment.
"Call now, if you will, on your gods, that the staff may bud and
blossom."
The peasant turned by a kind of instinct to the setting sun;
clouds were mantling round it; its form was veiled; nothing seen
but a dull and rusty stain of sunset fast paling into twilight.
Hoel shook his head.
"You will not call on it to hear, to help you?"
He was answered by a gesture which implied that the power of
Hoel's god was set for that night.
Then St. Joseph, with another ejaculation of prayer, struck his
thorny staff into the ground beside the other. He made over it
the sign of the cross, saying:
"By the grace of him who for us men hung on the tree on Calvary,
wearing the thorny crown, I bid thee be as thou wert wont to be
in the bloom of spring!"
There was still light enough to see how, here and there on the
length of the staff, the shrivelled rind began to swell and to
break, how the green buds shot forth and lengthened into twigs;
how these ramified out again, branch from branch, sucker after
sucker; how the old staff expanded into a shapely trunk of
thorn-tree, crowned with a pollard head of rustling leaves.
And then through the keen wintry air was wafted such a fragrance
as had never saluted the senses of shepherd, or of dreaming bard,
wandering through the brakes and thickets of leafy May. The
seasons had been reversed at the strong prayer of the just. He
who enabled Josue to command the greater and lesser light in the
firmament, "Move not, O sun, toward Gabaon, nor thou, O moon,
toward the valley of Ajalon," now honored the name of the true
Josue, the Captain of salvation, by the "things that spring up in
the earth," [Footnote 152] which obey their Lord as perfectly as
sun, and moon, and stars.
[Footnote 152: _Benedicite omnia germinantia in terrâ
Domino_.--Dan. iii. 76.]
{524}
What cries of astonishment broke from the rude men who crowded
round! How they came trembling to the feet of St. Joseph; how
they kissed the hem of his robe, and adored him as a god! They
thought he was Baal himself; they shrieked out that the sun had
set in clouds because Baal had come in person to take the place
of his representative. And though St. Joseph and his companions
testified by signs of abhorrence and earnest words how much the
rude impiety disturbed them, yet, "Speaking these things, they
scarce restrained the people from sacrificing to them." [Footnote
153]
[Footnote 153: Acts xiv. 17.]
But this reverence, misguided and idolatrous at first, soon found
its true channel, and was directed to the Giver of every best
gift. And so the gospel was preached in Glastonbury, and grew,
and flourished, and breathed out its fragrance like the thorn
itself.
Then, after nearly fifteen hundred years, came a winter more
killing than any Christmas during which the thorn had bloomed;
and "a famine, not of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of
hearing the word of the Lord." The decree of spoliation went
forth; the royal commissioners, with a warrant from Henry VIII.,
thundered at the gates. The choir of Glastonbury, as of numerous
other shrines in England, was desecrated; treasures of literature
in the library and scriptorium were torn in shreds and scattered
to the winds, with the relics of innumerable saints. The abbot,
and two of his brethren, were drawn on a hurdle to the Tor, and
martyred on its summit; the community dispersed, and the ruins,
covering many acres, were given over to strangers, as a stable
for their cattle.
But this was long after St. Joseph and his companions had been
gathered to the saints.
-------------
The Sun. [Footnote 154]
[Footnote 154: This lecture was delivered by M. Secchi to the
scholars of the school of Saint Genevieve, on the 28th of
July last, at a scientific _soirée_, presided over by
Mgr. Chigi. It occupied two hours in the delivery, during the
whole of which time the lecturer held captive the attention
of his distinguished audience, who testified their
appreciation of its scientific and literary merits by warm
applause. The lecture will speak for itself. But in
publishing it, there is one thing which cannot be reproduced;
that is, the deep interest which necessarily attaches to the
hearing a learned man himself explain his experiments and his
discoveries. A number of figures were necessary for the
illustration of certain parts of the lecture; and these,
prepared from M. Secchi's designs by M. Duboscq, optician,
were projected on a screen, by the aid of the electric light,
thus enabling the spectators to follow the learned astronomer
with greater ease. Of these designs, etc., only the most
essential have been given in the published lecture.]
Gentlemen: From the beginning of my stay in Paris, I was invited
by persons to whom I owe great deference to lecture to you on
some of the subjects which are studied at the Observatory of the
Roman College. This invitation I felt to be in the nature of a
command, which I would readily have obeyed long before, had I not
been prevented by numerous and incessant cares. I cannot,
however, leave France without discharging the debt; and it is for
this purpose that we have met together, on the present occasion.
I propose to speak to you of the sun, and to show you what
science teaches us of its physical constitution.
{525}
For eighteen years I have studied the sun, and observed all that
passes over its surface. I hope, also, to interest you in
acquainting you not only with the fruit of my own labors, but
also with the discoveries of my learned contemporaries.
What is the sun? Such is the question which has been frequently
asked me. I confess it has always perplexed me to reply to it. I
should not be pardoned, perhaps, if I should say I know nothing
of the matter; nevertheless, it is impossible for me to give a
complete and satisfactory answer. You yourselves have addressed
this question to me with an eagerness which I appreciate as a
particular honor; and, in responding to your desire, I am going
to place before you the very interesting results which we have
obtained in the study of this luminary, to which, after God, its
creator, we owe all the physical blessings we enjoy here below.
To deal with this vast subject in something like an orderly form,
let us speak first of the new means of observation with which
modern science has furnished us; after which we shall see what
advantage we have derived from them, and in what way they have
served to make us better acquainted with the sun.
Astronomers, gentlemen, are not privileged beings. Like simple
mortals, they are dazzled by the sun. Far from sharing the
penetrating sight which poets accord to the eagle, they cannot
fix their gaze on the bright orb of day without exposing their
eyes to the greatest danger; and this danger becomes more serious
if they employ their instruments for this purpose without taking
proper precautions. Until recently, two means have been employed
to protect the eyes of the observer: first, the reduction of the
objective aperture of the glasses; and second, providing
strongly-colored glasses. These two expedients present the most
serious inconveniences. The first deprives the observer of the
advantages which he would gain from the large apertures, and the
confusion of the image is greatly augmented by the diffraction
which the small diaphragms cause the light to undergo; while the
second will not permit of our distinguishing the different colors
which may meet in the sun; and on this account the observer is
liable to fall into very grievous errors. The means now in use
effectually obviate this double inconvenience, inasmuch as they
allow of the use of the entire aperture of the glasses, and leave
to the different parts of the sun their natural color. The first
means consists of the employment of the reflective glass. A
rectangular prism of crystal is disposed in such a manner as that
its hypothenuse has an inclination of 45 degrees on the axis of
the glass. The light, on reaching the surface, divides itself
into two very unequal parts. The reflected rays are rather
feeble, but of sufficient brightness to make them pass through a
glass faintly colored, falling perpendicularly on one of the
faces of the prism, without reaching the eye of the observer. The
colored glass, not having to sustain so high a temperature, is
not so liable to break, as often happened in the old method.
If the colored glass is completely done away with, we shall
succeed by adopting a method which rests on the properties of
polarized light. When the light is reflected by a glass mirror
under an angle of 35 degrees 25 minutes, it undergoes a
modification which is called polarization. If the rays thus
polarized are received on a second glass mirror under the same
inclination of 35 degrees 25 minutes, they will divide into two
parts, one part of which will traverse the glass, and the other
will undergo a second reflection.
{526}
The quantity of light reflected by the second mirror will depend
on the relative position of the two surfaces of reflection. It
will be at the maximum if these surfaces are parallel, but
otherwise if they are perpendicular; so that, by varying the
relative position of the two mirrors to each other, we may either
augment or diminish gradually the intensity of the reflected
rays. Such is the property of the polarized light, which is
utilized for making observations of the sun. To the eye-glass of
the instrument are fixed two smooth mirrors, so adjusted as to
make to the direction which the light follows an angle equal to
the angle of polarization. One of these mirrors can turn round to
the reflected rays. Then, by putting the surface of the second
almost perpendicular to that of the first, we can observe the sun
as easily as we can the moon, seeing it in its natural color, and
we can regulate at will the intensity of the light. It is to this
new arrangement of the eye-glasses that we owe the greater part
of the discoveries of which I am about to speak to you. I ought
to add, however, that in the astronomical glasses we employ not
only two, but three and even four, of these reflections.
But to come to the consideration of the sun. Everybody knows that
it has spots; that these spots, relatively very small, are of a
black color, and also, that they adhere to the body of the sun.
They move in a manner leading us to the conclusion that this
luminary turns on its own axis in the space of twenty-five and a
quarter days, and that its equator has an inclination of seven
degrees and a half on the ecliptic. These spots are far from
being constant. They undergo, on the contrary, the greatest
changes both of form and size. They show themselves particularly
in some zones, and appear and disappear at very irregular
periods. The maximum and the minimum are reproduced at intervals
of about eleven years. One of the most curious discoveries of our
times is, that this periodicity of the solar spots has some
correspondence with terrestrial magnetism. It is impossible to
discover the point at which the two classes of phenomena unite,
but the existence of the fact is incontestable. Thus, we have
just seen the spots pass through the minimum. From September,
1866, to March, 1867, there were scarcely any of them; and during
the same period the magnetic perturbations have been very feeble.
As soon as the existence of these spots had been fully
ascertained, the questions naturally arose, What is the cause of
them, and what their nature? On these points there have been
numerous opinions, all as diverse as possible. This is not to be
wondered at; for hitherto there has been no correct observation
from which could be learned the character and the particulars of
the phenomena we desire to explain. So, without stopping to
discuss ancient theories, I am about to bring before you the
latest observations, and the conclusions at which we have
arrived. The drawings of the first observers represent the spots
as formed with a black centre surrounded by a gray tint of a
uniform figure, which is called penumbra. It is not surprising
that, with such imperfect means of observation, the theory of the
spots should remain so long uncertain, and that these phenomena
should have been taken for simple clouds floating in the solar
atmosphere. This theory, which was put forth by Galileo, has been
revived in our day. The solar spots have an aspect completely
different from that which we see in the ancient cuts.
{527}
I am going to show the drawing of several of them as observed at
the Roman College. I designed them myself, by a very rapid
process, such a process being very important for objects
essentially variable, and which change their form with great
rapidity, and in a short space of time. Here is, first, one of
the most common forms. (Figure 1.) It is a round spot, consisting
of a black centre, around which is a penumbra all ragged. The
first thing you wall observe is, that the figure of the penumbra
is far from being uniform. It is composed of filaments, very long
and very thin, which converge toward the centre. These have been
called wisps of straw, willow-leaves, etc. I prefer to call them
currents, being aware, at the same time, that it is impossible to
compare them to any known thing. They are more scattered near the
outline of the penumbra, and they become condensed near the
centre, where the light is stronger and brighter. These luminous
threads start from the outline of the spot, traverse the
penumbra, and often run into the black space that forms the
centre, where we see them floating singly, gradually becoming
smaller, and disappearing after a while.
The penumbra is not always composed exclusively of threads like
those you see. The centre is often surrounded by a uniform pale
color, over which the currents are disseminated. These currents
are not always continuous, and their different parts present an
appearance which may be compared to elongated grains.
In spite of the increased power of the instruments we employ to
observe the sun, the detached parts of the spots often appear to
us as microscopic objects. In order to form an exact idea of
their real dimensions, we must always remember that, at this
distance, four fifths of a second is equal to 140 kilometres, and
consequently these apparent threads, whose seeming width is at
most not more than one or two seconds, are in reality immense
currents, being, about the middle, of 600 or 700 kilometres in
width, while their length is at least equal to the diameter of
the terrestrial globe.
The drawings which you have just seen represent some of these
spots in their complete form and exactly defined. But they
present themselves oftener under fantastic and irregular forms.
They are sometimes accompanied by a kind of tail, itself formed
of black spots, and which seems to follow the centre in its
motion.
{528}
We have here a curious example. The centre is not quite black; we
meet with shadows there--some gray, and others red; the filaments
on all sides fall toward the centre, and their edges are turned
back and bent, as if they had experienced some resistance, or as
if they had encountered a whirlwind. Here is a spot of this kind,
(Figure 2,) the details of which are most instructive, and most
important in a theoretical point of view. We find the centre
divided in several parts by the luminous threads. This appearance
was remarked by the ancient astronomers, who explained it by
supposing that on the surface of the sun solid crusts were
formed, which broke into shivers like glass under a blow from a
stone. Modern observations, however, do not admit of this
explanation. They show us clearly that these divisions are
produced by currents which, leaving opposite edges, meet in the
middle of the centre, and thus divide the spot into several
parts.
The formation of a spot is never instantaneous. It is ordinarily
announced by the appearance of several black points, and by a
kind of diminution in the thickness of the luminous bed. These
little cavities multiply themselves; one of them develops itself,
absorbing the others, and the process ends in the formation of a
black spot in the centre. In this first phase the movements of
the spots are very irregular, and their advance is always to the
front, by reason of the solar rotation.
The drawing which is now before you represents the first
appearance of a great spot which was formed almost suddenly on
the 30th of July, 1865. The day preceding that of its appearance,
in observing the sun as usual, we had remarked only three little
cavities, of which we noted the position. On the 30th of July, at
mid-day, we found in the place of these cavities an enormous
spot, the surface of which was equal to at least ten times the
size of our globe. It was so mobile, and its form changed so
constantly, that we could scarcely draw it. We could discover in
it four principal centres, where the movement of the matter was
visible in the form of a whirlwind. In an interval of 24 hours it
had undergone some considerable changes. On the 31st of July, the
four centres were completely distinct, and the matter which
separated them seemed as if it were stretched out.
{529}
During the days which followed, this form became more and more
marked. Soon there were four spots clearly defined, which
ultimately assumed the form of four independent craters or
cavities. In the interior of these craters we perceived some
light shadows, whose form reminded us of that of the clouds we
call cirrus. Their color was different from that of the other
part of the sun which presented itself to view. As the
polariscopic eye-glass does not change the color of objects, we
are enabled to see that these clouds are often of a very decided
red; and, as this tint is clear and well marked, it is impossible
to confound it with the effects due to the achromatism of the
instruments. You see here a great number of spots presenting this
appearance, and especially in Figure 2, where the red shadows
seem intertwined with the white shadows. I have more than once
seen these luminous tongues, so to speak, transform themselves
into red veils.
This hasty view is, however, so complete as to convince us that
the spots cannot be compared to clouds, their aspect not
warranting such a comparison. If any part of them may be compared
to clouds, it is more the luminous matter; for we see it
precipitate itself in the obscure space, and there dissolve in
much the same way as we see the vapor which forms the mist
dissolve into thin air. All that we are required to believe is,
that these apparently black masses are but rents made in the
luminous veil which covers the solar body, and to which we give
the name of photosphere. It is this bed which transmits light and
heat to us. It is suspended in the solar atmosphere, just as
clouds in the terrestrial atmosphere. What appear to us as spots
in the sun is simply the effect of the rents which take place in
it. We are confirmed in this view by the well-ascertained fact
that the spots are depressions in the solar body, and that they
have the form of a funnel. This form becomes very perceptible,
when the spots are drawn by the rotary movement toward the solar
disk. When we examine a spot situated toward the centre of the
sun, we find that the shape of the penumbra is more regular. But
when the spot moves toward the edge, we see the penumbra diminish
on the side of the centre, and increase on the opposite side, in
which case it presents the appearance of a cavity in the form of
a funnel looked at obliquely.
{530}
This effect is very clearly indicated in the drawing (Figure 3)
which you have now before you, and for which we are indebted to
M. Tacchini, the astronomer, of Palermo. We have observed this
same spot at Rome, and we have made a drawing of it similar to
that you now see; but I would rather exhibit that of M. Tacchini,
because it cannot be objected that it was made under the
influence of a preconceived idea. You see that in this spot the
edge of the aperture is raised much in the same way as in the
craters of the moon, and around these apertures are elevations,
clearer and more luminous, which we call faculas.
The conclusions which I have just presented to you are also those
to which M. Faye arrived, in studying the apparent perturbations
in the movements of the spots. In short, what settles the
question definitively is the study of the spots of exceptional
grandeur when they reach the edge of the solar disk. It is then
very easy to prove that the centre is lower than that part of the
outline from which radiates the facule. Both M. Tacchini and I
proved this at Rome, in studying the grand spot of July, 1865, at
the moment in which it disappeared behind the disk of the sun.
The spots, then, are apertures, rents made in the photosphere.
But how is it that these spaces do not fill up immediately? This
is a serious difficulty, and it leads us to study the structure
of the photosphere. If the photosphere was solid, all the
movements which take place in it would be impossible. It is,
then, fluid. But, on the other hand, a fluid would naturally
spread itself until all points of the surface were on the same
level, and it would require very little time to fill a gap having
the dimensions of even the largest of the spots. The celebrated
William Herschel saw this difficulty, and he met it by a solution
which we still adopt, because it has been confirmed by
observations and discoveries; so that what to Herschel was but a
conjecture has become to us a demonstrated truth. The
photospheric matter is like our clouds, gauze-like and
transparent as ours. We often see among the clouds differences of
level--disruptions which enable us to perceive the blue of the
sky in the space which separates them. The same thing happens in
the sun; and this hypothesis, which is so useful in explaining
the phenomena I have just set before you, accords perfectly with
all the particulars observed.
We have seen, in effect, the luminous matter remain suspended and
floating in the midst of the centre, and the photospheric
currents melt in obscure parts, just as our clouds dissolve,
apparently dispersing themselves in a space completely deprived
of vapor, when the temperature is sufficiently elevated. The
little white veil in Figure 1 is a cloud about to be dissolved.
Without this dissolving force, the matter which radiates from the
circumference to the centre would not be long in filling up this
gap. As I told you just now, we have been able to seize the fact
of this dissolution of the solar atmospheric matter, and to see
these cloud-like forms change into red veils occupying a large
surface in the centre.
One thing alone remains to be proved--the existence of a
transparent atmosphere. We have for a long time presumed its
presence and its action to explain a well-established fact,
namely, that the edges of the sun impart to us less of heat and
light than the centre. This fact, inexplicable by any known laws
of radiation, is easily explained by the action of an absorbing
atmosphere; for the rays part at the edge before passing through
a thicker atmospheric stratum, proving necessarily an absorption
more considerable than that which flows to the centre.
{531}
The existence of a solar atmosphere, which was formerly regarded
as probable, has been reduced to certainty by the observation of
eclipses, and it has been shown that veritable clouds float in
this gauze-like bed.
Everybody has heard of the magnificent aureola which surrounds
the moon during the total eclipse of the sun. It is a truly
solemn moment when, the last rays having just disappeared, we see
the shadow of the moon projected on a sky of leaden hue, with a
perfectly black disk surrounded by a magnificent luminous glory,
like that which we see represented around the heads of the
saints. This aureola, at least the part nearest the disk, is
owing to the atmosphere of the sun. This spectacle is
magnificent, but it becomes much more instructive when we examine
it through a good telescope. We then perceive around the disk of
the moon gigantic flames, of a lively red, the height of which is
incomparably greater than the diameter of the earth. Some are
suspended without any support, and others take a horizontal
direction, like the smoke that comes out of our chimneys. These
flames were designated protuberances; but we knew not how to
explain them. It was even doubted whether they were real; and we
were quite disposed to attribute them to an optical illusion.
These doubts have disappeared since the observations we made in
Spain during the eclipse of 1860. On that occasion we were
stationed at Desertio de las Palmas, on the coast of the
Mediterranean, while M. De la Rue took up his post at Riva
Bellosa, at a short distance from the ocean. We succeeded at both
these stations in photographing the sun at the period of the
total eclipse, and a comparison of the two photographs has proved
that the protuberances have a real existence, that they have a
form so fixed as to give identical images at two points distant
from each other by several hundreds of kilometres. The perfect
resemblance of the two photographs is the more remarkable, from
their not having been executed at the same moment. Between the
two operations an interval of ten minutes elapsed. These
protuberances, considering their distance and their bent forms,
can be nothing but clouds suspended in the solar atmosphere, and
it is these which form the red veils that we have seen in the
centre. The observation of eclipses proves to us conclusively
that the sun is really surrounded by a stratum of this red
matter, which we ordinarily see only on the most elevated
summits.
In the photograph taken at Desertio de las Palmas during the
total eclipse, the exterior form of the atmosphere is perfectly
visible. We see that it is more extended at the equator than at
the polar regions, which is a natural effect arising from the
movement of rotation which the sun possesses. We see, in short,
that this atmosphere is livelier in its action in the two zones
on each side of the equator, in which the spots ordinarily show
themselves. The existence of a solar atmosphere being perfectly
in accordance with all known principles and with all ascertained
facts, there is no longer any room for calling it in question. We
describe the sun, then, as surrounded by a dense atmosphere in
which floats the photospheric matter. The surface of the
photosphere is far from being uniform and regular. It is, on the
contrary, wrinkled all over, and again covered with granulations.
These granulations, first perceived by Herschel, have been
carefully studied in later times.
{532}
When our atmosphere is calm and the observation very precise, the
whole bottom of the solar disk appears covered with small
luminous grains, separated by a very fine and very dark net-work,
resembling in appearance partially desiccated milk, examined
through a microscope. These points, or white grains, are of
different sizes. Where there are openings, we see around each of
them some lines of grains in the form of leaves, more or less
oval. Their mean dimension is about the third of a second. These
grains are only the upper part of the flame which inclines toward
the openings, thus proving that there is a very sensible power of
attraction in the apertures. We may even say that these
granulations resemble the appearance which the clouds known as
cumuli present when, from the summit of a mountain, their upper
part is examined. The largest spots would be, then, but an
exaggeration of this net-work, ordinarily so fine, produced by
the force which caused the flame, or rather, the stratum of the
cumulus.
But what is it that produces these spots in the sun? Here the
difficulty is singularly complicated. To reply satisfactorily to
this question, it would be necessary to become acquainted with
what passes in the interior of the solar globe. But let us,
without hesitation, and without attempting to delude ourselves,
confess that our study of the sun is confined to its external
stratum, and to the most striking phenomena of which it is the
seat; whereas, with regard to the interior mass, it is only by
the process of induction that we are enabled to arrive at any
knowledge.
Observations which we have just made lead us to the conclusion
that the spots are owing to emanations issuing from the solar
body, almost similar to the way in which matter is ejected by our
volcanoes. This is proved both by the form of the craters, which
you have just seen, and by the columns of clouds, analogous to
those arising out of volcanoes, or out of chimneys, observed
during eclipses. Here, then, is how we explain the constitution
of the photosphere and the formation of the spots. The exterior
stratum cools itself constantly by radiation, passes into the
gauze-like state, or state of vapor, and ends by precipitating
itself in the liquid state, or even in the solid, remaining,
however, suspended in the solar atmosphere, as clouds do in ours.
It is this condensed matter that forms the photosphere, and it is
from that principally we receive light and heat. From some cause
or other, a movement from below takes place in the gauze-like
mass which is situated underneath. By this movement the
photospheric stratum, raised at first, spreads itself on all
sides, forming a sort of cushion, and ends by separating itself,
leaving a wide opening in the form of a crater. While the
volcanic emission lasts, the spot remains open, and it disappears
only at the moment when the equilibrium is reestablished, by the
luminous matter filling up the void which was formed. If this
theory is correct, the circumference of the spots ought to form
the mountains above the exterior surface. Now, we have just seen
that the outline of the spots is always surrounded by faculae,
which constitute prominent elevations. Supposing it is true that
the interior mass is the seat of violent action, this conclusion
has nothing surprising in it, and we are led to it by a certain
number of other phenomena equally remarkable.
{533}
Thus, every time that a spot is produced, we remark that it is
visibly projected with a quickness greater than that of the solar
rotation. The projecting mass is then animated with a quickness
greater than the surface of the photosphere; and, in order to
explain this fact, we must admit that the matter of the interior
stratum possesses a quickness greater than the superficial part.
This novel conclusion is supported by another fact. We know now
that the rotation of the spots has not the same angular quickness
under all the parallels. The quickness is sensibly greater in the
equatorial zone than in the higher latitudes. This circumstance
forces us to the conclusion that the sun is not a solid globe,
but that its structure admits of the different strata of which it
is formed having a movement of rotation independent of each other
as regards velocity. In fact, the only explanation we can give of
this difference of quickness is, that the interior mass is fluid,
and that it is moved by a rotary process, more rapid than that of
the external surface. We cannot, however, undertake the formal
demonstration of this point on the present occasion.
This fluidity of the sun is calculated to surprise you; but you
will cease to regard it as incredible when I remind you of
certain ascertained facts about this luminary. The gravity of its
surface is twenty-eight times greater than that of the surface of
our globe, from which results an enormous pressure capable of
condensing a large number of substances, or, at least, of
singularly diminishing their volume. Looking simply at this fact,
the mean density of the sun ought to be much greater than that of
the earth. It is nothing of the kind, however, but just the
contrary; for the specific gravity of the terrestrial globe is
four times greater than that of the solar mass. We must admit the
existence of a repulsive force capable of overcoming the
molecular attraction, and of rarefying the substances which the
weight tends to condense. This repulsive force is probably owing
to the heat, and, in fact, the temperature of the sun is
estimated at not less than five millions of degrees. At this
temperature no matter could remain solid, even in spite of the
enormous pressure of which we have already spoken. It is, then,
impossible for us to admit the existence of a solid mass, and
much more that of a cold centre in the interior of the sun.
And here an objection presents itself to which I ought to reply.
If the interior mass of the sun is at a temperature so very
elevated, how is it that, when the photosphere opens, a black
spot is presented to our eyes? In examining this opening, we
perceive a substance of which the temperature is extremely
elevated, and which ought, consequently, to be very luminous. How
is it, then, that, on the contrary, it presents to us the
appearance of a very deep black? My reply is, that the black
color of the spots is a purely relative matter; that it is owing
to the contrast of the brilliant light which comes to us from the
photosphere. If we could see those apparently dark parts away
from the glittering mass of the sun, they would appear not only
luminous, but dazzling with light.
But you will say to me, it still remains true that the interior
mass of the sun is less luminous than the photosphere; but since
the superficial part constantly cools by radiation, it follows
that there ought to be less heat, and, consequently, less
brilliancy in the photosphere than in the interior mass.
{534}
With your permission, I will make a reply to this which might, at
the first blush, appear paradoxical, but which is, nevertheless,
the expression of truth. It is precisely because it is of so very
high a temperature that the interior mass of the sun sends us a
less degree of light and heat; it is precisely because it is
cooled at the point of condensation, to precipitate itself in the
liquid or solid state, that the photospheric matter becomes
hotter and more luminous. To make this plain, we have only to
recall certain well-known principles of physics. Two bodies
equally hot may not emit the same quantity of heat. One of them
may cool itself rapidly in heating the bodies which surround it;
while the other may let its heat escape only very slowly, and
heat but feebly the neighboring bodies. In this case, we say that
the first has a more considerable radiating power. Now,
philosophers know that gas has a very feeble radiating power, and
that it may be consequently at a very high temperature without
emitting around it a great quantity of light and heat. You have
an illustration now before your eyes. This lamp, fed by lighted
gas, gives a very brilliant flame, because the carbon remains
there some time in suspension before burning. Let us throw into
the flame a little oxygen; immediately the flame pales, becomes
bluish, and ceases to be luminous. Its temperature,
notwithstanding, has greatly increased, and it is now the
celebrated gas by the aid of which M. Sainte-Claire Deville melts
his platina so rapidly. The change results from the very rapid
combustion of the carbon by the oxygen. As soon as this takes
place, the flame, no longer containing any solid body, loses
almost all power of emission, and ceases, in spite of its high
temperature, to have the brilliancy which it possessed at a lower
temperature. To convince you perfectly, let us put a solid body
in this flame, now so pale, and you will see it become more
brilliant than ever. We introduce, for example, a piece of lime,
and the apartment is at once illuminated by the Drummond light,
one of the most brilliant of our artificial lights.
But, leaving the earth, let us now return to the sun. The
interior mass is undoubtedly at a very high temperature--so high,
indeed, that all the substances composing it must be in the state
of gas, possessing only a feeble radiating power; while the
photosphere is composed of matter precipitated in a liquid or
solid state, of which the radiating power must be considerable.
Here is the explanation of what seemed paradoxical in my answer.
The hottest part of the sun is not the part which warms and
lights us most, because, being in the state of gas, it produces
only a feeble radiation.
Two questions now present themselves. How is it that the sun
preserves indefinitely so elevated a temperature in spite of the
enormous amount of heat which it loses daily? Of what kind of
matter is this luminary composed? And what the nature of the
radiation which sends to us daily the light and heat which we
need? It is undoubtedly impossible to give a complete and
satisfactory answer to these questions. We may yet be able,
however, to do so; and we are persuaded that science in its
progress will only confirm and develop the explanations which we
give to-day of first principles. In the first place, it is
impossible to admit that the sun is simply a luminous globe, not
possessing any means of renewing the heat which it loses at every
moment; for, in that case, at the end of a few years its
temperature would be lowered in a very appreciable manner; and it
would not require an age to effect a complete change in the
phenomena which are dependent on it. There must be, then, a
source of heat in the sun.
{535}
We are in the habit of comparing things we do not know with those
with which we are familiar. Thus we have been led to think of the
solar globe as the seat of a combustion similar to that we
witness on our hearths. This idea is deceptive.
We know the quantity of heat which each substance throws off in a
state of combustion; we know, too, what a vast body the sun is;
and we are able to calculate with a rough but sufficient
approximation the quantity of heat which the body of the sun
would produce in burning. The result of this calculation is,
that, at the elevated temperature which the sun possesses, the
combustion of the solar mass could not be kept up during many
ages. Since the historic period this temperature would have been
so lowered as to produce a change in the seasons that has not
taken place. We are compelled, then, to abandon the idea of a
mass in combustion, as well as that of a luminous globe, and to
acknowledge that there is a secret which has escaped us.
This secret, gentlemen, chemistry is charged to unveil to us.
Astronomers profit eagerly by all the discoveries which physical
science makes, and it is by this means alone that they arrive
first at conjecture, and afterward at a knowledge of what is
taking place at prodigious distances. It is thus that the
phenomenon of dissociation recently discovered by M.
Sainte-Claire Deville, puts us in the way of explaining the
permanence of the solar temperature. We know that no combination
can resist heat. Whatever may be the stability of the
combination, whatever energy the affinitive force may possess, if
the temperature is raised to the proper degree, the elements
separate, and remain together simply in a mixed state, wanting to
combine anew when the temperature is lowered. This is what we
call dissociation; and this is just the state, for example, in
which we find oxygen and hydrogen gas, exposed to a temperature
of 2500 degrees. At such a temperature they remain in a mixed
state, without being able to form water, which ought to result
from the combination of these two elements. But the phenomenon of
dissociation cannot take place without the intervention of an
enormous amount of heat. To illustrate this, let us suppose a
kilogram of ice at zero. In liquefying it would absorb 79 degrees
of heat; to make it warm, 100 degrees would be required; in
evaporation it would absorb 640; and to dissociate it, 3955, or
nearly 4000 degrees would be necessary. What we say of water is
equally true of all the combinations; all that is required being
to change the numerical degrees of the latent heat, for fusion,
for volatilization, and for dissociation. This being so, we
arrive at the conclusion that even the least considerable
quantity of matter in a state of dissociation may be regarded as
a magazine of latent heat continually tending toward sensible
development.
The temperature of dissociation of water is almost 2500 degrees.
The temperature of the sun being at least five millions of
degrees, the whole mass of which it is composed ought to be in a
state of dissociation, and to contain consequently an enormous
quantity of latent heat independent of the sensible heat; to
which is owing this prodigiously elevated temperature.
{536}
What, then, is the effect which the solar matter ought to produce
on the radiation of which it is the seat? Almost the same effect
that radiation produces on a liquid body which has reached a
temperature of solidification. The heat necessary to keep up the
radiation is borrowed from that part of the liquid which
solidifies, so that the temperature, instead of decreasing,
remains constantly at the point at which solidification ceases.
This is really what passes on the surface of the sun. This
brilliant mass, raised to a temperature of five millions of
degrees, has a tendency to cool itself rapidly. The radiation
produces, in fact, a coolness in the superficial stratum. By
reason of this coolness, part of the gas which composes the
atmosphere is lowered below the temperature of dissociation; it
yields then an enormous quantity of heat, which from latent
becomes sensible, and prevents also an ulterior lowering of
temperature. It is sufficient to repair the continual loss of
heat that a mass of several kilograms passes daily from a state
of dissociation to one of combination; and it is evident,
considering the enormous size of the solar globe, that things may
remain in this state during millions of ages without the
temperature of the sun changing in a manner which may be felt by
us. I say, by us, for our knowledge of this temperature is
obtained at no less a distance than several hundred thousands of
degrees.
It appears, then, from the very nature of the sun, that it does
not possess an inexhaustible quantity of latent heat. A day will
come when it will no more be able to lose heat without being
cooled in a sensible manner, but that cooling will not take place
before a very distant period, and long after we have disappeared
from this world.
By way of recapitulation of the several views we have set forth,
let us endeavor to give you a precise idea of the sun, as regards
both its interior and its surface. The reasonings which we have
just advanced, founded partly on astronomical observations and
partly on known principles of science, lead us to regard the sun
as composed of a fluid or gauze-like mass, surrounded with a
photospheric stratum, the matter of which has passed through the
first stage of condensation. According to the views held by
Laplace, the sun proceeded from the hands of its creator in a
nebulous state. We are led to believe that the interior mass is
still in this state. A change has taken place only on the
surface, because there only could the loss of heat owing to
radiation produce a partial cooling. The result of this cooling
is the condensation of a relatively small quantity of matter,
which, possessing a very considerable power of emission, forms
the photosphere. It is in the presence of this photosphere that
the only difference exists between the sun and a nebula, between
the myriads of stars which people the heavens, and the nebulae
with whose existence the telescope makes us acquainted.
We come, at length, to the last with which we proposed to deal:
What is the constituent matter of the sun? What are the elements
which enter into the composition of its atmosphere and of the
photospheric bed? Some years ago, to put a question like this
would have been regarded as rashness; to attempt to answer it,
the height of folly. We only knew, from the analysis of meteoric
stones, that cosmical matter did not contain any other elements
besides those of which our globe is composed. But to-day we can
go further, thanks to the discoveries of the German Kirchoff.
{537}
We all know the solar phantom, and the brilliant colors which
result from the decomposition of the white light. This phantom
seems continuous if we make the observations in a rough manner;
but if we employ delicate means, we see that it is formed of a
multitude of black streaks and of brilliant rays perfectly
distinct from each other. It is impossible to imitate this
appearance artificially. All that we are able to do is to project
on a screen the figure of a solar appearance taken from a
drawing. You see that it is furrowed over with a considerable
number of black streaks, of which the principal ones are,
according to Fraunhofer, who discovered them, indicated by the
letters of the alphabet, A, B, C, etc. These streaks are
extremely numerous: we have counted no fewer than 45,000 of them.
I have said that it is impossible for us to imitate this
appearance with our artificial lights, and it is precisely here
that we are able to discern the nature of the different sources
of light. In fact, each source has an appearance peculiar to
itself, and by which it is characterized. The brilliant line of
the Drummond light gives a continuous appearance, and it is the
same with all the simple incandescents. But when we analyze the
light of a body in combustion, we arrive at an entirely different
result. The appearance obtained in this case is crossed by rays
which, instead of being black, are, on the contrary, more
brilliant than the colors in the midst of which they are formed.
The same thing happens when we make the rays emanating from the
electric light pass through a prism, because in this case there
is combustion, that is to say, a combination of the oxygen in
charcoals, mixed with foreign matter, from which is produced the
voltaic bow. If we are content to restore these burning coals,
they will give a continuous appearance just as lime.
The brilliant spectral rays are not always the same. They depend
on the nature of the metal which is found in the flame, and which
takes part in the combustion. You see at this moment the
appearance which silver presents: it is characterized by a
magnificent green ray. Here is now the appearance of copper,
which, we know, has a yellow ray, accompanied by a fine group of
green rays, different from those which silver produces. We now
burn some zinc, which gives a magnificent group of blue rays, a
fine red ray, and another of violet. Finally, we shall close
these experiments with burning brass, which is, as you are aware,
a mixture of copper and zinc. You will recognize in the
appearance which is produced the characteristic rays of those
metals, each of them producing its proper effect, as if it were
alone.
We learn but little, however, from these experiments, of the
nature of the substances of which the sun is composed; for the
rays which we have produced are all brilliant, while those of the
solar appearance are black. Let us see, then, in pursuing this
subject, if it would not be possible for us to obtain these black
lines with our artificial lights. Let us produce, in analyzing
the Drummond light, a perfectly continuous appearance. Now, let
us make this appearance, before reaching the screen, pass through
a deep layer of hypoazotic acid. Immediately you see it
discontinued. It is like the solar appearance, crossed over by a
multitude of black lines. The hypoazotic acid is not the only gas
that produces this result. The vapor from brome, that of iodine,
will give equally the black lines in the same circumstances, only
these lines are different from those we have just seen in the
experiment made with the hypoazotic acid.
{538}
Thus, the gases, the vapors, possessing the property of absorbing
certain luminous rays, certain colors, these rays, found no
longer in the appearance, are necessarily replaced by the black
lines we have just observed. All the gases, all the vapors, could
not, I am convinced, produce this result; for it is clear that
their power of absorption, being less considerable, could not
make itself felt, unless by means of a stratum the thickness of
which should be greater than that which we are able to use in our
experiments. We find a proof of this in what passes in the
atmospheric air. Under a feeble thickness no sensible absorption
is produced; but it is certain that the atmospheric mass absorbs
a great number of rays, and consequently gives birth to many
black lines; for in the solar appearance we observe new and very
marked lines, when the sun being near the horizon, his rays pass
through a bed of air of very considerable thickness. These rays
are principally owing to the vapor of water. We can equally
affirm the absorbent power of the atmosphere which surrounds the
planets Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. Their appearances contain
lines very different from the solar appearance. Yet, as the light
which they transmit to us comes to them from the sun, we are
forced to conclude that that light undergoes some modification in
travelling over its transparent path. It is the atmosphere of the
planets which produces this result.
The sun also possesses an atmosphere, as we have seen, and this
atmosphere ought necessarily to exercise an influence on the rays
which traverse it. Such is, in fact, the origin of the rays which
we notice in the solar appearance. They are owing to the
atmospheric absorption, and the bed of transparent but absorbent
vapor which surrounds the atmosphere, and which the rays pass
through before they spread themselves in space.
But how are we to ascertain the nature of the vapors which
produce the black lines we observe? Here physical science comes
again to our aid, and the question we have just put finds its
answer in a recent discovery. We have seen that a certain
substance in burning gives birth to certain luminous rays which
characterize it. We have also seen that this same substance, in a
state of vapor, absorbs, on the contrary, certain rays, and
produces in consequence certain black lines which are equally
characteristic. Now, by a singular coincidence, these two powers,
emissive and absorbent, are identically the same. Each substance,
in a state of vapor, absorbs precisely the rays which it is
capable of producing in combustion, so that the black streaks
produced in the first case occupy identically the same place as
the brilliant lines observed in the second. We may demonstrate
this interesting theory by the following experiment, due to M.
Toucault. We know that sodium produces in burning a beautiful
yellow light. Well, let us burn some sodium in the coals, and
between these two substances the electric light is produced. The
metal while it is burning volatilizes largely; the vapors which
are produced absorb precisely the rays which they should have
emitted in their combustion; and you see that in the yellow,
instead of a brilliant line, we have a very dark line. What we
have just seen take place with the sodium has been equally proved
by experiments on a great number of metals, and, by induction, we
may extend the application to all those on which it has been
impossible to make experiments.
{539}
Let us apply this principle to what concerns the light of the
sun. The photosphere is composed of condensed substances,
precipitated in a solid or a liquid state, floating in a
transparent and absorbent atmosphere. This matter, being simply
incandescent, ought to present to us a continuous appearance, and
this continuity can be disturbed only by the absorption of the
solar atmosphere. From this it follows, that to ascertain the
chemical nature of the substances which compose this atmosphere,
it will be sufficient to compare the black lines of the sun with
the bright lines of our artificial lights. This has been done. M.
Kirchoff first discovered that the sun contains sodium; for the
line D of Fraunhofer coincides perfectly with the brilliant lines
of this metal. It is equally well known that iron, copper, and
twenty other substances which exist upon the earth in a solid
state, would, at a temperature of five millions of degrees, be
necessarily in a state of vapor.
After having thus made a chemical analysis of the sun,
astronomers wish to go further; they have sought to know equally
the composition of the stars. We have been led by this to some
very remarkable consequences; we have been able to make a kind of
classification of these stars, and to determine the group to
which our sun belongs. It remains, then, for us now to apply the
spectral analysis to the myriads of stars which stud the heavens,
to those far distant suns, the greater part of which, perhaps,
surpass in grandeur and brightness that which is the centre of
our planetary system. It remains for us to interrogate these
scarcely perceptible bodies, sparkling at such an incalculable
distance, and to demand and draw from them the secret of their
chemical composition. This enterprise is daring, but it is not
rash. The difficulties are alarming; yet learned men are not
discouraged, for they are accustomed to see difficulties
disappear before strenuous and persevering labor.
We commenced our study of the stars with the complicated
instruments which we employ for the sun; but we soon found out
that this complication was useless. We have been able to reduce
our instruments to the number of two, a cylindrical glass and a
prism. And M. Wolff, of the Paris Observatory, has succeeded
recently in suppressing the cylinder, keeping only the essential
element, that is, the prism intended to produce the appearance.
We have examined a great number of stars, and I am going to
submit to you some of the results at which we have arrived. You
see at this moment the appearance which the star Orion presents.
This star is of a yellow color; the appearance which it produces
is deeply streaked; and it is one of the most beautiful in the
heavens. You will find there the line D of sodium, and the line b
of magnesium. These are two fundamental lines which have served
as marked points to compare this appearance with that of the sun.
Besides sodium and magnesium, _a_ of Orion contains iron,
copper, and several other known metals; but it is singular that
hydrogen is not found there in the free state, as in the sun.
There is, then, some essential difference between the stars, of
which you will be more convinced as we go further into the
subject. Here is the appearance of Sirius. You see it is not
nearly so fine. You will find two large bands in blue, in the
place of the streak F of the sun; two others in violet; and one,
very faint, in yellow. The two first are attributable to
hydrogen, and the last to sodium; but we know not to what
substance the violet is owing. In the green there are also some
very fine lines, but very difficult to seize.
{540}
What is most remarkable is, that all the white stars present the
same appearances, and half the stars that are visible belong to
this type. Thus the fine stars of the Lyre, of the Eagle, of the
Bear, Castor, etc., ought to be ranged by the side of Sirius.
There is, however, an exception in [zeta] of the Bear, which is a
yellow star. The magnificent stars of Arcturus, of the Goat, of
Procyon, belong, on the contrary, to the class of which our sun
is a type, except that the iron line E is much more marked. Their
color, of light yellow, led to the inference that they were
analogous to the sun, and the supposition has been confirmed by
spectral analysis. All know substances have an appearance which
is peculiar to them, and which characterizes them. Can we say as
much of the stars? Do they also present marked differences in
their appearance? This has been the subject of very interesting
researches. The task has been undertaken at the observatory of
the Roman College, and it has led to a result altogether
unforeseen, namely, that the stellar appearances appertain to
only a very limited number of types. We may classify them in
three groups. The first group is that of the white stars like
Sirius; the second, that of the yellow stars, of which Arcturus
and the second are members; and Orion may be regarded as a type
of the third, in which we ought to place _a_ of Hercules,
and [Beta] of Pegasus. These two last-named stars have very
remarkable appearances. They seem formed of a multitude of
channels, which are divided by large black bands. This form of
appearance shows us that the stars which belong to this type are
surrounded with atmospheres heavily charged with vapor. In this
group enters all the red stars, and in particular _Omicron_
of the Whale, that celebrated star which has been called _The
Wonderful_. Several small stars of a blood-red color have
appearances resembling each other. It is remarkable that in all
the appearances belonging to stars of this type, the black lines
occupy the same place, which proves that in general they are all
made alike.
I have observed further that certain types abound in certain
parts of the heavens, and that the stars of the same kind are
generally grouped together. Thus the white stars are found in the
Pleiades, the Bear, the Lyre, etc.; the yellow in the Whale,
Eridan, etc. The constellation of Orion deserves particular
attention; it abounds in stars of a green color, reminding us of
the nebula which is found in the same region of the sky. This
small number of types, and the grouping of which I have spoken,
constitute an unforeseen fact, the importance of which is
considerable from a cosmological point of view. We should not,
however, be hasty in drawing conclusions from it.
A curious fact has been established with regard to one of the
white stars in Cassiopeia. Its appearance is directly the
opposite of that which is presented by stars of the same color,
for, in place of black lines, it shows some brilliant lines. This
phenomenon has appeared to me so extraordinary, that I am anxious
whether it is an isolated fact. I have observed more than five
hundred stars, selecting some of the largest, and I have found
only one, [Beta] of the Lyre, which possesses the same
peculiarity. M. Wolff says that among the small stars of the Swan
he has found some examples of the same kind. A most remarkable
fact is, that these brilliant lines were found in a transient
star which glittered for a time in the Crown in May, 1866.
{541}
These observations upset the theories which had been prematurely
built upon facts formerly known. Still, there is nothing
inexplicable here. You have seen that sodium burning gives a line
of a very lively yellow, while the line becomes black if the
sodium is increased to a considerable quantity. Might not the
same thing happen with the hydrogen, which produces the brilliant
lines of which I have spoken to you? Might not a small quantity
act by radiation, while the action would be one of absorption
should the mass be greater?
After having examined the stars, it was impossible to resist the
temptation of observing the nebulae. You know that we designate
by this name the kind of white clouds which are found spread in
the heavens, and of which the nature is not perfectly known.
Herschel has assured us that many of them, by means of the
telescope, may be resolved into a multitude of small stars
approaching very closely to each other. We infer from this that
the greater part are composed in the same manner, and that the
feebleness of our instruments is the only thing that prevents us
from proving it. It is, however, admitted that many of these
nebulae are formed of cosmical matter in a state of vapor not
condensed. Everybody knows the nebulae which compose the Milky
Way. But besides those which are visible to the naked eye, there
is a vast number whose existence the telescope has revealed to
us. One, of the most celebrated is that which is found in the
magnificent constellation of Orion: we have carefully drawn it at
the Roman College, and you see at this moment a sketch of it on
the screen. The nebulae possess a very feeble light, and we had
our doubts of success in seeking to apply the spectral analysis
to them. We have, however, succeeded beyond our hopes. The
appearances obtained in these observations are very singular.
They reduce themselves constantly to luminous streaks, all the
other colors failing; it is, in another way, that which happens
when we burn an alcoholic solution with marine salt; the flame,
analyzed by the spectroscope, gives simply a yellow streak. In
the nebulae we find two green lines and a blue one. Such is the
result which we obtained in examining the large nebulae of Orion,
and that of the Milky Way in Sagittarius. Such is that, also,
which furnishes the little nebulae called planetaries, on account
of their form, which resembles that of the planets. These facts
have been established for the first time by M. Huggins.
As I have just told you, the nebulas present generally but three
lines; one belongs to azote, another to hydrogen, and the third
is unknown. This result, which was not known before, is of the
highest importance; for it teaches us that the nebulae are
composed of gas and of vapors far removed from their point of
saturation and condensation. These appearances, with luminous
lines, distinctly isolated and separated from one another,
appertain essentially to gas, and, we ought to add, to gas raised
to a very high temperature. Thus we have made a discovery by the
aid of the prism, for which the most powerful glasses had failed
us.
The nebulae, notwithstanding their shining points, are not in
general a collection of stars, but masses of cosmical matter in a
state of dissociation under the action of an extremely elevated
temperature. The collections of stars are perfectly
distinguishable by the continuity of their appearances, as we see
in the nebulae of Andromeda, and in some others which are well
known. The discovery opens a vast field of investigation, and
will be an epoch in science.
{542}
We have wandered far into the depths of space, very far from the
point from which we started. This is of no consequence, however,
for between the sun, the stars, and the nebulae there is a close
relation. The sun is simply a star approaching nearer to us than
others. According to a bold hypothesis, its entire mass was at
one period in a state of dissociation, which a great part of it
still actually preserves. The only thing that makes it differ
from the nebulae, and causes us to rank it among the stars, is
its superficial stratum of inconsiderable thickness.
What mysteries do we not discover in nature, when we investigate
it by the aid of those principles and instruments with which
modern science has furnished us! And in the presence of the
wonders, what an exalted idea ought we to form of the splendors
of the universe and the power of its Creator!
Permit me, gentlemen, in closing this lecture, to quote an
admirable thought of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus. The sun, says
that father, is the most perfect image of the Deity. You see the
effects which it produces; you enjoy its benefits; but you cannot
contemplate it directly, nor sound its depths. The loss of life,
the greatest of the earthly blessings we enjoy, would be the
punishment of the madman who would dare to invade its mysteries.
It is the same with the Deity; it is impossible for us to see in
himself; and we ought to content ourselves with admiring here
below those traces of his infinite perfections which shine in his
works.
We have succeeded, by the means with which science has furnished
us, in examining this dazzling star, and in doing so we have seen
some unexpected wonders; but how many other wonders have escaped
us, which will doubtless be discovered at some future time!
If we can thus speak of the material sun and its splendors, what
shall we not say of its prototype, when, freed from this material
covering of sense, and reduced to a state of pure intelligence,
we contemplate him with the eyes of our soul? Science and Faith
are two rays issuing from the same focus, the one direct, the
other reflected. As long as we are upon this earth we should be
content with the second, our vision not being strong enough to
support the brightness of the first. But a day will come when we
shall see the Divinity face to face; and, in the meantime, the
man who denies his unfathomable mysteries, under the pretence
that our feeble powers are not equal to their comprehension, is
as foolish as the rude peasant who should deny the wonders with
which I have entertained you, under the pretext that his eyes are
dazzled by the light of the sun. A day will come when the direct
rays of the Science of Divinity will no longer dazzle our
intelligence: the high destinies which awaits humanity will
permit of our contemplating the unclouded essence of the Deity,
as the reward of the persevering but not blind fidelity with
which we shall have here below, without pride as without
baseness, believed in his existence and admired his greatness.
----------------
{543}
Translated From The French.
An Italian Girl Of Our Day. [Footnote 155]
[Footnote 155: _Rosa Ferrucci: her Life, her Letters, and
her Death_. By the Abbé H. Perreyve.]
Continued From Page 372.
I here interrupt, for a moment, the order of these
_Letters_, to introduce a fragment from one of the writings
of Signorina Ferrucci, in which is found, eloquently developed,
the idea with which the last letter closes. Need we wonder that,
to so a pure a soul, Christianity was all mercy and all love?
Certainly not. The passions of men have so often disfigured the
sweet countenance of the gospel that those outside the household
of faith form a false idea of it, and, in their inability to
distinguish what is divine from what is human, they reject all.
But, if they would only learn to leave men and draw near to God,
to flee vain disputes and go to the centre where all is calm,
they would soon know that the genius of Christianity is indeed
love. Pure souls, whom anger and dispute have not marred, know
this well. The young author whom I am about to cite understood
it, and it is with a feeling of respect that I transcribe these
beautiful pages, which breathe so strong a perfume of the gospel:
The love of God, which inflames the heart of man and infuses
into it a holy zeal, has assuredly nothing in common with that
implacable fanaticism with which infidelity so unjustly charges
the religion of Jesus Christ. And yet it is but too true that
the sons of one Heavenly Father, the inhabitants of a world
watered by the Redeemer's blood, have more than once, while
waging cruel war upon each other, ranged themselves under the
standard of the cross. But because such horrors darken the page
of history, are we to conclude that the love of God banishes
all toleration from the human heart, or can we deny that the
Catholic religion is all love? And shall the blind fury of men
make the world forget the numberless benefits which, for
nineteen centuries, the gospel has bestowed upon all nations
and upon its most cruel enemies?
O church of the Redeemer! who dost pray for thine enemies, and
dost show thyself ever ready to succor them, even as our
Heavenly Father maketh his sun to shine upon the most
ungrateful of mankind, who was it that filled thy heart with
that holy and ever active love of all the virtues? Who gave
thee the strength to oppose at all times a tranquil front to
the masters of the world? Whence have thy martyrs derived that
courage which made them joyfully bend their heads under the axe
of the executioner? Who taught thee to confound the subtle
contradictions of the philosophers, and, with the same hands,
to break the chains of the slave? How is it that, ever firm and
immovable, thou alone hast survived the vicissitudes of all
things and the overthrow of so many thrones? Who has given thee
such power of persuasion that by its prodigies "from the very
stones are raised up children to Abraham"? In fine, whence hast
thou received that inviolable authority which resolves all
doubts, dissipates our errors, humbles the mighty, sustains the
weak, enlightens the world, pardons all faults, and consoles in
every affliction and in every distress?
{544}
Ah! who does not see that so many miracles have been wrought by
the sole power of that divine love kindled in thee by Jesus
Christ? For just as thou lovest Jesus in fatigue and in repose,
in tears and in joy, in persecution and in peace, in combat and
in victory, so also thou lovest in him and for him the humble
and the great, the faithful and the unbelieving, the poor and
the rich. There is not on this earth a human being for whom
thou dost not pray, and whom thou wouldst not, at any price,
bring back to the bosom of him who suffered for all men because
he loved all. Oh! may thy desires soon be fulfilled, holy
church of the living God!
How, then, can that man call himself the friend of God and the
true son of the church of Jesus Christ, who would oppose arms
to arms, violence to violence, forgetting these words of
Christ, "Love your enemies," "Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do"? The blind apostles of intolerance show
well that they have never penetrated in its true sense the life
of the Redeemer, who, suffering every injury, and even the
death of the cross, drew the whole world to himself by the
irresistible power of pardon and of love. He who would be
willing to forget his prejudices, and, retiring into the
solitude of his own heart, would plant there the sweet image of
Jesus Christ, such a one would soon learn how far the power of
Christian meekness transcends that of the sword, and he would
shudder at the thought of pursuing with fire and steel them
whom the cross alone may vanquish. Ah! if Jesus crucified
entered truly into our hearts, how many things would he not
make them understand! [Footnote 156]
[Footnote 156: Della Carità Cristiani.]
Again, I find, in the same paper, this beautiful sentiment:
I believe that charity consists not solely in compassionating
the sufferings of the poor and relieving them. Its character is
more general: it must be the soul of all our sentiments. For my
part, I see charity in patience, in humility, in faith, in
docile submission to superiors, in justice, in courage, in
fortitude, in contempt of the world, in the desire of heaven.
Charity is, indeed, the light of God, infinite as himself.
Whoever has received into his heart a ray of this divine light
is bound, if I may so speak, to communicate its warmth to the
whole world.
We return to the letters.
July 15.
Sweet were the impressions, Gaetano, which our walk yesterday
in that beautiful garden left on my mind. Is it not true that
the flowers, the trees, the blue sky, the pure soft air, the
song of the birds, the hum of the insects--all conspired to
speak to our hearts of God? I feel, too, that all these
beautiful things seemed more joyous to me because you were
there, for to me they all seemed to reflect the feelings of
your heart. Then those beautiful verses of my mother's which
Uncle G---- read to us affected me powerfully. Earth and
heaven, flowers and songs, all borrowed a new charm from the
harmony of those beautiful stanzas.
{545}
July 22.
I do not know the places you speak of, unless you mean Romito
and Antignano. I went as far as La Torre on foot, one beautiful
August morning, without suffering much from the heat, which was
tempered by the sea-breeze. After having traversed that long,
steep road, which becomes at every step more solitary and more
closely shut in between the hills and the sea, I went up to the
top of the little fortress, and thence for a long time I gazed
on the neighboring islands and the vast horizon where sea and
sky seemed to unite, and I even discerned some of the lands of
the Maremma. Another time, with the Plezza, the Gabrini, and
other friends, we went as far as Romito. The sun had already
sunk below the horizon. Every moment the last glimmering of
twilight was becoming more faint, and soon the moon rose behind
the hills. Her pale rays were reflected in the sea, where
nothing was seen save a solitary fishing-boat; and the gentle
murmur of the waves, as they came slowly to die on the rocky
shore, was the only sound that broke the stillness of the
night. We crossed from time to time the dry bed of one of those
torrents which fall from the mountains into the sea; and thus,
now talking, now silent, gazing, admiring, we passed the two
little towers, and, arrived at the limits of the two communes,
we stopped and turned back, as if we had reached the Columns of
Hercules, There is a comparison that would please my good
friend Louisa V----. Would you believe it, in her last letter
she gravely compares me to a navigator steering toward a new
world. "Yet no," she says, "love is a world as old as the
earth." That may be, my good Louisa; but to me it is new, all
new, Gaetano, and I believe, even, that it will never grow old,
like everything that comes directly from God, who is endless
duration in eternal youth! On this is grounded my sure hope
that, after having united us here on earth, he will unite us
again in the life to come; and this thought alone raises me
from earth to heaven!
This was not the first time that Rosa had visited Antignano. That
calm and lovely shore had witnessed the sports of her childhood.
Three or four years before the date of the last letter we have
given, she wrote from that place to one of her young friends the
following pretty letter:
Antignano, July, 1853.
In spite of our joy at being here, believe me, my dear Maria,
we feel your absence sadly. It turns to melancholy the joyous
memories of last year. This is from my heart, Maria; how happy
I should be to have you at this moment by my side! Come back to
us then, dear friend, come back! The little wood where we spent
so many happy hours, the great shady trees, the smiling
country, and the sea--all call you back. Why, it is but two
days since I heard a wave which came bounding over the sea say
to you, "Come down, young girl, from the flowery bank into this
calm sea, and yield to the invitation of the sun, who with his
brilliant rays is brightening air and earth and water." But
this pretty song of the naiad was suddenly interrupted, for my
poor wave broke and expired on a rock. All its sister wavelets
murmured the same prayer to you, but all, like the first, soon
broke upon the shore; and I grew pensive at the sight, for
those poor waves, vanishing so quickly, seemed to me a true
image of our shattered hopes, which cause us so many tears.
Meanwhile a little interior voice remained with me, and
murmured sweetly in my ear, "Courage, courage! Why are you sad?
Cannot Maria come back? I am your good friend Hope, listen to
me and believe me: I promise you that next year Maria shall be
here." This consoled me a little, for I always believe what my
good friend Hope tells me. Courage, then, and patience, and I
am sure of having you yet at Antignano. Dear Maria, pardon this
letter, which is as long as it is foolish, and, if you do not
understand it, seek in it only a new proof of my tender
affection for you. Meanwhile, let us leave the world of dreams
and enter that of news. ...
{546}
To Gaetano.
July 28.
This day brings to us a mournful anniversary. Poor Charles
Albert! on this day, and at the very hour in which I write, he
yielded up to God his soul, oppressed with grief, but still
full of an unshaken confidence in the justice of his cause and
the imprescriptibility of his rights. Doubtless the saints have
welcomed into heaven him who on earth loved God and suffered
for justice' sake. It is with feelings of compassion that I
think of the king, his son, surviving all his family, who have,
one after the other, gone before him to the grave.
This enthusiastic remembrance of the house of Savoy is not the
only one to be found in the letters of Rosa Ferrucci. The
misfortunes of the king, Charles Albert; the death of the Duke of
Genoa, his son; the ruin of so many hopes, for a moment
triumphant--all these often call forth in her correspondence
plaints and regrets. I like to see this love of national
independence in so pure a soul. She says somewhere:
"In considering the history of nations, we discover at every
step new and infallible proofs of the wisdom and omnipotence of
him who directs the affairs of the world; of that mysterious
justice which surpasses all human understanding as the heavens
surpass the earth. Hope, then, in the Lord, ye victims of
oppression! Acknowledge the hand which alone can give you
deliverance! And you, usurpers of the rights of the vanquished,
triumph not without trembling at the tears which you have
caused to flow. He lives, he will live for ever, who will never
remain deaf to the lamentations of his people Israel. If he
defers his justice, are you to cease to believe in him? Because
he can wait, will your presumption know no bounds? Do you
forget that God is patient because he is eternal?" [Footnote
157]
[Footnote 157: Della Carità Cristiani]
Patriotism was, however, a family tradition with Rosa Ferrucci.
At the time of the memorable events which, in 1848, threatened
the speedy overthrow of Austrian rule in Italy, Signer Ferrucci,
with his colleagues in the University of Pisa, quitted his chair,
and, at the head of the students, who had formed themselves into
a body, set out for the army, accompanied by his young son. They
took part in all the battles of that unfortunate campaign--at
first in its victories, then in its reverses--and returned to
Pisa only after the ruin of the last hope. These are facts too
little known in the contemporary history of that unhappy Italy
whose faults are the theme of every tongue, while few know how
many noble hearts she can still produce.
We resume the correspondence:
August 4.
May I tell you, Gaetano, what I have been thinking about our
future life? We must first, as we have so often said, have
continually present to our minds the will of God, endeavor to
accomplish it in all things, and be ever submissive to it from
our inmost hearts. Then we must have but one heart and one soul
in serving God, and I hope that we shall have but one heart
also in loving our dear parents. What ingratitude would be ours
if in our happiness we forgot them to whom we owe so much, and
who loved us before we knew what love was! [Footnote 158]
[Footnote 158: "Prima che noi potessimo sapere che fosse
amore."]
{547}
Let us endeavor so to regulate the affections of our hearts
that one shall not be stifled by the other, but that all,
forming a sweet harmony, may rise toward him who created us,
and for whom alone we must live. May he alone be the end of all
our actions and of all our thoughts! Then fatigue will never
overcome our courage, our duties will never seem too heavy, our
life will be calm, our intentions pure, and we shall taste even
here below that interior peace,
"Which no one knows but he who feels it."
Such is the plan of our life. I have but lightly sketched it,
fearing that I might seem to be giving counsels and prescribing
rules to you. All this is possible only by the grace of God.
Let us beg it through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin at
the approaching festival of the Assumption; we have so great
need of her protection and guidance.
"We pray for grace and it obtain
From her who is its mother."
September 15.
To-day I am as sad as I was joyous yesterday. Your departure,
the thought of an inevitable separation from my father and
mother, a thousand conflicting feelings in my heart,
undefinable to myself, have made me weep. Alas for us women! we
are weaker than the leaves which are stripped from the trees
and scattered by the first wind of autumn; and, childhood
scarce passed, our hearts, capable only of loving and
suffering, are torn by a thousand contrary emotions of joy and
sadness. Pardon me these murmurs, O my God! No, I ought not to
weep, but ought rather to pour out my soul in thanksgiving.
I open my whole heart to you, Gaetano, because it is you who
are to be the support of my life; to share all my thoughts,
dispel my fears, and be my counsellor and guide. Singular
thing! my new hopes have made all my feelings more keen and
ardent. Hence those alternations of joy and sadness, to whose
deepest emotions I was till lately a stranger. As it is, I do
not know how I am to tear myself from the arms of those who
watched over my childhood and who love me so much. But let us
forget all this to-day. I can no longer speak of my mother
without my eyes filling with tears. It is drawing near that
dear October. If I cannot enjoy your ruralizing, I can, at
least, be happy in thinking of the pleasure you will find in
it. You are going to see your mountains again, and those
pine-groves, which from my childhood I have ever loved and
admired. In the midst of the flowers, the plants, the trees,
you will think often of him who created us with souls capable
of loving the beautiful and good; of him who this year has
opened to you the horizon of a new life, in which I hope you
will never find either regrets or thorns. Oh! how easy, as it
seems to me, does the beauty of the country make the love of
God. How sweet it is to think that the same God who gives the
dews and the fertilizing rains to the earth, foliage to the
trees, flowers and harvests to the fields, is also that loving
Father who supports us in all our trials and so sweetly invites
our souls to repose in himself! Let me speak to you of the good
God, Gaetano; I love so much to think of him.
September 25.
I cannot express the pleasure it is to me to gaze into the deep
azure of the beautiful mornings of which
"The air is sweet and changeless,"
and of the lovely evenings when the stars seem to speak, and
tell in a sacred language the wisdom of God. The country does
good to our souls. In admiring its beauties and its treasures
ever new, we are led more easily to think that, if earth was
made for man, man was created to love God. I often say to
myself, What, then, will heaven be, if there is so much of
beauty on this poor earth, where we are not so much dwellers as
pilgrims? ... On the eve of St. John's day, all Florence was
illuminated. There was nothing to be heard but games and noisy
laughter among the people. Every one was gazing eagerly at the
fireworks and the illuminations; but no one thought of admiring
the most beautiful ornament of the feast--I mean the moon,
whose tremulous rays were reflected in the Arno, lengthening
the shadows of the trees.
{548}
September 28.
Next year we will go to the country together. If you knew how I
love your mountains, with their tall pines, their flowers,
their streams, and their green summits. I still remember the
moment I left them. It was a November morning. The faint rays
of a cloud-veiled sun shed a pale light on the horizon, the
leaves were falling from the trees, and the snow of the day
before still covered the summits. All nature was solitary and
sad. Who could have told me then, that to this melancholy spot
which I was leaving as a child, I should return with you a
happy bride?
October 23.
Enjoy well your ruralizing; its pleasures are a thousand times
sweeter than those of our towns. How pleasant it is of an
evening to climb the heights, and thence behold the vast
expanse of heaven still purpled by the sun's last rays; to see
at one's feet the fields, the pine groves, the pale olives, the
elms, yellow-tinted by autumn, the little, scattered cottages
of the peasants, with the smoke of the evening fire rising from
the roof, and the village church, which seems by the tolling of
its bell "to mourn the dying day,"
"Il giorno pianger che si muore!"
[Transcriber's note: This sentence is blurred.]
I am far from all this now, but I often think of it. Again I
see our happy day at Cuccigliana, our mountain walk, and that
beautiful horizon, with its luminous depths, which promised me
a joyous future. How many things nature can say! How she can
speak to the heart! How, above all, she can speak to it of God!
Flowers, hills, forests, earth, and sky--all are more
beautiful when we have learned to discern in them the beauty of
God. How many times already, Gaetano, have I gone over again
our walk on the Serchio, where the rustling of the leaves was
the only accompaniment to our long conversations! Ah! may God
bless thee, may he render thee happy, and all my desires will
be satisfied.
Eve of All Saints' Day.
Oh! if the feast of to-morrow should one day be our feast! Do
not suppose, however, that I am presumptuous enough to hope
that we shall ever be like the saints of our altars. No; but I
believe that not only those great saints, but also all the
souls of the just who are admitted to the beatific vision of
God, are invoked on this great day by the church. This it is
that emboldens my desires. ...
If you are sad, recollect that it has pleased God thus to
alternate in this world our joys and sorrows, in order to
implant more deeply in our souls the desire of that life in
which weeping shall be no more. Then shall we be united I hope,
in the love and blissful contemplation of that God whom we now
adore under the veil of faith.
{549}
Meanwhile it is sweet to say to one's self: God loves me
infinitely more than I can love myself. He thinks of me and
watches over me with a tenderness surpassing all the tenderness
of a mother. What, then, should I fear? And besides, how be
Christians and not be willing to suffer for love of a God who
has suffered so much for us? I would share these thoughts with
you, Gaetano, because I find in them my strength and
consolation every day. Treasure them in your heart, call them
often to mind, and your sadness will disappear as
"La neve al sol si disigilla." [Footnote 159]
[Footnote 159: "The snow dissolves before the sun."]
I do not think we shall lose by the exchange when, having
finished Milton, we read Virgil together. That great man seems
to me indeed
"The light and honor of the other poets,"
as our Dante says. We shall reap from this reading the great
advantage of being able to compare the principal episodes of
the AEneid with the best passages of other poems. I assure you
I do not regret the time I give to my little studies; if I had
to commence them again, I should apply myself only with more
diligence and attention. I owe to them the best pleasures that
I have known; above all, I owe to them community of
intellectual life with you. [Footnote 160]
[Footnote 160: I would for a moment call the reader's
attention to this sentiment. Such should, indeed, be the
chief end of the studies of every Christian woman--community
of intellectual life with her husband, community of
intellectual life with her sons.]
Now that I do not take lessons, and that, consequently, I have
no more leisure, I know no more lively pleasure than to shut
myself up in my little room with my books and my pen; and even
during those hours which I ought and which I am determined to
devote to needlework, I love still to think of what I have read
and to beguile the time by these pleasant memories. Having had
some time for study to-day, I resumed the reading of Muratori,
taking the history of the wars of Odoacer and Theodoric. The
subject is a familiar one, but I return to it always willingly,
because I think the history of the middle ages even more
important for us to know than ancient history. And then what
joy of soul to see the church, in all places and in the most
barbarous ages, the mother and guardian of civilization, the
friend and consoler of the vanquished, the last bulwark of the
oppressed against the unbridled pretensions of power!
Poor Italy! how she has suffered! What carnage! How much blood
shed in vain! How many tears!
January 1, 1857.
Let us pray God, let us pray him with our whole heart to-day,
Gaetano, to bless our union, our souls, our actions, our
thoughts, our life. May he deign to preserve long those who are
dear to us, to shield us from great misfortunes, and, above
all, never to withdraw his grace from us! Such are the prayers
that we will offer together, united in heart, though separated
by distance. God will see the sincerity of our desires, and he
will grant them.
The serenity of the heavens gladdens all nature, and rejoices
also our souls, which in the light of the sun seem, as it were,
a reflection of the Increated Light. I do not think I am
superstitious, Gaetano; and if the new year had commenced in
the midst of lightning, thunder, and dismal rains, I should
certainly not, on that account, have augured ill for our
future. But now, contemplating the calmness and pureness of the
sky and of the whole horizon, I ask of God to give us a life
like to this beautiful day, that is to say, such a life that
nothing may ever be able to disturb in our souls that peace
whose source is in God, its eternal fount.
{550}
January 4.
After some cold days, the weather has again become very mild,
and the air is balmy as with the first perfumes of spring. How
brightly the sun shines to-day! Its warm beams inundate my
little room. Seated at my table, at some distance from the
window, my eye wanders involuntarily to what I can see of the
sky. I fancy I see a great blue eye looking down lovingly on
me. Ah Gaetano! how good is God!
I have just learned the death of a very dear friend. Young,
beautiful, brought up in opulence, the only daughter of a
mother who idolized her, she wished to become a Sister of
Charity in order to serve God in his poor. For ten years she
has been a tender mother to the orphan, and she has just died
in the bloom of her days. Dear and good Sister Maria! how happy
I should have been to see her again! I do not cease thinking of
her! Schiller would say here: "Cease to weep: tears do not
resuscitate the dead." Ah! with what a far different power do
the words addressed by the Redeemer to the afflicted come home
to our hearts: "Blessed are they that weep, for they shall be
comforted!" The more I meditate on these words, and then look
on earth in its renewal, the pure light and deep azure of the
sky, the more I am impressed, death notwithstanding, with the
infinite goodness of God and the ineffable bliss of a future
life. I hear sometimes of the good being oppressed by the
wicked; I often see virtuous persons in misfortune; will not,
then, the just also have their day and their recompense? Ah!
often, when at night I raise my eyes toward the twinkling
stars, I think of those happy souls who are there on high,
higher than the stars, in the eternal enjoyment of the beatific
vision, of adoration and love without end. If man would only
fix his soul on such thoughts, what is there on earth that
could discourage him?
I received your dear letter this morning, Gaetano, and lest you
should suppose I thought it too gloomy, I must tell you that I,
too, have been thinking of death the whole day, and that I even
offered a special prayer to our Lord to be merciful to me when
the hour shall have come for me to pass from time to eternity,
and, as I hope, "from the human to the divine." We have need of
abandoning ourselves with a child-like confidence into the arms
of God, if we wish to keep alive in our hearts the hope of
seeing in heaven him whom we adore on earth. For my part, if,
instead of thinking of him alone, I turned to think of myself,
I really know not whither my reflections might lead me. But
hope, which is a Christian virtue, is a firm expectation of
future glory, I will, then, forget my fears and believe that,
despite our imperfections, we may one day taste in the bosom of
God a happiness even of the shadow of which we cannot catch a
glimpse on this earth. We shall then know in what overflowing
measure the Lord rewards even the feeblest efforts of his
friends. We shall know how everything here below was inevitably
passing away with ourselves, how this earthly life vanished
more lightly than a dream, and that there remains nothing to
man after death but love, that ethereal part of the soul which
God claims all for himself. Yet more: I believe that the love
which shall unite and commingle our souls on high will not be
absorbed in the contemplation of the divine essence in such a
manner that the sweetness of loving each other still shall
escape our perception.
{551}
I believe, on the contrary, that it will be the triumph of love
to exist and to endure in God, and to unite in one canticle of
praise the souls which God made to love one another.
More sorrow--Matilda is dead! [Footnote 161] Oh! how we loved
her. She was an angel! It is we only who suffer, for to her it
is pure happiness to have quitted earth. Not a murmur was ever
heard from her lips. She found all peace and all strength in
the love of God. Her soul so easily opened itself to joy. The
day before her death, seeing some flowers, "What beautiful
things our God has made!" she exclaimed. Her friends wished to
inform her father of her imminent danger. This she constantly
opposed, wishing to spare that poor father the agony of a last
farewell. Here are examples.
[Footnote 161: Matilda Manzoni, daughter of the celebrated
author of _I Promessi Sposi_.]
I do not know the introduction you speak of; but my mother has
read to me the admirable verses of Manzoni which are prefixed
to it. How many things these verses recall to me. They have
affected me powerfully. Returning in memory to the times that
are past, I fancied as I listened to them that I heard the
sweet voice of my poor Matilda, who, in reciting this beautiful
poetry, evinced so tender an admiration for her father's
genius. We were at Viareggio. It was a beautiful summer
evening, and the peace of a starlit sky penetrated deep into
our souls. Matilda said to me: "Rosa, if you could only tell me
the first verse of those stanzas, I am sure I could recite the
whole." For some time I ransacked my poor memory in vain.
Suddenly came the word, "Pause awhile." That word was enough.
Matilda recited without failing in a word--and oh! with what
feeling--the whole piece of poetry. Dear friend! she is with
us no longer, and we shall see her no more on earth. When I
parted with her last, I said to her: "Farewell till we meet
again." I ought to have said: "Farewell till we meet in
heaven."
When the storm came upon us, [Footnote 162] two terrific peals
of thunder were heard at once. I confess, Gaetano, I did not
expect to reach Pisa. And oh! how terrible is the thought of
death, when all around reminds one of the almighty power of
God. I trembled as I thought of eternity. I saw my own
nothingness, and that my only refuge was in the bosom of God.
There did I cast myself with all the confidence of my soul.
Unperceived by any one, I drew from my bosom my crucifix, and,
concealing it in my hand, I pressed it to my lips. I felt then
what help religion will give us in our last moments, for I
immediately regained courage, and all my fears vanished.
[Footnote 162: Signorina Ferrucci was, with her parents,
returning from Leghorn to Pisa, when they were surprised by a
violent storm, which is the subject of this letter.]
To Signorina Louisa B----.
I received your sad and tender letter yesterday, my dear
Louisa, and I answer it without delay, to prove to you that
your sorrows are mine. Poor Antonietta! Yet, why weep for her?
Her soul has winged its flight to the celestial regions, where,
as she said in her delirium, all was ready to receive her. It
is not to her, then--it is to you, to your family, to
ourselves, that our tears belong.
{552}
As soon as I heard the sad tidings, I raised my heart to God,
and offered him a fervent prayer for your mother and yourself.
As to Antonietta, I could not pray for her, because I saw her
truly in the midst of the angelic choirs.
Dear friend, would that I could console you; but I feel with
sadness my utter inability. It is God alone who has the secret
of true consolation. Is not he our good Father? Does not he
await us in that blessed abode where there are neither sorrows
nor tears, but where reign eternal peace and happiness? And
then, my poor Louisa, if life seemed to promise your dear
sister happiness and joy, has not death put her in possession
of joys more pure, happiness more profound, than she could ever
have desired? Oh! how enviable is her lot. She will never know
the troubles, the disappointments, the disenchantments of this
life. She will be spared all the suffering which is inseparable
from a long existence. Death has been to her a beautiful angel,
come from heaven to crown her with flowers. Dry your tears,
Louisa: your sister is happier than we.
To Gaetano,
Each day is bringing you nearer the mournful anniversary you
spoke of in your last letter. I beg, I conjure you, Gaetano, to
allow to your heart no sentiment but that of resignation.
Remember that we shall see in heaven those who are taken from
us on earth; and that the sufferings of this life are the means
by which we are to attain endless beatitude. I speak thus, not
to preach patience to you, which it would ill become me to do,
but to give you a word of consolation; for I know all that you
have suffered, all that you still suffer in secret. The cares
of business and the multiplicity of exterior duties will not
prevent sorrowful memories from taking possession of your soul.
You can, then, but offer your sufferings as a sacrifice,
believing that they will render us more worthy of the divine
love. If I already shared your life, I would do everything in
my power to console and encourage you on these sad days.
Meanwhile let us both strive each day to lessen our
imperfections, and to let the love of God have fuller scope in
our hearts. Thus shall we, if not without fear, at least
without remorse, reach that solemn moment of our life, the one
that will end it. May God, who, we hope, will one day unite us
on earth by holy ties, deign to unite us also in heaven!
January 21.
(Three days before the commencement of her illness.)
Truly we must be always ready to die when and as God wills, and
to love him infinitely more than all the things of this world
which are passing away with our frail lives. Our immortal soul
is not made for this world, where all is fleeting, dissolving,
changing. By the very nature of its being, it yearns for
heaven. For me, living or dead, in this world or the next, I
will be ever thine, my Gaetano, in the love that God knows and
blesses.
This letter is the last that Rosa Ferrucci wrote.
Concluded In Next Number.
----------
{553}
The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City.
A glance at New York City, embracing the entire of Manhattan
Island, will show that its geographical position, its advantages
for sewerage and drainage, in fact for everything that would make
it salubrious and healthy, cannot be surpassed by any city in
this or any other country. And still, with its bountiful supply
of nature's choicest gifts, many of our readers will be surprised
to hear that our death-rate is higher than that of any city on
this continent, or any of the larger cities of Europe. We append
a table showing the relative per annum mortality in various
cities:
Death. Population.
New York 1 in 35
London 1 in 45
Paris 1 in 40
Copenhagen 1 in 36
Christiansund,
(Norway.) 1 in 40
Liverpool 1 in 44
Philadelphia 1 in 48
Boston 1 in 41
Newark, N. J 1 in 44
Providence 1 in 45
Hartford 1 in 54
Rochester 1 in 44 [Footnote 163]
[Footnote 163: _Health in Country and Cities_. W. F.
Thorns, M. D.]
Let us first examine the conditions which favor and cause this
excessively high death-rate, and then approximate as nearly as
possible what our percentage of mortality should be, under good
hygienic regulations.
The primary cause of the present condition is, evidently, in the
packing system of the tenant-houses; and how the unfortunates
exist in the fetid air and dirt of these dens, it is impossible
to imagine. The name tenant-house is applied to all buildings
containing three or more families. There are at present in our
city 18,582 of these residences. In these live over a
half-million of people, or more than half of our entire
population. These houses vary in condition, from the apartments
over stores on our prominent thoroughfares, which often contain
all the comforts and conveniences of more aristocratic and
imposing structures, through many gradations to the cellar,
garrets, and model tenant-houses, occupied by the most miserable
of our inhabitants. Such an economy of space was never known to
be displayed in sheltering cattle as is here shown in the houses,
if they can be so called, of the laboring classes. We give a
description of one of these establishments, for the benefit of
those who have never examined a "model tenant-house." On a lot 25
by 100 feet two buildings are erected, one in the front, the
second in the rear. Between the houses is a yard or open space,
in which are located rows of stalls to be used as water-closets.
The buildings are frequently seven and eight stories high,
including basement. Through the middle of each house runs a hall
three to four feet wide. On each side of the hall are the
apartments, as they are termed, more properly coops or dens.
There are sometimes three or four sets of these coops to each
half, making six or eight families to the floor; and so they are
packed, from the cellar to the roof of the establishment. As the
term "suites of apartments" is rather deceptive to the
uninitiated, we will state this means simply two--one, the
common room, where all the cooking, washing, and other family
work is performed, and in some instances used additionally for
manufacturing purposes, as shoe-making, tailoring, etc.; the
other is the sleeping-room.
{554}
The first is generally 8 feet by 10, and the second 7 by 8, with
an average height of 7 feet. "Not unfrequently two families--yea,
four families--live in one of these small sets of dens; and in
this manner as many as 126 families, numbering over 800 souls,
have been packed into one such building, and some of the families
taking boarders and lodgers at that. And worse yet, all around
such tenements, or in close proximity to them, stand
slaughter-houses, stables, tanneries, soap factories, and
bone-boiling establishments, emitting life-destroying
exhalations." [Footnote 164]
[Footnote 164: Mr. Dyer's Report on the Condition of the
Destitute and Outcast Children of this city.]
Imagine rows of such houses, so close to each other as to shut
out the air and sunlight from their inmates, and you have a
picture of the condition of some portions of the lower wards of
New York City. Of the 18,582 tenant-houses. Dr. E. B. Dalton, the
Sanitary Superintendent, reports "52 per cent in bad sanitary
condition, that is, in a condition detrimental to the health and
dangerous to the lives of the occupants, and sources of infection
to the neighborhood generally; 32 per cent are in this condition
purely from overcrowding, accumulations of filth, want of
water-supply, and other results of neglect." Dr. E. Harris, the
efficient Register of Vital Statistics for the Board of Health,
informs us that, although the Fourth ward has given up nearly one
half its space for mercantile purposes, it still retains the
population it had in 1864. This is effected by driving the poor
tenants into smaller space and more miserable dens, which they
are obliged to accommodate themselves to, as there is no rapid
transportation at their command by which they could reach homes
in more salubrious districts, and still retain their employment
in this section. The result is, that in some locations the people
are packed at the rate of nearly 300,000 to the square mile. Here
are congregated the vilest brothels, the lowest dance-houses, and
other dens of infamy. It is doubtful if throughout Europe, and
certainly in no other part of America, in the same amount of
space, so much vice, immorality, pauperism, disease, and fearful
depravity could be found, as some of the worst of these locations
present daily for our consideration. Our readers must not
suppose, from our frequent references to the Fourth ward, that it
contains all of this character of trouble existing in New York.
This is not the case. In portions of all the wards in the lower
part of the island, as well as up-town by either river-side as
high as Fiftieth street, will the same condition be found, but
not in so concentrated a form as in the Fourth Ward and its
immediate surroundings, which has for a long time held the
unenviable reputation of being the worst locality on the island.
Practical hygienists give 1000 cubic feet as the standard amount
of air-space for each individual. Dr. W. F. Thoms, in his
pamphlet on _Tenant-Houses_, thinking that quantity
impracticable in this character of building, gives 700 cubic feet
as the minimum in which a person can live and not be injured by
the carbonic acid he constantly expires. With many of the
'fever-nests' not more than 300 to 400 feet to the individual are
given; and Captain Lord's report shows that in 289 houses the
quantity allowed each inmate is only between 100 and 300 cubic
feet.
{555}
The zymotic or foul-air diseases, as they are termed by some,
formed 29.36 per cent of our total mortality during last year.
[Footnote 165]
[Footnote 165: Dr. Harris's Report.]
Belonging to this class are the diarrhoeal maladies, Asiatic
cholera, cholera-morbus, typhoid and typhus fevers, small-pox,
measles, scarlet fever, and others of this kind; also the
dietetic disorders, inanition, scurvy, etc. It will be readily
seen that, in such locations as are above described, a very large
proportion of the mortality from this class must arise.
Consumption also, which might properly be termed the constant
scourge of the human family, assists largely in running up our
death-table. The late Archbishop Hughes, in speaking of this
disease, said "it was the natural death of the Irish emigrant in
this country." This remark is equally true of persons coming from
all other countries, partially on account of foreigners not being
acclimated to the vicissitudes of our climate, but more
particularly because so many of them dwell in damp, leaky
shanties, or in cellars which are frequently below the level of
high water. Here the seeds of the disease are planted by which
the miserable victims of hectic fever, night-sweats, and other
attendant evils are hurried to their untimely graves. In the
fifteen months ending December 31st, 1867, 4123 persons died in
our city of this disease. The largest number of these were
between the ages of 25 and 40. One thousand seven hundred and
sixty-five were natives of Ireland, 1430 were Americans, 600
Germans, and 328 from other foreign countries.
Upon the infants, however, of these polluted districts death
fastens his relentless grasp, and from their ranks under the age
of five years he claimed last year over one half the entire
mortality of the city. The blood of these innocents is poisoned
from birth by the noxious influences of bad air and adulterated
food; consequently their nutrition is defective, and the majority
of them are found frail, puny, and miserable. In this condition
they are little able to stand the irritation attendant upon the
process of dentition, and during this period a large number of
them rapidly sink from diarrhoea, marasmus, or some kindred
disorder.
Seven thousand four hundred and ninety-four of these little ones
died last year under twelve months of age. This is supposed to be
little less than one fourth of all the infants born alive during
the same period. Is it not enough to send a thrill of horror to
the breast of every mother, to think that one out of every four
infants born, must perish before it reaches its first birthday?
"This is well known to be twice too high a death-rate for the
first year of infant life, and experience demonstrates, that the
infant death-rate is a safe index of the general rate of
mortality, both in the total population and in the adults of any
city or district. That is, if in the Sixth ward we find a high
death-rate in children, and if it is vastly higher than that in
the children of the Fifteenth ward, then we shall find (as we
actually have found) that the death-rate is excessively high in
the total number of adult inhabitants of the Sixth, while there
is a very low death-rate in the Fifteenth that buries the
smallest percentage of its infants." [Footnote 166]
[Footnote 166: Dr. Harris's Report.]
An easy solution to this is found in the greater susceptibility
of early infancy from extreme delicacy of formation. Just as the
accurate thermometer indicates immediately every change in the
temperature, so these frail organizations blight first under
detrimental influences, before the more matured portion of the
population are perceptibly affected by the same causes.
{556}
The following will strikingly elucidate the greater expectation
for human life to persons living in even comparatively salubrious
districts. The death-rate in the Fourth ward, in 1863, was about
1 in 25 of the population; in the Fifteenth, in the same year, it
was 1 in 60.
Why should this wide difference in the mortality exist in two
sections of the same city adjacent to each other? The reason is
obvious: there are but few of the densely over-crowded
tenant-houses in the Fifteenth or healthy ward, while the Fourth
presents a population of nearly 20,000 souls packed in these
buildings. Thus it is shown that persons living in the Fifteenth
ward, have two and a half times more chances for life than those
residing in the Fourth.
The all-important question to the social economist now recurs:
What is the necessary or inevitable mortality of the total
population of this city? We cannot do better than refer to the
mortality above given for the Fifteenth ward, which is 1 in 60.
Why is it not practicable to bring our sanitary regulations to
such perfection as to reduce the mortality of the entire city to
near this standard? Thus we would save many lives, now sacrificed
by diseases which we have the power in a great measure to
control; and we would lessen the general death-rate of the city
to between 16,000 and 17,000 to the 1,000,000, instead of
ranging, as it now does, from 23,000 to 26,000 to the same amount
of population.
To look at this fearful drain of human life is painful enough;
but the moral aspect of the subject will be found even more
deplorable. The constant inhalation of vitiated air lowers the
vitality and poisons the entire organism, and, as a natural
consequence, predisposes these unfortunates to a continual desire
for stimulation. This, in fact, is a manifestation of nature,
which, by a wise dispensation of Providence, when depressed or
disordered from any cause, has a constant tendency toward health.
They, however, do not appreciate that pure air, cleanliness, and
substantial food would quench this natural longing; but they seek
that which is more gratifying to their depraved appetites; as for
the time being it steals their reason and blunts their
sensibility to present misery. These facts account to a great
extent for the large number of rum-holes found in the
neighborhood of these tenant rookeries, which is reported in
certain localities to be one for less than every two houses. Many
of these low groggeries are so disgustingly filthy, and their
poisonous compounds so corrupting of every moral feeling, that
they can properly be placed on an equality with the despicable
Chinese opium-dens found in the neighborhood of Whitechapel in
London. The following figures demonstrate the immense number of
votaries who frequent drinking-saloons in this city, and the vast
sums of money squandered annually in these degrading haunts:
"There are at present 5203 licensed rum-shops in New York;
697,202 persons visit these daily, 4,183,212 in a week, and
218,224,226 in a year. The total amount of money paid out for
drinks across the bar and at the drinking-tables of the
liquor-shops of New York is $736,280.59 a week, or $38,286,590.68
a year." [Footnote 167]
[Footnote 167: Dyer's Report.]
This is the account of the licensed bar-rooms: how many
unlicensed ones exist it is impossible to know. When we consider
that the highest estimate made of our population gives us only
1,000,000 of inhabitants, the foregoing figures certainly are
astounding, and deserve most earnest consideration.
{557}
In connection with this subject, it will be interesting to
examine the annals of crime for the past year. There were 80,532
[Footnote 168] arrests made during the twelve months ending
October 31st, 1867.
[Footnote 168: Report Metropolitan Police.]
These embrace offences of every grade, from petty larceny to
murder. The number of the latter is 59, or an average of more
than one a week. This total number of criminals amounts to nearly
one twelfth of our entire population, and certainly shows a very
low grade of morals in our community. It would be most
interesting to know what proportion of these criminals date the
commencement of their career in crime, from the time they began
to drink intoxicating liquors.
One of the saddest features in our city is the condition of the
homeless children. "The number of these between the ages of five
and fifteen years is stated to be 200,900, of which not more than
75,000 attend Sunday-school, leaving the vast number of 125,000
of our children unreached and uncared for, of which it has been
estimated that nearly 40,000 are vagrant children." [Footnote
169] "Hundreds of these children are confirmed drunkards, and
thousands of them are accustomed to strong drink. Children from
the age of fourteen years down to infants of four are daily met
in a state of intoxication. They come drunk to the
mission-schools. The little creatures have many a time lain
stretched upon the benches of this institution, (Howard Mission,)
sleeping off their debauch. Hundreds of them have become veteran
thieves, and thousands more are in training for the same end.
Nine hundred and sixty girls and 3,958 boys, between the ages of
ten and fifteen years--making a total of 4618--were arrested
during the year ending October 31st, 1867, for drunkenness and
petty crimes." [Footnote 170]
[Footnote 169: R. G. Pardee, Esq., communication to _New
York Observer_.]
[Footnote 170: Dyer's Report.]
The arrests for the same period between the ages of ten and
twenty years amounts to the fearful number of 13,660. Is it not
melancholy to contemplate these little creatures, "made to the
image and likeness of God," allowed to develop in such haunts of
crime, every faculty as soon as awakened blunted by the
atmosphere of sin surrounding them? If not rescued from their
fate at an early age, we know they are the embryo criminals who
will in the future fill our prisons and grace our scaffolds. How
can it be otherwise? Nurtured in a hot-bed of crime from infancy,
educated in pilfering and beggary in childhood, it is but human
that they should develop these accomplishments in rank luxuriance
as they grow to manhood. It seems strange that Mr. Bergh's
attention has never been drawn to the condition of the miserable
tenants and the homeless children. He and the rest of his society
take every means to remedy the complaints of ill-used quadrupeds;
but unfortunate biped humanity may be stalled in filthy dens with
imperfect drainage and no ventilation, or, the little ones starve
and die on our thoroughfares, without finding a humanitarian to
raise a voice in their behalf. It is true, our cattle should be
cared for, but a just God will demand at our hands some
protection for his poor.
"He has said--his truths are all eternal--
What he said both has been and shall be--
What ye have not done to these my poor ones,
Lo! ye have not done it unto me." [Footnote 171]
[Footnote 171: Proctor.]
The radical relief for the evils growing out of the tenant-house
system can only be reached by, first, condemning and tearing down
the worst class of these buildings; and, secondly, remodelling
those which, by their construction, are susceptible of such
improvement as will insure the inmates at least the blessings of
sunshine and pure air.
{558}
These stringent measures are unfortunately, for the present,
impracticable, as, should they be carried into effect, two thirds
of the inhabitants of these dens would be thrown upon the streets
without shelter. Space must be found adjacent to the city where
neat and comfortable cottages can be built for the laboring
classes, and transportation of such character provided as will
enable them to reach these abodes in as little time and at as
small an expense as it now consumes to get to their tenant
dwellings. The beautiful shores on the opposite sides of the
Hudson and East rivers must eventually be dotted by the villages
of these working people. It has been reported that a very wealthy
gentleman of our community proposes building a number of such
houses somewhere in the vicinity of New York. To be the projector
of such a philanthropic enterprise would entitle him to the love
and admiration of the people now, while in after-years it would
be pointed out as a monument of his generosity to the struggling
poor. The proposed "Hudson Highland Bridge," the "East River
Bridge," and the tunnel under the East River, all of which, we
hope, will be pressed rapidly to completion, will form the first
of the links which are to bind our Island City to the surrounding
rural districts. The location where the first will span the
Hudson is near Fort Montgomery, in the Highlands; the second is
intended to connect the lower part of the city with Brooklyn; and
the iron tubular tunnel is, as its name indicates, a wrought-iron
tunnel, to be laid at the bottom of the East River; it also is to
connect Brooklyn with New York. In a sanitary point of view, we
think these proposed means for rapid communication between our
island and the neighboring country vie in importance with the
gigantic enterprise which gives us the water of the Croton river
for our daily consumption, and the Central Park for the
recreation and amusement of our pent-up population. Over the East
River Bridge it is intended to run cars by an endless wire rope,
worked by an engine under the flooring on the Brooklyn side. The
minimum rate of speed is put down as twenty miles an hour. It is
such travelling facilities as these structures will afford which
are necessary to enable the workingmen to reach healthful and
salubrious homes outside of the metropolis. We would thus be able
to disgorge the immense surplus of population which it is
impossible for us to accommodate in our midst.
But while we keep this in our minds as the great ultimatum which
will eventually relieve us, we must in the mean time use every
effort in our power to ameliorate as much as possible the misery
surrounding us.
Since the establishment of the Board of Health, in March, 1866,
strenuous efforts have been made by that body to remedy the most
glaring defects in the tenant-houses. Nothing could bear better
evidence of the good results effected by the wise sanitary
measures they have adopted than the saving in our mortality rates
during the last year. It has been asserted that "our present code
of health laws are better than those of any other city on this
planet;" and had the commissioners, in the execution of these
laws, been sustained in their laudable efforts for the public
good by the courts of justice, no doubt much more would have been
effected.
{559}
The Sanitary Superintendant, Dr. E. B. Dalton, reports 35,045
inspections made during the last year; 11,414 of these were in
tenement-houses, 11,473 to yards, cellars, waste-pipes, etc.; the
remainder, to private dwellings, slaughter-houses, establishments
for fat-melting and bone-boiling, stables, piggeries, etc. This
amount of visitations by the sanitary inspectors shows great
activity in their department, and entitles them to much credit.
The evils, however, attending the entire of the present systems
are so numerous that, without a good deal of active legislation,
it is to be feared the root of the trouble cannot be reached. In
the first place, no person should be allowed, in the future, to
build a house to be occupied by more than three or four families,
without its plan of construction being first officially approved
of by an appointed superintendent. This would confine the
sanitary evils, so far as the internal arrangement of tenements
are concerned, to those we now have; and, in the second place, as
Dr. Dalton suggests, the erection of a front and rear tenement on
the same lot should be strictly prohibited. The importance of
these means cannot be overestimated. In addition, many changes
apparently slight in themselves can be effected in the existing
houses, which would materially add to the comfort and chances of
life of the inmates. Miss F. Nightingale says: "It is a fact
demonstrated by statistics, that in the improved dwellings the
mortality has fallen in certain cases from 25 to 14 per 1000; and
that in the common 'lodging-houses,' which have been hot-beds of
epidemics, such diseases have almost disappeared through the
adoption of sanitary measures." One condition probably more
pregnant with disease to the tenants than almost any other is,
that so large a percentage of the water-closets in the tenant
buildings are not connected with the regular sewers. The
consequence is, these places become choked up with accumulations
of filth, and give forth noisome and offensive odors, most
detrimental to health. This alone is sufficient to cause a large
amount of the diarrhoeal diseases which pervade our community
during the hot season with such fatal results. The inspector of
the Fourth Sanitary District, for the Citizens' Association, in
1864, reported "less than 30 per cent of the privies in his
district as being connected with drains or sewers." He also says:
"There is a section of my district, embracing at least nine
blocks, in every part of which the peculiar odor arising from
privies is always distinctly perceptible during the summer
months. From this region fever is never absent. I refer to typhus
and typhoid, for intermittent and remittent fever do not prevail
in this neighborhood, even in the low tract adjoining the river.
Such a gentle fiend as paludal miasma flies affrighted from the
terrific phantoms of disease that reign supreme in this domain of
pestilence." The landlords who grind the last cent of rent
possible from their tenants should be obliged, at least, to do
all in their power to preserve them from palpable occasions of
disease. At a small expense in comparison to the income this
class of property yields, the proper connections with the sewers
could be made, and thus much suffering avoided.
One great trouble the sanitarian encounters is, the
disinclination of a large portion of this class to adopt habits
of cleanliness. They seem actually to riot in and be proud of
their filthy surroundings. And their example is unfortunately
contagious, as it is known frequently to be the case that where
neat, clean, and respectable families are thrown in contact with
them, they, too, soon degenerate into the same condition.
{560}
"It would be true of many thousands that, if left to the
uncontrolled indulgence of their reckless and filthy habits, they
would convert a palace into a pig-sty, and create 'fever-nests'
and hot-beds of vice and corruption under circumstances most
favorable to health, comfort, and social elevation." [Footnote
172]
[Footnote 172: Report of Association for Improving the
Condition of the Poor in New York. 1863.]
This fact, although discouraging, should be but a greater
incentive to keep constantly over them a vigilant sanitary
inspection, to show them the baneful effects of their habits of
living, and to cause a spirit of emulation to assist themselves
in purifying their homes and surroundings. This can be done.
Their "reckless and filthy habits" are, in many instances, but
the indication of a lowered moral and physical status, the result
of the poverty, starvation, and misery they have endured. A
little encouragement, and a constant stimulation as to the right
means to be adopted, would soon cause many of them to overcome
their vitiated and depraved tastes.
These combined facts, we think, necessitate a thorough house to
house examination of all this character of property in the city,
by competent sanitary persons, so that the Sanitary
Superintendent may know the exact condition of each tenement.
With such knowledge many advantageous improvements could be made
and many nuisances abated, without waiting for a report from
either the occupants or sanitary police, as is now done. This
action is at present rendered more essential as the summer is
coming on, and under the influence of its long, hot days the
animal and vegetable decomposition will make the air putrid with
its "life-destroying exhalations." Our death-rate from the
diarrhoeal, and other miasmatic diseases, will, as usual, run up
to the highest mark; and should cholera get a foothold in the
city, it is questionable if it could be controlled by the Health
Commissioners as readily as it was in the summer of 1866.
The question, how to deal wisely with the abuse of alcoholic
stimulants, has been earnestly discussed and considered by the
press, by municipal and legislative bodies, from the pulpit, and
also by countless temperance associations, without reaching a
solution of this great problem. Philanthropic efforts are
constantly made to stop the tide of self-destruction without
avail; and the originators of such movements seem all to arrive
at the conclusion that it is impossible to thoroughly restrain
the appetite for strong drinks by any character of laws which may
be enacted. The only resource that remains is to throw around the
trade such restrictions as will confine it to its narrowest
limits. This is to be effected not alone by legislative
enactments, but also by a moral and religious influence. Public
opinion has great weight, and every man who loves the well-being
of his race should frown down this social evil to the utmost of
his power. Ministers of the gospel should persistently teach the
enormity of the ills resulting, as they alone fully know, from
this cause.
A great many persons think the present laws have no influence in
restraining drunkenness, and that as much liquor is consumed now
as formerly. As a proof of their efficacy, we will give here a
portion of a table, taken from the report of the Excise
Commissioners for last year, comparing the number of arrests for
offences actually resulting from the excessive indulgence in
intoxicating drinks on Sundays, when the rum-sellers were obliged
to keep their glittering shops closed the entire day, and
Tuesdays, when the prohibition applied only to before sunrise.
{561}
Months. Year. Days. Arrests.
March, 1867 5 Sundays, 210
March, 1867 4 Tuesdays, 471
April, 1867 4 Sundays, 195
April, 1867 5 Tuesdays, 480
May, 1867 4 Sundays, 123
May, 1867 4 Tuesdays, 380
As it is well known that before the enaction of these laws the
arrests on Sunday far exceeded those of any other day in the
week, this should convince the most sceptical of the effect of
the Sunday prohibition.
The estimated number of vagrant children in this city is nearly
40,000. Forty thousand immortal beings floating, day by day,
toward physical and moral destruction! Throw aside all the
dictates of Christianity, and look upon these children in the
future. According to our free institutions, they will have the
same amount of control over the destinies of the nation as our
own offspring, although the latter may be thoroughly educated to
make good and intelligent citizens. Here we are allowing to be
nurtured the element which, in the riots of 1863, threatened to
deluge the length and breadth of the island with tumult,
conflagration, and bloodshed. Every year, with the constantly
increasing tide of emigration, new material is added to develop
this character at a more rapid rate. Such being the case,
self-protection demands that something be done to give these
children homes and draw them from the pollution surrounding them.
In the lower portion of the city, there are some institutions
intended particularly to take care of these little vagrants, and
they form the only breakwater to this torrent of infantile
depravity. The first of these is the Five Points Mission. This
was established under "An Act," passed in March, 1856, by the
Senate and Assembly of the State of New York, "to incorporate the
Ladies' Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal
Church." The intentions of the ladies forming this association
are shown in the second paragraph of the above-named act, and
reads: "The objects of said society are, to support one or more
missionaries, to labor among the poor of the city of New York,
especially in the locality known as the 'Five Points;' to provide
food, clothing, and other necessaries for such poor; to educate
poor children and provide for their comfort and welfare; and, for
that purpose, to maintain a school at the Five Points, in said
city, and to perform kindred acts of charity and benevolence."
The "Old Brewery," a most notorious den of infamy, just at the
Five Points, was selected by the association as headquarters for
their missionary labors; and to gather round them here the little
ones of this worst location of the city, to be fed, clothed, and
instructed in the rudimentary English branches, as well as the
Methodist Episcopal faith, became a labor of love. This
enterprise prospered, and now, in place of the "Old Brewery,"
stands a large, commodious mission-building. A peculiar feature
in the management is, that entire families are taken in, and
given work of some kind to do, so that it forms a character of
tenant-house. The institution contains some 18 families,
including between 60 and 70 children. One thousand and nineteen
children have been taught during the year in the day-school.
Immediately opposite and facing this is the second of these
institutions, the "Five Points House of Industry."
{562}
This was established under the supervision of the same gentleman
who at first had control of the Five Points Mission, the Rev. L.
M. Pease. Through some misunderstanding, he withdrew from the
mission and founded the House of Industry. His beginning was very
small, and consisted of an effort to obtain work for a number of
unhappy females who desired to escape from their criminal way of
living. His next step was the establishment of a day-school; soon
afterward men and women were employed in making shoes, baskets,
etc. The success of the enterprise was quickly assured, and it
rapidly enlarged its sphere of usefulness. Some time since, the
manufacturing of baskets, shoes, etc., was given up, and it is
now simply a house of refuge, where homeless children are
educated, fed, and clothed. During the winter, a meal was given,
in the middle of the day, to destitute adults. One of the
gentlemen informed us that 325 men and women partook of this meal
daily during the cold weather. The average number of children
given three meals was also 325, making 1300 meals given by this
institution daily. The whole number of children taught here
during the last year was 1289. An interesting feature connected
with this enterprise is the boarding-house which has recently
been established for working-girls. A large tenement-house was
bought, and fitted up in the most complete manner; and here
homeless working-girls can get good, substantial board for three
dollars and a quarter a week. This is of great advantage to these
poor young women, who are overworked at meagre pay, and enables
them to live for about one half the price they would be obliged
to pay for board in a respectable lodging-house. In the internal
arrangements, everything is done to add to the comfort as well as
the mental improvement of the inmates. In the public parlor there
are an organ and a piano, also several sewing-machines. These are
at the disposal of any one in the house, at all times. Two
evenings in the week they have night-school. The Germans teach
their language in exchange for English. The matron states:
"Through the kindness of some publishers, we have 5 daily papers,
12 weeklies, and 4 monthlies. Three daily German papers are sent
us; also a German magazine, published at Leipsic, Germany." Some
six years ago, the third of the houses for this special work was
established at No. 40 New Bowery, by the Rev. W. E. Van Meter.
The Howard Mission (as this establishment is called) far exceeds
the House of Industry in its internal appearance. The latter,
with its massive bare walls and iron gratings resembles more a
prison for culprits than a home for little ones. The former, to
the contrary, is built with a desire to surround the children
with everything that can please and attract them. The assistant
superintendent remarked to us that "their wish had been to make
their mission home more beautiful and enticing than any saloon
could be." The two large halls are neatly finished and
artistically adorned. In the lower one, through the benevolence
of a gentleman, a fountain is constantly playing, several hanging
baskets of moss and evergreens swing from the ceiling, and at the
base of the fountain is a pretty reservoir containing gold-fish.
This institution has received, in six years, 7581 children; and
the March number of the _Little Wanderers' Friend_,
published by this house, states that "for this month (February)
619 children have been fed at its tables, clothed from its
wardrobes, and taught in its schools."
{563}
These houses all have their regular religious services, morning,
noon, and night, with Sunday-schools, singing, and
prayer-meetings. On Sunday mornings, the prisoners from some of
the station-houses, under arrest for disorder and drunkenness the
night previous, are taken to the Howard Mission, and furnished
with coffee and bread, and then, before leaving, they have a
religious discourse preached to them. In addition, these houses
have regular visitors, who call at the homes of those making
complaints, to assist and comfort the sick, and, at the same
time, to find out if the statements given by them are correct. In
order that those not familiar with the workings of such
institutions may see the charitable work these ladies effect, we
extract the first two items from the visitors' diary in the April
number of the _Monthly Record of the Five Points House of
Industry_, 1866:
"Called on Mrs. L---- , Irish Catholic; is a widow, with two
small boys; tells me she cannot get enough work to support the
family; would be willing to sew, wash, pick hair, or any of the
various female employments, if she could get it. We offered to
feed and clothe her boys if she would send them to our school,
which she readily promised.
"Visited Mrs. G----, 31 M---- street, Irish Catholic. She lives
in a small attic room, rear building; is a widow, with one
child; has been but a few days out of the hospital; found her
little girl sick with fever; promised to send a doctor and give
her necessary assistance."
Although these institutions are doing something by their work to
alleviate the condition of a portion of this vast army of 40,000
stray waifs, still it is most evident that they are utterly
inadequate to provide for more than a small fraction of this
number. It is well known that nearly one half the population of
this city profess to be members of the Roman Catholic religion;
and, to show the great excess of persons belonging to this church
among the lower classes in our city, we extract the following
analysis of a block of buildings from the _Little Wanderers'
Friend_ for March, 1868: "Fifty-nine old buildings occupied by
382 families, in which are 2 Welsh, 7 Portuguese, 9 English, 10
Americans, 12 French, 39 negroes, 186 Italians, 189 Polanders,
218 Germans, and 812 Irish. Of these, 113 are Protestants, 287
Jews, and 1062 _Roman Catholics_."
The Catholic Reformatory in Westchester county, established by
the late Dr. Ives, is doing everything possible for the children
under its control; but the little vagrants, unless arrested for
some petty crime and thus committed to that institution, are not
within reach of its benefits.
The Rev. F. H. Farrelly, the pastor of St. James's church, has
labored most zealously during the last three years in the cause
of the Catholic children in his immediate vicinity. He has
established a poor-school in the basement of his church, under
the charge of the Sisters of Charity. The average daily
attendance here is 200, and these are furnished with a meal at
noon, in order to facilitate their remaining in the institution
the entire day. During the year, two suits of clothing are
furnished to as many as the good father's means will permit. This
school will be removed to the very elegant five-story
mission-house, now nearly completed, on the corner of James
street and New Bowery. This structure is of brick with freestone
trimmings, and has a front of 111 feet on New Bowery, and 83 feet
on James street. It will be divided into 21 class-rooms.
{564}
This enterprise will take more means for its support than St.
James's parish can possibly furnish, and it deserves and should
have the sympathy and pecuniary assistance of all Catholics.
It is impossible to calculate the amount of good to be effected
by the establishment of a large home, under the supervision of
the Sisters of Charity or Mercy in this location. These good
ladies are peculiarly adapted to care for the wants of the poor,
the sick, and the afflicted, as they devote all their energies,
according to the intention of their institution, to these classes
of society. And why? Because simply in so doing they fulfil the
wishes of "The Master." Thus their mission is one of love, and to
strictly attend to duty the greatest pleasure of their lives.
This is the solution of their great success in the management of
hospitals, schools, and charitable institutions; and the large
number of their magnificent edifices devoted to these purposes,
found throughout almost every portion of the known world, attest
the success with which God blesses their labors. To these good
sisters the poor emigrants could appeal, without even apparently
denying their religion, for a little sustenance to keep their
miserable bodies from perishing; the sorrow-burdened could
communicate their troubles, confident of a ready sympathy; and to
these the homeless little vagrant could come, knowing a mother's
tender love and gentle forbearance awaited him. In the home a
room should be devoted to the use of mothers--a place where they
could leave their babes to be fed and taken care of for the day.
This would enable poor widows to do washing and other kinds of
work, and thus many could support their families who are now
entirely dependent upon public charity. In addition to the home,
a large farm should be procured near the city, where the children
taken permanently under the care of the institution could be
raised and educated. This is advisable, because, in the first
place, it would be more economical, and secondly, experience
demonstrates that a large body of children do not thrive well in
such establishments when located in cities. We feel confident
there would be no trouble in supporting this home, as the great
Catholic heart always responds liberally to appeals made for the
poor, and in this institution the weight of the burden should be
equally borne by all the Catholics in the city. In addition to
all this, to take care of these little wanderers is a matter of
great import in the light of political economy. They form the
fountain-head from which a large proportion of our criminals are
developed. If they could be made useful members of society, it
would relieve the city of a large proportion of the taxation
which is now necessary to support our various prisons; and the
energy now shown in the commission of crime would become a source
of material wealth to the country.
There is one other subject we wish to mention before concluding
this paper: it is, the condition of the night-lodgers at the
station-houses. From the report of the Board of Metropolitan
Police, we find that 105,460 persons were accommodated with
lodgings at the various precincts during the last twelve months.
Mr. S. C. Hawley, the very accommodating chief clerk of this
department, informs us that the number this year will be much
greater. Over 100,000 sought refuge in the station-houses, glad
to obtain the bare floor to rest their weary limbs; but how many
pace our streets nightly, poverty-stricken and despairing, but
too proud to seek a shelter in these abodes of crime! It is a
stigma on the fair fame of this great city that, throughout its
length and breadth, there is not one refuge, established by
religious or philanthropic efforts, where the homeless can find
shelter from the wintry night blasts.
{565}
"Our beasts and our thieves and our chattels
Have weight for good or for ill;
But the poor are only his image,
His presence, his word, his will;
And so Lazarus lies at our doorstep,
And Dives neglects him still." [Footnote 173]
[Footnote 173: Proctor.]
In Montreal, Canada, refuges are connected with the church
property, and are superintended by the female religious orders,
we think more particularly by the Gray Nuns. In 1860, the
Providence Row Night Refuge was established in London, under the
care of the Sisters of Mercy. There is no distinction made as
regards religious creed, and the only requisites necessary for
admission are, to be homeless and of good character. Before
retiring, a half-pound of bread and a basin of gruel are given to
each lodger, and the same in the morning, before they are allowed
to commence another day's efforts to obtain work. What charity
could so directly appeal to our hearts as this? Think how many
men and women arrive daily in this metropolis, in search of
employment! For days they eagerly seek it without success,
hoarding their scanty means to the uttermost. Finally the time
comes when the last dime is spent for bread, and they wander
along, their hearts filled with dread, as night covers the earth
with her sable mantle, knowing not whither they shall turn their
weary steps. Think of the poor woman wending her way through the
pelting storm; garments soaked and clinging to the chilled form;
heart filled with despair, and crying to Heaven for shelter; head
aching, temples throbbing, brain nearly crazed with terror;
finally, crouching down under some old steps to wait the first
gleam of day to relieve her from her agony. If one in such
condition should reach the river-side, what a fearful temptation
it must be to take that final leap which ends for ever earth's
cares and sufferings, or, still worse for the poor female, the
temptation to seek in sin the refuge denied her in every other
way!
"There the weary come, who through the daylight
Pace the town and crave for work in vain:
There they crouch in cold and rain and hunger,
Waiting for another day of pain.
"In slow darkness creeps the dismal river;
From its depths looks up a sinful rest.
Many a weary, baffled, hopeless wanderer
Has it drawn into its treacherous breast!
"There is near _another river_ flowing.
Black with guilt and deep as hell and sin:
On its brink even sinners stand and shudder--
Cold and hunger goad the homeless in." [Footnote 174]
[Footnote 174: Proctor.]
What a mute appeal for such institutions is the case of the
little Italian boy found dead on the steps of one of our Fifth
avenue palaces last winter! Think of this little fellow as he
slowly perished that bitter night, at the very feet of princely
wealth. How his thoughts must have reverted to his dark-browed
mother in her far-off sunny home! And think of that mother's
anguish, her wailing
"For a birdling lost that she'll never find,"
when she heard of her boy's death, from cold and starvation, in
the principal avenue of all free America! We consider we are safe
in saying that in no other work of charity could a small amount
of money be made to benefit so many as in the founding of these
refuges. In the police report it is recommended that "several of
these be established in different parts of the city, to be under
the supervision of the police." This is a great mistake. These
people always associate station-houses and the police with crime;
consequently it is bad policy for them to come constantly in
contact with either.
{566}
This is the objection to the lodging-rooms used in the various
precincts. Official charity, as a rule, hardens those who dole it
out, and degrades its recipients.
There are thousands of noble-hearted women attached to our
different churches, who, if they once thoroughly understood this
subject, would not cease their efforts until societies were
established and refuges opened. How could it be otherwise! How
could they nestle their little ones down to sleep in warm,
comfortable beds, and think of God's little ones freezing under
their windows? How could they go to sleep themselves, and feel
that some poor woman was probably wandering past their doorways,
dying from want and exposure? We hope, before the chilling winds
of next November remind us of the immensity of suffering the
winter entails upon the poor, some philanthropic persons will
have perfected this design, and have the refuges in working
order. If such should be the case, the founders will find an
ample reward in the words of Holy Writ, "He that hath mercy on
the poor, lendeth to the Lord: and he will repay him."
If we could thus, by the adoption of every possible sanitary
precaution, deprive our death-tables of all avoidable mortality;
and by a proper religious influence elevate the moral character
of the people, we should, in the first place, save thousands of
lives, now necessary to develop our vast resources; and,
secondly, our advance toward perfection in healthfulness and
public virtues would go hand in hand with the gigantic strides
being made in the adornment of our beautiful island. Our people
would no longer seek other places in quest of health, as none
more salubrious than New York could be found; and strangers,
instead of saying, as is said of that most beautiful of Italy's
fair cities, "See Naples, and die!" would exclaim, "Go to New
York, and live!"
----------
Wild Flowers.
The child, Mercedes, youngest of the three
Whom God has sent me for a mother's crown.
Brought me wild flowers, and with childish glee
Thus prattled on, as at my feet she cast them down:
"See, mamma! here are saucy flowers I found
Hiding behind the hedge, like boys at play.
Just peeping up their heads above the ground.
To watch if any one should chance to pass that way.
"'Aha!' said I, 'whose little flowers be you,
And from whose garden have you run away?
Your leaves are dripping with the morning dew.
Fie, naughty things! What, think you, will the gardener say?
{567}
"'Come, let me take you to my mamma's home;
And she will put you in a golden vase,
Where you shall stand and look around the room,
And see your pretty, rosy faces in the glass.'
"I took them softly up, and here they are.
And now, my mamma, I should like to know
Whose garden they have wandered from so far.
And why they did not stay at their own home to grow?"
I said: "My child, these flowers have never strayed
From any other home. Their place to grow
Is just behind the hedge, down in the glade.
Though no one may their beauty see or sweetness know."
Then she: "Why, mamma dear, how can that be?
What use for them to grow there all alone?
Why look so pretty if there's none to see?
Or why need they smell any sweeter than a stone?"
"No one on earth may see," I then replied--
"No one may know that flowers are blooming there
But God." Mercedes clapped her hands, and cried,
"God's flowers! Oh! keep _them_, mamma, in your book of prayer."
Methinks the child did choose a fitting place
To put those unnursed blossoms of the field:
Like them, our humble prayers with beauty grace
The heart's rough soil, and unto God their perfume yield.
-----------
Translated From The French.
Faith And Poetry Of The Bretons.
The bay of St. Malo is strewn here and there with rocks, upon
which forts have been erected to protect the town by their cross
fires. One of these, the Grand Bé, was formerly armed with
cannon; but the fort is now abandoned, and only recognizable
midst its ruins by the cross at the extremity of the beach,
resting apparently on the blue sky above. To this cross all eyes
are attracted, to this all steps turn, so soon as the breakers
leave a shore of sand and granite for a pathway for the
travellers.
After having ascended a rough and steep declivity, a naked and
desert plateau is attained, where a few sheep find with
difficulty a herb to browse upon; then a turn through a defile of
rocks, and on the steepest point a stone and cross of granite.
This is the tomb of Chateaubriand.
{568}
No longer a poetical tomb; leaning against the Old World, it
contemplates the New; under it, the immense sea, and the vessels
passing at its feet; no flowers, no verdure around it, no other
noise than the incessantly moving sea, covering in its tempests
this naked stone with the froth of its waves. Here he chose his
last resting-place; and we wonder what thought inspired the wish
that not even his name should be inscribed upon his tomb. Was it
pride, or humility that actuated him? To me it appears that this
humility and this pride were from the same source--a perfect
disenchantment with the world. This man, who had proved so many
projects abortive, so many ambitions misplaced; this traveller
who had overrun the universe, visited the East, the cradle of the
Old World, and the deserts of America, where was born the New;
the poet who could count the cycles of his life by its
revolutions, was overwhelmed at the end of it by a sadness that
knew no repose. He, whose youth was preluded by _Considerations
on Revolutions_, so comprehended life in his latter years as
to write _The Biography of the Reformer of La Trappe_. The
silence and solitude of the cloister were in harmony with the
sadness of his soul. Having been charged with the most important
missions, having accomplished the highest employments, and set to
work the most skilful and powerful men, he retired from the
whirling circle of the world, penetrated with the overpowering
truth, how little man is worth, how little he knows, and how
seldom he succeeds in what he undertakes. The usual source of
joy--pride, the intoxication of the world--only provoked in him a
smile; for all men he had the same contempt--did not even except
himself--and knew well, according to the ancient proverb, that
there is very little difference between one man and another.
[Footnote 175]
[Footnote 175: Thucydides.]
Through humility, then, he cared not for any inscription on his
tomb, not even a name. What mattered it who read it! Men were
nothing, and he was one of them! But through pride also, he chose
this naked stone. Travellers would come from all parts of the
world, they would contemplate it and say, _Chateaubriand!_
His name would be echoed by the waves that came from, and those
that parted for, distant shores; and men were obliged to know
where he lay.
Thus--ever-recurring instability of the human soul!--in him were
united the most contrary sentiments--the disenchantment of glory,
and the belief in the immortality of a name; the disdain of
scepticism, and the thirst for applause; the impression of the
Christian's humility, and an instinct of sovereign pride.
Here, however, we find truth: this cross, the sign of eternity on
this stone marked by death, is the immutable testimony of the
emptiness of human pride. Chateaubriand desired only a cross on
his tomb, while Lamennais, his compatriot, rejected it: both
obedient to the same preoccupation, in negation as in faith. The
cross, dominating the tomb where the Breton poet reposes, is the
symbol of the genius of his country, of Catholic Brittany.
Faith, in Brittany, has a particular character, allied to a
poetry peculiar to Breton genius. In this country material
objects speak; the very stones are animated, and the fields
assume a voice to reveal the soul of man conversing with his God.
This is not imagination; no one can be deceived in it. So soon as
one enters Brittany, the physiognomy of the country changes, and
the sign of this change is the cross. On all the roads, at all
the public places, is raised the cross; of every epoch from the
twelfth to the nineteenth century we find them, and of every
form.
{569}
There, simple crosses of granite raised on a few steps; here,
crosses bearing on each side the image of Christ and the Virgin,
rude sculptures in themselves, but always impressed with a
sincere sentiment. The Bretons not only understand the tenderness
of the Blessed Virgin, but they feel her grief; they share it
with her, and express it with an energetic truth. Look at the
picture of the Virgin holding her dead son on her knees, in the
church of St. Michael at Quimperlé. It is a primitive painting by
an unskilled hand, and one totally ignorant of the resources of
art; the design of it is incorrect; yet what an expression of
grief! The painter wished to portray the living suffering of the
mother; the mouth is distorted, the eyes are fixed, the pupil
seems alone indicated: yet this fixedness of look seizes upon
you; you stop, you remain to examine it, you forget that it is a
representation, and see the Virgin herself, immovable in her
grief, with no power to express her sorrow; petrified, yet
living.
At one side, leaning against the wall, is a statue of the Virgin,
conceived with as contrary a sentiment as possible. She is all
tenderness and delicacy, and has a leaning attitude, the head
inclined, with the gentle look of the Mother who calls the sinner
to her side. Her robe falls in numberless plaits, her mantle
envelops her with a harmonious grace; for she is no longer the
Mother of sorrow, but the sweet consoler of human kind, holding
her Son in her arms, whom she presents to bless the earth,
_Notre Dame de Bot Scao_, The Virgin of Good News.
The faith of sailors in the Blessed Virgin is well known, that of
the Breton sailors particularly. At Brest, we look in vain for a
museum of pictures. Brest is not a city of art; it breathes of
war; the port, filled with large ships, the arsenal and its
cannon, its shells, its gigantic anchors, the forts built on the
rocks, the animated movement of the streets, where soldiers of
all kinds go and come, and sailors constantly arriving from all
parts of the world, give to it an air of intense reality--a
character at once powerful and precise. Man has built on the rock
his granite home, and we may believe it is immovably established.
But ascend the steps that lead from the lower to the upper town,
and under a vault you will find four pictures appended to the
wall. Here is the museum of Brest. Sea pictures dedicated to the
Blessed Virgin, the departure of the vessel, women and children
on the beach on their knees during a tempest, the vessel tossed
by the waves, and the arms of the sailors extended to heaven; and
on their return, the rescued sailors, bending their steps, with
tapers in their hands, toward the chapel of Notre Dame; and
underneath, touching legends, cries of the soul that implores,
humbles itself, or renders thanks. _Holy Virgin, save us! Holy
Virgin, protect those who are now at sea!_ Man we see in his
weakness, his aspirations, and his hopes--the true man; the rest
was but the mask.
They seize every opportunity and use every pretext to testify
their faith. At Saint Aubin d'Aubigné between Rennes and Saint
Malo, you go along a tufted hedge; you see a cross cut of
thorn--a cross which grows green in the spring, among the
eglantines and roses. [Footnote 176]
[Footnote 176: At St. Vincent les Redon, a tree is cut in the
form of the cross.]
You return to visit the land of Carnac--a land so pale and
desolate, where the standing stones are squared by thousands,
gigantic and silent sphinxes that for twenty centuries have kept
their impenetrable secret--what is that cross that rises on an
eminence?
{570}
One that they have planted on an isolated ruin in the land--a
cross on a Druidical altar, and before the army of stones which
mark, perhaps, a cemetery of a great people.
Elsewhere, at the cross-way of a road near Beauport, a spring
gushes out and flows among the rocks, forming both basin and
fountain on the heaped-up stones; in an arched niche is enclosed
a Virgin crowned with flowers; all around, the field
morning-glory, the periwinkle, and the eglantine have peeped
through the moss and herbs, and enlaced the rustic chapel with
their flowery festoons, and fallen again on the infant Jesus.
Opposite lie fields of green thorn-broom, and above their long,
slender stalks appear the half-destroyed walls of an ancient
abbey, roofless, opened to heaven, and silent. Through the
blackened arches appears the blue sea, whose prolonged and
incessant roaring fills the air.
In this Catholic country _par excellence_, all the churches
are remarkable. There is no village, however small, of which the
church does not form an interesting part; and here and there, as
at Guérande and Vitré, we find the beautifully carved pulpits
enclosed in the wall, from which the missionary fathers, on
certain extraordinary occasions, speak to the people assembled in
the square. At Carnac and Rennescleden we have the arched roofs
so exquisitely painted; at Roscoff, Crozon, and elsewhere,
medallions of stone and wood framing the altar with quaint gilded
sculptures; then, again, we meet with a tabernacle formed for an
architectural monument, a sort of palace in miniature, with its
wings, pavilions, columns, domes, galleries, and statues, (as at
Rosporden;) then an antique confessional greets us in a little
chapel near Chateaulin, and a canopy sculptured in wood or even
crystal, at Landivisiau. An odd ornament, which is found in only
one church--that of Notre Dame de Comfort, on the way to the Bec
du Raz--is called _the wheel of good fortune_, and is
composed of a large wheel suspended from the roof of the church,
and entirely surrounded by bells. On days of solemn feasts, for
baptisms and weddings, the wheel is turned, and, agitating all
the bells at once, forms a noisy chime, which times the march of
the procession, and adds a joyous and silver-toned accompaniment
to the voices of the young girls chanting the canticles to the
Blessed Virgin. Finally, we meet with one of those trunks of
trees, large squared pillars of oak, encircled with heavy bands
of iron, and placed in the middle of the church, by the side of a
catafalque of blackened wood, but sowed with whitened tears; the
trunk and the coffin, emblems of the fragility of life, and the
Christian principle above all others, charity.
The churches in the towns are truly _chefs-d'oeuvres_, the
cloisters of Tréguier and Pont l'Abbé, for example, where the
arcades are so light and so finely carved; or the
_bas-reliefs_ inside the portal of Sainte Croix, at
Quimperlé, a vast page of sculptured stone, finished with the
delicacy and richness of invention, the charming qualities of
youth and of the _Renaissance_. Then, in all these churches,
near the altar, you perceive immediately the painted statue of
the parish saint, one of the Breton saints, not found
elsewhere--Saint Cornély, Saint Guénolé. Saint Thromeur, Saint
Yves especially.
{571}
Saint Yves has the privilege of being represented in almost all
the churches, even in those of which he is not patron; the
remembrance of this great, good man, this wise priest, this
incorruptible judge, is indelibly impressed on the heart of every
Breton. Sometimes he is seen in his judge's robe, his cap on his
head, and listening to two litigants, one in red velvet,
embroidered in gold, with his grand wig, his silken stockings,
and sword; the other, the poor peasant, all in rags, holes on his
knees and his elbows, and naked feet in his wooden shoes. The
great lord, with his cap on his head, and an air of pride,
presents the saint a purse of gold; the peasant, with timid look
and attitude, his head bent down, his cap in his hand, humbly
awaits his sentence. He has nothing to give, but justice will not
fail him. Saint Yves turns toward him with a gracious smile, and,
handing him the judgment written on parchment, lets him know it
is his. And thus the history of the middle ages: the church
protecting the peasant, the weak against the powerful and the
strong.
As to monuments, properly called, nowhere can we find more of
these beautiful churches of the middle ages, testimonies of the
piety, the science, and the taste of so glorious an epoch. Here,
the Cathedral of Dol, of the best day of Gothic art--the
thirteenth century--imposing by its massiveness, its grandeur,
and the noble simplicity of its ornaments and the harmony of its
proportions, the granite of whose towers, in the lapse of ages,
is permeated with the air of the sea, has a color of rust, we
might say built with iron; there, Tréguier and its exquisite
wainscoting, benches, altars, stalls, pulpit in brilliant black
oak, carved in such fine and delicate designs, with inexhaustible
variety; not a baluster alike, enough models to furnish the
entire sculpture of our time; and further on, Saint Pol de Leon
and its spire of granite; daring and easy, a prodigy of
equilibrium, immovable, girded with open galleries like graceful
crowns, flinging to heaven its tiny sharpened bells; so
beautifully carved, so aerial, the joy of Brittany, as well it
may be, its legitimate pride; then Folgoat, a little unknown
village north of Brest, lost at the extremity of the isle, and
necessary to leave one's route to see it; but even here, two
Breton princes, the Duke Jean III. and the Duchess Anne, have
constructed a royal church accumulating all that Gothic art in
its richest ornamentation, united to the most ingenious caprices
of the _Renaissance_, could have imagined of delicacy and
brightness; portraits sculptured, statues of the finest style
reflecting their antiquity, a richly Gothic and carved choir, and
a gallery--one of those graceful and original monuments of
Catholicism so seldom met with--of lace-work, where trefoils,
roses, and foliage are carved in indestructible blue granite. The
hammer of the Revolution has only knocked off small pieces of
these beautifully carved stones. They resisted the passions of
men, as they have defied the action of time.
With the bells, of such varied forms, and the vessels for holy
water, we will conclude.
These bells are of every style--of the _Renaissance_, the
Roche-Maurice-les-Landerneau, of Landivisiau, of Ploaré, of
Pontcroix, and of Roscoff. Many are hung with smaller and lighter
bells and ornamented with two-story balustrades, like the
minarets of the East; then the coverings, spires as they are
called, are like that of Tréguier, open, that the winds of the
sea may pass through them, and adorned with crosses, roses,
little windows, cross-bars, and stars like the cap of a magician.
{572}
The vessels for holy water also express the character of the age.
At Dinan, in a church of the twelfth century, an enormous massive
tub is supported by the large iron gauntlets of four chevaliers;
the old crusader dress, armed _cap-a-pie_ in the service of
Christ. In a church of the fifteenth century, at Quimper, is one
of an entirely opposite character--a small column, around which a
vine is entwined, and above an angel, who, with wings extended,
appears as if it had descended from heaven to alight upon the
consecrated cup. Again, and as if inspired by a still more
Christian sentiment, we find the exterior vessels for holy water,
so common everywhere in Brittany, of which the most remarkable
are at Landivisiau, at Morlaix, and Quimperlé. The interior ones
seem only accessories; the exterior, isolated before the door,
have a more precise signification: they solicit the first impulse
of the soul; the Christian, in stretching out his hand toward the
blessed vase, pauses, and prepares his heart for the coming
devotion.
How well these Breton architects have understood religion! These
exterior vases are living monuments, little pulpits, with their
emblems, symbols, and heads of angels enveloped in their wings.
Their canopies, prominent, sculptured, and under them, standing
and always smiling, our blessed Mother, who seems to invite the
faithful to enter the house of prayer. And prayer, as some one
has said, is the fortress of life. The Breton people believe and
pray: a hidden power is theirs--religion; its effectiveness
attesting not only its existence, but its life.
---------
Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.
Abbot Pastor said: He who teacheth something and doth it not
himself, is like unto a well which filleth and cleanseth all who
come to it, but is unable to cleanse itself of filth and
impurities.
A brother asked Abbot Pastor the meaning of the words: He who is
angry with his brother without cause. He answered: If in all
cases where thy brother wisheth to put thee down thou art angry
with him, even though thou pluck out thy right eye and cast it
from thee, thy anger is without cause. If however, any one
desireth to separate thee from God, then mayest thou be angry.
Abbot Pastor said: Malice never driveth away malice; but, if
anyone shall have done thee an injury, heap benefits upon him, so
that by thy good works thou destroy his malice.
A brother came to Abbot Pastor, and said: Many thoughts enter my
mind, and I am in great danger from them. Then the old man sent
him out into the open air, and said: Spread out thy garment and
catch the wind. But he answered that he could not. If thou canst
not do this, replied the old man, neither canst thou put a stop
to these thoughts; but it is thy duty to resist them.
Abbot Pastor said: Experiments are useful, for by them men become
more perfect.
-----------
{573}
New Publications
Discussions in Theology.
By Thomas H. Skinner,
Professor in the Union Theological Seminary.
New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 770 Broadway.
Hints on the Formation of Religious Opinions.
Addressed especially to young men and women of
Christian education.
By Rev. Ray Palmer, D.D.,
Pastor of the First Congregational church,
Albany. Same publisher.
These two volumes are very much alike in their general scope and
character. Both are written in a calm, philosophical style, and
with the praiseworthy view of presenting the claims of the
Christian religion on the reason and conscience of men, combating
scepticism, and removing difficulties and objections derived from
the infidel literature of the day. Professor Skinner begins with
a very good essay on miracles as the basis of a reasonable,
historical belief in the teaching which they authenticate, and
then proceeds to develop his own views respecting certain special
topics which he can assume will be admitted by his particular
audience to be contained in that teaching. These relate chiefly
to the mode by which fallen man may obtain restoration to the
divine favor through the Redeemer of our race. The author's
object is to show that this mode, as explained by himself,
exhibits the attributes of God in a manner consonant to the
dictates of reason and the truths of natural theology, and is one
by which any sincere, well-intentioned person can make sure of
obtaining grace from God, pardon and eternal life. The author's
view is that of the new school of Calvinists, which is a great
improvement on that of the old school in a moral, though not in a
logical, sense. Such preaching and writing as that of Professor
Skinner must have a good influence on those who still believe in
Christianity and know no other form of it than the Presbyterian.
It puts forward the goodness and mercy of God, and encourages the
sinner to hope for grace and pardon, if he will be diligent in
prayer, meditation, and other pious exercises, and this appears
to have been the practical end proposed to himself by the author
in this volume. Dr. Palmer's essays are more elaborate and
consecutive in their character, and aim more immediately at
satisfying the intelligence. He first portrays in a clear and
impressive manner the evils of scepticism, and then proceeds to
exhibit the evidence of the truths of natural theology and of the
fact of a divine revelation, which is also accomplished with a
considerable degree of ability and force. The result at which he
aims is to convince his readers that they are morally bound to
recognize Christianity as true, and to form some definite
opinions as to its real meaning, which may serve them as a
practical rule and guide for attaining their eternal destiny. The
capital defect in his argument is, that he reduces the evidence
of the being of God to mere probability, thus leaving the mind
where Kant left it, in a state of scientific scepticism with no
better basis of certainty than the practical reason. Of course,
then, he has nothing more to propose under the name of Christian
doctrines than probable opinions. No doubt, it is obligatory on
all to act upon opinions which are solidly probable in regard to
the momentous interests of the soul, where there are no other
equal probabilities to balance them, and no greater certainty is
attainable. We deny, however, emphatically that man is left in
this state by the Christian revelation. The being of God is a
metaphysical certainty. The fact of revelation is a moral
certainty, reducible in the last analysis to a certainty which is
metaphysical and sufficient to produce an absolute assent of the
mind without any fear of the contrary.
{574}
The articles of faith proposed by the revelation of God ought to
have the same certainty, since it is necessary to believe them
without doubting. Our respected authors cannot propose a
reasonable motive for believing all the doctrines of their sect
or school without any doubt, but can only propose opinions more
or less probable, or even directly contrary to reason. We do not
think, therefore, that they will be able to satisfy the reason of
any person who thinks logically that their theories of
Christianity are true and complete. The most they can do is to
breed an anxious desire to find out with certainty what
Christianity is and to attain to a rational faith.
----
Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Madonna.
By Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D.,
President of St. Mary's College, Oscott.
For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.
This is a valuable contribution to Catholic literature, and
presents a subject of interest not only to Catholics, but to the
public at large; for great public facts are always of interest,
whatever may be our opinion in regard to their significance. A
clear and full account is given in this book of the principal
facts connected with the origin of some of the sanctuaries of the
Madonna in Europe, particularly of the Holy House of Loreto and
the recently established pilgrimage of La Salette in France. We
do not see how any one can read it and resist the conviction that
God has, by his own finger, established and maintained the
devotion of the faithful at these holy places. It is easy enough
to cry superstition, and to call everything supernatural
superstitious. But the evidence of facts speaks for itself, and
we commend this book to the candid reader, confident of his
favorable judgment in spite of all preconceived opinions, as able
to speak for itself. We have, moreover, found it most attractive,
and have read it from beginning to end with unflagging interest.
It is calculated to quicken the faith of the dumb Christian, open
his eyes to the unseen world, and fill his heart with desire for
virtue and the love of God, and, as well, to produce in the mind
of the careless a deeper conviction of the truth of spiritual
things, which may make him set less value on the present, and
prize more highly the world to come. We hope this book may
attract attention and be widely circulated.
-----
Notes on the Rubrics of the Roman Ritual:
Regarding the Sacraments in general.
Baptism, the Eucharist, and Extreme Unction.
By Rev. James O'Kane, Senior Dean,
St. Patrick's College, Maynooth.
New York: The Catholic Publication House.
1 vol. crown 8vo, pp. 527. 1868.
This is one of the most excellent commentaries upon the Ritual
that has come under our notice. The reverend author has for
several years delivered lectures upon the Rubrics to the senior
class of theological students in Maynooth, and the substance of
these lectures is to be found in the present volume. That he is
eminently qualified for such a difficult task, is apparent from
the thoroughly practical as well as theoretical knowledge he
displays in treating of the administration of the sacraments.
Priests on the mission will find the book one of the most useful
works for reference on the subjects treated of which can be found
in the English language.
It has been examined by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and
received its approbation, and can, therefore, be consulted and
followed with confidence as good authority.
------
Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia for 1867.
This valuable work appears to receive more care and attention
each year. The present volume is of unusual importance on account
of the political events in our own country and elsewhere, bearing
on the ultimate destiny of the Christian world, which are
recorded in its pages.
{575}
It contains, also, a very fair statement of the history and
present condition of the Pope's temporal dominion, and of the
principal events in the history of the Catholic Church during the
year. In the article on the "Roman Catholic Church," it is
incorrectly stated that the Council of Florence is by some
regarded as oecumenical. It is universally regarded as
oecumenical, and was one of the most important councils ever held
in the church. The Patriarch of Constantinople, the Greek
Emperor, the representatives of the other Eastern patriarchs and
of the Russian Church, and a number of other Eastern prelates
were present, and discussed all their causes of difference with
the Roman Church during thirteen months, after which they signed
the Act of Union, and united in a solemn definition of the
supremacy of the Pope.
The Council of Basle is enumerated among the certain oecumenical
councils, although all its acts from the twenty-fifth session
have been condemned, and none of those of the prior sessions
approved, by the Holy See. Although a few Galilean writers have
maintained that this council was oecumenical during its earlier
sessions, their opinion is generally rejected and is of no
weight.
------
Red Cross; or, Young America in England and Wales.
By Oliver Optic.
Boston: Lee & Shepard.
This volume, the third of the series published under the title of
_Young America Abroad_, continues and concludes the travels
and adventures of the naval cadets on British soil and in British
waters. London, Liverpool, Manchester, the Isle of Wight, the
Lake District, Snowdon, the Menai Straits, etc., are visited,
affording an opportunity for the introduction of a great deal of
miscellaneous information regarding the physical geography and
history of many interesting localities. So far the book is
unexceptionable. The adventures of the students, however, are, in
Oliver Optic's usual style, exaggerated to the very verge of
credibility; and though they will doubtless be relished by the
class for which they are written, we no less decidedly think
that, as mental food for youth, the selection is not the most
judicious, and that the author could very easily, with equal
credit to himself and greater benefit to his juvenile readers,
serve up something else more nutritious, if less palatable, or
not so highly seasoned. As regards the students themselves, it
seems to us, also, that the author has not yet hit upon the
golden mean: the good boys are almost too good, the bad equally
untrue to nature. Our experience with boys--and it is by no means
slight or superficial--tends to prove that with those who, from
an indisposition to submit to an "iron rule," are commonly known
as "wild," such impatience of restraint generally springs from
exuberant animal spirits, and is seldom, if ever, met with in
connection with meanness, much less vice. _Per contra_, the
greatest sycophants are, as a rule, the meanest and most
depraved.
------
Chaudron's New Fourth Reader.
On an Original Plan.
By A. De V. Chaudron.
Mobile: W. G. Clark & Co. Pp. 328. 1867.
Exteriorly, this book presents a by no means pleasing appearance;
hence, the greater our surprise, and, we may add, our pleasure,
at the variety and excellence of its contents, in which respect
it is nowise inferior to any of those in use in our public
schools. While we cannot expect for Mrs. Chaudron's Series of
_Readers_ an extended circulation in this city, in view of
so many and generally deserving rivals already firmly established
amongst us, we do with confidence recommend them, if in their
general features they resemble this, the only one of the series
submitted to us.
--------
{576}
Imitation of Christ
Spiritual Combat
Treatise on Prayer.
Boston: P. Donahoe. Pp. 816. 1868.
Decidedly opposed to small type in books of a religious or
educational character, we can cheerfully overlook its use in this
instance, giving us, as it does, complete in one volume and in
bulk not exceeding the average size of prayer-books, three such
admirable devotional works.
------
Irish Homes and Irish Hearts.
By Fanny Taylor, author of
_Eastern Hospitals, Tyborne,
Religious Orders,_ etc., etc.
Boston: Patrick Donahoe. Pp. xi. 215.
The original work, of which this volume is a very neat reprint,
was favorably mentioned in _The Catholic World_ for
September, 1867. Hence we need not enter into details. It is
enough to say that the author, leaving the beaten track of
ordinary tourists, devoted herself to the visitation and
inspection of the various charitable and religious institutions
of Ireland, the number and excellence of which amply vindicate
"the warmth of Irish hearts and the depth of Irish faith." This
volume gives the result of her examination. It unfolds not a new,
but to many an unexpected, phase of Irish character, and will
well repay a perusal, from which few can rise without being
benefited thereby.
------
Choice of a State of Life.
By Father C. G. Rossignoli, S. J.
Translated from the French,
1 vol. 16mo, pp. 252.
Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1868.
This is a well-reasoned little treatise on vocations, or the
choice of a state of life, an important matter too little thought
of in our day, when material things have the upper hand, and
spiritual things are made of so little account. Many, no doubt,
fitted by their talents and called by an interior voice to the
priesthood or the religious state, neglect the call; and others
again, quite unfit, thrust themselves forward, allured by some
prospect of worldly advancement. This little book clearly exposes
the motives which should govern us in the choice of a state of
life. If read in a calm and undisturbed state of mind, we do not
doubt it will do a great deal of good, and induce many to embrace
the better part which shall not be taken away from them.
------
Margaret: A Story of Life in a Prairie Home.
By Lyndon.
New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1868.
A pleasantly told story of everyday life. The interest in the
narrative is well sustained throughout; the incidents natural,
yet effectively introduced; and the characters strongly marked
and sufficiently diversified. "Life in a prairie home," however,
if here faithfully described, differs materially from what it is
generally supposed to be. The incidents are such as to be equally
possible in any village in any one of the original thirteen
states.
------
Elinor Johnston: Founded on Facts; and
Maurice and Genevieve, or
The Orphan Twins of Beauce.
Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. Pp. 136.
Two charming stories for children, tastefully got up, if we
except an occasional inequality in the pages and carelessness in
typography, which we hope to see avoided in future volumes. There
is no reason why books intended for children should not be as
creditable in appearance as those for adults. That this can be
done is proved by the beautifully uniform series just issued by
the Catholic Publication Society.
------
Books Received.
From John Murphy & Co., Baltimore:
The First-Class Book of History, designed for
pupils commencing the study of history, with
questions; adapted to the use of academies
and schools.
By M. J. Kerney, A.M., author of Compendium
of Ancient and Modern History, Columbian
Arithmetic, etc., etc., etc.
Twenty-second revised edition.
Enlarged by the addition of Lessons in
Ancient History,
1 vol. 16mo, pp. 335.
----
From P. O'Shea, New York:
O'Shea's Popular Juvenile Library.
First series. 12 vols., illustrated.
-------------
{577}
The Catholic World.
Vol. VII., No. 41.--August, 1868.
----
A New Face On An Old Question.
A few months ago I described a visit which I had recently paid to
a friend of mine in the country, and repeated a little of the
conversation we then had together upon subjects especially
interesting to Catholics. [Footnote 177]
[Footnote 177: See _The Catholic World_, March, 1868;
article, "Canada Thistles."]
I was so well pleased with what I saw and heard on that occasion
that I resolved to spend a few more days with him; and last
month, as soon as the warm weather set in, I presented myself one
evening at his hospitable door, valise in hand, and was soon
comfortably installed as a guest. If I found his house an
embodiment of domestic comfort during the winter, it was still
more delightful, now that the lawn and meadows wore the brilliant
green of early summer, and the prairie-roses, climbing over the
great, roomy piazza, shook down perfume into the open windows,
and drew around the place the ceaseless song of bees and the whir
of the restless little humming-bird. The library which had
charmed me so much when the blazing wood-fire shed a ruddy glow
of comfort over the bookshelves and the big writing-table, and
the tempting arm-chairs, was a thousand times more attractive,
now that green branches and bunches of roses filled the
old-fashioned fire-place, and windows, open to the floor, let in
the breath of new-mown hay, while creepers and honeysuckles kept
off the glare of the sun, and waved gently in and out with the
south-west breeze. Here we used to sit and chat on warm
afternoons, and our conversation generally turned upon the
religious topics in which we were both so much interested. One
day we were talking about the great improvement of late in the
style of discussion on the Catholic question. "We don't hear so
much of the old slanders," said my friend, "but there is rather
an inquiry into the reasons of our success and the best methods
to meet us. Whenever that inquiry is conducted honestly and
thoroughly, it is found that the only way to meet us is, to come
over boldly to our side and fight under our banner. As an
illustration of what I have said," continued he, picking up a
pamphlet from the table, "take this sermon on 'Christ and the
Common People,' by the Rev. Mr. Hinsdale, a Protestant clergyman,
of Detroit. He states the subject of his discourse boldly enough:
'We start,' he says, 'with the _confessed failure of
Protestantism_ to control spiritually the lives, and to mould
religiously the characters, of the millions.
{578}
What are the reasons?' He declares that Protestantism has
scarcely won a foot of ground from Romanism in more than two
hundred years. 'Geographically, it is where it was at the close
of the century in which Luther died. Neither is Protestantism
stronger religiously or politically than it was in the
seventeenth century; some deny that it is as strong' Nor can it
be claimed that it is now making any material gains in any of
these directions.' Again: 'In the Protestant countries, no ground
has been wrested from false religion or irreligion within a
hundred years;' and in the principal American cities the
Protestant denominations are unquestionably losing ground. There
is good authority for stating that in Cincinnati, for instance,
the communicants in the Protestant churches are fewer by two
thousand than they were twenty years ago; yet the population of
the city has increased during the interval by something like a
hundred thousand. Well, Mr. Hinsdale being, as I should judge, a
gentleman of common sense and honesty, does not try to relieve
his mind from the pressure of these disagreeable facts by cursing
the Catholics, but sets himself to work to find out the reasons
for the greater prosperity of our church. I need not read them to
you; for of course the great reason of all--the assistance of
Heaven--he does not perceive; but he makes some significant
admissions. He tells his people that Catholicism is the especial
religion of the poor, and that Protestantism is restricting
itself daily more and more closely to the rich; and he quotes a
saying of Theodore Parker's: '_If the poor forsake a church, it
is because the church forsook God long before._' I am a
Protestant of the Protestants,' Mr. Hinsdale adds, 'but have no
hesitation in affirming that in some particulars we should stand
rebuked before Romanists this hour; none in declaring that in
some respects the Romish priest understands the methods of Christ
better than the evangelical preacher.' Now, when the alarm of
Protestants at the increase of our churches takes such a form as
this, I believe that good results must flow from it."
"No doubt you are right," said I; "but I am afraid few of the
anti-popery preachers are like this gentleman of Detroit. Here,
for example, is an address, delivered at the last anniversary of
the American and Foreign Christian Union, by the Rev. Dr.
Talmadge, of Philadelphia. He begins with the admission that the
cause of popery is still flourishing, 'although in the attempt to
destroy it there has been expended enough ink, enough voice,
enough genius, enough money, enough ecclesiastical thunder, to
have torn off all the cassocks, and to have extinguished all the
wax candles, and to have poured out all the holy water, and to
have rent open all the convents, and to have turned the Vatican
into a Reformed Dutch church, and the convocation of cardinals
into an old-fashioned prayer-meeting, and to have immersed the
pope, and sent him forth as a colporteur of the American and
Foreign Christian Union. But somehow there has been a great waste
of effort. The plain fact is,' he continues, 'that Romanism has
to-day, in the United States, tenfold more power than when we
first began to bombard it.'
{579}
And the moral he draws from this survey of the situation is, that
the Protestants had better 'change their style of warfare,' and
introduce into the fight the principle of holy love, and the
example of charity and devotion. Nothing could be more sensible
than this remark of his: 'Bitter denunciation on the part of good
but mistaken men never pulled down one Roman Catholic church, but
has built five hundred. There is only one way to make a man give
up his religion, and that is by showing him a better.' Brave
words, you say, and so they are. Yet this very sermon is full of
just the sort of bitter denunciation which the preacher
denounces. The whole address is a condemnation of the speaker
himself--one of the finest pieces of unconscious satire I ever
read. I don't believe _The Observer_ itself could do the
raw-head and bloody-bones business better than Dr. Talmadge does
it."
"Never mind. Get these people to admit the principle of honest
and gentlemanly dealing in religious controversy, and you may
leave their practice to reform itself. For one man who was
impressed by Dr. Talmadge's swelling invectives, I make little
doubt that there were five who carried away in their hearts his
advice to be charitable, courteous, and just. The English
Nonconformist preacher, Newman Hall, who travelled through the
United States recently, told his congregation on his return home
that one of the greatest dangers of Protestantism nowadays was
injustice toward Roman Catholics. I am afraid that his advice was
not much relished in England, for you know injustice to Catholics
is one of the pet foibles of Englishmen; but it is not so bad
here. The American people are naturally fond of fair play. You
have only to convince them that a certain course of conduct is
unjust, and they will change it of their own accord."
"Do you mean to say, then, that you believe reason and logic are
henceforth to supersede violence and slander in the discussion of
the Catholic problem?"
"Not entirely, of course. But I believe that falsehoods are
rapidly losing their efficacy in polemics, and that Protestants
recognize this fact and are preparing to adapt themselves to the
altered conditions of the conflict. And I do not mean to
insinuate that as a class they do this merely from policy. Most
of them probably used to believe the old standard lies; at least,
they did not _dis_believe them. They repeated them by rote,
because they had been brought up to do so, and they never thought
of stopping to inquire into their authority. Now that the
slanders have ceased to serve a purpose, it is naturally easier
to convince those who used to profit by them that they _are_
slanders. What I mean to say is, that the tendency of our time is
toward fairness and good sense in religious disputes. You and I,
for example, are quite young enough to remember when 'Romanism'
was popularly regarded as an unknown horror, no more to be
tolerated than the plague or the yellow fever. It was not thought
to be a question open for debate. A Protestant would no more have
dreamed of examining the merits of popery than the merits of
hydrophobia. But now it is a very common thing for our
adversaries to admit that we have done wonderful service to
humanity in our day; that in some particulars we have done and
are still doing more than any other denomination; only we belong
to a past age and ought now to give way to fresher organizations.
{580}
I remember a rather striking sermon which I read in a Detroit
newspaper, the other day, on the 'irrepressible conflict' between
Catholicism and Liberalism, by the Rev. Mr. Mumford, a Unitarian
clergyman. The greater part of the discourse was as illiberal as
anything could be. Mr. Mumford saw in the Catholic Church a
tremendous engine of oppression, and thought it was scheming to
get control of the negroes in the Southern States, and through
them to direct the politics of the whole country--"
"He saw no danger in the great influence which Methodism has
acquired over the colored people, did he?"
"No; and he forgot to mention that the Catholic Church is almost
the only one in America which has never been tainted by the
intrusion of politics. Well, I was going on to say that, with all
Mr. Mumford's prejudices and absurdities, he had the honesty to
acknowledge that the Catholic Church is really entitled to the
gratitude of mankind, and declared that he was glad it had
secured some foothold in America, 'to act as a restraint upon the
intolerance of the Protestant churches.'"
"I am afraid that you rather exaggerate the importance of
admissions like these. They are so often made merely for
rhetorical effect! They are little patches of light artfully
thrown into the picture to heighten the effect of the shadows."
"I know that I don't refer to them as proofs of a willingness to
examine the nature and grounds of Catholic doctrine, though I
believe that there is much more of such willingness than there
used to be, but as an evidence that a spirit of fairness and
good-breeding is beginning to prevail in religious controversy;
and from that spirit I cannot but expect good results."
"So far I have no doubt you are right; and one of the good
results, it seems to me, must be the gradual extinction (or
possibly the reform) of denominational newspapers of the old
bludgeon-school. _The Observer_ must go out of fashion
whenever reason comes in. There will be no room for the religious
brawlers when those who differ in creed learn to talk over their
differences in a common-sense way. Don't you think there is a
change in the tone of the press already?"
"The secular press certainly has improved wonderfully in its
treatment of Catholics. About the religious periodicals I am not
so sure: some of them are tamer than they were formerly, but the
old stand-bys lash their tails as furiously as ever, and the less
they are heeded the louder they roar. But that is only natural.
You see the same thing at the theatres. When a play ceases to
draw very well, the single combats become doubly fierce and the
red-fire is frequent. The violence of the denominational organs
must not be taken as an evidence of the sentiment of society. If
they really led the opinions of their readers, we should have an
anti-Catholic crusade every year. I wonder if you have noticed,
however, that some of the Protestant religious papers which have
usually been mild in their tone have been roused of late to an
unaccustomed bitterness against us?"
"Yes, and I hardly know how to account for it."
"I think the explanation is this. The calm discussion of Catholic
questions, as we said before, must logically lead to the
discovery of Catholic truth. There are Protestant writers who see
this and do not want to see it. They perceive whither the current
is bearing them, and they struggle against it. They rail at the
church by way of protest against the growth of an unwelcome,
dimly foreseen conviction, as an encouragement to their tottering
unbelief, just as boys whistle to keep up their courage.
{581}
Have you ever seen a dying sinner try to fight off death? It is
in some such hopeless effort as his that _The Liberal
Christian_ and a few other journals are now engaged. I do not
say that they understand this themselves. I do not charge them
with absolutely resisting the progress of conviction, or, to
speak more exactly, the resistance is instinctive rather than
voluntary; but they feel or suspect, perhaps without fully
comprehending, that, if they keep on as they are going, they must
come pretty soon to the Catholic Church, and that provokes them.
_The Liberal Christian_, you know, is edited by Dr. Bellows,
an accomplished gentleman, who was thought some years ago to
exhibit a decided leaning toward the church. I am not prepared to
say whether this supposition was correct or not; but it is
certain that he saw more clearly and exposed more boldly the
inherent defects and logical tendencies of Protestantism than any
other Protestant I can remember, and in one of his published
sermons he declared that Unitarians (his own sect) had more
sympathy with Catholicism than with any other form of religion.
It might seem strange to find him among the foremost revilers of
that very Catholicism; but my theory explains it. The hostility
which glistens in his letters and runs mad, sometimes, in the
miscellaneous columns of his paper, is the revolt of his
Protestantism against the progress of unwelcome ideas--an effort
of his unregenerate nature, so to speak, to throw off something
which does not agree with it. Ah! how many men have trod in the
same path he is now following, and have been led by it to the
bitter waters of disappointment! He saw the fatal gulf into which
the Protestant bodies were plunging. He felt that hunger of the
spirit which nothing but the church of God ever satisfies. He
raised a cry for help, and when he found that there was no help
except from the Holy Catholic Church, he turned his back upon
her, and bound himself down once more with the narrow bonds of
what is called Unitarian 'liberalism.' And now, of course, he
misses no opportunity of declaring his detestation of the succor
which he has refused. He has failed in his aspirations after a
mock church, and naturally he vents his disappointment on the
real one. He fancies that he is moved by principle, when he is
really instigated by pique. He imagines that he is an earnest,
honest seeker after an answer to what he well terms 'the dumb
wants of the religious times,' when he is--but I have no business
to judge his motives. That is God's affair. We must presume that
he is courageous and sincere, and that whenever he finds the
right road he will boldly walk in it. Nine years ago, Dr. Bellows
delivered an address before the alumni of the Harvard Divinity
School, on 'The Suspense of Faith,' which was generally supposed
to indicate his wish to engraft a ritual and a priesthood upon
the Unitarian denomination, bringing it perhaps nearer to
Episcopalianism than to any other system of worship. There was no
such thought in his mind, I am sure; though his sentiments, had
they been acted upon, might have led many men through
Episcopalianism into the Catholic Church. I will not weary you
with the whole of it; but let me read a few lines which have a
special application to what we have been saying.
{582}
He is trying to account for the fact that Unitarianism is in a
posture of pause and self-distrust and he says: 'If, with logical
desperation, we ultimate the tendencies of Protestantism, and
allow even the malice of its enemies to flash light upon their
direction, we may see that _the sufficiency of the Scriptures
turns out to be the self-sufficiency of man_, and the right of
private judgment an absolute independence of Bible or church. No
creed but the Scriptures, practically abolishes all Scriptures
but those on the human heart; nothing between a man's conscience
and his God, vacates the church; and with the church, the Holy
Ghost, whose function is usurped by private reason: the church
lapses into what are called religious institutions, these into
Congregationalism, and Congregationalism into individualism--and
the logical end is the abandonment of the church as an
independent institution, _the denial of Christianity as a
supernatural revelation,_ and the extinction of worship as a
separate interest. There is no pretence that Protestantism, as a
body, has reached this, or intends this, or would not honestly
and earnestly repudiate it; but that its most logical product is
at this point, it is not easy to deny. Nay, that these are the
_tendencies_ of Protestantism is very apparent.' When he
comes to speak of Unitarianism as the representative and most
logical exponent of Protestantism, he expresses himself in a
still more remarkable way. Religion, he thinks, like everything
else in the world, has been constantly making progress, and
Unitarianism has always been in the van. Now this progress seemed
to have reached its limit; there is a pause, a partial recoil, in
some cases a turning back to the formalism and ritual worship of
Rome, in others a headlong rush into the abyss of pure
rationalism. In fact, Dr. Bellows believes that to create an
equilibrium in the relations between God and man, two opposing
forces are in operation--a centrifugal force, which drives man
away from submission to divine authority, that he may develop his
own liberty and functions of the will, and a centripetal force,
which leads him to worship and obedience. These are represented
respectively by Protestantism and Catholicism, and he seems to
think them destined to alternate--perhaps for all time, though
about this his meaning is not very clear. 'Is it not plain,' he
says, 'that, as Protestants of the Protestants, we are at the
apogee of our orbit; that in us the centrifugal epoch of humanity
has, for this swing of the pendulum at least, reached its bound?
For one cycle we have come, I think, nearly to the end of our
self-directing, self-asserting, self-developing, self-culturing
faculties; to the end of our honest interest in this necessary
alternate movement.'"
"That means, if it means anything that Protestantism has done its
work, at least for the present age; that it has accomplished all
it can; and there is nothing left for man but a return to the
centripetal force, or to the Catholic Church."
"Exactly: that would be the logical complement of the position he
assumed in the curious discourse from which I have been quoting;
but the misery is that he had not the courage to be logical. Ah!
how well I remember the impression produced at the time by that
sad, sad cry of weariness and disappointment which went up from
his pulpit when he perceived that the toil, and speculation, and
uneasiness of years had brought him to no goal; that he had
developed man's faculties without finding a use for them; that he
had achieved an intellectual freedom without knowing what to do
with it; that, as he well expressed it himself, '_there was no
more road_ in the direction he had been going.'
{583}
Many, as we have seen, when they reached that point on their
journey whence this whole dismal prospect was visible, turned
back to the church which their fathers had forsaken, and there
found peace; and Dr. Bellows had stated so boldly the miseries of
his own situation that it was no wonder people thought he too
would follow that course. But he set himself about finding a new
road, imagining a new church which was to arise at no distant
day, and combine the most conservative of liturgies with the most
radical of creeds. It was to be constituted on strictly
centripetal principles. Speculation having proved empty, worship
was to be essayed as a change. Doubt being but sorry fare for a
hungry soul, there was to be a good deal of faith, and preaching
not being a gift of all men, place was to be made for prayer.
What that church was to be, how it was to arise, and when it was
to make its appearance, he did not pretend to say. But it must
come soon, because 'the yearning for a settled and externalized
faith' was too strong to be left unsatisfied. It was to be, I
must suppose, a mingling of the revelations of our Saviour with
the dreams of Luther, Calvin, Fox, and Swedenborg; because, as
Dr. Bellows says in one of his lectures, 'the religious man who
has no vacillations in his views, who is not sometimes inclined
to Calvinism, sometimes to Rationalism, sometimes to Catholicism,
sometimes to Quakerism, has an imperfect activity, a dull
imagination, and a timid love of truth; for all these faiths have
embodied great and interesting spiritual facts which the free and
earnest explorer will encounter in his own experience, and find
more vividly portrayed in the history of these sects than in
himself.' It was to possess a fixed creed, but nobody was
expected to believe in it, for 'inconsistencies of opinion' are
to be expected of everybody, and doubt, fear, and scepticism are
actually desirable, provided they are 'the work of one's own
mental and spiritual activity, and not of mere passive
acquiescence in the forces that one encounters from without.' It
was to be a _true_ church, of course, yet a false church
also; because Dr. Bellows declares that 'truth is too large to be
surrounded by any one man or any one party,' and there are always
two great parties in religion as there are in politics, 'and each
has part of the truth in its keeping;' so that, of course,
neither can be wholly right. He wanted his church to be a
historical church, for Christianity is a historical religion, and
'a faith stripped of historic reality, disunited from its
original facts and persons, does not promise to live and work in
the human heart and life.' He seemed to have forgotten that
history is the growth of time, and cannot be conferred upon a
new-born infant. The future church must have rites and
ceremonies, for without them religion hardly 'touches our daily
habits and ordinary career,' and is, like Unitarianism, 'an
unhoused, unnatural, and disembodied faith.' It must be a visible
church, yet without a priesthood; a divinely instituted church,
yet without authority; receiving its doctrines by divine
revelations, yet only true in part; eternal, yet changeable, I am
not surprised that Dr. Bellows has not yet found it."
"Surely he never uttered any such extraordinary farrago as you
have been putting into his mouth?"
{584}
"Not in those words, of course, nor with that collocation of
thoughts; but all that I have said you will find either in his
_Suspense of Faith_, or in the volume of sermons published
under the title of _Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine_,
(New York, 1860.) I have represented, as fairly as possible, the
vagueness of his aspirations and the inconsistency of his
principles. It is only clear that he wanted to be a Protestant
and a Catholic at the same time. He was shocked at the results of
his own centripetalism, and he longed for a visible church, with
a tangible creed and a set form of worship; only he wanted to
make the church himself; not to be the founder of a new sect--he
disclaimed that, and was unwilling even to change the form of
service in his own congregation--but to dream about it, to
speculate upon what it ought to be, to mould and influence
opinion, until, by a seemingly spontaneous movement, the new
church should arise from the midst of the people. Poor man! He
sees, by this time, that nobody feels the want of this new
church, and nobody believes in it; and he hates the true church,
partly because it is a continual reproach to him, bringing to
mind a duty unfulfilled and a happiness unappreciated, and partly
because it continually revives his disappointment."
"I have serious doubts, however, whether Dr. Bellows ever
comprehended the beauty of the Catholic religion half so well as
many people supposed that he did. Read his books with a little
care, and you will see that he never took but the most
superficial view of religion: he never got at the core of it.
Religion to him--as to how many others!--was a thin philosophy
which amused his intellect, a sentimental poetry which tickled
his aesthetic instincts; it was not a _life_. Of that vital
Christianity which comprehends the whole relationship between God
and man, which is both a creed, a worship, and the very essence
of devout life, his heart seems to have been void."
"Yes, he says something almost equivalent to this in his sermon
on 'Spiritual Discernment.'[Footnote 178]
[Footnote 178: _Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine_.]
'All the triumphs of Protestantism,' he declares, 'the universal
improvement of private and public morality, of public education,
respect for the individual, have grown out of the increasing care
to keep the church and the world apart--religion and other
interests distinct subjects of thought and attention.' And the
word 'world' here he does not use in its bad sense, but merely as
synonymous with secular affairs. Again he says, that 'the
Catholic Church succeeded wonderfully in blending life and
religion together, faith and daily usage, pleasure and worship,
philosophy and the Gospel;' and this, he thinks, was its great
fault, while the great merit of Protestantism was, that it
carefully separated what the church had so carefully melted
together. That gives you the real old Puritan idea of piety--a
something to be put on at stated times, and then put off again,
like the long faces which old-fashioned Protestants pull for
Sunday wear; to have no intimate connection with daily life, but
to be kept carefully apart, like the best coat which our
ancestors used to lay by in lavender leaves, to be worn on days
of ceremony. What is the good of a religion which does not blend
with work-a-day life? of a faith which is not felt in daily
usage? of a worship which must be kept apart from our pleasures,
from our business, from any of our honest pursuits?
{585}
Why, the very beauty of religion is, that it shall be in man's
heart at all times and in all places. If it cannot accompany us
everywhere, if it can only live in the artificial atmosphere of
Sunday meetings, it is not worth having. The danger against which
we have most to guard is not, Dr. Bellows thinks, that of
forgetting our religion, but that of growing too familiar with
it. His God is an awful rather than a loving God, and our sin
against him is not that we go so far away from him, but that we
bring him so near to us. In effect he tells us to fetch out our
piety once a week or so, on stated occasions, but not to let it
interfere with our daily walk and conversation, for that would be
sacrilege."
"All this shows, as you say, that he has no comprehension as yet
of the true nature of religion; and shall I tell you why he is so
slow to acquire it? I believe that he is not really in sympathy
with Christianity."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh! he is nominally a Christian, of course. He would be
horrified if you told him he was not. But he has no sympathy with
the religion of Christ. Our Saviour, in his opinion, was only the
expounder of a system of ethics, and, to tell the truth, it is
not clear to me wherein the Christ of Unitarianism is essentially
superior to Socrates or Benjamin Franklin. The worship of our
Lord Dr. Bellows emphatically denounces as rank 'idolatry.' We
may only reverence him as a creature specially favored by the
Almighty, and a teacher to whose word we owe the most profound
respect. Take away from your religious system the idea of God in
the person of his divine Son perpetually present with the
faithful, and helping them to bear the burdens of humanity which
he himself has borne, and it is but a cold, cheerless, fallacious
belief which is left you. It is no longer religion; it is only a
false philosophy. Devotion vanishes; faith, hope, and love are
exchanged for a code of rules of behavior; and God withdraws from
the world into the impenetrable mystery of the heavens, where the
voice of prayer indeed may reach him, but his presence is never
felt by man, and his love never fills the heart. He is no longer
the dear Lord of the Christian saints, but the Allah of the
Moslems."
"You have hit it exactly; and now let me tell you that ever since
Dr. Bellows set out on the foreign tour in which he is still
occupied, I have watched for the record of his impressions of
Oriental life, feeling certain, from what I knew of him, that he
would find an attraction in Mohammedanism which he never saw in
Christianity. I was not mistaken. He is not a polygamist: he has
no taste for a sensual heaven; I don't suppose he prefers the
Koran to the Bible; and I never heard of his keeping the
inordinate fasts of Ramadan; still, the creed of Islam seems, in
its main features, to have caught his fancy, and he loads it with
indirect praises, which he never thought of bestowing upon any
form of Christianity. Let me read you an extract from one of his
recent letters to _The Liberal Christian_:
"'These people,' he says, referring to the Egyptians, 'know
nothing of Christianity which ought to give it any superiority
in their eyes over Mohammedanism. When the Arabian prophet
commenced his marvellous work, there is little doubt that he
was animated by the sincere enthusiasm of a religious reformer.
Mohammed recognized both dispensations, the Mosaic and the
Christian; and his intelligent followers to this day speak
reverently of the Christ. They evade the authority and use of
our Scriptures, by asserting that they have been thoroughly
corrupted in their text. A learned Mohammedan in India,
however, has just written the introduction to a new Commentary
on our Bible, in which he ably refutes the Mussulman charge of
general corruptness, and adduces all the passages quoted out of
the Old and New Testaments in the Koran.
{586}
But what have Mussulmans seen of Christianity to commend it
greatly above their own faith? Is it alleged that Mohammedanism
has owed its triumphs and progress to the sword? Is it the
fault of Christians if the Cross has not advanced by the same
weapon? What infidel rage of the Crescent has ever exceeded the
fanatical soldiering of the Crusades, and what has Coeur de
Lion to boast over Saladin in enlightenment or appreciation of
the Christian spirit? And if we come to bowing, and fasting,
and washing, and external forms, _I confess that the
degrading prostrations, and crossings, and mummeries of the
Greek and Catholic churches, with the gaudy trappings of robes
and jewels, the worship of saints and images, and the
deification of a humble Jewish woman, appear to me to have
nothing in the presence of which Mussulmans could feel the
lesser reasonableness, purity, or dignity, or the lesser
credibility of their own unadorned and simpler
superstition._ Compared with Catholic and Greek legends, the
Koran is a model of purity and elegance of style, and _its
worst superstitions do not much exceed in grossness the popular
interpretation given to monkish fables._ As it respects
ecclesiastical interference and tyranny, Mohammedanism is a
whole world in advance of Romanism or the Greek Church. It is
essentially without priest or ritual, in any Catholic sense.
The Mussulman is his own priest. He finds Allah everywhere, and
he has only to turn toward Mecca, and bow in prayer, and his
field, his boat, the desert, is as good an altar as the mosque.
It is truly affecting to see the fidelity of the common people
to their faith, the apparent heedlessness of observation, the
absorption in their prayers, the careful memory of their hours
of devotion.'
"And, speaking of the absence of symbols and rites in the
mosques, he adds: 'Surely there is something grand in this
simplicity, _and something vital in a faith which, aided by so
little external appliance, has survived in full vigor twelve
hundred years'_"
"Why don't he admire the vitality of the devil? Satan has
survived in full vigor a good deal more than twelve hundred
years."
"That would be about as logical. But is it not melancholy to see
how far a man whom we would like to respect can be carried by his
uncontrolled vagaries! He demanded a 'historical church:' there
is only one in Christendom, and that he will not have; and now it
almost seems as if he felt an occasional temptation to search for
one _outside_ of Christendom. Protestantism, he finds, has
run its course. Catholicism he will have nothing to do with.
What, then, is left him, if he will be a religious man at all?
That seems to be the question which perplexes him and the small
but intelligent school of thinkers of whom he is the
representative. As the Jews are still waiting for the Christ they
crucified eighteen hundred years ago, so the Bellows school are
watching for the coming of that Christianity which they have
already rejected. And both, it seems to me, are sick at heart
with hope long deferred."
"Yes; we hear little now of the confident prophetic tone in which
Dr. Bellows some years ago discoursed of the glories of the new
religion of humanity, and predicted a resettlement of worn-out
creeds and a revival of suspended faith. He writes now rather of
the desolation of the present than of brightness which he
discerns in the future. And this brings us back to the point from
which we started. While Protestant theologians in general are
discarding vituperation, there are certain of our opponents who
show us a bitterness to which they were not formerly accustomed,
because they have been disappointed in their own religious
aspirations, and have a vague, half-conscious, and wholly
unwelcome impression that the Catholic Church alone is capable of
satisfying them. Dr. Bellows, for instance, travels through
Europe and finds that Protestantism is everywhere lifeless. He is
bold enough to say so; but he takes his revenge in the next
breath by trying to show that the Catholic Church is no better.
{587}
He is powerless to arrest the decay which is destroying his own
organization, but he seems to find a melancholy compensation in
attacking Catholicism. He reminds me of what the boy said when he
was thrashed by a school-fellow: 'If I can't whip you, I can make
faces at your sister.' He visits Paris, and confesses that
'Protestantism makes next to no headway' in France, and is torn
by internal dissensions. He goes to the heart of Protestant
Germany, and finds the general aspect 'one of painful decay in
the faith and spirituality of the people.' All over the
continent, he observes that where the Catholic faith has died
out, 'nothing vigorous has shot up in its place,' and the masses
of the population are 'without aspiration, devoutness, or faith
in the invisible.' 'Protestantism, as it appears here, is a
chilled, repulsive, ungrowing thing, entering very little into
the national or the social and domestic life, and apparently not
destined in any of its present forms to animate the passions or
win and shape the hearts and lives of the middle classes. ...
_Out of the present elements of faith and worship in Germany I
see no prospects of any healthy and contagious religious life
arising.'_ Nay, what is worse than all, the peculiar form of
Protestantism upon which, if upon any. Dr. Bellows would rely for
the regeneration of Europe, is in no better way than the others.
'It does not appear,' he says, 'that the liberal element in the
Protestantism of Germany, I mean that branch of its Protestantism
which we should consider 'most in sympathy with Unitarianism, is
very earnest or creative. It seems still rather a negation of
orthodoxy than an affirmation of the positive truths of
Christianity. ... Forced to take positive ground, I fear that a
large part of this extensive body _would be compelled to
abandon Christian territory altogether._' From Berlin he
writes that 'the whole life of the national church is sickly and
discouraging;' from Strasburg, that Protestantism 'must learn
some new ways before it will become the religion of the people of
France, Italy, or even Germany;' from Vienna, that the
Protestantism of Austria is 'essentially torpid and
unprogressive, presenting nothing attractive or promising.' These
passages, and many more of similar purport, we may take as
equivalent to the little boy's confession that he could not whip
his antagonist. When it comes to the other part, the making faces
at his sister, I am bound to say that Dr. Bellows shows more
temper than strength. In Vienna, he deplored the lukewarmness of
the Catholic people all through Germany, yet, in several previous
letters, he had contrasted their zeal in church-going with the
indifference of the Protestants. He accuses the clergy of
avarice, though in Rome he compliments the priests for their
personal merits, their 'seriousness, decorum, and fair
intelligence.' He declares that 'the Catholic Church is an artful
substitute for anything that a human soul ought to desire;' that
she is 'the chief hinderance to progress;' that she has
'glorified the blessed Mother into the Almighty;' that she
'mutters spells and practises necromancy at her altars,' and all
that kind of thing, which I need not repeat, because we have
heard it in almost the very same words scores of times before.
But the most curious of all his angry attacks was made--where,
think you? Why, on a steamer in the Levant, where there was
nothing whatever to provoke him: where the onslaught was so
perfectly gratuitous that it burst upon the calm flow of his
letter like a thunderbolt rending the summer sky. Here it is:
{588}
"'Roman Catholicism, weak in every member, is prodigious in its
total effectiveness, because it is a unit. It is quietly
seizing America, piece by piece, state by state, city by city.
In a new state like Wisconsin, for instance, it has the oldest
college, the largest theological school, the best hospitals and
charities, the finest churches; and what is true of Wisconsin
is equally true of many other Western states. Protestantism,
with a hundred times the wealth, intelligence, public spirit,
and administrative ability, by reason of its sectarian
jealousies and divisions can have no parallel successes, and is
losing rapidly its place in legislative grants and in public
policy. The Irish Catholics spot the members of state
legislatures who vote against the appropriations they call for,
and are able in our close elections to defeat their return.
Representatives become servile and pliable, and Romanism
flourishes. A Quaker gentleman of wealth, in the West, (the
story is exactly true,) married a Vermont girl who had become a
Catholic in a nunnery where she was sent for her education. It
was agreed that, if children were given them, the boys should
be reared in the faith of their father, the girls in that of
their mother. _The Vermont mother gave her husband ten girls,
but never a son!_ Eight of them grew up Catholics, married
influential men, and brought up their children Catholics, and
in some cases brought over their husbands, and so the Roman
Church was recruited with Protestant wealth and Quaker blood to
a vast extent. So much for sending Protestant girls to Roman
Catholic seminaries, and then complaining that so many
Protestants are lost to the superstitions of Romanism! There is
an apathy about the Roman Catholic advances in the United
States among American Protestants, which will finally receive a
terrible shock. There is no influence at work in America so
hostile to our future peace as the Roman Catholic Church. The
next American war will, I fear, be a religious war--of all
kinds the worst. If we wish to avert it, _we must take
immediate steps to organize Protestantism more efficiently_,
and on less sectarian ground.'
"Well, upon my word, the conduct of that Vermont girl was
abominable. I suppose Dr. Bellows thinks she never would have
been artful enough to swindle her husband out of all his expected
boys if she had not been brought up in a convent. 'So much for
sending Protestant girls to Roman Catholic seminaries!' I should
think so, indeed!"
"The story is very ridiculous; but the moral Dr. Bellows draws
from it is worse than ridiculous. If we wish to avert a religious
war, he says, 'we must take immediate steps to organize
Protestantism more efficiently, and on less sectarian ground.'
That means that Protestantism must maintain an overwhelming
preponderance in this country by fair means or foul. If it cannot
convert the papists with the Bible, it ought to knock them on the
head with a bludgeon. And the same atrocious sentiment is still
more plainly expressed by an Irish writer in _The Liberal
Christian_ of Feb. 29th, who says, 'Popery and Fenianism are
Siamese curses, withering every noble and humane feeling wherever
they exist. ... _They deserve no toleration; they should
receive no mercy._' There's a 'liberal' Christian for you,
with a vengeance!"
"Well, we can afford to ridicule such fears and threats; but it
is very sad. Here, where nearly all honest people seem to have
made up their minds to reform their bad language, and be as
polite in discussing sacred questions as in talking over secular
affairs, a sect which professes toleration and fairness beyond
all others goes back to the old style of polemical blackguardism.
I can appreciate the unfortunate position of the liberal
Christians, when, having pushed ahead so far, they find that
there is 'no more road' in that direction, and can understand
that only one of two courses may seem open to them, either to
berate the Catholics or to join them; but the instruction which
the barrister received from his attorney when the law and the
facts were both against him, 'Abuse the other side,' does not
apply so well to religion as to jury trials. We must have a
different style of argument if anybody is to be converted or
improved by the discussion.
-------
{589}
Nellie Netterville.
Chapter XII.
When first O'More unfolded the cloak in which he had brought
Nellie safely through the flames, she lay so white and still
that, for one brief, terrible moment, he almost fancied she was
dead. The fresh air, however, soon revived her, and, opening her
eyes, filled with a look of terror which afterward haunted them
for months, she fixed them upon Roger, and whispered nervously:
"Where are the rest--the priest and all? Where are they?"
"They are with their God, I trust," he answered solemnly. At that
awful moment he felt that he could say nothing but the truth,
terrible as he knew that truth must sound in the ears of the pale
girl beside him. His words, in fact, seemed to cut through her
like a knife, and she fell upon her knees, exclaiming: "I only
saved--I only saved! O my God, my God! have mercy on their
souls!" Then suddenly remembering that, if she were safe, she
owed it entirely to Roger, she added earnestly, "You have risked
your life for mine. How shall I thank you?"
"By helping me once more to save it," he answered curtly.
"Nellie," he went on rapidly, for he knew too well that every
moment they lingered there was fraught with peril--"Nellie, you
are saved, and yet not safe yet! Your life, however, is in your
own hands now, and with courage and good trust in Providence, I
doubt not we shall pull safely through."
Nellie seemed to gather up her mind for a great effort, and said
calmly:
"Only say what I must do, and I will do it."
"The case is this," said Roger shortly: "Yonder tower," and he
pointed to the burning pile overhead--"yonder tower must fall
soon, and, if we linger here, will crush us in its ruins. On the
other hand, even if we could creep round to the opposite side of
the church, a thing in itself almost impossible, the fanatical
demons who guard the gates will probably shoot us down like dogs.
The cliff, therefore, is our best--almost our only chance.
Nevertheless I leave the choice in your own hands. Only remember
you must decide at once."
"The cliff, then, be it!" said Nellie, with white lips but
flashing eyes. "God is more merciful than man. He will save us,
perhaps; if not, his will be done--not mine. I will trust
entirely to him--entirely to him and you."
Almost ere she had finished speaking, Roger had undone the rope
which he carried round his waist, and was looking eagerly about
him for some means of securing it in such a way as to make it
useful to Nellie in her descent. Fortunately for his purpose, a
thorny tree had planted itself, some hundreds of years before, in
a fissure of the rocks so close to the walls of the tower that,
old, and gray, and stunted, as it now was, its roots had in all
probability penetrated beneath their broad foundation, and were
quite as firmly settled in the ground. Upon this Roger pounced at
once, and having tried it sufficiently to make tolerably sure of
its powers of endurance, he passed one end of his rope round the
thickest and lowest portions of the stem, and made it fast with a
sailor's knot.
{590}
The other end he threw over the cliff, and then watched its fall
with a terrible, silent fear at his heart lest it should prove
shorter than his need required. Down it went and down, and he
stooped over to mark its progress until Nellie felt sick with
fear, and turned away to avoid the giddiness which she knew would
be fatal to them both.
At last she heard him say, "Thank God, it has reached the
platform!" Then he turned round and anxiously scanned her
features.
"Nellie," he said, "this thing is difficult, but not impossible.
I have seen you bound like a deer down cliffs almost as steep, if
not so high. The great, the only real peril, is in the eyesight.
Lot's wife perished by a look. You must promise me neither to
glance up nor down, but to keep your eyes fixed on the rocks
before you. Hold well by the rope; take it hand over hand like a
sailor, (I remember that you know the trick;) and leave the rest
to me. There is really a path, though you can hardly see it from
this spot; and there are chinks and crevices besides, in which
you will easily find footing. You must feel for them as you
descend; and when you are at a loss, I shall be below to help
you. Neither will you be quite alone, for I am going to fasten
you by this cord, so that, if you should happen to let go, I may
perhaps be able to support you."
"My God!" said Nellie, white with terror, as he passed a strong,
light cord, first round her waist and then his own, in such a way
that there was length sufficient to enable them to act
independently of each other, while, at the same time, neither
could have fallen without almost to a certainty insuring the
destruction of both. "My God, I cannot consent to this. Go by
yourself; my fall would kill you."
"But you will not fall--you shall not fall," he pleaded
anxiously, "if only you will abide by my directions."
"Go alone, I do beseech you!" she answered, with a shiver. "You
cannot save me, and I shall but insure your destruction with my
own."
"Nay, then, I give it up," he answered, almost sullenly. "We will
stay here and die together, for never shall it be said of an
O'More that, in seeking safety for himself, he left a woman thus
to perish."
"Then, in God's name, let us try!" said Nellie; "only tell me
what to do, and I will do it--if I can."
"Hold fast the rope, that is all. Never let one hand go until the
other has grasped it firmly, and leave the rest to me. I will
help to place your feet in safe resting-places as we go down.
Only trust me, and all will yet be well."
"I will trust to you and to God, and our Lady," said Nellie,
unconsciously repeating the password of the morning. Her color
was rising fast, and her eyes had begun to sparkle with
excitement. O'More seized the propitious moment, and, almost
before Nellie knew it, she had begun her perilous descent.
"Are you steady now--quite steady?" he asked, in as low a voice
as if he feared to startle the air with motion by speaking
louder. Yes! with the natural instinct of a mountain climber
Nellie had already found a rough indented spot in which her foot
was firmly planted, and he descended a step lower. Thus inch by
inch they went, Nellie ever clinging to the rope, and O'More
guiding her descent with a success he had hardly looked for, and
which he felt to be almost miraculous.
{591}
His heart at last beat high with hope; for he saw by the distance
which they had descended that they must be nearing a sort of
shelf or platform formed by a sudden bulging out of the lower
strata of the cliffs, and he knew that they were safe if they
could only reach that spot, the rest of the path being so well
marked that, even without his aid, Nellie could easily have found
her way from thence to the sands beneath.
But the surge of the sea boomed louder and louder as she
approached it, and at last, fairly forgetting Roger's caution,
she turned her head a little, and glanced downward. Then, for the
first time, she became fully conscious of the terrible position
she occupied, suspended as it seemed by a very thread between
earth and sky, and with the great, deep, awful ocean rolling
hundreds of feet below her. Her head swam, her eyesight failed
her, she had just enough presence of mind left to grasp the rope
firmly by both hands, when, feeling as if her senses were utterly
deserting her, she cried out:
"O my God, I am going! Save me, Roger, I am going!"
"No, no!" he cried, in agony, for he knew only too well the
danger of the thought. "Hold fast--hold on; for Christ's dear
sake, hold on! One step--two steps more, and you are safe.
There!" he cried, in a voice hoarse with emotion, as he felt his
own foot touch the platform; and seizing Nellie by the waist, he
drew her, hardly conscious of what he was doing, by main strength
to his side. "There, oh! thank God--thank God, you are safe at
last!"
He was just in time. Nellie had that very moment let go the rope,
and if he had not caught her, would inevitably have been dashed
to pieces on the rocks below. As it was, he landed her safely and
gently on the ledge where he himself was standing, and without
venturing to loose her entirely from his grasp, laid her down,
that she might recover from her nervous panic.
"You are safe," he kept repeating, as if it required the
assurance of his own voice to make certain of the fact. "You are
safe!" and then with an instinctive yet entirely unacknowledged
consciousness on his part, that _his_ own safety might
perhaps be at least a portion of her care, he added--"we are safe
now. You can stay here until you are quite yourself again; only
do not look up or down--at least not just yet, not until the
giddiness is gone. You forgot Lot's wife, or this never would
have happened."
Nellie was not insensible, though she looked so. She only felt as
if she were in a dream. She understood perfectly all that Roger
said; the shadow even of a smile seemed to pass over her white
lips as he alluded to Lot's wife; but his voice fell with a
muffled sound, as if it came from a great distance, on her ear;
and earth, and sky, and cliff, and ocean, all seemed blending and
floating in a wild fantasy through her brain. By degrees,
however, a sort of awakening seemed to creep over her, but she
did not use it at first either to look up or speak. Possibly she
felt that words would be powerless to express her thoughts, and
was glad of any excuse for silence. Roger did not like to hurry
her, and he therefore employed the next few minutes in scanning
the sea in search of Henrietta. She was there, exactly in the
place in which he had bidden her to wait for him; but she was
watching the burning tower overhead, and had evidently very
little notion that any of its victims had escaped. From the spot
where he was standing, he could easily have made her hear him;
but fearing that his voice might rouse up some hidden foe, he
turned to Nellie for assistance.
{592}
"Have you a handkerchief," he asked, "or anything of that kind
which you could give me for a signal?"
Without answering, without even looking up, (so obedient had she
grown, poor Nellie!) she untied the scarlet kerchief, which, in
her harmless vanity, she had that morning thrown over her head
and knotted beneath her chin, as the last thing wanting to her
costume of a native girl, and gave it into Roger's hand. He waved
it for some time without success; but at last Henrietta saw it,
and began to row vigorously into shore.
"Now you may look," cried Roger joyfully, helping Nellie to stand
up; "now you may look; for you will see nothing but what it is
good for you to see. Henrietta Hewitson is waiting for us in the
boat below, and the sooner we leave this resting-place the
better."
"Henrietta Hewitson!" cried Nellie, roused effectually to life
again by the mention of her name. "His daughter! How kind, how
noble! Shall we not go to her at once?"
"If you are able," he answered. "The rest of the way is
easy--easier far than the cliffs of Clare Island, which you
climbed with me yesterday."
"Easy! oh! yes, surely it is easy," cried Nellie wildly. "O my
mother--my mother!" she sobbed, with a little gasp; "I shall see
her once again--and my grandfather! the poor old man will not be
left desolate, after all."
Roger saw that she was growing every moment more and more
excited, and he cut the matter short by carrying her down to the
beach and laying her in the boat, as if she had been a baby.
Henrietta received her with a look of remorse, as if she felt
that she herself must seem, somehow or other, responsible in
Nellie's eyes for the pain and misery she had been enduring for
the last few hours; and while she wrapt her tenderly and
affectionately in a cloak taken from her own shoulders, Roger
sent the boat, by a few vigorous strokes of the oar, to a safe
distance from the rocks near which they had embarked. This
manoeuvre placed them in full view of the burning tower, and he
dropped his oar and gazed upon it as if irresistibly attracted by
the spectacle. The body of the church was by this time a
smouldering heap of ruins, but the tower, wrapt in its terrible
robes of fire, still stood bravely up as if in defiance of its
coming doom. For a single second it remained thus, unyielding and
apparently uninjured, than it began visibly to totter. Another
moment, and it was swaying backward and forward like a leaf in an
autumn storm; and yet another, and, as if in a last wild effort
to escape from the flames that swathed it, it plunged right over
the cliffs, the fragments of its ruined walls crashing and
crumbling from rock to rock till they fell with a roar like
thunder into the waters underneath. Both girls, at the first
symptom of the catastrophe impending, had instinctively shut
their eyes; but Roger, on the contrary, looked on as steadily as
if he were keeping a count of every falling stone in order to set
it down in his debt of vengeance against those who had done the
deed. Not a syllable, however, did he utter, until the last stone
had fallen, and the last fiery gleam disappeared from the cliff;
but then, as if unable any longer to endure in silence, he threw
up his arms toward heaven, and exclaimed:
{593}
"Men, women, and children all sent before their time to judgment!
O God! what punishment hast Thou reserved in this world or the
next that shall be heavy enough for such a deed as this!"
"Curse me not--curse not!" cried Henrietta, with anguish in her
voice, "The doom, God knows, is heavy enough already."
"Curse _you!_" said the astonished Roger, "_you_, to
whom I owe more than my own life a thousand times. Nay, Mistress
Henrietta, what madness has made you fear it?"
"I fear! I fear! Why should I not?" sobbed Henrietta. "The sin of
the parents shall be visited on the children, and he is my
father, after all!"
"Your father! _your_ father!" Roger muttered, trying to keep
down the storm of passion that was choking him. "Well, well, he
is, as you say, _your_ father, and so I must perforce be
silent."
"Alas! alas!" Henrietta pleaded, "if you did but know the
completeness of his religious mania, you would also comprehend
how easily a man, merciful in all things else, can in this one
thing be merciless."
"Nay," said Roger bitterly; "it needs, I think, no great stretch
of intellect to understand it thoroughly. A man, fresh from the
siege of Tredagh, where children were dashed from the
battlements, lest, 'like nits, they should become troublesome if
suffered to increase,' will, doubtless, merely consider the
holocaust of human life which lies buried beneath yonder ruins as
a whole burnt-offering, smelling sweet in the nostrils of the
Lord, which he, as his high-priest, has been deputed to offer
up."
He broke off suddenly, for a hand was laid upon his arm, and a
white face lifted pleadingly to his. "Speak not thus of her
father," whispered Nellie. "Speak not thus; see how she is
weeping!"
"Her tears are his best plea for mercy, then," said he in a
gentler tone, and seizing the oars, he began to row as vigorously
as if he hoped to quiet his boiling spirit by the mere fact of
bodily exhaustion. Nellie made no answer, and silence fell upon
them all.
The deed just done was not of a nature lightly to be forgotten,
and they went quietly on their way, as people will, upon whom the
shadow of a great terror still hangs heavily. Just, however, as
they entered the harbor of Clare Island, Nellie caught sight of a
well-known figure, and uttered a cry of joy. It was Hamish, and,
in her impatience, she scarcely waited until the boat was
fastened ere she was at his side. But there was no gladness in
his eye as he turned to greet her. He was deadly pale, and his
left arm hung powerless at his side. Nellie saw nothing of this
at first, however, she was thinking so entirely of her mother.
"Is she come, dear Hamish?" she cried. "Where is she?"
"In Dublin," he answered curtly.
"In Dublin--and you here?" cried Nellie in dismay.
"Because she sent me," he replied.
"What is it, Hamish? What is it?" faltered Nellie, struggling
with a sense of some new and terrible misfortune impending over
her.
"She is sore sick--sick even unto death," Hamish reluctantly
replied. He could not bring himself to utter the terrible truth
as yet.
Nellie stood for a moment mute with terror. She read upon her
foster-brother's face that worse news than even this was about to
follow; but when she would have asked what it was, courage and
voice completely failed her. She knew it, however, soon enough.
From his seat by the door of the tower, Lord Netterville had
caught a glimpse of Hamish, and came down at once to greet him.
Excitement seemed for one brief moment to have restored all his
faculties, and he cried out eagerly:
{594}
"You here, good Hamish! I am heartily glad to see you! And what
news bring you from Netterville? How goes my lady daughter? Ill,
do you say--sore stricken? Nay, man, remember that she is still
but young. It cannot surely be an illness unto death?"
"Yea, but it is, my lord," said Hamish, speaking almost roughly
in his agony. "Death, and nothing short of death, as surely as
that I am here to say it."
"Art thou a prophet?" asked Roger, bending his dark brows upon
him, and half tempted to suspect a snare. "Art thou a prophet,
that thou darest to speak thus confidently of the future?"
"Sir," said Hamish, driven at last beyond his patience, and
hardly knowing how to break his news more gently, "it needs not
to be a prophet to foresee that the widow of a royalist and a
Catholic to boot, shut up in prison and condemned on a false
charge of murder, is in danger--nay, said I danger?--and is as
certain of her doom as if she were already in her coffin."
Nellie uttered a wild cry, the first and last that escaped her
lips that day, and Lord Netterville repeated faintly, "Murder!"
"Ay, murder; and in another week she dies," Hamish answered, now
desperate as to the consequences of his revelation.
Nellie turned short round toward Roger:
"I must go!" she said. "I must go at once."
"Of course you must," he answered, in that helpful tone which had
so often that morning already reassured her.
"She has sent me hither to conduct you," Hamish--with some latent
jealousy of the interference of a stranger--was beginning, when,
unable any longer to conceal the bodily anguish he was enduring,
he uttered a moan of pain, and leaned back against the low wall
of the pier.
Then for the first time Nellie looked into his face, and saw that
he was as white as ashes.
"My God! my God!" she cried in her perplexity. "What is to become
of us? He is dying too."
"No, no," Hamish mustered his failing strength to answer, "It is
nothing. They shot at me as I took boat from the beach, and hit
me in the arm; but it is not broken, and if only I could stop the
bleeding, I should be well enough to start at once."
But he grew paler and paler as he spoke, and the blood gushed in
torrents from his arm, as he tried to lift it for their
inspection. Roger shouted to Norah to bring down a cordial from
the tower, and he then helped Nellie and Henrietta in their
nervous and not very efficient endeavors to check the bleeding
with their kerchiefs. Hamish was by this time well-nigh
insensible, but a cup of wine revived him, and having ascertained
that he was merely suffering from a flesh-wound, Roger sent back
Norah to rummage out some bandages which he remembered were among
his soldier stores. With these he stanched the blood, and
carefully bound up the wounded arm, assuring Nellie at the same
time that her faithful follower was merely suffering from loss of
blood, and that in a few days he would be as well again as ever.
Nellie must be forgiven if at that moment she had no thought
excepting for her mother.
"A few days," she cried despairingly; "then I must go back alone;
for my mother will be dead by that time."
{595}
Hamish did not hear her. He was leaning back in that half-dreamy
state which often follows upon loss of blood; but Roger answered
instantly:
"You shall go at once; but certainly not alone." He turned round
to look for Lord Netterville; the poor old man had sunk upon the
ground, and in his helplessness and perplexity was weeping like a
child.
"Lord Netterville!" said Roger suddenly.
Lord Netterville dashed the tears from his eyes, and looked up
anxiously in the young man's face.
"Lord Netterville," Roger repeated, giving him his hand and
helping him to stand up, "you see how the case stands; your
granddaughter must go to her mother, and go at once. Any delay
were fatal. This poor fellow is totally unable to accompany her.
Will you trust her to my care? I swear to you that she shall be
as dear and precious to me as a sister, and that I will watch
over her and wait upon her as if I were in very deed her
brother."
With a look of relief and confidence that was touching to behold,
the old man wrung the hand which Roger gave him, and then
silently turned toward Nellie. Roger did did not ask her if she
would accept him as an escort; he felt that after the events of
the morning she would need no protestations of loyalty at his
hand, and merely said:
"In two hours we can start; but I shall have to go first to the
mainland to look for horses."
"Nay, that shall be my business," said Henrietta suddenly. "In
two hours hence, at the foot of the round tower, you will find
them waiting; and I will bring you at the same time a letter to a
friend, who may, I think, prove useful to you in Dublin. Follow
me not now," she added in a tone that admitted of no reply, as
Roger made a movement as if he would have gone with her to the
boat, "follow me not now; I can best arrange matters if I go
alone; but in two hours hence I shall expect you."
Chapter XIII.
Henrietta was as good as her word, and, thanks to her energy and
kindness, Nellie, with Roger for an escort, was enabled to
commence her journey that very afternoon, both she and her
companion being mounted upon good swift steeds, which the young
English girl had made no scruple of abstracting for the purpose
from her father's stable. She had done even more than this; for
she had conquered her pride and petulance sufficiently to write a
letter to Major Ormiston, in which she entreated him, by the love
he once professed to bear her, to do all he could for Nellie, and
to procure her every facility for access to her mother. This she
had given to Roger, hinting to him at the same time that her
correspondent was high in favor of the Lord Deputy, and might
possibly be able to induce the latter to commute the sentence of
death hanging over Mrs. Netterville into one of fine or
imprisonment, even if he could not or would not grant her a full
pardon. Of this hope, however, Roger said not a syllable to
Nellie, fearful, if it should come to naught, of adding the
bitterness of disappointment to the terrible measure of misery
which in that case would be her portion.
The journey to Dublin was a difficult and a long one, and if
Nellie had been allowed to act according to her own wishes, she
would probably have used up both herself and her horse long
before she had reached its end.
{596}
Fortunately, however, for the accomplishment of her real object,
Roger took a more exact measure of the strength of both than,
under the circumstances, she was capable of doing for herself,
and he insisted every night upon her seeking a few hours' repose
in any habitation, however poor, which presented itself for the
purpose.
With this precaution, and supported also in some measure by the
very excitement of her misery, Nellie bore up bravely against the
inevitable fatigues and discomforts of the journey. The horses,
however, proved less untiring. In spite of Roger's best care and
grooming, both at last began to show symptoms of distress, and
they were a long day's journey yet from Dublin when it became
evident to him that his own in particular was failing rapidly.
Henrietta had chosen it chiefly for its quality of speed; but it
was too light for a tall and powerfully-built man like Roger; and
more than once that day he had been compelled to dismount, and
proceed at a walking pace, in order to allow it to recover
itself. Night was rapidly closing in, and Nellie, who,
preoccupied by her own anxieties, had not as yet remarked the
state of the poor animal, ventured to remonstrate with Roger upon
the slowness of their proceedings. Then for the first time he
pointed out to her the exhaustion of their steeds, acknowledging
his conviction that his own in particular was in a dying state,
and that two hours more, if he survived so long, would be the
utmost measure of the work that he could expect him to
accomplish. Nellie was for a moment in despair, and then a bold
thought struck her--why not ride straight for Netterville? They
had been for some hours in the country of the Pale, and they
could not be very far from her old home now. Every feature in the
landscape was becoming more and more familiar to her eyes, and
she was certain that, in less than the two hours which Roger had
assigned as the utmost limit of his steed's endurance, they would
have reached her native valley. Once there, they would not only
be in the direct road to Dublin, but they would also have a
better chance of finding horses than they could have in a place
where they were entirely unknown. Netterville, it was true, was
now wholly and entirely, with its fields and stock, in the hands
of the Parliamentarians; but she was certain of the fidelity of
the poor people there, and as certain as she was of her own
existence, not only that they would not betray her, but that they
would also do all they could to help and speed her on her way.
The plan seemed feasible; at all events, no other presented
itself at the moment to Roger's mind, and accordingly, after
having done all he could to relieve his horse, and prepare him
for a fresh spurt, they struck right across the country eastward
toward the sea. Nellie proved right in her conjectures. In even
less than two hours from the moment in which they started, they
reached the valley of Netterville--reached it, in fact, just in
time; for Roger had barely leaped from his horse's back ere the
poor animal was rolling on the turf in the agonies of death.
Nellie then proposed that they should walk to the cottage of old
Grannie, and dismounted in her turn. Her horse was not so
exhausted as that of Roger, nevertheless it was even then unfit
for work, and would in all probability be still more so on the
morrow. Roger therefore thought it better to leave it to its fate
than to run the risk of attracting notice by bringing it with
them to Grannie's habitation.
{597}
He hoped, as Nellie did, that they would have a good chance of
finding fresh steeds at Netterville next morning; and after
carefully hiding the two saddles in a clump of gorse, they set
out on their way on foot. The old woman received Nellie with a
cry of joy. No sooner, however, did the latter mention the
business which had brought her there, than the faithful creature
stifled all her gladness at this unexpected meeting with her
foster-child, and turned to weep in good and sorrowful earnest
over the woe and shame impending upon the house of Netterville,
in the person of its unhappy mistress. While Nellie ate, or tried
to eat, the simple fare set before her by her hostess, Roger told
the latter of the fate which had befallen their horses, and
inquired as to the possibility of replacing them by fresh ones.
Grannie shook her head despondingly. Royalists and
Parliamentarians alternately, she said, had seized upon every
available horse they could find in the country, until, as far as
she knew, there was not a "garran" fit for a two hours' journey
within ten miles of Netterville. As to Netterville itself, if
there _were_ any horses left in its stables, (which she
doubted,) they must of necessity belong to the English soldier to
whose lot, in the drawing of the debentures, the castle and its
grounds had fallen; much, the old woman added with a chuckle, to
the disgust of the officer who commanded them at the time of the
recent murder, and who, having coveted the place exceedingly for
himself, was supposed to have pressed the matter heavily against
Mrs. Netterville for the facilitating of his own selfish wish.
Roger listened to all this in silence, privately resolving to
risk his own detention, if discovered, as an outlaw, and to visit
the stable of Netterville next morning, in hopes of procuring a
fresh mount. As nothing, however, could be done till then, he
entreated Nellie to lie down and rest, after which he left the
hut, there not being a second chamber in it, and throwing himself
on a bank of heather on the outside, was soon fast asleep. It was
long before Nellie could follow his example, but at last she fell
into that state of dreamless stupor which often, in cases of
extreme exhaustion, takes the place of healthy slumber. Such as
it was, at all events, it was rest--rest of body and rest of
mind--a truce to the aching of weary limbs, and to the yet more
intolerable weariness of a mind, wincing and shivering beneath a
coming woe. The first gleam of daylight roused her from it. There
was never any pleasant twilight now, between sleeping and waking,
in Nellie's mind! With the first gleam of consciousness came ever
the pale image of her mother, and there was neither rest nor
sleep for her after that. In the present instance, anxiety as to
the chance of being able to prosecute her journey at all, was
added to her other troubles; and, unable to endure suspense upon
such a vital point even for a moment, she opened the door
quietly, so as not to disturb old Granny, and looked out for
Roger. He was nowhere to be seen, and she guessed at once that he
had gone up to the castle. Then a longing seized her to look once
more upon the old place where she had been so happy formerly;
and, without giving herself time to waver, she walked hurriedly
up the valley. She did not, however, venture to the front of the
house, but resolved instead to take a path which, skirting round
it, would lead her to the offices behind.
{598}
It was, by one of those strange accidents which we call chance,
but for which the angels perhaps have quite another name, the
very path which her mother had always taken when visiting the
sick soldier. The door of the room which he had occupied was
slightly ajar as Nellie passed it; and, moved by an impulse for
which she could never afterward thoroughly account, she pushed it
open without noise, and entered. The room was not uninhabited, as
she had at first supposed. A woman, evidently in the last stage
of some mortal malady, lay stretched upon the bed, and a soldier
of the Cromwellian type was seated with an open Bible in his hand
beside her. He had probably been employed either in reading or
exhorting, but at the moment when Nellie entered, it was the
woman who was speaking.
"I tell you, soldier!" Nellie heard her querulously murmur--"I
tell you, soldier, it is mere waste of breath, your preaching. So
long as that woman's death lies heavy on my soul, so long I can
look for nothing better in the next world than hell."
At that very moment Nellie noiselessly advanced, and stood in
silence at the foot of the bed.
The woman recognized her at once, and with a wild shriek flung
herself out of the bed at her feet. The girl recoiled in horror
and dismay. She had learned the whole story of her mother's
condemnation from Hamish ere she left Clare Island.
"Murderess of my mother!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with
anguish. "Dare not to lay hands upon her daughter."
"Mercy! mercy!" cried the woman, grovelling on the ground, and
seeking with her white shrunken fingers to lay hold of the hem of
Nellie's garment. "Mercy! mercy!"
"Where shall I find mercy for my mother?" Nellie asked, as white
as ashes, and shaking from head to foot in the agony of her
struggle between conscience and resentment--the one urging her to
forgive her foe, the other to leave her to her fate. "Where shall
I find mercy for my mother?"
"You see, soldier--you see," moaned the poor wretch upon the
floor, "the daughter cannot pardon me; why then should God?"
"What would you have?" cried Nellie, almost maddened by the
mental conflict. "What would you have? I cannot cure you. What
can I do?"
"You can forgive," the woman answered feebly; "then perhaps God
will pardon also."
"O my God! my God! give me strength and grace sufficient!" cried
Nellie; and then, by an effort of almost superhuman charity, she
stooped, put her arms round the dying creature's neck, and kissed
her.
The woman uttered a cry of joy, and fell back heavily out of
Nellie's arms. A long silence followed.
Nellie looked at the dead, white face, lying quietly on the floor
beside her, and felt as if she were dying also, so utterly did
her senses seem to fail her, and so dead and numbed were all her
faculties in the heavy strain that had been put upon them. A hand
was laid at last upon her shoulder. Nellie started violently. She
had totally forgotten even the existence of the soldier.
"Nay, fear not, maiden, nor yet grieve inordinately," he said, in
a voice of mingled pity and admiration. "Thou hast acted in all
this business (I am bound to bear testimony to the truth) in a
way worthy of thy mother's daughter."
"Thank God, at least, that I forgave her," Nellie murmured
beneath her breath, scarce conscious of what he was saying.
{599}
"Nay, and in very deed," he answered, "thy presence here has been
a crowning and a saving mercy for the poor wretch whom we have
seen expire. Ever since I found her here last night, dying alone
and in despair, I have been striving for her with the Lord, and
praying and exhorting, but, as it seemed to me, all in vain,
until thy kiss of peace fell like a balm more precious even than
that of Gilead on her soul, and restored it, I cannot doubt, (for
I saw a light as of exceeding gladness settle upon her dying
features,) restored it to long banished peace."
"Thank God that he gave me grace to do it!" Nellie once more
whispered. It seemed as if she were powerless to think of aught
besides.
"They who do mercy shall in due time find it!" rejoined the
soldier, putting a small scrap of written paper into her hand.
"In this very room thy mother tended me, when my own comrades had
deserted me, fearing the infection; in this very room yonder
woman, having been expelled the other portions of the mansion,
since order has been taken for the separation of God's elect from
the sinful daughters of the land, took up her abode some three
days since; and in this very room I last night found her, dying
of the malady of which, but for thy mother's care, I must have
also perished, and so moved by the prospect of eternal
retribution which lay before her, that she of her own accord did
dictate, and did suffer me to write down on the spot, a full
confession of her own guilt in the matter of the murdered
Tomkins, She told me then--and many times afterward in the course
of the long night she did continue to aver it--that she herself
it was who did the deed for which Mrs. Netterville stands
condemned to die; she having, in a drunken squabble. seized the
man's pistol and shot him dead upon the spot. And she furthermore
avowed, with unspeakable groanings and many tears, that,
terrified at the consequences of her own act, and moved besides
by a fiendish desire of vengeance against thy mother, who had in
some way unwittingly, in times past, offended her, she not only
accused her of the murder, but maintained that accusation
afterward upon oath when examined before the High Court of
Commissioners in Dublin. Now then, maiden, rise up and speed. Thy
mother's life is in thy hands; for with that paper, writ and
witnessed by one who, however humble, is not altogether unknown
as a zealous soldier in the camp of Israel--with that paper, I
say, to attest her innocence, they must of a certainty
acknowledge it, and let her go."
"How shall I thank thee, O my God!" cried Nellie, scarcely able
to believe her ears that she had heard the soldier rightly.
"It is good to praise God always," he replied sententiously, "but
at this moment briefly. Thy present care must be to get to Dublin
with what speed thou mayest."
"Alas!" said Nellie, "how shall I get there? I have ridden day
and night ever since I heard this unhappy news, and only
yesterday evening our horses were so knocked up, that I and my
companion had to find our way hither as best we could on foot."
"There are but two horses in these stables, and neither of them
are mine to offer," said the soldier, evidently distressed and
anxious at the dilemma in which his _protégée_ was placed.
"Nevertheless, and the Lord aiding me in my endeavors, I will do
what I can. Come with me to the courtyard--I doubt not but thou
knowest the way well enough already."
{600}
Yes, indeed! poor Nellie knew it well enough, and at any other
time she might have wept at revisiting on so sad an errand a spot
hitherto pleasantly associated in her mind with many a childish
frolic, and many a petted animal, the favorites of the days gone
by. Just now, however, she had no inclination to dwell on the
memories of the past. Joy at the proved innocence of her mother,
and a wild fear lest she herself should arrive too late in Dublin
to allow of her profiting by the disclosure, filled her whole
soul, and left no room there for sentimental sorrows. She found
Roger already in the yard, engaged in hot discussion with an
officer of the English army, a coal-black charger, which the
latter was holding carelessly by the bridle, being the apparent
object of the dispute.
"Ay," muttered her conductor, as he glanced toward the group; "it
is, I see, even as I suspected, and I shall have to pay dearly
for Black Cromwell." Then leaving Nellie a little in the
background, he went up to the English officer and said:
"Here is an unhappy maiden, Captain Rippel, bound upon an errand
of life and death, and sorely in need of a good steed to bear
her. The fate of a grave, God-fearing woman, even of Mistress
Netterville herself, the late owner of this mansion, is dependent
on her speed, and, had I twenty horses in the stable, as I have
not one, I declare unto thee as God liveth and seeth, that she
should have her choice among them all."
"Yea, and undoubtedly," the other answered with a sneer.
"Nevertheless, since it is even as thou sayest, and that thou
hast them not, I fear me, good master sergeant, that this young
daughter of Moab, who has been lucky enough to find favor in your
eyes, will be none the better for your good intentions."
"Sir, if you be a man--a gentleman--you cannot, you will not
refuse!" cried the indignant Roger. "Consider, this young lady is
here a suppliant where once she dwelt the honored mistress of the
mansion, and you cannot of a surety say nay! Remember it is no
gift we crave, for this purse contains double the value of your
steed, strong and of admirable breeding as undoubtedly he is."
He held up a purse as he spoke, the parting gift of Henrietta,
from whom, however, he had accepted it merely as a loan, to be
afterward repaid in some of the most valuable of the articles yet
left him in his tower. It was well filled and heavy; but with a
little smile of scorn the officer waved it quietly on one side.
"And how am I to be certified, I pray you, that this young
maiden--who seems to have cast witchcraft on you both--is in
reality Mistress Netterville, or any other indeed than a base
impostor?" he asked with a most offensive leer. "Scarce five days
have as yet elapsed since I came hither, sent by the Lord High
Deputy himself, to put order in this garrison, and to separate
the elect of God from the sinful daughters of the land, and--"
"Sir, do you dare!" cried Roger, suddenly cutting short his
speech; and, raising his hand, he would have struck him to the
ground if the soldier had not placed himself hastily between
them, saying in a monitory tone to Roger:
"If thou wouldst not destroy the young maiden's hopes altogether,
sir, leave this affair to me. Another look or word of thine, and
it will utterly miscarry."
{601}
Roger felt the man was right. It was not by violence or angry
words that he could best serve Nellie. He checked himself at
once, therefore, and fell back, while the soldier said quietly to
his superior officer:
"Thou hast not, peradventure, captain, forgotten the offer which
thou didst make to me some three days since, when first the way
in which the Lord had disposed of our lots was made known to us
at Netterville?"
"Forgotten--no, in sooth--not I!" the other answered roughly.
"Nor have I forgotten either with what manifest folly and
ingratitude thou didst reject it; better though it was by a
hundred pieces of good gold, than that which one of thy comrades
didst thankfully accept from Major Pepper."
"Throw Black Cromwell and the white mare Daylight into the
bargain, and I accept," the soldier answered quietly.
"What, part with Black Cromwell? Black Cromwell, who hath carried
me unhurt through more battles than David himself ever fought
against the Philistines?" the officer demanded with well-affected
astonishment. "Verily and indeed, master sergeant, thou art, as I
do perceive, notwithstanding thy good odor for most punctilious
sanctity--thou art, I say, but an extortioner after all. Had it
been the mare alone, now, though she also is a very marvel for
strength and speed--I had never said thee nay; but to talk to me
of parting with Black Cromwell is to prick me, so to speak, upon
the very apple of the eye."
"Nevertheless I have a fancy for him, and if I cannot get him, I
will still hold fast to Netterville, the inheritance which the
Lord himself hath of late assigned me in this new land of
promise," the other steadily replied.
"There is the good horse. Battle of Worcester, he is stronger
than Black Cromwell, and would altogether suit the maiden
better," his superior rejoined in a coaxing tone.
"Yea, but he hath an ugly trick of going lame ere the first mile
is over," Sergeant Jackson responded with a knowing smile, and
then he added in a tone which was evidently intended to bring the
discussion to an end, "It will be all in vain to dispute this
matter any further. Captain Rippel. If you have in truth, as you
seem to say, made up your mind to keep Black Cromwell for your
own riding, I, on the other hand, am equally resolved not to part
with this house of Netterville, which will serve me well enough,
I doubt not, as a residence, once I have brought my old mother
hither to help me in its keeping."
"Nay, then, usurer, take the horse and thy money with it!" cried
the officer, in a tone far less expressive of vexation than of
triumph at the result of the discussion. "Take thy money and hand
me over that debenture which, with the loss of such a charger as
Black Cromwell, is, I fear me, but too dearly purchased."
Without deigning to utter a single syllable in return, Sergeant
Jackson took the purse which the other in his affected
indignation almost flung at his head, with one hand, while with
the other he drew forth from the breast-pocket of his coat a
paper, being the identical debenture in question, and presented
it to his officer. Captain Rippel snatched it hastily from him,
ran his eye over it to make sure that it was the right one, and
then, turning on his heel, sauntered out of the courtyard,
without even condescending to glance toward the spot where Nellie
stood anxiously awaiting the result.
{602}
Sergeant Jackson instantly dived into one of the stables, and
seizing a side-saddle, (Nellie's own saddle of the olden times,)
he led forth a strong, handsome mare, as white as milk, and began
to saddle it in hot haste; while Roger, taking the hint, did the
same for Cromwell.
"I am afraid I have cost you very dear," Nellie said in a low,
grateful tone, as she stood beside the sergeant. "Believe me, for
nothing less than a mother's life would I have suffered you to
make such a sacrifice."
"Nay, maiden, call it not a sacrifice," he answered without
looking round, and giving a pull to the girths to make sure that
they were tight. "Or if thou needs must think it one, remember
that, had not thy good mother saved my life, I should not have
been here to make it."
Nellie's heart was too full to speak, and she suffered him to
lift her in silence to her saddle. He settled her in it as
carefully and tenderly as if, instead of a simple soldier, he had
been one of the old courtly race of cavaliers, from which she was
herself descended, and then, with one last whispered word of
gratitude for himself, and one last loving message for old
Grannie, which he promised to deliver to her in person, Nellie
rode forth from Netterville, and, without even giving it a
farewell glance, turned her horse's head toward Dublin.
Chapter XIV.
The city of Dublin, as it stood within its walls in the days of
the Protectorate, barely covered ground to the extent of an Irish
mile, and was built entirely on the south side of the Liffey.
That side, therefore, only of the river was embanked by quays,
and not even _that_ in its entirety; the space now occupied
by the new custom-house and other buildings, to the extent of
several thousand feet, being then mere ooze and swamp, kept thus
by the continued overflowing of the tides.
To the north of the Liffey, however, there was a suburb, built,
as time went on and the exigencies of an ever-increasing
population required, outside the walls of the fortified city. It
was called "Ostmantown," now "Oxmantown," and occupied a very
insignificant space between Mary's Abbey and Church street;
Stoney Batter, Grange Gorman, and Glassmanogue, being merely
villages scattered here and there in the open country to a
considerable distance northward. A bridge of very ancient date,
the bridge of "Dubhgh-all," also at a later period styled the
"Old Bridge," formed the sole means of communication (except by
boat) between the city and its northern suburb. Built upon four
arches, and closed in on the Dublin side by a strong gate-house
with turrets and portcullis, the Old Bridge, like all others of
similar antiquity, was broad enough and strong enough to form a
sort of street within itself; shops being erected upon either
side, and traffic as busy and as eager there, as in the more
legitimate thoroughfares of the city.
From Old Bridge men passed at once into Bridge street, (_Vicus
Pontis_ formerly,) a long, narrow thoroughfare, hemmed in on
one side by the city walls, and on the other by a tolerably
handsome row of houses. These houses were almost all built in the
cage-work fashion of the days of Queen Elizabeth, and roofed in
with tiles and shingles. Many of them also possessed inscriptions
which, cut deep into the wood above the doorway, stated the name
and calling of the owner, with the addition frequently of some
pious sentiment or appropriate phrase from Scripture.
{603}
This custom seems to have been a favorite one in Dublin, and in
the more antique portions of the city there existed houses, even
to a very recent period of its history, upon which might still be
read the names and occupations of the men who, more than two
hundred years before, had resided within their walls.
On the day on which we are about to introduce Dublin to our
readers, there had been a considerable amount of stir and bustle
going on among its inhabitants, and more especially among those
of Bridge street. Rumors had, in fact, been rife since early dawn
of an expected rising of the rebels (as the king's partisans were
then styled by their opponents) in the north; and men speculated
in hope and fear, as their secret wishes moved them, on the
probability of the report. It received something like
confirmation in the afternoon, one or two regiments of recently
arrived English soldiers, armed from head to heel, and evidently
ready to go into action at a moment's notice, having been marched
out of the city and sent northward. Later on in the day,
moreover, it became known that the Lord-Deputy himself, Henry
Cromwell, the best of Ireland's recent rulers, accompanied by a
strong escort, was proceeding in the same direction, and might be
looked for at any moment at the "Ormond Gate," which shut out
Bridge street on the city side, just as the "Gate-house" closed
it on that of the Old Bridge.
But if people stood at their doors and windows to do honor to the
coming of their king-deputy, there yet seemed to be another and
still stronger attraction for them at the end of the street
opposite that by which he was expected to appear. Eyes were cast
quite as often, though more furtively, in the direction of the
Old Bridge as in that of the Ormond Gate; for, in the midst of
other rumors, there had come a whisper, no one knew how or by
whom it had been first set agoing, that a person suspected of
belonging to the rebel party had just been arrested on the river,
having attempted, by means of a boat, to elude the passage of the
Old Bridge, and so penetrate unchallenged into the heart of the
city.
There followed, as a matter of course, much secret and some
anxious speculation as to the rank and real object of the
arrested person, but no one ventured to make open inquiry into
the matter. Cromwell's brief reign of blood had stricken men dumb
with fear. To have shown the smallest interest in persons
suspected of belonging to the rebel party, would have been but to
have drawn down suspicion on themselves; and suspicion, in those
hard times, was too nearly akin to condemnation to be heedlessly
incurred. Instead, therefore, of going at once to the Gate-house
and ascertaining the real facts of the case from its guardians,
people were content, while awaiting the appearance of the
military cavalcade from the castle, to question and conjecture
among themselves as to the rank and real business of the arrested
man. A flourish of trumpets before Ormond Gate put a stop at last
to their gossipings. Heads and eyes, if not hearts and good
wishes, were instantly turned in that direction; the gate was
flung open, and Henry Cromwell, surrounded by a goodly company of
officers and private gentlemen, rode at a brisk pace through it.
A moment afterward, and he had swept past all the gazers, and
pulled up opposite the Old Bridge. The guard at the Gate-house
instantly turned out to receive him, the portcullis was drawn up,
and he was actually spurring his horse forward to the bridge,
when a girl, in the habit of a western peasant, darted through
the soldiers and flung herself on her knees before him.
{604}
The movement was so rapid and unexpected that, if the Lord-Deputy
had not reined up his steed until he nearly threw it on its
haunches, he must inevitably have ridden over her. A moment of
silent astonishment ensued. The girl herself uttered no cry, and
said not a syllable as to the nature of her petition; but as she
lifted up her head toward the Lord Henry, her hood, falling back
upon her shoulders, revealed a face of ashy whiteness, and there
was a pleading, agonized expression in the dark eyes she raised
to his, which told more than many words, of the inarticulate
anguish of the soul within.
Henry Cromwell was not of a nature to be harsh to any one, much
less to a woman; but there had been information enough sent in to
him that morning to make him suspect a snare, and he turned
sternly for explanation to the chief officer of the guard.
"What means this unseemly interruption, corporal?" he asked, as
the latter was vainly endeavoring to induce Nellie to rise from
her knees. "Is this maiden a prisoner? or if not a prisoner, is
she distraught, that she thus ventures, bare-headed and dressed
in such ungodly play-acting fashion, to rush into our very
presence?"
"A prisoner of only half-an-hour's standing is she, may it please
your excellency," the soldier answered promptly, "she and her
companion! They were seen attempting to cross the river in a boat
borrowed from some of the natives on the other side, and as it
seemed to me that their purpose must needs be seditious to demand
such secrecy, I caused both to be apprehended, and have kept them
here to wait your honor's further directions in the matter."
"Ormiston," said the Lord-Deputy, turning to one of the younger
of the group of officers behind him, "remain you here, and
examine, with Corporal Holdfast, into this business. If there be
aught which seems important hid beneath this masquerading folly,
follow me at once to Glassmanogue, where I shall have business to
detain me for a couple of hours; but if it be only, as I do
suspect, the silly freak of a love-sick maiden, in that case I
shall not look for you before to-morrow morning, when you will
bring me, as I have explained already, the last despatches which
may have come from England."
Having thus somewhat summarily despatched poor Nellie's business,
but little dreaming of the great service he had done her in
appointing young Ormiston her guardian, Henry Cromwell dashed
over the bridge, and, followed instantly by his escort, galloped
northward. The moment Nellie saw that her efforts to hold speech
with the Lord-Deputy himself would prove in vain, she had risen
of her own accord, and, the hood once more drawn modestly over
her head and face, had stood aside to let him pass, with a calm,
sad dignity in her look and bearing which had its due effect upon
the rough soldier who had made her captive. He did not again
attempt to touch, or even to address her, but standing near her
silently and respectfully, seemed to wait until of her own accord
she should return with him to the Gate-house. Thus unmolested,
Nellie forgot his existence altogether, and equally heedless of
the crowd, which, having gathered in the wake of the Lord-Deputy,
was now gazing curiously and compassionately upon her, she stood
considering what her next move should be, when, in obedience to
his orders, Harry Ormiston
approached her.
{605}
As he took Corporal Holdfast's place beside her, Nellie lifted
her eyes to his face, and recognized him instantly as the young
officer who had been riding with Henrietta on the day of their
first meeting in the wilderness. A soft cry of joy escaped her
lips, and Harry Ormiston broke down in his half-uttered greeting.
_He_ also remembered her face--have we not already told our
reader that it was by no means one easily to be forgotten?--but
of the when or the where that he had seen it, he had no such
distinct a recollection. Silently, and with a look of timid hope
stealing over that fair face, Nellie drew Henrietta's missive
from her bosom and placed it in his hands.
Ormiston glanced at the superscription, and with a flush of
honest joy mantling on his features, eagerly tore it open.
Scarcely, however, had he read three lines ere the scene among
the mountains, which had ended in his quarrel with his betrothed,
rose before him like a vision, and instantly remembering Nellie
as the fair girl who had been in some measure, albeit
unwittingly, its cause, he turned sharply upon Corporal Holdfast.
"How is this, corporal? I fear me you have made some grave
mistake! This young maiden whom you hold a prisoner is the bearer
to me of a token from one whose zeal and faithfulness in the good
cause cannot be suspected--even from a member of the household of
that brave and God-fearing Major Hewitson, who has set up his
camp on the very edge of the wilderness, and thus made of his
small garrison a very tower of strength against the incursions of
the enemy."
"Nay, and if your honor says it, it must needs be true," the
man--a bluff old soldier, with little pretensions to sanctity in
his composition--answered with suppressed impatience; "and
therefore I can only marvel that a maiden, known and esteemed by
the family of worthy Major Hewitson, should not only have sought
to cheat our vigilance by crossing the river privately in a boat,
but should have done so in the company of a man whom I myself can
testify to having been a chief of some repute in the army of the
Irish enemy, having crossed swords with him at the battle of
'Knocknaclashy,' as I think they call it in their barbarous
language, where he fought (I needs must own it) with a valor
worthy of a better cause."
Major Ormiston turned, gravely but kindly, to Nellie.
"I fear me much," he said, "that you have been but ill-advised in
all this business. Why not have presented yourself openly at the
bridge if the matter which has brought you hither will bear
investigation? and why, more than all the rest, have you come
attended by a person whose very company must needs render you
suspect yourself?"
"O sir!" said Nellie, weeping sadly, as she began to fear that
even Henrietta's recommendation to mercy might perhaps avail her
little; "we had not the password, without which we never should
have been permitted to enter Dublin by the bridge; and our errand
is, alas! of such a nature, that every moment lost is of deep and
sad importance."
"_Our_ errand," Ormiston thoughtfully repeated. "This
errand, then, is not entirely your own, but is in some way or
other interesting also to the man by whom Master Holdfast tells
me you are accompanied."
{606}
"He should have said 'a _gentleman_,'" Nellie answered, with
a slight rebuking emphasis on the latter word--"a gentleman who,
at his own great trouble, and, I fear me, risk, has enabled me to
accomplish this journey; in which, however, he has no other
interest than such as any kind and noble heart might feel in the
sorrows and perils of an unprotected girl."
"Where is he--this other prisoner?" Ormiston asked, turning for
information to the corporal.
"In the gate-house, sir, where we have him safe under lock and
key; for he was no prisoner to be left at large like this silly
maiden, who begged so hard to be allowed to see the Lord-Deputy
go by, that I found it not in my heart to deny her so small a
favor; for the doing of which, I trust I have not incurred the
displeasure either of your honor or of his highness the Lord
Henry."
"Certainly not, honest Holdfast; you have acted both well and
mercifully in all this business. And now lead the way to the
gate-house, and trouble not your wits about this young maiden. I
myself will be her surety that she attempt not to escape."
He offered his hand very respectfully to Nellie as he finished
speaking, 'and she suffered him to lead her in silence toward the
bridge. As they entered the gate-house, however, she quietly
withdrew her hand and glided from his side to that of Roger.
Ormiston instantly recognized the latter as the dispossessed
owner of the "Rath," and an officer, beside, of some standing in
the recently disbanded army of the Irish. Courteously saluting
him, therefore, he informed him that he had been deputed by the
Lord-Deputy to inquire into the nature of the business which had
brought him to Dublin, adding an earnest hope on his own part
that it might prove to be in no way connected with political
affairs.
"That, most assuredly, it is not," said Roger, pleased and
touched by the young officer's manner, and satisfied by
Henrietta's letter, which Ormiston still held open in his hand,
that he was addressing the person for whom it had been intended.
"My business is one which solely concerns this young gentlewoman,
and concerns her, in fact, so nearly, that if you cannot aid her,
as Mistress Hewitson half hinted that you could, I trust, at all
events, you will give me as much of my liberty for this one day
as may enable me to do so myself. I too am a soldier and an
officer. Major Ormiston, and you may trust me that I will not
abuse your favor."
"Sir," said Nellie imploringly, "you have not read the letter--if
you would but read the letter! Mistress Hewitson half promised
that you would help me!"
Thus called upon, Ormiston ran his eyes over Henrietta's letter,
which, concluding it to be on matters merely personal to himself,
he had been reserving for more private, and therefore more
satisfactory perusal.
Nellie watched him anxiously as he read on, and with a spasm of
anguish at her heart she saw that, as he gradually took in the
nature of its contents, his first look of eager joy disappeared,
and was succeeded by one of deep and tender pity--pity which made
itself felt in the very accents of his voice, as he exclaimed:
"Young Mistress Netterville! Good God! And I never even dreamed
of the relationship! Alas! that you should have come so far, only
to find sorrow and disappointment in the end."
"Oh! not dead! not dead!" cried Nellie, terrified by his words
and looks. "Say, not dead--not dead--I do entreat you!"
{607}
"No, no!--not dead--_yet_," he answered nervously. He could
not bring himself to say that she was to die upon the morrow.
"Nay, Major Ormiston," Roger here interposed, for Nellie was
sobbing in speechless anguish, "if not dead all is well--or may
at all events yet be well--for this most injured lady. I have
hope still--hope in the honor and justice even of our enemy. See
this paper! It was writ by the soldier who hath lately received
as his share in the Irish spoil the house and lands of
Netterville, and who is ready to aver on oath that he took it
down word for word from the lips of the very woman who did that
deed for which Mrs. Netterville stands condemned to die."
Ormiston glanced rapidly over the papers which Roger had drawn
from his bosom and given to him.
"Yes, yes!" he cried joyfully, "I doubt it not in the least.
Sergeant Jackson is well known as a man of truth beyond
suspicion, and these lines, moreover, do but repeat the defence
which the unhappy lady urged over and over again upon her trial,
insisting that the accusation against her was an act of private
vengeance. But all this can be discussed hereafter. Time presses;
and whatever is to be done to save her, must be done at once."
"The Lords Chief-Justices," suggested Roger; but Ormiston shook
his head with a little smile of scorn.
"Little likely _they_ to reverse a sentence pronounced in
their own courts!" he said. "No, no! it is to the Lord-Deputy we
must appeal. I will ride after him at once, and in a couple of
hours at the furthest you may look for me with the result. I
trust in God that it may be a good one."
He left the room without waiting for an answer, and in another
minute they heard him gallop across the bridge. The next two
hours were passed by Nellie in an agony of expectation which was
painful to behold. She could not stay still a moment. Sometimes
she paced the narrow guard-room with rapid and impatient
footsteps--sometimes, regardless of the presence of the English
soldiery, she flung herself on her knees, weeping and praying
almost aloud in her agony. Every stir upon the bridge--every
sound from the street beyond, seemed to announce the return of
her messenger, and at these moments she would stand up, shivering
from head to foot in such a fever of hope and fear, that Roger at
last became seriously alarmed, and remonstrated firmly and
affectionately with her on her want of self-command. At last, to
his inexpressible relief, a bustle at the doorway announced
Ormiston's return, and a moment afterward the latter entered the
guardroom. Nellie stood up, as white as ashes, and utterly
incapable of either speaking or moving toward him. Shocked at the
mute anguish of her face, Ormiston took her hand in his; but when
she looked at him, expecting him to address her, he hesitated,
like one doubtful of the effect of the tidings he was bringing.
"For God's sake, speak at once!" cried Roger. "Anything is better
for her than this suspense! Say, is it life or death?"
"Not death, certainly--at least I hope not," said Ormiston,
vainly seeking in his own mind for some fitter words by which to
convey his meaning.
The blood rushed to Nellie's temples, and the pupils of her eyes
dilated, but still she could not answer.
"You _hope?_" Roger repeated sadly. He saw, though Nellie
did not, that there still existed some uncertainty in the matter.
{608}
"There is a reprieve at all events," he said, in the same joyless
tones in which he had before replied.
The color faded from Nellie's cheek, and the gladness from her
eye. "Only a reprieve--only _that,_" she muttered, in tones
so hoarse and changed that the young men could hardly believe it
to be hers--"only that!"
"But the rest will follow," said Ormiston, trying to reassure
her. "The Lord-Deputy will himself inquire into the business,
and--"
"Nay, then, she is safe indeed!" Nellie interrupted him to say.
"With that confession, furnished by her chief accuser, her
innocence must be clear as daylight. O sir! she is safe--surely
she is safe!" she added, trying to reassure herself by the
repetition of the word, and yet sorely puzzled by a something in
Ormiston's eyes which looked more like pity than sympathy in her
joy.
"Safe? I trust so--with all my heart and soul I trust so," he
answered gravely. "Nevertheless, my dear young lady, I would
counsel you, as a friend, not to suffer your hopes to soar too
high, lest any after disappointment should be too terrible for
endurance."
"If she is reprieved, she will be pardoned; and if she is
pardoned, she will live," Nellie repeated slowly, like one trying
yet dreading to discover the hidden meaning of his words.
"She will live," he amended gently; "yes, certainly, if God hath
decreed it as well as man."
"Nay, if she is in God's hands only, I am content," said Nellie,
with a sudden return to confidence, which somewhat astonished
Ormiston. "I also have been in God's hands," she added, with an
appealing look toward Roger, "and can tell how much more merciful
they are than man's. Sir, I conclude from what you say that she
is ailing; may I not go to her at once?"
"If you are strong enough," he was beginning, but she interrupted
him with a burst of grief and indignation.
"How? not strong enough? and I have come all this way to see her!
O mother, mother!" she sobbed convulsively, "little you dream
your child is near, bringing peace and pardon to your prison!"
Roger saw that Ormiston knew more than he liked to tell, and
asked in a low voice:
"The poor lady, then, is very ill?"
"Dying!" the other answered curtly.
"Will her daughter be in time to see her, think you?"
"In time; but that is all. She has burst a blood-vessel, as I
have just now learned, and this reprieve seems little better than
a mockery; for no one dreams that she could have survived for the
tragedy of to-morrow."
"Then let Nellie go at once," said Roger promptly. "She has
ridden night and day to see her mother, and sad as the meeting
may be, it would be sadder still if they met no more. Let her go
at once."
And so it was decided.
----------
{609}
Newman's Poems.
BY H. W. Wilberforce.
The little volume of poems published anonymously under this
humble title, [Footnote 179] produced an impression immediately
on its publication, not only among Catholics but among English
readers in general, which could hardly have been caused by a
volume of poems from any other writer of the day, with the
exception, perhaps, of the Laureate. The explanation is to be
found in the initials J. H. N. at the end of the preface--a
signature long ago of world-wide celebrity.
[Footnote 179: _Verses on Various Occasions_. London:
Burns, Gates & Co. 1868. For sale at the Catholic Publication
House, 126 Nassau street, New York.]
There may be those who feel surprised to find that a man chiefly
known as having been, under God's providence and grace, the main
author of the Oxford movement of 1833, should be found to have
possessed and exercised extraordinary poetical gifts. It may
perhaps be partly a lurking feeling of envy, partly a just
perception how rarely any one man combines numerous unconnected
powers, which makes the world at large reluctant to admit that
any man has greatly distinguished himself in a line far removed
from that specially his own. But that feeling, be its origin what
it may, does not in reason apply to the case before us, because
it would seem that the gifts which specially qualify a man to
produce a deep effect upon the hearts and consciences of his
fellows, to be the founder and leader of any great school of
thought, social, moral, political, or religious, are very much
the same as those required for the making of a great poet.
This is at first sight so obvious, that we incline to think the
only real argument against it would be, an appeal to experience.
It will be said, there is a small class of men who have won among
their fellows (as if it were a title of honor formally secured to
them) the name of "the poet," and no one of them has been, except
in his own special art of poetical composition, among the great
leaders of human thought. But this is easily accounted for. A man
immersed for years in public affairs of any kind, however richly
his mind may have been stored with poetical images, and however
natural it may have been to him to have sought for them a
poetical expression, can rarely have had leisure to cultivate the
merely artistic part of poetical composition to the degree
necessary for success as a poet. It is hardly likely that in his
case there should combine the many accidental circumstances
necessary (over and above the possession of great poetical
endowments) for the composition, publication, and general
diffusion of any considerable poetical work. And even if all
these should happen to meet, the mere fact of being very greatly
distinguished in any other line is of itself, we strongly
suspect, enough to prevent any man from being chiefly remembered
as a great poet. The name of "the poet Cowper" is a household
word in every English family. But if "William Cowper, Esq., of
the Inner Temple" (as his name stands on the title-page) had
risen to the woolsack, we believe that, even though he might have
written the same poems, he would never have gained the title.
{610}
If indeed mediocrity in everything else had sufficed to gain a
high and permanent reputation for a man of equal mediocrity in
poetical talents, we should now have talked of Cowper's friend as
"the poet Hayley." But that the highest poetical genius does not
obtain the title for a man otherwise conspicuous, is proved by
the example of Shakespeare. Merely because he has left behind him
dramatic works to which the world affords no rival, not even the
preeminent poetical genius shown in his poems has caused the
world at large to speak and think of him as "the poet
Shakespeare." Nor would Dryden, despite of his matchless lyric
poems, have attained the title, if among his numerous plays he
had written Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear.
It seems to us that these considerations are enough to answer the
objection from experience, which might perhaps be urged against
our opinion, that the qualities which qualify a man to exercise a
deep influence on his fellows and make him a leader of the souls
of men, are in fact the same as those which qualify him for
success as a poet.
We think this volume will convince most of those who read it that
we are right. The weighty and touching thoughts of these poems
bear the stamp of the same mint from which issued those volumes
of sermons, which, far more than any other work, have impressed a
permanent stamp upon the generation of English readers which is
now tending, as Dr. Newman says of himself, "toward the decline
of life." It is impossible to read them without feeling that, if
his life had been one of mere literary leisure, his chosen
employment would probably have been poetry. As it is, he has
evidently resorted to it, not when he was thinking of others, but
when he sought to relieve the fulness of his own soul. In this
world he has written in prose; his poetry has been the record of
his inner struggles and emotions, and has been written for
himself and his God.
As long as any memory of the English nation and the English
language remains among men. Dr. Newman, we doubt not, will be
remembered and reverenced; not indeed as one of the few whom
poetry has made great, but as one of the great men who have
written poetry. And so far from deeming it strange that such
should be the case with the great author of the movement of 1833,
we, for our part, should have thought it strange if, in a man of
the highest literary culture, the intense feelings in which that
movement originated had not relieved themselves by poetical
expression. We believe, indeed, that few if any great moral
movements have taken place in which something more or less of the
same kind has not been found. Perhaps the most remarkable
exception was the change of religion in England in the sixteenth
century; the leaders in which not only produced no great poetical
work, but did not leave behind them so much as a hymn. This was a
striking contrast, not only to the contemporary movement in
Germany, and to that of the Methodists in the eighteenth century,
but also to that of the earlier Lollards. The explanation,
however, is not far to seek. Lord Macaulay says, "Ridley was
perhaps the only person who had any important share in the
English Reformation, who did not consider it as a mere political
job." Now, attractive as jobbing is to many very clever men, it
is hardly qualified to inspire any poetical afflatus. Cranmer was
too busy getting what he could for himself, to be musing over
poetical images.
{611}
Besides, the Reformation in England appealed not so much to men's
deeper feelings, as to their natural and reasonable dislike to
have their property confiscated and themselves imprisoned,
hanged, and cut up alive; and this last kind of appeal neither
needed nor encouraged poetical powers.
To return to the volume before us, the poems were so evidently
written only for the author himself that it is our signal good
fortune that they have ever been published. The greater part of
them first appeared in a series called the _Lyra
Apostolica_, in many successive numbers of the _British
Magazine_, edited by the late Hugh James Rose, in which
several of Dr. Newman's earliest prose writings were originally
published. It was afterward issued in the form of a small volume,
the first edition of which appeared in 1836. By far the greater
part of it was supplied by Dr. Newman; the other poems, by five
of his intimate friends. [Footnote 180]
[Footnote 180: These were John Bowden, "with whom" (Dr.
Newman writes in the _Apologia_) "I spent almost
exclusively my undergraduate years." He died just before Dr.
Newman became a Catholic. His two sons are now fathers in the
London Oratory.--Hurrell, Froude, whose noble character and
high gifts Dr. Newman has sketched with admirable force,
truth, and beauty, in three pages of the _Apologia_,
which he sums up by saying: "It is difficult to enumerate the
precise additions to my theological creed which I derived
from a friend to whom I owe so much. He made me look with
admiration toward the Church of Rome, and in the same degree
dislike the Reformation. He fixed on me the idea of devotion
to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in
the Real Presence." He died February 29th, 1836,
"prematurely," says Dr. Newman, "and in the conflict and
transition-state of opinion. His religious views never
reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of
their multitude and their depth."--John Keble, the author of
_The Christian Year_, of whom Dr. Newman writes
(_Apologia_, edition i. p. 75) words expressing deep
feelings shared by many who are now, by God's grace, members
of the Catholic Church. He died in 1865, and at this moment,
on his birthday, April 27th, the first stone of a new college
at Oxford, erected as a testimonial to him, and bearing his
name, is being laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury.--Robert
Isaac Wilberforce, second son of William Wilberforce. From
his earliest years his character seemed made up of truth,
purity, unselfishness, tenderness of affection, and
indefatigable diligence. As his great powers developed, they
showed themselves perhaps the more remarkable from their
combination with a degree of humility so extraordinary as to
be his chief characteristic. After a university career of
unusual distinction, he was elected fellow of Oriel College,
on the same day with Hurrell Froude, with whom he is classed
by Dr. Newman, in the _Apologia_, as one with whom he
was, "in particular, intimate and affectionate." He became a
country clergyman, and afterward archdeacon; and in 1838
published (in combination with the present Bishop of Oxford)
the _Life of William Wilberforce_. His theological works
were all of later date. It is characteristic that he always
declared he would never have undertaken any of them if Mr.
Newman had not left the field unoccupied. In the opinion of
most persons, except himself, his equal in learning and
ability was not then left in the Church of England. In 1854,
he became a member of the Catholic Church, and died in 1857,
while studying at Rome for the priesthood.--Isaac Williams
was fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He remained much
longer in Oxford, sharing Mr. Newman's intercourse and
counsels. In 1840, Mr. Newman dedicated the beautiful volume
on _The Church of the Fathers_ "to my dear and much
admired Isaac Williams, the sight of whom carries back his
friends to ancient, holy, and happy times." He is, perhaps,
best known by his published poems; but he has also published
a series of devotional commentaries on the gospels, of great
beauty and to which many are deeply indebted. He died in
1865. Dr. Newman went to visit him in his country retirement
only a few days before. Our readers, we think, will feel an
interest in this brief memorial of a group of men so closely
connected with the collection in which many of these poems
originally appeared.]
To these are added, in the present volume, a few of earlier and a
good many of later date. All of them seem equally to have been
composed without any view to publication, and considering that
their illustrious author has always been remarkable for a dislike
to put himself forward, and for an almost extreme susceptibility
of feeling, some persons may wonder that he has ever been able to
persuade himself to give them to the world. We do not share their
wonder; for we long ago came to the conclusion that it is by men
of the greatest natural reserve that the fullest confidences of
their inner feelings are not unfrequently made. In the common
intercourse of society such men display least of their real
feeling. But being distinguished from others by the depth and
strength of their thoughts and affections, more lasting
convictions and emotions, and greater self-knowledge, they can,
upon any call of duty, speak out most unreservedly and sincerely;
and the pain it gives them to make any revelation of their inner
selves is such that, to do it completely, costs them little, if
anything, more than to speak of themselves at all.
{612}
This, all the world sees, has been exemplified in the
_Apologia_, and in its measure it has been the same with the
_Lyra Apostolica_, and with the present volume. The poems in
the _Lyra_ were, nearly all of them, the expression of the
thoughts which crowded into the mind of Dr. Newman during a tour
in the Mediterranean, between December, 1832, and July, 1833. The
present volume adds very greatly to their interest by giving the
place and day of their composition. Thus, the poem headed
"Angelic Guidance" was written on the day on which he left
Oxford. In our days, in which a very few hours upon the Great
Western takes Oxford men to Falmouth without trouble or fatigue,
the date, "Whitchurch, December 3d, 1832," is interesting.
Whitchurch is a somewhat dreary and secluded village, at which
the direct road from Oxford to Southampton intersected the mail
road from London to Exeter and Falmouth. There was in those days
a coach to Southampton, to the top of which Mr. Newman mounted,
(the present writer and other Oriel friends standing in the
street, in front of the Angel Inn, to see the last of him.)
Before midday he reached Whitchurch, and there had to wait till
night for the Falmouth mail. We should be curious to know what
has become of the large inn at Whitchurch which was maintained by
this sort of traffic. It must long ago have been shut up. Mr.
Newman's life had hitherto been almost entirely confined to one
or two places, and now he was starting alone for distant lands,
and began by waiting many hours at a lonely and (_crede
experto_) sufficiently dreary inn. His thoughts turned to the
guardian angel who, as he already believed, bore him company. The
_Apologia_ tells us how early in life his thoughts had run
upon angels and their ministrations. He says of these lines:
"They speak of 'the vision' that haunted me. That vision is more
or less brought out in the whole series of these compositions."
We need hardly say how much these circumstances add to the
interest of the poem, which appeared in the _Lyra_ without
any explanation of the circumstances under which it was composed.
It is impossible to read these poems without feeling how much a
man takes with him from home of the thoughts which are called out
even by the most striking and memorable scene. The events going
on in England--the evident decay of what he still believed to be
the "reformed church"--formed the coloring medium through which
he looked at all he saw. Thus, at sea, the day he left Gibraltar,
he wrote the lines headed "England:"
"Tyre of the West, and glorying in the name
More than in Faith's pure fame!
O trust not crafty fort, nor rock renown'd
Earn'd upon hostile ground;
Wielding Trade's master-keys, at thy proud will
To lock or loose its waters, England! trust not still.
"Dread thine own power! Since haughty Babel's prime.
High towers have been man's crime.
Since her hoar age, when the huge moat lay bare,
Strongholds have been man's snare.
Thy nest is in the crags; ah! refuge frail!
Mad counsel in its hour, or traitors, will prevail.
"He who scann'd Sodom for his righteous men
Still spares thee for thy ten;
But, should vain tongues the Bride of Heaven defy,
He will not pass thee by;
For, as earth's kings welcome their spotless guest,
So gives he them by turn, to suffer or be blest."
The _Apologia_ tells us that the golden lines, "Lead, kindly
light," were composed when the "orange-boat" in which the author
sailed from Palermo to Marseilles was becalmed in the straits of
Bonifacio.
{613}
It is not mentioned, we think, that it was in the darkness of the
night. They are here headed, "The Pillar of the Cloud:'
"Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home--
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet: I do not ask to see
The distant scene,--one step enough for me.
"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Should'st lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears.
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
"So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."
"Off Algiers," in sight of the grave of that great African church
which produced St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, and Tertullian, is the
date of "The Patient Church," in which, in spite of all
appearances to the contrary, the writer, relying on the promise
of Christ, looked forward to the ultimate victory of the church,
and which begins:
"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!"
On December 28th, 1832, Mr. Newman caught his first sight of a
Greek shore. It is highly characteristic that the first thought
which it inspired to the most finished classical scholar of his
day in Oxford, was not of Thucydides, not even of Homer, but of
"the Greek fathers:"
"Let heathens sing thy heathen praise,
Fall'n Greece! the thought of holier days
In my sad heart abides;
For sons of thine in truth's first hour.
Were tongues and weapons of his power.
Born of the Spirit's fiery shower.
Our fathers and our guides.
"All thine is Clement's varied page;
And Dionysius, ruler sage,
In days of doubt and pain;
And Origen with eagle eye;
And saintly Basil's purpose high
To smite imperial heresy,
And cleanse the altar's stain.
"From thee the glorious Preacher came,
With soul of zeal and lips of flame,
A court's stern martyr-guest;
And thine, O inexhaustive race!
Was Nazianzen's heaven-taught grace;
And royal-hearted Athanase,
With Paul's own mantle blest."
At Corfu, the narrative of Thucydides brought to his mind the
thought which he worked out in the sermon on "The Individuality
of the Soul," published six years later; and in which he says:
"All who have ever gained a name in the world, all the mighty men
of war that ever were, all the great statesmen, all the crafty
counsellors, all the scheming aspirants, all the reckless
adventurers, all the covetous traders, all the proud
voluptuaries, are still in being, though helpless and
unprofitable. Balaam, Saul, Joab, Ahitophel, good and bad, wise
and ignorant, rich and poor, each has his separate place, each
dwells by himself in that sphere of light or darkness which he
has provided for himself here. What a view this sheds upon
history! We are accustomed to read it as a tale or a fiction, and
we forget that it concerns immortal beings who cannot be swept
away, who are what they were, however this earth may change." The
germ of that sermon is contained in the lines headed "Corcyra,"
January 7th, 1833.
The _Lyra_ contains some beautiful and well-known lines:
"Did we but see,
When life first open'd, how our journey lay
Between its earliest and its closing day.
Or view ourselves as we one day shall be,
Who strive for the high prize, such sight would break
The youthful spirit, though bold for Jesus' sake.
"But thou, dear Lord!
While I traced out bright scenes which were to come,
Isaac's pure blessings, and a verdant home,
Didst spare me, and withhold thy fearful word;
Willing me year by year, till I am found
A pilgrim pale, with Paul's sad girdle bound."
They are headed, "Our Future. What I do, thou knowest not now;
but thou shalt know hereafter." It gives them a new interest to
find that they were composed at Tre Fontane, the spot of the
martyrdom of St. Paul.
{614}
The verses called "Day Laborers," composed while waiting at
Palermo for a passage home, (as is described in the
_Apologia_,) show the author's deep sense of having a work
to do. They are headed, "And He said. It is finished:"
"One only, of God's messengers to man,
Finished the work of grace which he began;
......
List, Christian warrior! thou whose soul is fain
To rid thy mother of her present chain;--
Christ will avenge his bride; yea, even now
Begins the work, and thou
Shalt spend in it thy strength; but, ere he save,
Thy lot shall be the grave."
We have insisted on the peculiar value of the poems written
during this short tour, (the only one of the kind in which the
illustrious author has ever indulged himself,) because it adds a
new and special interest to compositions which, even when
published without any such interest, attained a wide and deserved
celebrity. He seems at the time to have felt that that tour was
to be the only distraction of the kind in a life of toil; and
that he was enriching himself with images of beauty (worthy, as
he says, in itself rather of angelic than mortal eyes) which were
to last him for many a long year:
"Store them in heart! Thou shalt not faint
'Mid coming pains and fears.
As the third heaven once nerved a saint
For fourteen trial years."
That the remembrance has been fresh and keen, we see in the lines
on "Heathen Greece" written in 1856, and first published in that
exquisite volume _Calista_:
"Where are the islands of the blest?
They stud the AEgean sea;
And where the deep Elysian rest?
It haunts the vale where Peneus strong
Pours his incessant stream along,
While craggy ridge and mountain bare
Cut keenly through the liquid air.
And, in their own pure tints arrayed.
Scorn earth's green robes which change and fade.
And stand in beauty undecay'd.
Guards of the bold and free."
It is worth notice that the pregnant lines on "The Sign of the
Cross" were written before the author left Oxford, and while he
was as yet, as he expressly tells us, so ignorant of Catholic
doctrine that even when waiting at Palermo, just before he
returned home, he says: "I began to visit the churches, and they
calmed my impatience, though I did not attend any services. I
knew nothing of the presence of the blessed sacrament there."
We might linger equally upon many poems which equally deserve it,
but pass on to those written since the author was a Catholic.
Among these are not to be reckoned the translations from the
Latin Hymns of the Breviary, which were made "in 1836-8." There
are a few which bear the date "Littlemore," a date full of
touching recollections to the friends of the author. It is a
hamlet locally separated from the parish of St. Mary's, of which
he was vicar, but belonging to it. He had built a church there
for the use of his parishioners, and retired there from time to
time for his own as well as their benefit. When he gave up his
connection with the Oxford movement, (as the _Apologia_
shows,) he retired there altogether, and staid there till he
became a Catholic in 1845. Of those written since the author
became a Catholic the best known, probably, are "The Pilgrim
Queen," and "The Queen of the Seasons." It is indeed cheering to
find a great genius, who had so long been more or less crippled
by the chill, stiff system of Anglicanism, opening out, like a
flower beneath the spring sun--beneath the genial teaching of the
Catholic Church:
{615}
"But I know one work of his infinite hand.
Which special and singular ever must stand;
So perfect, so pure, and of gifts such a store,
That even Omnipotence ne'er shall do more.
"The freshness of May, and the sweetness of June,
And the fire of July in its passionate noon.
Munificent August, September serene,
Are together no match for my glorious Queen.
"O Mary! all months and all days are thine own.
In thee lasts their joyousness, when they are gone;
And we give to thee May, not because it is best.
But because it comes first, and is pledge of the rest."
Apart from the freedom of thought which the author has gained
from the Church, ("Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free,") there seems to us an ease and flow about the
very language and metre of these Catholic hymns which we do not
find equalled in the author's earlier poems, sublime as are their
conceptions. But it is remarkable that the poem which unites both
these qualities in the highest measure, is that which was
composed last, "The Dream of Gerontius." Like the others it seems
to have been written for the author alone, and to have been
published merely as an act of friendship to the editor of _The
Month_. Is it too much to hope that the high sense of its
exceeding depth and beauty which has been shown by the whole
English world may not only encourage the author, as he tells us
it did, to publish his collected poems in the volume before us,
but to compose more? For it is plain that as yet at least his
arms are not dimmed or his force abated.
"The Dream of Gerontius" begins with the thoughts of one who
feels himself at the gate of death and the prayers of the
assistants by his bedside. Then Gerontius says:
"Novissima hora est; and I fain would sleep.
The pain has wearied me. ... Into thy hands,
Lord, into thy hands. ..."
And the priest says the commendation. Then follows:
Soul Of Gerontius.
"I went to sleep; and now I am refreshed--
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself.
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.
I had a dream; yes, some one softly said,
'He's gone;' and then a sigh went round the room.
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Say, 'Subvenite;' and they knelt in prayer.
I seem to hear him still; but thin and low."
......
He does not yet know whether he is living or dead. Then he finds
himself held,
"Not by a grasp
Such as they use on earth, but all around
Over the surface of my subtle being.
As though I were a sphere, and capable
To be accosted thus, a uniform
And gentle pressure tells me I am not
Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.
And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth
I cannot of that music rightly say.
Whether I hear, or touch, or taste the tones.
Oh! what a heart-subduing melody."
Then follow the songs of the guardian angel over the soul which
he was set to tend. After a long while Gerontius takes courage
and says:
Soul.
"I will address him. Mighty one, my Lord,
My guardian spirit, all hail!
Angel.
"All hail, my child!
My child and brother, hail! what wouldest thou?
......
Soul.
"I ever had believed
That on the moment when the struggling soul
Quitted its mortal case, forthwith it fell
Under the awful presence of its God,
There to be judged and sent to its own place.
What lets me now from going to my Lord?
Angel.
"Thou art not let; but with extremest speed
Art hurrying to the just and holy Judge;
For scarcely art thou disembodied yet.
Divide a moment, as men measure time.
Into its million-million-millionth part.
Yet even less than that the interval
Since thou didst leave the body; and the priest
Cried 'Subvenite,' and they fell to prayer;
Nor scarcely yet have they begun to pray."
We must not linger on the converse between the soul and its
guardian angel, nor at the marvellous description of the demons
in "the middle region," their impotent rage--impotent against
one who has now no traitor within.
{616}
Then he comes within the reach of the heavenly choirs. We have
the hymns of the successive choirs. At length, as they approach
"the veiled presence" of God, the soul hears again the voices it
left on earth, for in that presence the voices of prayer are
heard:
Soul.
"I go before my Judge. Ah! ....
Angel.
.... "Praise to his name!
The eager spirit has darted from my hold.
And, with the intemperate energy of love,
Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel;
But, ere it reach them, the keen sanctity
Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes
And circles round the Crucified, has seized.
And scorch'd, and shrivell'd it; and now it lies
Passive and still before the awful throne.
O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe,
Consumed, yet quickened by the glance of God.
Soul.
"Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be.
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There, motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn,
There will I sing my sad, perpetual strain.
Until the morn.
There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne'er can cease
To throb, and pine, and languish, till possest
Of its sole peace.
There will I sing my absent Lord and love;--
Take me away.
That sooner I may rise, and go above,
And see him in the truth of everlasting day."
Then follow the words of the angel, and those of the souls in
purgatory. At length the angel concludes:
"Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the throne of the Most Highest.
"Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear.
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow."
Any one who has read this wonderful poem will complain that we
have omitted this, and this, and this, which especially deserved
to be quoted. It is most true. It would be impossible to give any
idea of its matchless weight and beauty, except by transcribing
the whole of it; and we have wished only to give a sample which
may direct to it the attention of any reader to whom it may yet
be unknown.
The preface contains a dedication of the volume of Mr. Badeley,
one of Dr. Newman's Oxford friends and followers, who before this
time knows far more of that world of spirits than even the gifted
eye of the most illustrious seer has ever pierced; for he had
hardly received this dedication when he received his summons to
it. He was the son of a Protestant physician at Colchester, who,
many years ago, was the medical adviser of a convent in that
neighborhood, and created a good deal of suspicion among his
fellow religionists, by bearing testimony to the supernatural
nature of a cure of one of the nuns who was his patient. Mr.
Badeley himself graduated with high honors at Oxford in 1823, and
afterward studied the law, in which he attained a high reputation
and great success. He directed his special attention to
ecclesiastical questions, and hardly any case connected with them
came before the courts in which he was not retained. In this
preface Dr. Newman bears testimony to the fidelity with which he
followed the religious movement in which the volume originated
from first to last. He was counsel to the Bishop of Exeter in the
celebrated Gorham case, and his argument upon it was published in
a pamphlet which attracted much notice. He also published a book
against the alteration of the law of marriage. At last a new
light shone upon his path; he followed it faithfully, and it led
him into the Catholic Church. He was, perhaps, the only lawyer
from whom was actually accepted, on his conversion to the church,
a sacrifice of his worldly interests, nearly equal to that made
by many Protestant clergymen.
{617}
The loss of practice has no doubt been risked by all who have
become Catholics; by him, owing to the nature of his principal
business, it was in a great measure incurred, nor did he ever
recover what he had lost. But the time is short. It is but a few
weeks since he was cheered by Dr. Newman's words, "We are now
both of us in the decline of life; may that warm attachment which
has lasted between us inviolate for so many years, be continued,
by the mercy of God, to the end of our earthly course, and beyond
it;"--and his earthly course is already over; the sacrifice is
gone by. He is now able to estimate its real value.
--------
Sonnet.
Sharp lightnings flash, tempestuous thunders roll:
I shudder--and yet wherefore? For the dead
Sleep undisturbed in consecrated bed.
And thou, who didst yield up thy sweet, young soul
So mildly to thy Maker, and console.
By dying acts, the hearts which love thee best,
Must, even on this first night, sublimely rest
In thy still sepulchre, by yon green knoll.
Yet one, I know, will tremble as she hears
The storm above her darling; and each dart
Of the forked lightning will to anguish start
A legion of dread shapes and tender fears;
For who can sound the fountains of her tears,
Choice instincts, lodged in her maternal heart?
--------
{618}
The Second Plenary Council of Baltimore. [Footnote 181]
[Footnote 181: _Concilii Plenarii Secundi Baltimorensis,
Acta et Decreta_. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co.]
The good city of Baltimore witnessed, in October, 1866, the most
numerous and imposing ecclesiastical assemblage ever gathered in
the United States. Forty-seven archbishops and bishops, with two
mitred abbots, convened in Plenary Council, under the presidency
of the Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore, delegate of the
Apostolic See. For two weeks they met daily in consultation,
their labors being interrupted only by the solemn sessions
prescribed by the Pontifical. After a free but harmonious
interchange of ideas, they adopted practical resolutions, which
they embodied partly in decrees, partly in petitions to the Holy
See. Their work done, it was not published to the world, but sent
to the mother and mistress of all churches for revision,
correction if necessary, and final recognition or approval. And
now, almost two years after the celebration of the Council, the
ACTS and DECREES, as revised and approved by the Holy See, are
published under the authority of the same most reverend prelate
that as delegate apostolic had presided over the deliberations of
the council. The work is thus complete: the new legislation takes
its appropriate place in our canon law; an epoch is marked in the
history of the American church.
From the beginning of the church, the celebration of councils has
been looked on as a most efficient means, under God, of
preserving discipline, arriving at proper conclusions on
practical matters, and promoting the common good. The very first
question that arose in the infant Christian community was decided
in the Council of Jerusalem, where the apostles and the ancients
consulted together. Every succeeding age saw councils meet to
decide ecclesiastical questions. Indeed, the history of the
church may be said to be a history of councils. Gradually, as
ecclesiastical discipline assumed regular outlines, and was
settled according to fixed rules, proper arrangements were made
for the regular meeting of prelates for consultation and mutual
consolation and enlightenment. It would be foreign to the
purposes of this paper to dwell on the ancient discipline in this
regard; but a short exposition of the actual law and practice of
the church will enable the reader properly to appreciate the
importance of the work of the late Plenary Council.
The Council of Trent (Sess. xxiv. _De Reform_, c. 2) decreed
that the ancient practice of holding councils should be renewed,
and fixed a regular period for their celebration. Each archbishop
was to call his suffragans together every three years, and these
were strictly obliged to obey the summons. The object of these
meetings was "to regulate morals, correct excesses, settle
controversies and do all other things permitted by the sacred
canons." St. Charles Borromeo celebrated several such councils,
which were not only productive of immense good to the church of
Milan, but have remained as a pattern on which the proceedings of
all subsequent councils have been modelled. But councils of
bishops were not in favor with the civil rulers, whose aim it was
to fetter, and, if possible, to enslave the church.
{619}
They prevented the execution of the salutary decree of Trent,
which, with a few exceptions, remained almost a dead letter from
the time of St. Charles to the present century. To the church of
the United States belongs the credit of having revived the custom
of holding councils. Not long after the establishment of the
hierarchy, the first Provincial Council of Baltimore was
convened, and was followed in regular succession by others, held
every three years, according to the prescriptions of the fathers
of Trent. When new archiepiscopal sees were erected, Rome,
anxious that the American church should retain as far as possible
a uniform discipline, suggested the holding every ten years of a
plenary council, to be composed of all the bishops of the various
ecclesiastical provinces of the country, under the presidency of
a delegate to be nominated by the Holy See. Accordingly, the Most
Rev. Francis Patrick Kenrick, of illustrious memory, then
Archbishop of Baltimore, was appointed delegate apostolic, and
convened the first plenary council in his metropolitan church, in
May, 1852. The second should have been held in 1862, but the
civil war then raging made it necessary to defer it. As soon as
peace was restored, measures were taken to convene the prelates,
and, as we have seen, the council was actually held in 1866.
The title "plenary" sounds odd to some ears, and has, if we
remember aright, provoked some little discussion in the public
prints. The term national is frequently given to the council in
common parlance, and would probably have been its official title
also but for the caution of the Holy See. Rome, enlightened by
wisdom from above and rich with the experience of ages, looks on
a tendency to nationalism in the church as one of the greatest
dangers that can arise, almost, indeed, as the forerunner of
schism. When she was about to propose to the American prelates
the decennial convening of a council of all the bishops of the
various provinces of the country, the question of the official
title at once arose. _National_ was not liked,
_general_ was too ample, _provincial_ too restricted. A
learned ecclesiastical historian suggested _plenary_, the
title given to the general councils of the African church in the
fifth century--councils rendered famous by the genius of St.
Augustine, and their explicit condemnation of Pelagianism. The
title was adopted. It avoids the narrowness of nationalism, while
it fully expresses the idea of a _full_ council of
_all_ the prelates of the American church.
The object of a plenary council is plainly indicated by the Holy
See. Strictly speaking, provincial councils could provide all the
necessary legislation. But there would be danger of a loss of
uniformity. Even among the best persons, the old adage, that
where there are many men there are many minds, is verified. To
prevent this divergence of views from manifesting itself too much
in practice, it has been deemed advisable to call occasionally
all the bishops together, that their united counsels may adopt
such measures as will keep the American church one not only in
faith and in the essential points of discipline, but even in the
principal among the secondary matters of the latter branch. It is
not necessary to descant on the advantages of such uniformity.
The faithful, if they do not expect it, are at least edified and
consoled by it; and, for the great purposes which the church is
called on to carry out in this country, it brings into practical
effect, as far as is possible, the great motto, _Viribus
unitis_. To gain it were well worth the sacrifice even of fond
predilections and of cherished usages.
{620}
The plenary council, then, is to look to the wants of the whole
American church, and to do for it what a provincial council does
for an ecclesiastical province. Canon law is necessarily couched
in general terms, and cannot be applied in the same way
everywhere. A great portion of it, in fact, consists of decisions
given for particular localities under peculiar circumstances, of
which the principle only is or can be of general application. It
thus happens not infrequently that the general regulations have
to be modified to meet other wants, other times, other
circumstances. This is one of the first duties of local councils.
They propose, and, with the approval of the supreme pastor, enact
those regulations to which their wisdom and experience may point
as necessary to carry out the real spirit of the general law. In
these they do not contradict, much less abrogate; on the
contrary, they enforce the observance of the canons. We know
there is an impression abroad that "canon law does not oblige in
this country;" but a more erroneous or more mischievous idea
could scarcely have been propagated. If it be said that all the
circumstances contemplated by the canons do not exist here, and
that such laws as presuppose these circumstances are not, on that
account, applicable here, the proposition is correct; but, if it
be said that the law itself does not oblige, the proposition is
simply monstrous. We do not know whom it would affect worse, the
higher or the lower orders of the clergy, the religious or the
seculars. All would be very much in the same position; all would
soon be glad to return to the reign of law. If "canon law does
not oblige in this country," what becomes of the impediments of
matrimony? Where do the religious orders find the charter of
their privileges? On what does an aggrieved clergyman rely for
the right of appeal? Where is the proof that every Christian of
either sex, that has come to the years of discretion, is obliged
to approach worthily, at least once a year at Easter, the holy
sacrament of the blessed eucharist? The origin of the erroneous
idea appears to be, that, the organization of the church in this
missionary country not being yet completed, certain privileges,
generally granted by the Holy See, have been withheld; and, as
one case may easily occur to the clerical reader, we shall take
the liberty of using it to exemplify our meaning. The nomination,
institution, and consecration of bishops are inherently and
radically the exclusive right of the Holy See. No matter by whom
it may have been exercised at any time, if it was not in virtue
of a permission expressly or tacitly granted by the successor of
St. Peter, the exercise was a schismatical act. This no Catholic
can deny. By canon law the right of presentation of three names
to the pope has been granted, not to all the clergy of the
diocese, but to the cathedral chapter, a body in the composition
of which the diocesan clergy, by the same law, exercised but
little influence. In this country there are no cathedral
chapters; in fact, it is impossible thus far to erect them
according to the canons. The right of presentation of the three
names has been accorded by Rome to the bishops of the province
instead. This is an instance in which a privilege granted by the
canons to a body which has no existence among us has been
transferred by the supreme authority to another body that can
exercise it.
{621}
We are not now either blaming or praising the arrangement; that
would be beyond our province. We are merely stating what the law
is, and endeavoring to help to dispel an error which may be, if
it has not been, productive of evil. As canon law, then, does
oblige in this country, numerous questions must necessarily arise
in the application of its ordinances to our circumstances and
wants. The whole social fabric here is very different from that
of Europe when the decretals were issued. It thus becomes
necessary to adopt such measures as may save the principle of the
law, and, at the same time, avoid the inconvenience of a too
literal understanding. This is one of the first and most
important works of a council. It involves a patient and careful
study of the law; a thorough knowledge of the circumstances of
the country; a prudent foresight, which may be able to discern
what measure is most likely to be practically successful. We may
instance the question of the tenure of church property. If there
were in practice real religious freedom among us, if the church
were allowed to hold her property according to her own laws,
there would be no difficulty. The actual canon law would provide
for the security of the tenure, for the good use of any revenues
that might accrue, and for any rights or legitimate influence the
donors might reasonably expect to be allowed. But, at least in
most of the states, the wisdom of the legislature has interfered,
simply to prevent the Catholic Church from executing her own
long-tried, satisfactory laws on the subject. To save the vital
principle, the security and the independence of church property,
it has been necessary to adopt various expedients, which may be,
we do not doubt are, the best that could be devised under the
circumstances, but, considered in themselves, are far from
satisfactory. They, of course, are only temporary; and it is
ardently to be desired that the time will soon come when wiser
civil legislation will permit the execution of the mild and
equitable provisions of the canons.
It is easy to see that a wide field is thus opened for the wisdom
and industry of the fathers of a plenary council. But "the
correction of abuses" is also expressly assigned by the decree of
Trent as one of the objects of their labors. To err is human, and
it is only too easy to fall away from the strict observance of
the canons. Such has ever been the experience of the church. In
this country, thank God, positive abuses are rare, if they exist
at all. There is a general desire to become acquainted with the
law of the church and to observe it as closely as circumstances
will allow. But necessity has, in the past, introduced many
customs which no longer have its sanction or excuse. Yet it is
found hard sometimes to leave the old paths and take the broad
highways of the canons or the rubrics. Sometimes doubts arise as
to whether the exceptions formerly allowed are still permitted.
Thus, there is ample matter for wise and cautious legislation,
neither so lax as to allow abuses to grow up, nor so strict as,
by substituting the letter for the spirit, to make the law kill
rather than give life.
There must of necessity arise in the course of time many most
important practical questions, which can be nowhere better
decided than in council. Mutual advice, comparing of ideas, and
discussion naturally lead to wise conclusions. In a country like
ours, where so many cases arise which are without precedent, the
necessity of frequent counsel among the prelates is obvious.
{622}
And doubtless the regular celebration of councils has contributed
greatly to that success which has especially marked the external
government of the church in America. Fewer mistakes have been
made here, perhaps, than anywhere else in the same time, while
the successes have been great, nay, brilliant. The wisdom of the
old has been handed down to the young; the experience of one
generation has been used for the benefit of that succeeding; and
there has been an uninterrupted unity of practical views from the
days of Carroll to the present. Thus, England, Dubois, Bruté,
Kenrick, Hughes, though dead, still live. Not merely their works
remain behind them, but their spirit still speaks in the halls of
the archiepiscopal residence, and in the sanctuary of the
metropolitan church of Baltimore.
Another special duty has been assigned by the Holy See to our
American councils--that of proposing the erection of new
episcopal sees, and the names of candidates to fill either them
or the older ones that may be canonically vacant. The erection of
new sees is a special feature of the church in new countries.
Every council of Baltimore has proposed the creation of new
bishoprics, and, in most cases, the propositions have been
favorably considered by the Holy See. The growth of the church
can thus be traced through the acts of the various councils, and
the steps can be counted, one by one, by which, from one bishop
at Baltimore, the American hierarchy has progressed to its
present development. Its growth has been more rapid than even the
material progress of the country; and as we look at the far West,
sure to become the happy home of millions of Catholics,
imagination is scarcely bold enough to call up the numbers by
which the bishops will be counted in future councils. We have
already alluded to the duty of selecting candidates to fill
episcopal sees. It is an important and a difficult task,
requiring the exercise of some of the highest qualities that
should be possessed by those who are, in the highest sense,
"rulers of men." The Holy See has been so impressed with its
importance and difficulty that it has earnestly urged that the
bishops of the province should meet every time that there is a
see to be filled. When, however, the vacancy occurs about the
time of a council, or when the fathers ask for the erection of
new sees, the question of candidates to be recommended must be
considered in its sessions.
From this cursory glance at the work of a plenary council, it
will be seen that the two weeks given to the celebration of the
one lately held could have been by no means a time of rest. On
the contrary, the conscientious performance of this work required
the employment of every available moment. Every preceding council
of Baltimore had devoted itself to the attainment of the
different objects which we have indicated. The measures adopted
were timely and wise, and the legislation forms the groundwork of
our particular church law. Nor will we wonder at the success
attained when we think of the great names that adorned those
councils, of the illustrious prelates whose learning, prudence,
foresight, zeal, and piety instructed and edified the past
generation, and laid the broad and solid foundations on which the
grand structure of the American church is rising. All honor to
these great men! They were "men of great power, and endued with
their wisdom, ... ruling over the present people, and by the
strength of wisdom instructing the people in most holy words. Let
the people show forth their wisdom, and the church declare their
praise."
{623}
But the American church had grown out of its infancy, and it was
time to commence to build on the foundations so deeply and so
skilfully laid. It would have been impossible, even had any one
desired it, merely to re-enact in the second plenary council what
had been done before--merely to pass a few general decrees,
recommend the erection of new sees, provide for the filling of
them and of those already existing and vacant by apostolic
authority, and then separate. Had the council confined itself to
this, it would have failed of performing its allotted work. These
considerations had their due weight with the most reverend
prelate, who most fitly was chosen for the high and important
office of delegate apostolic. He determined upon a comprehensive
plan, the execution of which by the council should, by meeting
one of the chief present wants, impress its celebration and its
work in indelible characters on the history of the American
church. As early as April, 1866, this plan had been distributed
to the archbishops and bishops, the heads of religious orders,
and all others who of right were to be present at the council. He
next convoked a body of theologians to initiate the preparatory
studies. They were taken from the religious orders as well as
from the secular clergy; many of them were or had been professors
of theology or canon law; some were favorably known for high
offices they had already held or for well-deserved reputation for
learning. The _coetus_ met daily as long as the greater part
of its members could remain in Baltimore, and in that time the
main points were gone over carefully and thoroughly, and the
recommendations of the theologians thereon submitted to the most
reverend archbishop. Some divines who could not be present sent
their contributions in writing, so that we do not say too much
when we assert that the best talent of the country was employed
in these initial steps. The many occupations, however, in which
the greater part of the _coetus_ were engaged at home
rendered a protracted stay of all impossible, and the remainder
of the work was necessarily confided to a fewer number. The most
reverend delegate apostolic, himself a most indefatigable worker,
watched over all the proceedings. Every paper was submitted to
his final revision before it went to the printer. Indeed, as he
was the promoter, so he was in reality the principal of the
laborers in the great work, to which he brought learning,
improved by conference; judgment, matured not only by age, but by
long practice in every branch of the ministry; a ready pen, whose
labors, in other departments, for the cause of our holy religion,
had already procured for him a high and well-deserved reputation.
And we are sure his colleagues will not blame us if we say that,
under and after the archbishop, Very Rev. James A. Corcoran,
D.D., of the diocese of Charleston, deserves to be especially
remembered for his industry, his erudition, his talents. The
graceful style in which so many of the decrees are couched is so
peculiarly his own that it can never be mistaken; and it will
make the second plenary council remarkable for what, perhaps,
would scarcely be expected in this remote country--a Latinity
that would grace even the most finished documents that come from
Rome herself. The work thus went on until the drafts of the
decrees formed a large volume, which, for greater convenience,
was printed.
{624}
The inspection and the examination of it by the fathers and the
theologians of the council were thus rendered more easy; indeed,
it would be difficult to conceive how, without this preparation,
the work could have been done at all.
As each bishop was entitled to bring two theologians, there was a
very large attendance of the clergy of the second order. To these
must be added many vicars-general, the heads of religious orders,
and the superiors of the greater seminaries. All these clergymen
were divided into congregations, after the pattern of the Milan
councils of St. Charles Borromeo. Each congregation was presided
over by a bishop, with a vice-president and a notary. This last
officer kept a minute of the proceedings of the congregation, and
drew up its final report. The whole matter of the proposed
decrees was distributed among these congregations, and thus the
preparatory work was subjected to a searching, minute
investigation. It may be here interesting to the general reader
to give a short account of the mode in which the business of a
council is managed. We learn from the acts that there were four
different meetings at the Second Plenary Council:
1. Private congregations.
2. Public congregations.
3. Private sessions.
4. Public sessions.
The "private congregations" were the meetings of the committees
or congregations of theologians, each in a separate room. The
"public congregations" were held in the cathedral, and there
assisted at them all the "_synodales_" that is, all who had
a right to be present at the synod, from the Most Reverend
President to the youngest theologian. At these congregations the
theologians "had the floor," the bishops confining themselves to
asking questions, or proposing difficulties. The "private
sessions" were meetings of the prelates alone. The officers of
the council were also present, but merely to record the acts. The
work of the council was really done in these private sessions. In
them the decrees were passed, and the acts show that there were a
close scrutiny and a thorough investigation of the measures
proposed. The "public sessions" were solemn ceremonies in the
cathedral. After pontifical high Mass, the decrees already passed
were solemnly read and promulgated. They thus became a law as far
as the action of the council could make them such. All that they
needed was the approval of the Holy See.
In this manner the decrees of the Second Plenary Council of
Baltimore were prepared, examined, discussed, matured, until now
they are published as the law of the American church. In looking
over them one is astonished at the variety of matter on which
they treat. Faith, and the errors opposed to it now so prevalent,
the church and her government, the primacy of the Roman pontiff,
the powers, rights, and duties of archbishops and bishops, the
rights and duties of the clergy, church property, the sacraments,
the sacrifice of the Mass, and all the proper conducting of
divine worship, uniformity in the celebration of festivals, and
other points of discipline, the _status_ of religious, the
education of youth, good books, the Catholic press, zeal for the
salvation of souls, the spiritual welfare of the blacks, secret
societies--these are some of the subjects which, as even a
cursory examination shows us, are treated in these decrees. These
are, indeed, what the original plan intended them to be. They
give a clear and lucid exposition of canon law as adapted _by
authority_ to the circumstances of this country.
{625}
They supply a want long felt, and they will remain for all time
to come the guide and the rule of action of all ecclesiastics,
from the hoary missionary bowed down with age and labors to the
young priest whose elastic step leads him joyously from the
seminary walls to his first appointment, from the mitred prelate
to the humblest of the great army of missionaries that are
bringing to our countrymen the good tidings of peace. They are
clear and comprehensive; they were carefully prepared, every
quotation, even though it were of a few words, was verified; and
they are in every sense authoritative. Prescinding altogether
from their binding force, they were carefully prepared
originally; next, they were literally sifted by the theologians
of the council; afterward they were discussed, and sometimes
modified by the fathers; lastly, they were subjected to the
scrutiny of Roman theologians, and were finally approved with
very few emendations. They have thus undergone the trial of a
threefold criticism, and deserve proportionate attention and
respect. But, what is far more important, they are binding as
laws, and the S. Congregation _de Propaganda Fide_ has
expressed its wish that they be faithfully observed by all whom
it may concern. They have been, moreover, made by authority the
text of a course of canon law in our ecclesiastical seminaries.
The future clergy of the country are thus to be formed on them.
To the volume that contains them they are afterward to look for
enlightenment and instruction in the performance of the duties of
the ministry. Nothing more need be, indeed little more could be,
said in their praise.
The Acts and Decrees have been published in a goodly volume, in
imperial octavo, by the well-known firm of John Murphy & Co.,
Baltimore. We need not say that the material part of the book is
highly creditable to the publishers. The good quality of the
paper, letter-press, and binding is commensurate with the
importance of the work and the magnitude of the occasion which
brought it forth. The volume contains all the official documents,
from the first letter of Rome appointing Archbishop Spalding
delegate apostolic, to the last communication of the Cardinal
Prefect of Propaganda in regard to the decisions of the Holy See.
A copious and well-arranged index gives access to the mass of
matter scattered through the work, thus rendering as easy as
possible a reference to any given point. We congratulate Mr.
Murphy on the honor done him by the privilege of placing his
imprint on the title-page of so great and important a
publication. It is a fitting reward for many services rendered to
Catholic literature through a long and useful business career.
We hail this volume as the beginning of a new period in our
American church, the period--_detur venia verbo_--of the
reign of law. It marks an improvement, a step in advance, a
progress. But the progress is legitimate, because it commenced
where all such movements must commence, if they be Catholic, with
the proper authority. A work begun, carried on, and brought to
completion as this has been, is--we need not say--a _safe_
guide; and one for which, we may be permitted to add, every lover
of our holy religion should feel deeply grateful to those through
whose zeal and labors it has been accomplished. By it this young
church now takes her place with the most ancient and best
regulated churches of the Old World: a light is given to our
feet, lest inadvertently we stumble in the darkness: a sure guide
is afforded, alike to young and old, to prelate and subject, to
cowled monk and surpliced priest.
--------
{626}
Translated From The French.
An Italian Girl Of Our Day.
Concluded.
To any one who has read this sweet and pious correspondence I
need not point out how strongly toward the end it inclines to
heaven. Was it a presentiment of death? It may have been. We
cannot deny to certain souls the grace of having heard from afar
the call of God. For me, I think I see in this case the natural
movement of a very pure love in a lofty soul. There are souls
that see God everywhere. She of whom I speak was one of these,
and, from her infancy, all that was beautiful on earth had been
for her but a veil designed to temper the brightness of the
Eternal Beauty. Thus in the new and unknown regions of earthly
love, through the first wonder and the first dreams, she soon
found again the divine countenance; but this time more radiant
than ever, more vivid, more irresistible; and that chaste flight
which had carried her to the hopes of earth passed beyond and
bore her away to heaven.
That a person has not had the happiness to feel this heavenly
attraction, is no reason that he should either wonder at it or
attempt to deny it. It is in the logic of our heart, and I
believe there are few souls that in various degrees have not felt
its power. It was known to ancient philosophy, whose greatest
glory it is to have expressed by the mouth of Plato, its king,
the progression of love from bodies and from souls to ideas and
to God; and St. Augustine, who bore in his heart the gospel of
Jesus Christ, has not rejected this part of the ancient heritage.
Who has not read that conversation at Ostia, in which two holy
souls, beginning with the love that united them on earth, came at
last to touch heaven? "We were speaking sweetly together, ... and
whilst we converse and look up to heaven, we reach it with the
whole aspiration of our heart." [Footnote 182] It is this
soaring, this upward flight that I speak of; this it is, I
believe, which carried the soul of the saintly young bride to the
desire of that eternal region where all desires are satisfied.
[Footnote 182: St. Augustine's _Confessions_.]
The heavenly instinct had not deceived her. Two days after that
on which she wrote the last letter we have given, a death-bearing
blast was breathed upon her, and she was seized with a slight
fever which at first gave no uneasiness except to the
ever-anxious heart of a mother. Yet on the very first day she had
said to her, "Take my little desk and keep it in memory of me."
These words were startling, coming from a person so
clear-sighted. The illness suddenly assumed an alarming
character, and the physicians recognized it as the miliary fever,
a terrible epidemic which was then desolating Tuscany, and which
seemed to pick out only choice victims. The young patient had
divined her danger; she at once asked for the sacraments, and
received with a humble and tender love the last visit of that
Saviour whose blood never fails us, from our cradle, which it
sanctifies, to our death-bed, where it
strengthens and consoles us.
{627}
The patient now felt herself better. "Great and happy day!" she
said; "if I am restored to health, never shall I forget it. What
strength there is in the holy viaticum! My dear mother, how sweet
and consoling is our religion! Ah! believe me, if any one feared
death, he could do so no longer after having received the blessed
Eucharist." Then she called her betrothed. "Gaetano," she said,
"if it is the good pleasure of God to unite us on earth, he will
restore me; but if he has other designs in our regard, then, my
Gaetano, we must be resigned and adore his holy will, must we
not?" The young man could not answer.
She continued: "In my English prayer-book there is an act of
thanksgiving for the reception of the holy viaticum: take the
book and read it to me." And a voice, tremulous with sorrow,
began to read the following admirable prayer:
"Glory and thanksgiving be to thee, O Lord! who in thy
sweetness hast been pleased to visit my poor soul. Now let thy
servant depart in peace according to thy word.
"Now thou art come to me, I will not let thee go; I willingly
bid farewell to the world, and with joy I go to thee, my God.
"Nothing more, O dear Jesus! nothing more shall separate me
from thee: in thee I will live, in thee I will die, and in thee
I hope to abide for ever.
"I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ; for Christ is
my life, and to die will be my gain.
"Now I will fear no evils, though I walk in the shadow of
death, because thou art with me, O Lord! As the hart pants
after the fountains of water, so does my soul after thee: my
soul thirsts after the fountain of living water. Oh! when shall
I come and appear before the face of my God?
"Give me thy blessing, O divine Jesus! and establish my soul in
everlasting peace; such peace as only thou canst give; such
peace as it may not be in the power of my enemy to destroy.
"Oh! that my soul were at rest in thy happiness, and in the
enjoyment of thee, my God, for ever!
"What more have I to do with the world? And in heaven what have
I to desire but thee, my God?
"Into thy hands I commend my spirit. Receive me, sweet Jesus!
In thee may I rest; and in thy happiness rejoice without end.
Amen."
When the reader's voice had ceased, the young patient wished to
take some repose. But she still seemed collected, and continued
to pray.
Her brother was expected to arrive from Florence. "Settle the
room," she said to her mother, "and put back upon my table the
things that were taken off it when it was prepared for an altar.
I do not wish that poor Antonio should perceive, on entering,
that I have received the last sacraments; but remember, dear
mother, always look upon that little table as a sacred thing, for
it has borne the body of Jesus Christ." All that day she held her
mother's hand, and spoke of nothing but the happiness of having
received the holy communion. Toward evening she remembered that
she was to have visited such and such poor persons that day. This
thought troubled her, and she could be calmed only by the
assurance that before night some one should carry to those poor
persons their accustomed succor. From this time she began to
converse with Jesus Christ, speaking to him with an ardor which
the violence of her sufferings rendered more intense. "O Jesus!
this bed seems to me of fire--but no, I will not complain.
{628}
Thou willest that I should serve thee in suffering, and in
suffering I will serve thee. Thou knowest that I should not
grieve to die if my death did not cause such great affliction to
those who love me. If thou seest that I should make a good
Christian wife, I would say, 'O Lord! heal me!' But what is it
that I am asking? No, not my will, but thine be done!" In the
middle of the night, seeing her mother's shadow still bending
over her pillow, she exclaimed, "O the heroic love of mothers!"
She thought so much of the least things that were done for her.
"My poor father," she said, "how good he is; what care he takes
of me; for my sake he deprives himself entirely of sleep. He has
called in three physicians, and he wishes one of them to remain
night and day near my room. It is too much, my God! Mother, what
say you of my Gaetano? Ah! now indeed I feel how happy I should
have been with him; for the more I know him, the more I feel that
he loves me, as you love me." She asked to have prayers recited
by her bedside, and began herself in a low tone the prayers for
the agonizing. Her mother interrupted her. "Rosa, my child, why
these sorrowful prayers? You will recover, my child; do not
always be thinking of death." She answered, "Ah! but if all day I
have not been able to think of anything but death; if Jesus
wishes to take me, must I not be ready?" She suffered terribly;
one moment nature prevailed, and she uttered a complaint. Her
betrothed said to her, "Rosa, think of what our Lord suffered."
"Thanks, Gaetano; ah! how that thought consoles me!"
The dawn of the following morning only brought an accession of
the malady. Three skilful physicians saw all their efforts
powerless against its violence. One of them, who loved Rosa as
his own child, wept. The patient became delirious. "Let us go!
let us go!" she cried; "dear mother, adieu! my home is not here,
my home is above! Let us go! let us go! adieu!" She repeated
these words, sometimes in French, sometimes in Italian. She
called her father, when he was absent, talking to him as if she
saw him beside her; when he was present, looking for him and
calling him still. She wept over the misfortunes of a poor widow
whom in her dreams she saw left destitute; the next moment it was
a little orphan that she cradled in her arms, and that drew tears
from her eyes. Nothing could calm her delirium, which was still
full of these charitable memories and images. At one time she
seemed to see the ladder of Jacob, and she exclaimed: "But I--am
I pure enough to go up with these angels? may I go forward? may I
join their choirs, I who was preparing for earthly espousals?"
She then recovered her consciousness, and asked for a chapter of
the _Flowerets_ of St. Francis on holy perseverance, during
the reading of which she cried out suddenly, as if struck with
horror, "O the evil spirits! the evil spirits!" Her mother
hastened to her, threw her arms round her, and pressed her to her
heart, saying, "Listen to your mother, Rosa, my dear child. Why
these cries? why these terrors? You need not fear the evil
spirits, my child; and they are not devils that surround your
bed, but the angels of heaven. Have you not always loved God?
have you not loved the poor? have you not been a good and
obedient child?" But her countenance grew stern. "Hush," she
said, "tempt me not to pride." And her face was overspread with
the shadow of a profound and austere humility.
{629}
Her delirium returned, and now with a violence that neither words
nor remedies could calm. As a last resource, her mother said to
her, "Rosa, my child, I am quite exhausted. If you could calm
yourself a little, I might lean my head on your hands and sleep.
Calm yourself, my child, for my sake." And saying this, she
affected to fall asleep. From that moment the poor child was
silent; love was stronger than delirium.
A long stupor followed; an ivory paleness overspread her
features; the veil of death was upon her brow. The victim was
ready. But there is no victim without sacrifice, and no sacrifice
without pain. Jesus trembled and wept, and was sorrowful even
unto death in the Garden of Gethsemane. The hour of cruel
sacrifice was come for this young Christian. She felt the cold
iron of the sword, but again divine love remained victorious.
Suddenly she wakes, opens her large, terrified eyes, while the
blood rushing from her heart in an impetuous tide, crimsons her
face and lights up her eye. She seems to come out of a dream, and
now for the first time to understand all. "It must be, then!" she
cried, "it must be! I must die! I must leave my father's house! I
must leave my betrothed! No, no! I am to live with him, I am to
make him happy!" A flood of tears bathed her countenance; a cry
of anguish burst from her soul. "Adieu, Gaetano, adieu! we shall
see each other no more!" It was a terrible struggle in that poor
heart. The joyous preparations for her wedding had suddenly given
place to the dismal preparations for the grave. The bride seemed
to entwine her dying fingers in her nuptial wreath and to clasp
it convulsively--but, if it be God's will?
Her mother put to her lips a picture of our Lady of Good Counsel,
which the young girl had near her bed. Instantly she became calm,
joined her hands, bowed her head, and remained perfectly silent.
What was passing at that moment in the superior part of that
beautiful soul? The eye of God alone, infinitely holy, can read
such secrets. What we know is that, after this long silence, the
dying girl pronounced in a clear, firm voice, the words, "Thy
will be done." And from that moment the name of Gaetano was never
upon her lips.
She recited the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. At the invocation,
"Gate of heaven, pray for us," she pressed her mother's hand and
smiled. Did she then see the eternal gates opening?
The Prior of San Sisto, her confessor, was by her bedside. She
asked for extreme unction, and answered distinctly to all the
prayers. An extraordinary grace of peace and resignation seemed
from that moment to have entered her soul. She needed consolation
no longer; it was she who now consoled and encouraged all around
her. Her poor mother, wild with grief, threw herself upon her
bosom. "I still hope," she said, sobbing; "yes, my Rosa, I still
hope that you will recover; but if this be not God's will, oh!
pray to him, supplicate him to call me also to himself. I will
not, I cannot live without you!" But Rosa said, "No, mother, you
must not wish for death. You have too many duties to accomplish
upon earth; remember the mother of the Machabees." Then
stretching out her hand and laying it on the head of the
sorrow-stricken woman, she said, "I bless her who has so often
blessed me! O Blessed Virgin! change the sorrow of this poor
mother into the consolation of the poor, the afflicted, and the
sick; and do thou, O my God! grant that we may all adore unto the
end thy holy decrees." She drew from her finger a little ring,
and said to her mother, "Keep that in remembrance of me;" and
placing in her hands the ring of her betrothal, she said, "Give
that to--you know whom--it is a noble soul." But she spoke not
his name.
{630}
The end drew near; her family and friends surrounded her bed;
every one was weeping. She said smiling, "You are all around me,
I am very happy; thanks." Then suddenly, "Who wishes to have my
hair?" No one ventured to answer. A long, half-reproachful look
was cast on the weeping faces around. A voice cried, "_I_
do." Rosa recognized it and said, "My mother shall have it."
She motioned to the Prior of San Sisto to come to her, and said
to him in a whisper, "I beg of you to return this evening to my
poor mother and do all you can to console her." From this time
she seemed to retire to the feet of God, henceforth to speak to
him alone. She said, "I suffer, my Jesus, but all for thy love! I
do not fear hell, because I love thee too much. I am on fire, I
am in flames! O Jesus! burn me, consume me in the flames of thy
love!" It was now with difficulty that these holy ejaculations
came from her oppressed bosom. Again, however, and for the last
time, she rallied. Death had a hard struggle with her vigorous
and innocent youth. This time the dying girl spoke the very
language of the saints, and her farewell to earth was worthy of a
St. Catharine of Sienna. "O Lord!" she said, "bless all men!
bless this city of Pisa! bless her people! bless her bishop and
her pastors! bless the Catholic Church! bless her sovereign
Pontiff! bless her ministers and her children! Have pity on poor
sinners; enlighten heretics; be merciful toward those who believe
in thee, merciful also to those who believe not. Pardon all; be a
loving Father to the good and to the wicked. Have pity on my
soul, O Immaculate Virgin! Give to all thy peace, O Jesus!--that
peace--" She was silent. A film gathered over her eyes; they saw
no longer the things of earth, but a better light began to dawn
on them. "Yes, yes," she murmured, "I see now; I begin to see--O
the heavenly Jerusalem! O the angels! oh! how many angels! How
beautiful! Yes, certainly, willingly, my God! Where am I? who
calls me? where then? Let us go! let us go, my God! Let us go
forward! _Andiamo! andiamo! avanti!_--" The words died on
her lips; she made the sign of the cross, kissed the crucifix,
and while mortal eyes still sought her upon earth, she was
following the Lamb in the eternal choirs of the virgins.
Such is this beautiful death, every detail of which we have
learned from her who, after having assisted at the sacrifice, did
not die, but, like Mary, had to come down living from Calvary.
Will I be pardoned if I add some reflections on these letters and
this narration? I said when commencing them that, as it seemed to
me, they glorified Christianity in the two-fold transfiguration
of love and of death. It seems to me yet clearer, now that I have
finished them, that this is indeed their characteristic and their
merit.
Yes, it is the glory of Christianity to have rendered possible,
nay frequent, this sanctity of love which ancient philosophy
pursued in its dreams, but which it had never either contemplated
or exemplified. It is the glory of Christianity to have so well
schooled, so well regulated the heart of man, to have made that
heart at once so virginal and so strong, as to be capable of
loving more, and better than ever, all that is lovable on earth,
and at the same time capable of always loving it less than God.
{631}
It is the glory of Christianity to have made a young girl--not a
philosopher, not a poet, but a simple and pious girl--to realize
unconsciously in her heart that sublimest conception of human
wisdom; the continual, incessant passage of love from the shadows
of being and of beauty, to the infinite being and the infinite
beauty, from "divine phantoms," to use the expression of Plato,
to the eternal reality. It is the glory of Christianity to have
in all things opened to man a road toward God; to have taught him
to make all his affections serve as so many steps whereby he may
ascend to the absolute love: "In his heart he hath disposed to
ascend by steps." [Footnote 183] In fine, it is the glory of
Christianity to have worked this prodigy, that a holiness so
extraordinary, a perfection so superhuman, neither destroys nor
fetters the pure affections of earth; so that the saints did not
attain to the loving God alone by stifling in their hearts all
love for their fellow-beings; but, on the contrary, they learned
to love all mankind more than themselves, by first loving God
above all.
[Footnote 183: Psalm lxxxiii. 6.]
Whoever, after seeing this, will meditate on the nature of the
human heart, and on its history when abandoned to itself, will be
forced to admit that here is indeed a transfiguration.
And as regards death, I find this transfiguration to be, if
possible, more striking still. Death learned upon the cross that
its highest office is to be the auxiliary of love. There an
indissoluble fraternity was established between these two great
forces; and _there_ love received its mission to transform
death into sacrifice. The ideal statue of the dying Christian is
not then the ancient gladiator, falling, resigned but passive,
his head bowed, his dim eye fixed on the earth which is fast
escaping from him, impatient for the approach of nothingness,
plunging willingly into eternal night. No; his ideal is the
Crucified, dying erect, above the earth, "_exaltatus a
terra_" in the attitude of the priest at the altar, pardoning
all men, loving them to his latest breath, acquiescing in his
death, nay, willing it, making himself the solemn deposit of his
soul into the hands of his Father, at once the subject and the
king of death, at once priest and victim.
Such is the Christian fraternity of Love and Death.
Hence it is, that through the differences of ages, of conditions,
of minds, all holy deaths resemble one another; it is still love
ruling death and transforming it into sacrifice. We have just
portrayed the last hours of a betrothed bride who died in
sacrificing to Jesus Christ her nuptial crown; ere while we
followed through tears of admiration the account of another
death, grander, more celebrated, more striking. [Footnote 184]
[Footnote 184: These lines were written a few days after the
death of the Rev. Father de Ravignan. We give them to-day
just as the first emotion dictated them, persuaded that time
cannot take from the virtues of the saints their eternal
actuality.]
Now, what similitude could we expect to find between the last
hours of a holy religious, an illustrious orator, a great and
heroic soul, and those of a simple young girl, strong only in her
innocence? And yet I venture to compare these two deaths, and the
longer I consider them the more do I find that they resemble each
other, that they are blended together in one ruling sentiment;
they are both a sacrifice, and a sacrifice conducted by love.
Sacrifices very different, victims very unequal, I admit. What
peace in the death of the holy Father de Ravignan; or rather,
what triumph of the Christian will over death! How he rules it!
{632}
He speaks of "this last affair which is to be conducted, like all
others, with decision and energy;" he gives the directions for
the sacrifice; he offers it himself! When did he more truly live
than on that bed of death? when was he more wakeful than in that
seeming sleep! Then was he so strong and vigorous that he seemed
to dominate death itself; in this resembling, as far as is
possible to man, Christ upon the cross, whom, say the doctors,
death could not approach except by his express order. What love,
in fine, in his every word and in those desires of heaven, for
the impatience and the ardor of which he reproaches himself! For
my part, I fancy I see him welcoming death, for which he had been
preparing himself for more than thirty years, with that grave,
sweet smile whose charm was so extraordinary.
The young bride of Pisa is far from this severe grandeur. There
are tears, there are regrets in her last farewell. There is one
earthly name that lingers on her lips even to the confines of
heaven. She does not command death--she obeys it; and yet here,
too, I see an altar, a victim a sacrifice. Here, too, I see the
will, more tremulous, more surprised, indeed, than in the great
religious, but still armed by love, ending by _conducting
itself the last affair_, and by absorbing death in its
victory. Once again, what becomes of death in such deaths? where
is it? It seems to disappear: "Death, where is thy victory? Where
is thy sting? It is swallowed up!"
Let our souls become inebriated with hope at the recital of holy
deaths; let us yield ourselves without fear to the attraction
which they give us for the life to come. Undoubtedly, the true
secret of dying well is to live well; and our imperfection does
not allow us to treat death as may the saints. But surely the
love which transfigured their death, is at least begun in our
souls; it may increase, and, the hour come, may transform for us
also the supreme defiles into regions of light and peace.
Among the paintings which have been found in the catacombs of
Rome, there is one that has always struck me as having a profound
meaning: it is a jewelled cross, from all sides of which spring
stems of roses, which bloom around it, and cover its severe
nudity. [Footnote 185]
[Footnote 185: Two of these crosses, adorned with gems and
flowers, have been discovered among the frescoes of the
cemetery of St. Pontianus, whose origin seems to have been
anterior to the third century. One of them surmounted an
altar; the other, which decorated a baptistery, is one of the
most valued monuments of Christian archaeology. Throughout
its entire height, and on both arms, it is covered with
precious stones, richly figured, alternately square and oval.
The two arms support flambeaux, with the flame clearly
outlined; from them also depend two little chains, at the
extremity of which are suspended the traditional Alpha and
Omega. From the foot of the cross to the arms spring on both
sides stems of roses covered with leaves and flowers.
Directly under this painting was the baptismal font, formed
from a stream whose waters, ever smooth and limpid, seem even
now, after the lapse of fourteen centuries, to await the
immersion of the catechumens.
The discovery in a baptistery of this cross enveloped in
splendor, light, and love, authorizes our conjectures as to
the signification it must have had in relation to the
neophytes. This precious fresco is carefully reproduced in
the great work of M. Perret on the Roman catacombs.]
It is very rarely that the cross is found in the catacombs.
Perhaps for the tender faith of the neophytes it was dreaded-the
sight of that instrument of torture which was yet odious to
the whole world, and was dragged daily through the streets for
the punishment of slaves. It was, doubtless, to assist the
transition from horror to love that the Christian instinct had
covered that cross with precious stones and blooming roses, red
still with a blood shed by Divine love for the salvation of
mankind. Be that as it may, this symbol seems to me to express
gloriously the transfiguration of death by Christianity. Ah!
neophytes that we are, neophytes of death and a life to come, let
us regard the dying moment as a cross which Jesus and his saints
have covered for us with encouragement and hope.
{633}
When the children of the first Christians wondered to see a
gibbet on the altar, their fathers pointed to the jewels and
roses, and told them of the Redeemer's love. If death terrifies
us in its austere nakedness, let us look at the love which can
transfigure it, and can make our last hour the happiest, and
above all, the most precious in our life.
Rosa Ferrucci was mourned. The whole public press of Tuscany told
of her death; poets chanted it; inscriptions were composed in her
honor,--the Italian scholars excel in this art so little
cultivated among us;--I transcribe one which I think touching:
CHASTE YOUTHS, TENDER VIRGINS,
DECORATE WITH TEARS
THE TOMB OF ROSA FERRUCCI,
SWEETEST GIRL,
IN THE POLITE ARTS
VERSED BEYOND THE CUSTOM OF WOMEN;
WHO,
ON THE VERY EVE OF MARRIAGE,
WHILST UNACCUSTOMED JOYS FILLED HER SILENT BREAST,
COMPLETED HER YOUTHFUL LIFE
SECURE.
_Secura!_ beautiful word--word full of peace! and yet less
eloquent than one single word which I once read on a fragment of
marble taken from the Roman catacombs, [Footnote 186] and which I
now bring to the tomb of her who has passed from earthly
espousals to the nuptials of the Lamb. The case here also was
that of a young Christian maiden. Was she affianced like Rosa
Ferrucci? Was it the hand of a betrothed spouse that closed her
tomb? The word we speak of, does it indicate her virginal glory,
or was it her name? The little stone saith not. All that we know
is, that the hand which carried into the consecrated galleries
the mortal remains of the young Christian, after having marked
the place of her repose, took a fragment of marble, laid it
against the opening, fastened it by a little clay, and choosing a
word among those which the Gospel had just given or explained to
the world, engraved these six letters:
"Chaste,"
[Footnote 186: This fragment is now preserved among the
_monumenta vetera Christianorum_ in the Belvedere gallery
of the Vatican.]
-------------
Memoirs Of Count Segur.
To record the actions and opinions of one who labored efficiently
in the attainment of American independence is an agreeable task.
The deeds of soldiers are always interesting to the historian and
attractive to the reader. The philosophical principles that led
gay young men from the brilliant capital of France to the distant
regions of a new world, in order to practically assist in the
assertion of human liberty, cannot be ignored, much less
neglected, in our all-investigating age. Count Segur participated
in the stirring scenes over which the genius of Washington
presided, and he has transmitted to us the treasure of his
experience in the first volume of his memoirs. As he lived in the
times preceding the great Revolution which overthrew so many old
forms of power and honor throughout Christendom, and as his
facilities for obtaining a correct knowledge of the state of
society and of systems in his day were extensive, his
introductory pages are very instructive.
{634}
This will appear from one comprehensive sentence of his own: "My
position, my birth, the ties of friendship and consanguinity,
which connected me with all the remarkable personages of the
courts of Louis XV. and Louis XVI.; my father's administration,
my travels in America, my negotiations in Russia and in Prussia;
the advantage of having been engaged in intercourse of affairs
and society with Catharine II., Frederick the Great, Potemkin,
Joseph II., Gustavus III., Washington, Kosciusko, Lafayette,
Nassau, Mirabeau, Napoleon, as well as with the chiefs of the
aristocratic and democratic parties, and the most illustrious
writers of my times;--all that I have seen, done, experienced,
and suffered during the Revolution; those strange alternations of
prosperity and misfortune, of credit and disgrace, of enjoyments
and proscriptions, of opulence and poverty; all the different
occupations which I have been forced to occupy, and the various
conditions of life in which fate has placed me--having induced me
to believe that this sketch of my life would prove entertaining
and interesting; chance having made me successively a colonel, a
general officer, a traveller, a navigator, a courtier, the son of
a minister of war, an ambassador, a negotiator, a prisoner, an
agriculturist, a soldier, an elector, a poet, a dramatic author,
a contributor to newspapers, an essayist, a historian, a deputy,
a counsellor of state, a senator, an academician, and a peer of
France:"--Certainly a catalogue of sufficiently varied offices,
winding up rather prosperously!
The family of Segur was ancient and honorable. In the field and
in the cabinet his forefathers had distinguished themselves, and
our author helped to extend his ancestral reputation. Highly
gifted by nature, his ample opportunities of cultivation and
acquirement made him familiar with the various branches of
science then taught. He became deeply imbued with those
philosophical notions that had begun to spread themselves abroad
under the reign of Louis XV., and continued to gather might until
they brought his successor to the block, and even still keep
Europe in a state of unrest. From 1753 to 1774, when Louis XV.
died, young Segur had occasion to learn as much as his youthful
judgment would enable him, concerning the wretched state of
society around the court of that weak and degraded prince. It was
under his reign, or rather that of his mistresses--for their
influence had more to do with the government than the
king's--that the storm was brewed which swept away with terrible
force so many corrupt systems of legislation and social life. The
philosophers began to point their weapons against ancient
customs. Parliamentary decrees came to the assistance of the
latter, but "their acts of rigor against philosophical writings
produced no other effect than to cause them to be sought after
and read with a greater avidity. Public opinion became a power of
opposition which triumphed over every obstacle; the condemnation
was a title of consideration for its author; and under the reign
of an absolute monarch, liberty having become a fashion in the
capital, exercised a greater sway in it than the monarch
himself." Who can fail to see that such results will always
inevitably follow similar proceedings! Human nature has something
imperatively logical in it, and it will act according to its
laws, which are nothing else than the laws of Providence.
{635}
There is a deep philosophy in what he says: "Power was still
arbitrary, and yet authority lost its influence; public opinion
escaped despotism by railing at it; we did not possess liberty,
but license." (P.17.) The lethargy of one weak mind produced all
this confusion. The parliament, clergy, philosophers, and
courtiers, all joined for different purposes in the same common
cry against the shameful indolence of the court. The revolution
which was silently moving through public opinion was scarcely
dreamed of by anybody. Rash measures of resentment, always the
resort of weak and tyrannic minds, only served to irritate what
had been provoked, and the folly of the king was shown in small
acts of petty tyranny. But death came to remove him and his
turpitude from the French throne. Segur narrates it: "In the
month of April, 1774, as Louis XV. was going to hunt, he met a
funeral, and, being fond of asking questions, he approached the
coffin and inquired who it was they were going to bury? He was
told it was a young girl who had died of the small-pox. Seized
with a sudden fear, he returned to his palace, and was two days
afterward attacked with that cruel malady, the very name of which
had alarmed him. The hand of death was upon him; his flesh became
corrupted; mortification ensued, and carried him off. His corpse
was covered with lime, and conveyed to St. Denis without any kind
of ceremony." (P. 32.)
He proceeds to philosophize upon the desertion of the royal
fallen shadow by his most subservient flatterers, and observes
that in proportion as they had been slavish to his whims and
their own interests during his life, so did they evince their
indifference to him when departed. They turned immediately to the
rising sun, and offered him their adulatory worship. Still, the
principles which had been set to work in former years continued
to advance even under the benignant reign of Louis XVI., who
finally atoned for the faults of his predecessors.
The author sums up succinctly the condition of the tottering
society, daily becoming weaker: "The object of every one was to
repair the old edifice; and, in this simultaneous attempt of all,
it was levelled with the ground. Too much light was brought to
the work by many, and a conflagration ensued. The consequence of
this has been, that, for the last fifty years, our harassed lives
have been to each of us a dream, alternately monarchical,
republican, warlike, and philosophical." (P. 63.) The misfortune
is, that this dreaming has not yet ended in France, or, indeed,
in any part of Europe except Switzerland.
But we must hasten to the events which drew him into connection
with the American war. He became a soldier, and, after fighting
several duels, found himself carried away by the enthusiasm which
filled his countrymen at the sound of the first cannon-shot fired
in defence of the standard of liberty. "I recollect," he says,
"that the Americans were then styled insurgents and Bostonians;
their daring courage electrified every mind, and excited
universal admiration, more particularly among young people. The
American insurrection was everywhere applauded, and became, as it
were, a fashion; and I was very far from being the only one whose
heart beat at the sound of liberty just waking from its slumbers,
and struggling to throw off the yoke of arbitrary power. On my
arrival at Paris, I found the same agitation prevailing also
there in the public
mind.
{636}
Nobody seemed favorable to the cause of England; all openly
expressed their wishes for the success of the Bostonians."
Eager as were these young enthusiasts to fight in America for the
cause of liberty, many obstacles interposed to prevent or defer
the carrying out of their intentions. The French government was
not in a very prosperous financial state at the time, as the
country had scarcely recovered from the mad speculations of the
Scotchman Law during the preceding reign. Besides, England was
then powerful: her fleets swept the sea, and she had just
conveyed across the Atlantic 40,000 mercenaries, to cut the
throats of American freemen and stifle the rising spirit of
liberty. Private aid was, indeed, freely afforded to the
colonists; arms and ammunition were conveyed across the ocean in
spite of embarrassing neutrality laws, and many enterprising
officers were allowed to resign their positions in the French
service and serve under Washington. When the American deputies,
Silas Deane, Arthur Lee, and Benjamin Franklin, arrived in Paris,
and were received with such cordiality at the French court, a new
stimulus was given to the general desire of assisting the
revolutionists. The appearance of those republican delegates
produced a sensation in that brilliant capital. "Nothing could be
more striking than the contrast between the luxury of our
capitol, the elegance of our fashions, the magnificence of
Versailles, the still brilliant remains of the monarchical pride
of Louis XIV., and the polished and superb dignity of our
nobility, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the almost
rustic apparel, the plain but firm demeanor, the free and direct
language of the envoys, whose antique simplicity of dress and
appearance seemed to have produced within our walls, in the midst
of the effeminate and servile refinement of the eighteenth
century, some sages contemporary with Plato, or republicans of
the age of Cato and Fabius." (P. 101.)
No less impressive than their unpretending exterior, the honesty
and artless sincerity of the American deputies gained the hearts
of the French people, and enlisted in their cause the generous
enthusiasm of the warlike portion of the nation. Numerous offers
of service were made, and among the most distinguished were
Lafayette, then a young man, the Count de Noailles, and Count
Segur. The two latter were obliged by their parents to desist
from the enterprise, which they had already arranged to carry out
by crossing the ocean; but Lafayette succeeded in purchasing a
vessel, which he armed and manned at his own expense, and, taking
with him some experienced officers, sailed from a port in Spain
and reached America, where he met with a reception due to his
merits and noble purpose. A brave and experienced soldier, M. de
Valfort, afterward chief instructor of Napoleon Buonaparte,
accompanied the Marquis and rendered efficient service during his
stay in the New World.
Some time was now spent by young Segur in attending to the events
which Voltaire and his colaborers were bringing about in the
world of literature. He was a visitor at the family residence of
Segur, whose mother was a woman of note in the metropolis. The
count himself narrates several interesting incidents respecting
the arch-infidel, with whom he appears to have been on intimate
terms. With regard to his death there is one thing worth
recording. Immediately after his triumphal entry into Paris,
death came upon him. Segur says that he recanted his former
errors.
{637}
"The clergy, no longer venturing to oppose him, now hoped to
convert him. At first Voltaire yielded; he received the Abbé
Gauthier, confessed himself, and wrote a profession of faith,
which, without fully satisfying the priests, greatly displeased
the philosophers. After escaping the danger, he forgot his fears
and his prudence. A few weeks after, upon being taken extremely
ill, he refused to see a priest, and terminated, with apparent
indifference, a long life." There is a different version of the
latter half of the story. It is related that he cried most
piteously for a priest; but his philosophical friends refused to
accord him his request, and he died with imprecations most
horrible upon their heads for denying his dying wish.
Political changes at length enabled the count to embark for
America, and become an actor in the great drama of freedom, of
which he had been long an earnest spectator at a distance. War
was declared between France and England. The French, under Arthur
Dillon and Count Noailles, directed by D'Estaing, captured the
town of Grenada; after which the latter sailed for Savannah,
designing to seize that important position. Notwithstanding the
valor of the French and Americans in the successive assaults upon
the works, they were obliged to retire with loss, rendered still
more lamentable by the fall of the brave Pulaski, who fought in
America for the liberty which had been crushed in his own land. A
concise and accurate narrative of the principal events that
preceded the surrender of Cornwallis to the united arms of
America and France, occupies a considerable space in the memoirs
before us. The bravery of the French, very naturally, obtains a
prominent notice until the moment of capitulation arrives. "The
English troops then defiled between the two allied armies, drums
beating, and carrying their arms, which they afterward deposited
with their flags. As Lord Cornwallis was ill, General O'Hara
defiled at the head of the English troops, and presented his
sword to the Count de Rochambeau; but the French general,
pointing to Washington at the head of the American army, told him
that, the French being only auxiliaries, it was for the American
general to receive his sword and give him his orders." (P. 237.)
Strange incidents happen in all wars. About this time, the French
general, De Bouillé, made an attack on the Dutch islands of the
West Indies, lately captured by the British. "Having during the
night landed his troops in the island of St. Eustatia, he
advanced at break of day to attack the principal fortress of the
island, whose garrison was then engaged in manoeuvring on the
plain. The vanguard of M. de Bouillé was composed of an Irish
regiment in the service of France: deceived by the sight of their
red coats, the English thought they saw a part of their own
countrymen, and suffered themselves to be approached without
suspicion. Undeceived too late, they vainly fought with courage;
they were routed on all sides, and pursued with so much ardor
that French and English entered pell-mell into the fortress,
which remained in our possession." How many foreign battle-fields
have found the Irish in the vanguard of armies, yet what avails
their valor to their own country!
In 1782, Count Segur got permission to set out for America, and a
frigate, La Gloire, of thirty-two guns, was placed at his
disposal to carry important despatches to Count Rochambeau from
his government.
{638}
He had as fellow-passengers the Duke de Lauzun, the Prince de
Broglie, the Baron Montesquieu, Count de Loménie, an Irish
officer named Sheldon, Polawski, a Polish gentleman, and others
eager to assist the inhabitants of a new world fighting for
liberty, of which men were allowed to dream in the Old World.
Enthusiastic as he had previously felt upon the subject, he could
hardly restrain himself, now that he was on his way to accomplish
his most cherished hopes.
A letter dated from "Brest Roads, onboard La Gloire, May 19th,
1782," contains some remarkably philosophical passages; and when
writing his memoirs, forty-two years afterward, he could find no
fitter language to convey the sentiments which then agitated his
mind. "In the midst of an absolute government, everything is
sacrificed to vanity, to the love of fame, or what is called
glory, but which hardly deserves the name of patriotism in a
country where a select number of persons, raised to the first
employments of the state by the will of a master, and on the
precarious tenure of that will, engross the whole legislative and
executive power; in a country where public rights are only
considered as private property, where the court is all in all,
and the nation nothing. A love of true glory cannot exist without
philosophy and public manners. With us, the desire of celebrity,
which may be directed to good or evil, is the prevailing motive,
while promotion depends not upon talents, but upon favor." A most
pernicious course, and certain to produce disastrous consequences
in any organization! He proceeds to expose the facility with
which men adapt themselves to any absolute system in which the
ambitious and selfish portion of the community find adulation and
sycophancy the readiest ladders to power and eminence, while the
truly meritorious find their virtue an obstacle to favor, if not
an occasion of suspicion and fear. If the French nation continued
without change under the system of government such as Count Segur
represents that of his day, it would be more difficult to account
for the phenomenon than the revolution which destroyed it.
The intelligent appreciation of right and freedom that incited
those Frenchmen to dare the perils of the ocean preparatory to
the more serious dangers of the battle-field for the sake of
liberty, we should not too easily forget in the present age. It
was no whimsical adventure that led them over the waves to engage
in the pursuit of chimerical gratification. "In separating at
this time from all I hold dear, I do not make so painful a
sacrifice to prejudice, _but to duty_. ... Being a soldier,
I leave my family, my native place, and all the charms of life,
in order strictly to fulfil the duties of a profession, perhaps
the noblest of any, when engaged in a just cause."
An interesting narrative of the voyage, in company with the
frigate L'Aigle, of forty guns, and bearing a treasure of two
million and a half livres for the aid of the Americans, is given
in a few pages of the memoirs. They fell in with an English
frigate of seventy-four guns, and a memorable engagement ensued.
This vessel was the Hector, formerly a Frenchman, taken by the
English at the defeat of De Grasse. In the midst of the
engagement, Vallongue, the French commander, cried out to the
English captain to strike his colors. "Yes, yes," said the latter
ironically, "I am going to do it;" and completed his answer by a
terrible broadside. So near were the vessels that the men used
pistols; and even the rammers of the guns were wielded as clubs.
{639}
For three quarters of an hour La Gloire bore the brunt of the
unequal conflict; but, at length, aided by L'Aigle, they so
disabled the English vessel that they expected soon to capture
her. Next day, however, other sails appearing in sight, they
abandoned the Hector, which afterward sank, and the crew was
rescued by an American ship. An incident of the battle may be
related, as showing the coolness and gayety of the French
character, even amidst the most appalling scenes:
"The Baron de Montesquieu was standing near us, (on the deck;) we
had of late been amusing ourselves with rallying him in regard to
the words _liaisons dangereuses_, which he had heard us
pronounce, and, in spite of all his inquiries, we had still
evaded explaining to him that such was the title of a new novel,
then much read in France. While we were thus conversing together,
our ship received the fire of the Hector, and a bar-shot--a
murderous junction of two balls united by an iron bar--struck a
part of the quarter-deck, from which we had just before
descended. The Count de Loménie, standing at the side of
Montesquieu, and pointing to the shot, said very coolly, 'You
were wishing to know what those _liaisons dangereuses_ were?
There, look, you have them.'"
Soon after this event they approached Delaware Bay, where they
captured an English corvette. Being ignorant of the channel,
however, they were necessarily delayed, and they were placed in a
most critical position by the appearance of an English fleet,
whose superior force seemed to leave them no chance of escape.
This they effected, nevertheless, with the greatest difficulty,
carrying with them the gold which they had been obliged to throw
into the river when pursued by the English, but which they
afterward fished up and secured. They then proceeded on the way
to Philadelphia, and the Count gives amusing incidents that
occurred on the route. Sometimes well treated by the inhabitants
favorable to the cause of freedom, they were also subjected to
much annoyance by the tories and the timid or vacillating between
both sides. A certain Mr. Pedikies is particularly mentioned as
having received them coolly and suspiciously, while promises,
bribes, and threats were necessary to oblige him to afford them
any aid. The contrast evident between the Americans and his own
countrymen, is noticed by the writer in an aspect very favorable
to the former. What especially attracted his attention was, the
absence of different classes in society and of all poverty. "All
the Americans whom we met were dressed in well-made clothes, of
excellent stuff, with boots well cleaned; their deportment was
free, frank, and kind, equally removed from rudeness of manner
and from studied politeness; exhibiting an independent character,
subject only to the laws, proud of its own rights, and respecting
those of others. Their aspect seemed to declare that we were in a
land of reason, of order, and of liberty." (P. 320.) He describes
the face of the country, its boundless resources of agricultural
wealth, and stores of future happiness and power. Philadelphia,
then the capital of the country, attracted his admiration, and he
enters upon a disquisition concerning the Quakers, who inspired
him with a very high esteem for their principles of peace and
rectitude. He says that "most of them were tories," and cannot
blame them, because their religion forbade its members to engage
in war. "Friend," said one of them to General Rochambeau, "thou
dost practise a vile trade; but we are told that thou dost
conduct thyself with all the humanity and justice it will admit
of.
{640}
I am very glad of this; I feel indebted to thee for it; and I am
come hither to see thee, and to assure thee of my esteem."
Another discovered a very ingenious mode of avoiding
participation in the deeds of war, even by paying taxes to
support it, and at the same time of complying with the law of
Congress imposing taxation. The day upon which the collectors
called, he placed a certain sum of money apart where they might
find it, and thus he would not _give_, but allowed it _to
be taken_. At Newport, he became acquainted with a venerable
member of the same sect; and the Frenchman became an ardent
admirer of Polly Leiton, the beautiful and modest daughter of his
host. She made no pretence to conceal her abhorrence of war, and
candidly addressed the Count in terms not at all complimentary to
his military notions. "Thou hast, then," she said, "neither wife
nor children in Europe, since thou leavest thy country, and
comest so far to engage in that cruel occupation, war?" "But it
is for your welfare," he replied, "that I quit all I hold dear,
and it is to defend your liberty that I come to fight the
English." "The English," she rejoined, "have done thee no harm,
and wherefore shouldst thou care about our liberty? We ought
never to interfere in other people's business, unless it be to
reconcile them together and prevent the effusion of blood." "But
my king has ordered me to come here and engage his enemies and
your own," said Segur. To this she replied that no king has a
right to order what is unjust and contrary to what God ordereth.
Having transacted important business with M. de Luzerne, at
Philadelphia, and fully acquainted himself with the state of
affairs and eminent men of the times, he set out for the camp of
Washington and Rochambeau, on the banks of the Hudson. In the
narrative of his journey thither, he shows himself a keen
observer, and highly appreciates the character of the
inhabitants, as well as the magnificent aspect of the country
through which he passed. Schools, churches, and universities met
him at every town; while kindness, comfort, happiness, were
everywhere displayed. The modest tranquillity of independent men,
knowing no power above them but the influence of law, and that
law the expression of their own will; the vanity, servility, and
prejudices of European society unknown; the general spirit of
industry and the honorable occupation of labor common to all;
such phases of life, so strange to the traveller, attracted his
deepest attention.
The inns at which he stopped on his way were generally kept by
captains, majors, colonels, generals, who conversed with equal
facility upon military tactics and agricultural projects, and
were no less entertaining in their stories of campaigns against
the English than in their success in clearing forests and raising
crops on the sites of Indian wigwams. This very naturally
surprised the inquisitive Frenchman; but, while it presented to
him a new phase of human society, it approved itself very highly
to his judgment. Two things, however, he found to condemn; or, as
he himself says, shocked him more than he could express. One was
"a vile custom, the moment a toast was given, of circulating an
immense bowl of punch round the table, out of which each guest
was successively compelled to drink; and the other was, that,
after being in bed, it was not unusual to see a fresh traveller
walk into your room, and without ceremony stretch himself by your
side, and appropriate a part of your couch."
{641}
Trenton and Princeton recalled to him the memory of brilliant
exploits performed in the cause of liberty by Washington and
Lafayette; but at Pompton he would have fallen into the hands of
the Britishers, had he not been warned of his danger by an old
woman sitting at her door, engaged by a spinning-wheel. Having at
length crossed the majestic Hudson, which he eloquently
describes, he was cheered by the sight of the American tents, and
soon reached the headquarters of Rochambeau, at Peekskill. He
took command of a veteran regiment of Soissonnais, which had been
awaiting him, and he was received with the greatest enthusiasm.
It had been formerly named Segur, from his father, who had
commanded it at the famous battles of Lawfeld and Rocoux. In both
these battles the old warrior was wounded at the head of his
regiment, once by a musket-ball through his breast, and again by
another shot that shattered his arm. Although he felt annoyed at
the absence of active operations in the field, still he found
amusement enough among his numerous countrymen, with whom he was
now associated. One young officer of artillery particularly
attracted his attention. This was Duplessis-Mauduit, who had most
signally distinguished himself in several engagements, and who
carried his attachment to liberty and equality so far as to be
highly displeased if any one called him _Sir_ or
_Mister_. He would be called simply Thomas
Duplessis-Mauduit.
His appreciation of the character of Washington is in accordance
with the estimation in which that great man was and is held by
all. "Too often," he says, "reality disappoints the expectations
our imagination had raised, and admiration diminishes by a too
close view of the object upon which it had been bestowed; but, on
seeing General Washington, I found a perfect similarity between
the impression produced upon me by his aspect and the idea I had
formed of him. His exterior disclosed, as it were, the history of
his life; simplicity, grandeur, dignity, calmness, goodness,
firmness, the attributes of his character, were also stamped upon
his features and in all his person. His stature was noble and
elevated; the expression of his features mild and benevolent; his
smile graceful and pleasing; his manners simple, without
familiarity. He did not display the luxury of a monarchical
general; everything announced in him the hero of a republic."
Expecting to find an army without organization, and officers
without suitable military knowledge, he was surprised to find
well-drilled battalions, and officers fully competent in all
departments of their service. He dined frequently with
Washington, and gives instructive descriptions of the habits of
those Revolutionary heroes. The toasts most frequently given
after dinner at headquarters were, "The Independence of the
United States;" "The King and Queen of France;" "Success to the
allied armies." The generous spirit of brotherhood that united
the two nations in those days seems to have become unknown in our
times; while she that was then the cruel enemy has now become the
flattered friend. Who will deny that nations sometimes act the
life of individuals? Washington's opinions on this point are
worth recording: "He spoke to me of the gratitude which his
country would ever retain for the King of France, and for his
generous assistance; highly extolled the wisdom and skill of
General de Rochambeau, expressing himself honored by having
observed and obtained his friendship; warmly commended the
discipline and bravery of our army; and concluded by speaking to
me, in very handsome terms, of my father, whose long services and
numerous wounds were becoming ornaments, he said, to a minister
of war." (P. 253.)
{642}
The Americans and French were closely besieging the British at
this time in New York, and although the prudence of the generals
restrained the impetuosity of the allies, who eagerly sought to
attack the enemy in their defences, it was not possible to
prevent the execution of some daring exploits. But the armies
soon separated, the French marching toward Newport and
Providence, thence to Boston. They were ordered to the West
Indies, where the decisive blow was to be struck at the English,
and, as it eventually turned out, the independence of the States
soon after followed.
We cannot but admire the wisdom displayed in this book of
memoirs, written eighty-five years ago, amidst scenes and times
that could afford material from which the future greatness of the
country could be predicted only by a very sagacious mind. He
clearly foresaw, in the rising colonies then about to emerge into
a powerful nationality, all the resources which, by judicious and
liberal legislation, led to the wonderful prosperity with which
our country is blessed. The religious toleration and equality
which reigned everywhere he highly eulogized, and accounts very
philosophically for the necessity of such a state of things. It
must be borne in mind that Count Segur was a follower of
Voltaire, although of a Protestant family. For this reason the
ingenuousness with which he testifies to the origin of this
religious toleration is more deserving of notice. At page 371, he
says: "The multiplicity of religions rendered toleration
indispensable among them, and, what will, perhaps, appear
singular, _the example of this toleration was set by the
Catholics_. No church, therefore, was privileged or considered
the established church; the ministers of each religion were paid
by those who professed it, and there existed between them not a
fatal spirit of jealousy, a source of discord, but a laudable
emulation of charity, benevolence, and virtue." It is pleasing to
record this generous tribute of respect to the liberal spirit
which influenced the religious denominations of those
Revolutionary times. It is true that in all religious sects there
are some members who are ever ready to clamor for persecution,
and eager to adopt forcible measures to compel their unwilling
neighbors to believe according to their own special measure of
belief. And it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to name one
religious party that has not, when sufficiently strong to do so,
been led into the commission of acts which succeeding generations
would willingly have effaced from the record of their
predecessors. For instance, what intelligent Presbyterian of the
present day would not willingly blot from the page of her history
the deeds that stain the Scotch Church in the days of her
influence? Buckle, one of the deepest non-Catholic writers of the
present age, says that her real character was "one of the most
detestable tyrannies ever seen on the earth." "When the Scotch
Kirk was at the height of its power, we may search history in
vain for any institution which can compete with it, except the
Spanish inquisition. Between these two there is a close and
intimate analogy. Both were intolerant, both were cruel, both
made war upon the finest parts of human nature, and both
destroyed every vestige of religious freedom." (Vol. ii. p. 322.)
{643}
It is more truthful to admit the opinion of Mr. Buckle than to
attempt to controvert his facts of proof by which he establishes
his position. We only advert to this as elucidating the principle
that, although there may be individual Presbyterians and
individual Catholics who feel a disposition to recur to the
unchristian acts of some of their predecessors, yet it cannot be
denied that they are exceptional. The general spirit of
toleration which Count Segur so justly appreciates, is too deeply
implanted in the institutions of the Republic to be blown away by
any foul blast of weak bigotry.
Another subject upon which he wisely commented is equally
important to show his great foresight. After aptly describing the
reasons from which he presaged the future greatness of the
nation, he observes that "the only danger to be apprehended
hereafter for this happy Republic, (which then consisted of three
millions of inhabitants,) is the state of excessive opulence of
which its exclusive commerce seems to hold out the promise, and
which may bring luxury and corruption in its train." (P. 374.)
Has not this already come to pass? Again he asks: "Is not that
difference which is observable between the manners and situation
of the North and South calculated, in fact, to create an
apprehension for the future of a political separation, which
would weaken and perhaps even dissolve this happy union, which
can only retain its strength while it remains firm and intimate?"
The past few years have proven the justness of his views.
We cannot better conclude than by transcribing his relation of an
incident which evinced the bravery of his friend Lynch, an
officer of the staff of Count d'Estaing, at the storming of
Savannah: "M. d'Estaing, at the most critical moment of that
sanguinary affair, being at the head of the right column,
directed Lynch to carry an urgent order to the third column,
which was on the left. These columns were then within grape-shot
of the enemy's entrenchments; and on both sides a tremendous
firing was kept up. Lynch, instead of passing through the centre
or in the rear of the columns, proceeded coolly through the
shower of balls and grape-shot, which the French and English were
discharging at each other. It was in vain that M. d'Estaing, and
those who surrounded him, cried to Lynch to take another
direction; he went on, executed his order, and returned by the
same way; that is to say, under a vault of flying shot, and where
every one expected to witness his instant destruction. 'What!'
cried the general, on seeing him return unhurt, 'The devil must
be in you, surely. Why did you choose such a road as that, in
which you might have perished a thousand times over?' 'Because it
was the shortest,' answered Lynch. Having uttered these words, he
went with equal coolness and joined the party that most ardently
engaged in storming the place."
It has been a pleasure, as well as an instruction, to accompany
in his thoughts and actions one of those many noble and brave
foreigners who aided, by their services, in the establishment of
our independence, and forced a powerful foe to relinquish her
grasp upon a nation struggling for liberty.
--------
{644}
Notre Dame De Garaison.
In the province of Aquitaine, a short distance from the village
of Monléon, among the hills of _Les Hautes Pyrénées_, is a
valley bearing the name of Garaison, where stands a votive chapel
in honor of the Blessed Virgin. It is a favorite place of
pilgrimage for all the country around, which has been approved of
by Popes Urban VIII, and Gregory XVI., who have enriched it with
indulgences. It was erected in consequence of the apparition of
our Blessed Lady on the spot, about the year 1500, to a young
shepherdess who was guarding her flock in the valley. The legend
is as follows, somewhat abridged. It is supported by most
unobjectionable witnesses at the time of the event, by tradition,
and the unanimous voice of the country around; by public
documents, and by the effects which followed and which still
exist. As for me, however, this is of little moment, these
legends not being matters of faith. It is sufficient for me to
know that the spot in question is one dear to Mary and peculiarly
favored by Heaven. It has been sanctified by the sighs of
contrition, by the pure confessions, the fervent communions, and
the sudden and miraculous conversions of those who have gone
thither in honor of the Mother of our Lord.--But the legend:
A young girl of twelve years of age, Anglèse de Sagazan, was
guarding her flock near a large hawthorn which shaded a fountain
of living water. The deep shade and the soft murmur of the
fountain invited repose, and, opening her basket of provisions,
the young shepherdess seated herself by the spring to dip her dry
brown bread in the clear, cold water. Suddenly a lady of majestic
mien, with a serene countenance and gracious regard, clothed in a
long, white robe, which fell in graceful folds to her feet, stood
before the astonished maiden, who, dazzled by her appearance,
remained immovable and speechless. Then our gracious Lady, who
loveth the poor and the humble, declared to her that she had
chosen this spot as a place of benediction, whereon she wished a
shrine erected in her honor, around which her children might
gather with more than ordinary assurance. This apparition
occurring three days in succession, the maiden related to her
father what had happened. He, in turn, reported the occurrence
among his neighbors, who were quite incredulous, but yet, through
curiosity or inspired by God, flocked to the fountain, where was
still to be heard the voice of the Virgin, though no one saw her
but the pure eyes of the shepherdess. The people went to seek the
curé, and returned to the fountain with banners, chanting hymns
in honor of Mary. They erected a large cross on the spot. After
that the water of the fountain seemed miraculously changed, and
the sick went thither to be healed. The sudden restoration of
many to health made the spot celebrated in a short time. The
number of miracles increasing, the present elegant vaulted chapel
was erected by the voluntary offerings of grateful pilgrims, and
there the benediction of Heaven descended upon the votaries of
Mary.
{645}
At this day wonderful are the prodigies wrought on soul and body
at the shrine of our Lady of Garaison. Ages ago God healed many
who, at the troubling of the waters, descended to the
angel-guarded Pool of Siloam. His ways are not as our ways. ...
I made a pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Garaison in June, 18--. The
evening before, I went to shrift, by way of preparation, and the
next morning left at an early hour with a party of friends, who
completely filled our private diligence. There were five of us,
and two servants, besides the driver and his more efficient wife.
I might call her the driver and him the postilion. Quite a
procession we should have made in honor of our Lady of Garaison!
We ought to have gone plodding along the highway in sandal shoon
and penitential garb, with pilgrim staff and scallop-shell,
knocking our breasts as we went, as did the votaries of the
middle ages. But in these days, when stout old Christian flies
along the celestial railroad with his burden of sin carefully
stowed away in the baggage-car, I, a feeble pilgrim, may be
excused for seeking as comfortable a seat as could be found in
our rickety old diligence. As I got in, I caught a satisfactory
glimpse of a large basket, in which were light, crispy
_pistolets_, heaps of deep-red cherries, flasks of water,
and bottles of mild _vin rouge_, which our servant had
thoughtfully provided for our outer man. And they were not
disdained in our drive of thirty miles. Such due attention having
been paid to our bodily wants, we were quite at leisure to
abandon ourselves to our spiritual musings or our devotions! Who
could wish to have his soul constantly disturbed and pestered by
a jaded and craving body? It is quite contrary to the religious
as well as philosophic spirit of this enlightened nineteenth
century, and though I was somewhat ascetic, and rather inclined
to the sterner rules of medieval times, the thought almost
reconciled me to my corner, where I braced my weary back, and to
the aforesaid basket, whence I fortified my body.
"_Ciel!_" I exclaimed, as I found myself _en diligence_
and the stone cross of St. Oren's Priory fast disappearing, "have
I returned to the middle ages, or am I dreaming?" I could not
help rubbing my eyes, and wondering what some of my more
enlightened American friends would think, if they could see me
seriously, deliberately setting off on a pilgrimage (even in a
carriage!) of thirty miles, to pay my devotions at a shrine of
the Virgin Mary! But yes--my head was quite sound, though filled
with the vows I wished to offer in a spot peculiarly dear to our
Lady. This was the first visit I ever made to one of these places
of popular devotion, and so, apart from my religious motives, I
felt some curiosity to see this mountain chapel, away almost upon
the confines of Spain.
The roads are fine in that part of France, and bordered by
magnificent shade-trees. Owing to recent rains, we had no dust.
We passed waving wheat-fields, luxuriant vineyards hedged with
hawthorn, and away on the neighboring hills was many an old
château with its venerable towers, and hard by an antique church.
I found everything novel, and consequently interesting. Going and
returning we stopped at most of the villages.
{646}
In every one we found an old vaulted stone church, with thick
walls and doors, ever open to the passer-by. In each were several
chapels, adorned with oil paintings, bas-reliefs, and statues of
the saints, and in every church were the stations of _Via
Crucis_ well painted, and the little undying lamp of olive oil
burning near the gilded tabernacle--announcing the presence of
the Divinity--the Shekinah of the new Israel--and recalling the
beautiful lines of Lamartine:
"Pâle lampe du sanctuaire,
Pourquoi dans l'ombre du saint lieu,
Inaperçue et solitaire,
Te consumes-tu devant Dieu?
"Ce n'est pas pour diriger l'aile
De la prière ou de l'amour,
Pour éclairer, faible étincelle,
L'oeil de celui qui fit le jour.
......
"Mon oeil aime à se suspendre
A ce foyer aérien;
Et je leur dis, sans les comprendre.
Flambeaux pieux, vous faites bien.
"Peutêtre, brillantes parcelles
De l'immense création,
Devant son trône imitent-elles
L'éternelle adoration.
"C'est ainsi, dis-je à mon âme,
Que de l'ombre de ce bas lieu
Tu brûles, invisible flamme,
En la présence de ton Dieu.
"Et jamais tu n'oublies
De diriger vers lui mon coeur,
Pas plus que ces lampes remplies
De flotter devant le Seigneur." [Footnote 187]
[Footnote 187: In the absence of a suitable poetic version
of the above, we subjoin--for such of our readers as are
not familiar with the language of the original--the
following prose translation of it, from Digby's _Ages of
Faith_:
"Pale lamp of the Sanctuary, why, in the obscurity of the
Holy Place, unperceived and solitary, consumest thou
thyself before God? It is not, feeble spark! to give light
to the eye of him who made the day: it is not to dispel
darkness from the steps of his adorers. The vast nave is
only more obscure before thy distant glimmering. And yet,
symbolic lamp, thou guardest thy immortal fire, thou dost
flicker before every altar, and mine eyes love to rest
suspended on this aerial hearth. I say to them, I
comprehend not; ye pious flames, ye do well. Perhaps these
bright particles of the immense creation imitate before
his throne the eternal adoration! It is thus, say I to my
soul, that, in the shade of this lower place, thou
burnest, a flame invisible, a fire which remains
unextinguished, unconsumed, by which incense can be at all
times rekindled to ascend in fragrance to heaven!"]
In these churches there was always an altar to the Virgin, too,
adorned with lace and flowers, and streaming with gay ribbons and
pennons, after the taste of the country. In one we found a
wedding party, and were in season to hear the _Ego conjungo
vos_ of the curé over a very modest and subdued-looking pair.
We often passed huge crosses of wood or stone erected by the
wayside, to which were attached the instruments of the Passion. I
noticed among the passers-by that the women made the sign of the
cross and the men raised their hats. I did not find the villages
very agreeable. The houses were of stone, with tiled roofs, and
had a cold, forbidding look. The paved streets were narrow, with
no sidewalks, and anything but cleanly. I thought of our fresh
New England villages, their white cottages and green blinds, and
front yards filled with flowers and shrubbery. But those of
France were more antique and more picturesque--at a distance.
Flocks of sheep dotted the country, each guarded by a
shepherdess, who wore a bright scarlet _capuchon_, which
covers the head and falls below the waist. It is picturesque, if
not graceful, and at a distance the wearer looks like one of her
native but overgrown _coquelicots_. They were generally
spinning, after the manner of the country, with the distaff under
one arm and twirling the spindle in the hand, thus laying their
hands to the spindle and their hands hold of the distaff after
the manner of Old Testament times. How they contrive to spin with
these two instruments is past my comprehension, but they do
succeed admirably.
Every now and then we met a donkey groaning under the weight of
his ears and of a huge cage, or _panier_, as large as
himself on each side, filled with live poultry or fruit and
vegetables. Perched on the top between these queer saddle-bags
was a bright-eyed, sunburnt _paysanne_, most patiently
thwacking Old Dapple marketward. The oxen looked as if they fared
better; they were sleek and clean, that is, what I could see of
them, for they were almost entirely encased in great coverings,
as if they were elephants.
{647}
Their drivers wore a blouse of blue cotton, and wooden shoes with
most impertinently turned-up toes. They are worn (the shoes) both
by men and women. They make a terrible clatter; you would think
the Philistines upon you; but they are very durable.
The country reminded me of the interior of New England. The hills
were finely wooded, more so than I had expected in that old
country. On leaving Monléon, we entered a valley, narrow at
first, but which gradually opened, forming a basin of
considerable extent, with green meadows and shady thickets. It is
bounded and crowned by hills, and a few hours distant are the
Pyrenees. This valley is solitary--secluded, but not wild or
uncultivated. Perhaps there is a score of houses in it. From
about the centre rise the turrets of Notre Dame de Garaison. The
whole country was once covered with magnificent oaks which had
been planted by the old chaplains, but the vandals of a later day
had cut away whole forests.
The rain poured down in torrents when we entered the valley of
Garaison, but that did not prevent us from admiring the locality
so favorable to devotion. Far from any city, free from noise, the
chapel is buried among the hills and forests of Aquitaine, a spot
chosen by God in which to reveal his presence and power! What a
delicious solitude! We drove to a little _auberge_--Hotel de
la Paix!--erected for the accommodation of pilgrims. In the
olden time they were sheltered in a monastery, which was
devastated during the Revolution, and now, when great festivals
draw crowds of people, the women often remain in the house all
night. Leaving our carriage at the hotel, we immediately went to
the church in spite of the rain, passing through a long avenue of
majestic oaks.
The principal entrance to this sacred retreat is quite imposing.
The front is decorated with a statue of the Virgin, holding the
dead Christ in her arms--the bodies of natural size, and the work
of a skilful hand.
The buildings form a vast enclosure, in the centre of which is
the chapel, having on the north and south two courts which
separate it from the rest of the edifice. I was surprised to find
so fine an establishment so far away from any city. We passed
through a cloister shaded by cypresses to the chapel. Over the
door and at the sides are niches, in which are statues. The
vestibule, as in all these old churches, is very low. Here my
attention was attracted by a great number of small paintings
which cover the walls and vault, forming a complete mosaic. These
_ex-voto_ are not remarkable as works of art, but precious
on account of the miraculous events which they retrace. They
represent the persons who have been cured of their infirmities by
the intercession of Mary; to each is attached a label bearing the
name of the person and the date of the cure. These paintings were
left untouched at the Revolution, though the venerable guardians
of this sanctuary were driven from their cherished solitude; and
the sacred vestments, the holy vessels, the silver lamps, the
jewels, and other _ex-voto_ of all kinds, which had been
offered the Virgin in gratitude for grace received, were carried
away; the fine statues of the twelve Apostles were destined to
the flames, but were rescued by the people of Monléon, whose
church they now adorn.
From the vestibule we passed into the nave. One feels an
inexpressible emotion of piety and devotion on entering this
beautiful church.
{648}
I went immediately to the grand altar to pay my devotions to our
Lady of Garaison, while the servant took my letter of
introduction to M. le Supérieur, who was fortunately at liberty.
I found him a tall, fine-looking gentleman, instead of a hoary
old hermit, and as polite as a Parisian. He wore a flowing
_soutane_, confined at the waist by a fringed girdle, and on
his head was a sort of skull-cap, such as the priests wear in
that country--I imagine, to protect their tonsured heads from the
cold. He conducted me over the whole establishment. In his room I
saw the skull of the shepherdess to whom the Virgin appeared. She
died a nun, and more than a century old. After her death, her
body was given to the chapel, which had been erected during her
life, and to which she had been permitted to resort from time to
time. The fountain is under the grand altar; but the water is
conducted into a basin in a vault to the east of the chapel.
Every one says the waters still perform wonderful cures. The
superior said it was not owing to any mineral qualities; and as I
was not able to analyze them, I contented myself with drinking
quite freely of them, bathing therein my forehead, and inwardly
praying God to heal every infirmity of body and soul. On the
basin is a bas-relief representing the Virgin's appearing to the
shepherdess.
The arches and walls of the sacristy are covered with the
frescoes of a by-gone age, but which have not lost their
brilliancy of color. They represent the descent of the Holy Ghost
upon the Apostles; angels bearing to our Saviour the instruments
of the Passion, etc.
Over the grand altar of the church, in a niche, is a statue of
Notre Dame de Garaison, the mother of sorrows, holding in her
arms the inanimate body of her divine Son. There are four small
chapels, two on each side, separated by walls which advance to
the principal nave, and are there converted into pilasters to
support the vault. In them are some oil paintings, two of which
are very fine, the angel guardian and a Madonna. The niches,
which were robbed in 1789, have been newly furnished with gilded
statues of the twelve Apostles, large as life, and bearing the
instruments of their martyrdom; and one of our Saviour in the
midst. On the vault are painted the patriarchs and prophets of
the old law. These gilded statues and altars give a most
brilliant appearance to the lightly vaulted Gothic chapel.
In the south court is a fountain. Mary stands with her divine
babe in her arms, sculptured in white marble. The water spouts
out at her feet through four small masks, and falls into a basin
of pure white marble, whence it flows into another still larger.
The statue has been a little injured by exposure to the weather;
but still it reminds one that Mary is the channel through which
the grace of God comes to us--that through her flow the waters of
benediction and of grace upon man!
The refectory is vaulted and paved. In it is a whispering
gallery, common in the monasteries of the middle ages, so one
could communicate from one corner to the other opposite in the
lowest tone. I am sure the knight of the couchant leopard was no
more surprised or awed by the midnight procession he witnessed in
the little chapel of Engaddi, than was I at a late hour in the
evening, when, while I was still rapt in prayer, and quite
unconscious of what was going on around me in this still mountain
chapel, I found the altar suddenly illuminated, and a door opened
to a long procession of white-robed priests and about a hundred
young men:
"Taper and Host and Book they bare,
And holy banner flourished fair
With the Redeemer's name.
{649}
They passed around the chapel, chanting _Tantum Ergo_, and
then returned to the altar to give the benediction of the Blessed
Sacrament. The richly gilded chapel was radiant with reflected
light, and the strains of _O salutaris Hostia!_ seemed to
float upward in celestial tones, as they issued from lips
purified by solitude and prayer. I never felt more devotion at
this solemn rite than there, in the shadow of the Pyrenees. I
forgot my fatigue, and yielded to heartfelt emotion. Exiled from
my native land, to which I might never return, and among those
who were almost entire strangers to me, I felt myself folded to
the bosom of divine Providence, and that the All-Father would
have me consider every part of his world as my home, and all
those souls, which he has breathed into human forms, as my
brethren and sisters.
It was a late hour when I fell asleep on my hard bed at the Hotel
de la Paix. Coldly looking down upon me from a rude frame was,
for my guardian saint, a picture of _Napoleon le Grand;_
but, though he had routed many a formidable host, he did not put
to flight a single sweet fancy or holy thought that thronged my
brains, waking or sleeping.
At an early hour I was again before the altar of Our Lady.
Priests were celebrating the holy mysteries at every altar when I
entered the chapel. At seven o'clock, M. le Supérieur offered the
Holy Sacrifice for my intentions, at which I communicated. ...
My devotions ended, I rambled around the garden and through the
cloisters, drank again from the fountain, and then prepared for
my departure. I had gone to Garaison with a deeper intent, more
serious purpose, than is my intention to unveil here. I bore in
my heart a burden--a burden common to humanity--which I laid down
at the feet of Mary, thinking, as I did so:
"Oh! might a voice, a whisper low,
Forth from those lips of beauty flow!
Couldst thou but speak of all the tears,
The conflicts, and the pangs of years,
Which at thy secret shrine revealed
Have gushed from human hearts unsealed!"
I left that chapel in the strong embrace of the everlasting
hills, and with sunlight flooding its walls like a glory. Turning
to give it a last look, at the last turn in the valley, it seemed
like a lily rising up in the green meadows--fit type of her to
whom it is dedicated.
Since that time I have visited many a shrine of _la belle
France_, but I turn to none with a more grateful heart than
NOTRE DAME DE GARAISON.
-----------
{650}
Count Ladislas Zamoyski.
Translated From The French
Of Ch. De Montalembert.
The nineteenth century, which is already drawing to a close, will
in the course of its history present nothing more grand, more
touching, more deeply impressed with the stamp of moral beauty,
than Poland--vanquished, proscribed, abandoned by the world.
This nation in mourning and in blood, which yet will not
die--this race of indomitable men and women, which survives all
tortures, all treasons, and all catastrophes, what a spectacle
and a lesson does it present! Its existence is at once a defiance
and an appeal: a defiance to adverse fortune, and an appeal to
what seems the too tardy justice of an avenging God. Abandoned
and calumniated by successful iniquity, by selfish opulence, by
the ever-ready worshippers of success, a sight intolerable to
their conquerors, and a reproach to the powerful of the world--there
they abide, like Mardochai before Aman, firmly resolved
to forget not, to despair not, nor to capitulate; incomparable
types of suffering, of sacrifice, of unwearying patience, of
lofty patriotism; invincible martyrs and confessors, not only of
faith, but of right, of country, and of liberty!
In the centre of this group of proscribed and oppressed, like
some great oak struck by lightning in the midst of a burning
forest, stands out in bold relief the noble figure of Count
Ladislas Zamoyski.
Ere yet the waves of forgetfulness and indifference have effaced
his noble memory, let us endeavor to recall and rescue from
oblivion some traits of an existence which, by every title,
belonged to ourselves; for in France he was born, (during a
journey of his parents there,) and in France he died, [Footnote
188] having passed here the greater part of the thirty-seven
years which he spent in exile, without having at any time
returned to his true country.
[Footnote 188: January 11th, 1868.]
Here it would seem appropriate to speak of the ancestors of the
illustrious dead. But how can we fitly portray to this generation
the splendor and power of those ancient houses of Poland and
Lithuania, whose immense possessions, countless adherents, and
extent of influence find no parallel in our own country, even at
the most aristocratic periods of its history? It was a Zamoyski
who headed the embassy which came to offer the crown of Poland to
a brother of Charles IX.; [Footnote 189] and some one of this
race is ever to be found dominant in their country's annals. They
may have had equals, but I know that in their native land none
ever assumed to be their superiors.
[Footnote 189: For an account of this embassy, see the
excellent work of the Marquis de Noailles, _Henri de Valois
et la Pologne in 1572_.]
Nothing is more _a propos_ to our immediate subject than the
legend of their device and bearings. A King of Poland, whose
people had some cause for discontent, being engaged in a conflict
with the Teutonic chevaliers, saw on the field of battle a
Zamoyski dying, his breast pierced with three lances. The king
approached to aid and comfort him. "_To mnicy [Transcriber's
note: blurred.] boli!_" exclaimed the dying hero. "_It is
not that which pains me!_" or in other words, "_A wound does
less harm than a bad prince or a bad neighbor_."
{651}
These three words and three lances have ever since been the
armorial bearings of the Zamoyski family. Reflecting upon them,
we find in them a singular appropriateness to that one of the
line whom we have best known; that illustrious and wounded hero
whom we have had so long before our eyes with the deadly steel in
his heart, and on his lips a word of proud resignation or
intrepid disdain.
Fortunate are those great races who, before they are submerged by
the rising tide of equality and modern uniformity, can give forth
one last flash of glory, and furnish to the historian some great
heart enthusiastic for a good cause and a noble faith; some
vigorous lover of right and duty, capable of signalizing himself
by a generous death, like our own Duke de Luynes, or by an entire
life of devotion and sacrifice, like Count Ladislas Zamoyski. For
reason as we will, so long as men are men, they will be always
and everywhere moved by a something--I know not what--a kind of
realization of completeness, which nobility of birth imparts to
great virtues or great misfortunes.
Ladislas Zamoyski, in his 28th year, was an officer of the
lancers in the Polish army, and aide-de-camp to the Grand Duke
Constantine; he was desirous above all things to serve his
country as a soldier and a citizen, when the military
insurrection of Warsaw broke out, at the end of November, 1830.
It was, as has often been repeated, the advance-guard of the
Russian army, directed against the France of July, which turned
back against the main body. Although the count had taken no part
in the insurrection, the high rank of his family and the
precocious maturity of his mind enabled him to profit by the
particular position which he held near the prince, whose
arbitrary and unwise acts had contributed more than anything else
to provoke the revolt. He obtained from the brother of the
emperor the order which separated the Polish troops from the
Russian, and gave a sort of method to the military movement,
which soon expanded into a national revolution. Believing himself
freed now from all allegiance to the grand duke, the young count
took part in all the exploits of the campaign of 1831--a campaign
which has left imperishable recollections in the minds of all who
were living at that time.
For ten months all Europe stood breathless, gazing with deep and
varied emotions on those fearful turns of fortune. Every incident
produced vehement agitations at the French tribune, in the
streets of Paris, and even in the reviews held by the French
king. There was something both of heroic and legendary interest
in this conflict, so disproportioned yet so prolonged, between a
handful of brave men on the one side, and the colossal resources
of Russia on the other--a conflict where the veteran comrades of
Dombrowski and Poniatowski were led on by youths inflamed with
holy zeal for their country's liberty, where the first place was
so long held by the Generalissimo Skrzynecki, true paladin of the
middle ages, who always put in the orders of the day for his army
prayers to the Holy Virgin as Queen of Poland, and who, brave in
the field and devout at the altar, was so pre-eminently hero,
Christian, and Catholic. I know not how upon this point the young
Poles of our own day stand; but I know they would be faithless to
the most noble examples of the heroes of 1831 if they should
suffer themselves to be enervated by religious indifference, or,
sadder still, should they ever trail through the depths of
atheism and modern materialism that banner which their ancestors
never separated from the cross of Jesus Christ.
{652}
When, finally, the countless masses which Russia threw upon
Poland had dislodged the insurgents from all their positions;
when the attempts at intervention made by the French government
were rendered nugatory by the icy and cynical indifference of
Lord Palmerston; [Footnote 190] when Europe resigned herself to
be a tranquil spectator at the sacrifice of a nation, Ladislas
Zamoyski, firm to the end, in the front rank of combatants,
holding then the grade of colonel, laid down his arms with the
last division of the Polish army, that of Ramorino, defeated in
Gallicia. He crossed then the frontiers of that country which he
was destined never more to see, and came, wounded and suffering,
but not less resolute than in the first days of his manhood, to
put himself at the disposal of his uncle, Prince Adam
Czartoryski, the venerable chief of the Polish emigration, as he
had been president of their national government.
[Footnote 190: See the correspondence between Prince
Talleyrand and Lord Palmerston on the Polish question, July,
1831, in the documents submitted to the English parliament by
order of the Queen, in 1861.]
It was then that we saw him for the first time among us. Young,
tall, commanding, active, and untiring, he carried in his
deportment and in those glorious wounds the credentials of his
mission. Always occupied with the cause of his country, but with
a serenity and stability far beyond his years, he attracted to
himself all attention. A solitary and embarrassed wanderer in a
world which was so soon to grow heartlessly indifferent to
Poland, he entered calmly and resolutely upon that obscure,
laborious, and uncongenial path which honor and duty had traced
for him.
I must be permitted here a just homage to that first Polish
emigration of 1831, which, preceded by the members of the
national government, by the Count Platen and General Kniacewicz,
and grouped about Prince Czartoryski, the Generals Dembinski,
Dwernicki, Rybinski, and the former ministers, Malachowski and
Morawski, have given us, for nearly forty years, such noble
examples of fortitude and devotedness, of modest dignity and
magnanimous resignation. How many of these yet remain to whom I
can address this last testimony of an admiration which I shall
always account among the most salutary and most lasting emotions
of my life? I owe to them a great good--the power to know and to
comprehend the grandeur and beauty of a vanquished cause!
Forced by circumstances to immolate everything in the worship of
their assassinated country, not one hesitated before this stern
requisition. Rich and poor, old and young, citizens and soldiers,
all were called on for sacrifices painful and unexpected, and
none shrank back; indeed, to many the privations they were
obliged to endure formed a strange contrast to their previous
habits of prodigality and almost oriental luxury. Ladislas
Zamoyski was conspicuous in this career, so new to himself and
his comrades. The subsidies which his friends forced him to
accept were invariably reserved for some general object, or
divided among his less fortunate companions, saying: "_I learn
every day to do without something._" One thing only did he
guard carefully--his _beloved sword_, as, with juvenile
_naïveté_, he was accustomed to call it, in the warm hope
and belief that it might yet serve his country.
{653}
The French refugees, whom the Edict of Nantes expelled from their
homes, represented liberty of conscience odiously persecuted, and
by this title they won the active sympathies of all the
Protestant nations. The Irish emigrants, who, about the same
time, were the victims of an intolerance as bitter and
inconsistent in Protestant England, found in France and Spain
places freely opened to them, and which they honorably filled.
The French emigration of 1792 represented not only loyalty to a
monarchy, but an entire social order, whose end no one believed
so near--an order which still reigned in nearly the whole of
Europe; to this they owed, at least during the first years of
their exile, the aid and support of all the powers affected or
threatened by the Revolution. It was quite otherwise with the
Polish emigration of 1831, which, nevertheless, personified, at
one and the same time, liberty both political and religious, and,
more than all, a grand people, erased, by injustice, by a crime
without a parallel, from the list of nations, and unanimous in
protesting against that decree. They received from perplexed and
divided Europe not one of those consolations and encouragements
which it was their right to expect.
France and England had generous alms to solace needs purely
material, but nothing more. Ruled by a double fear--that of the
Muscovite preponderance from without, and that of dangers from
demagogues within--no statesman, even the most liberal, was able
or willing to espouse the Polish cause. It was a sadder thing
still that a misapprehension prevented their receiving a sympathy
which otherwise would have been first offered. Beyond the little
circle of liberal, free-hearted Catholics--a circle then very
limited--the Polish refugees, victims of the most bitter
persecutor of the church in the nineteenth century, met no
response from the religious world. It was a time when Catholic
Europe, monarchical and aristocratic, was miserably prostrate
before the Austria of Prince Metternich and the Russia of the
Emperor Nicholas. Consequently, at Paris, and, above all, at
Rome, there was to be caught not one glimpse of salvation. There
existed among the defenders of the throne and the altar an
animosity to the Poles truly revolting, unjustifiable traces of
which even yet remain. It was the heaviest cross, for a multitude
of Christian souls, which the Polish emigration hid in its bosom.
I have the right to speak of it, for no one, perhaps, on this
subject, has received more mournful confidences, and no one, I
venture to believe, has done more to induce among Catholics a
happy change--a change commencing with the good and fatherly Pope
Gregory XVI., and precisely on occasion of Count Ladislas
Zamoyski, whom he was pleased, at my request, to encourage to
visit him in Rome. [Footnote 191]
[Footnote 191: Until 1837, no Pole was allowed to enter Rome,
without a passport visé by Austria, Prussia, or Russia;
consequently, this excluded the exiles of 1830.]
But how time and efforts must fail in making reparation for this
strange misunderstanding! and how much it must have aggravated
the sorrows inseparable from prolonged exile--those sorrows
which every noble heart must comprehend, even without having
experienced them, and which inspired, in a sad, gifted soul, the
last ray of its genius!
"He passed, a wanderer on earth. May God guide the poor exile! I
move among the crowd; they gaze at me, and I at them, yet each to
each is unknown. The exile is alone everywhere," [Footnote 192]
[Footnote 192: _Paroles d'un Croyant_. 1833.]
{654}
Count Zamoyski, always sincerely attached to the faith of his
fathers, even before the death of a beloved mother had developed
in him a fervent piety, lived long enough to witness this happy
change in Catholic opinion. He had the consolation of seeing the
entire church moved, at the voice of its chief, by the
incomparable sufferings of Poland. In France, at least, every
Catholic worthy the name addressed prayers without ceasing to the
divine mercy, that the country of St. Hedwige and Sobieski might
one day resume her place, free among the nations. This harmony
between the irrepressible aspirations of his patriotism and the
daily increasing fervor of his religious sentiments threw over
the last years of his life a warm and consoling light.
But before arriving in port, how stormy the voyage! Bound by soul
yet more than by the ties of blood to his uncle, Prince Adam
Czartoryski, he had been twenty-five years his lieutenant, his
coadjutor, and the sharer of his fortunes; like him, too,
encountering continually repulse, deception, and injustice,
without being embittered or discouraged.
Belgium, always hospitable, took full possession of her
nationality in the same year, 1831, when Poland seemed to have
lost hers. She immediately opened the ranks of her army to Count
Ladislas, with the grade of colonel, a position he had won on the
bloody banks of the Vistula.
For fifteen years [Footnote 193] he watched in vain for an
opportunity to once more draw his sword in behalf of his own
land, or for some cause which might even indirectly serve her
interests.
[Footnote 193: From 1832 to 1847.]
He was obliged to content himself with employing his intercourse
with the political men of the two great constitutional countries,
to secure to the Polish question, in the order of the day, some
parliamentary discussion or some diplomatic bias, and to obtain
from the French chambers and the English parliament those
periodical demonstrations which seemed to him so many
protestations of right against the most odious of political
crimes; so many guarantees against a proscription which the sad
destinies of men too often drew down on them, to the profit and
encouragement of injustice.
At length, in 1846, he thought he saw the dawn of better days. In
the short counterfeit alliance between Pius IX. and Italian
liberty, he hastened, with sixty other Polish officers, to offer
their devotedness and military experience to the new pontiff,
whom all believed menaced by Austria even more than by the
Revolution. From thence he passed as a volunteer into the army of
Charles Albert, and shared, by the side of that noble and
unfortunate sovereign, in all the vicissitudes of the struggle
between Piedmont and Austria. Austria, we must remember, at the
time we speak of, was not the liberal Austria of the present day;
and no Pole could look on this empire as aught save the author
and accomplice of the calamities of his country. Piedmont being
defeated and restricted to its ancient limits, it was to Hungary
that Count Zamoyski next turned his steps. Hungary was then in a
state of insurrection against Austria, but was also a victim
herself to an insurrection of her Sclavic population, unwisely
irritated. To gain from Hungary a recognition of the rights of
these people--rights so misunderstood or ignored by the rest of
Europe--was the mission of Count Zamoyski, and for which he was
willing to confront new perils. The Russians, however, soon
arrived, and, combining their armies with those of Austria and
with the revolted Croats, Hungary was soon crushed.
{655}
After the decisive defeat of Teneswar, the remnants of the Polish
legion passed into Servia, and from thence to Turkey.
For two years he occupied himself here in disciplining those
indomitable spirits for future contests; for to the honor of the
Ottoman Porte be it recorded that it refused the demands of the
Russian and Austrian governments for the extradition of the
Polish and Hungarian refugees.
During a short revisit which he made to France, the Eastern
question arose, and he immediately returned to Turkey. He took
part, with the rank of general, in the campaign on the banks of
the Danube, and through the entire Crimean war devoted his
strength, his rare intelligence, his military experience, to
forming regiments of Polish Cossacks, ostensibly for the service
of the sultan, but indulging in the hope of seeing them
ultimately admitted to the ranks of the allies.
In January, 1856, the preliminaries of the Peace of Paris came to
dash aside once more his patriotic day-dreams, and to destroy
every chance of resuscitation which had seemed offered to Poland
in this rupture, so pompous but so fruitless, between France and
England and Russia.
No adequate reason has yet been given for that blind delusion
which prevented the powerful allies, in 1855, or Napoleon I., in
1812, from using against Russia the only power which she could
not control, to recall Poland to that national existence which
was her sacred right; and which, at the same time, was the only
efficient guarantee for the independence and security of Europe.
Made desperate by this thwarted expectation, Poland suffered
herself, in 1863, to be drawn into that strenuous but unfortunate
effort whose miserable consequences are in the memories of all.
Count Zamoyski, now suffering with age and infirmities, made one
last attempt to prevail on England to unite in some kind of
action with France, and not to stand by in silence at those
massacres and outrages which Russia perpetrated with such
impunity, a mockery to the civilization of the nineteenth
century. He failed, and this was his last attempt.
He died, leaving Europe more than ever exposed to perils he had
warned her against, more than ever recklessly serving the
Muscovite power.
He died, seeing Russia supremely powerful in the East, and free
to put the seal on all the bloody hypocrisies of her history:
_here_, making the world resound with her solicitude for the
civil and religious liberty of the Cretans, while she crushed out
with her unholy foot the last palpitations of Polish freedom, and
extirpated, with infernal perfidy, the last vestiges of Polish
Catholic faith: _there_, instigating against regenerated
Austria a formidable conspiracy of her Sclavic subjects, while
the highways and mines of Siberia are strewn with the skeletons
of heroic Poles, whose only crime was to spurn the yoke of those
Russians who are a hundred-fold less truly Sclavic than their
victims.
The history of Count Ladislas Zamoyski is, then, a sad one; it is
the story of a life-long shipwreck.
All his designs were frustrated, all his hopes deceived. Always
hastening from disappointment to disappointment, from defeat to
defeat, he wearied never, paused never, was successful never.
{656}
Deeming no sacrifice too great, and no detail too minute for the
service of his country, he was prompt to avail himself of any
circumstance or encounter any new risk which might gain for her a
friend, remove an error, or stimulate in her behalf the
indifferent. Self-armed against disasters, he raised himself from
each defeat with the tenacity of an old Roman on the
battle-field, where he had been once overthrown, to fall again,
wounded and crushed down by an implacable adversity.
It would seem as if so many trials, mental and material, public
and private, might suffice to fill that measure of suffering
which is the lot of all below. But no! he had still to endure
those which would appear more fittingly the portion of the idle
and prosperous.
Crippled with wounds and infirmities, the last ten years of his
life were passed in physical sufferings which made them one
prolonged torture. He endured, during all this time, the
prolonged weariness, the distastes, the feebleness of failing
health; and he supported them with the same imperturbable
patience, the same tranquil and unconquerable courage, which had
sustained him through the sad vicissitudes of his public life.
How great the virtue, crowned by those great sufferings! There is
in it a grand and mysterious lesson, and one, above all, which
God seems to have designed for our instruction and edification;
for his character more than his career at all times raised him
far above the mass of human kind. No one could approach him
without feeling a profound respect before a strength of mind so
determined, a patience which never failed; before that singular
union of bravery and gentleness, that generous sense of honor,
that equanimity, that integrity. Rich in the domestic happiness
which Providence accorded to his declining years, he was content
to live, content to suffer; yet appreciating any relief, and
humbly thankful for those rare moments of respite which were
permitted to his numerous infirmities. Without disavowing the
aspirations of his youth, he had purified and transformed them in
the crucible of self-denial and sacrifice. What remained to him
of generous pride was so tempered that the most exacting could
not have reproached him. His Christian fervor brightened as the
chills of age encircled him; and the destinies and well-being of
the church inspired him no less than those of his country.
He gave a proof of this devotion in the past summer, (1867,)
when, so broken in health, he went to Rome to lay at the feet of
Pius IX. a last homage. In the midst of those _fètes_ of the
Centenary of St. Peter, where were gathered the bishops and the
faithful of the entire world, except those bound fast and gagged
by the Muscovite autocrat, Ladislas Zamoyski appeared, like the
living spectre of absent, enchained Poland.
Nor was it only faith: it was still more--charity--which animated
this soul, so Christian and chivalrous. How can we depict that
compassion and generosity, so irrepressible, toward his destitute
compatriots! or how sufficiently admire that charity of
forgiveness to his enemies--the pitiless enemies of his nation!
Never one word of bitterness crossed his lips.
"What is to be thought of the Russians?" said a friend to him,
one day, "and how far are they implicated with the emperor?"
"I never judge them," he replied: "I pray for them."
For us, who are not bound to exercise such superhuman moderation,
who are witnesses and not victims of these atrocities, we raise
beside the tomb of this just man a cry of grief and indignant
surprise.
"_Usquequo, Domine sanctus et verus, non judicas et non
vindicas, sanguinem nostrum de iis qui habitant in terrâ?_"
{657}
How long, O Lord! shall crime and falsehood triumph? How long
wilt thou leave unpunished this martyrdom of a Christian nation,
which will soon have lasted an entire century?
But all rebellious thoughts against the tardiness of divine
justice are checked, all the poignancy of sorrow is subdued, by
the remembrance alone of the departed dead. He is gone! His long
and cruel trials are over! He has entered into light and peace!
He lives in the bosom of his God, and his memory will be for ever
cherished among men, with the annals of his illustrious house and
of his unfortunate country. He leaves behind a name which will be
a crown of glory to his children, born in the land of exile where
he died, and rocked in their frail cradle on a stormy sea. He
leaves a sacred grief, which is a treasure to her alone, to the
youthful and admirable woman who gave herself to him in his
darkest hour; the intrepid sharer in his vicissitudes and perils,
the loving and faithful consoler of his sufferings and decline,
and who enjoyed a happiness with him in this world which is to be
interrupted only for a few brief days.
Finally, he leaves a great and profitable example to all who have
known and loved him; above all, to those who, subjected to
slighter trials, submit to them with less patience and less
courage.
----------
The Catholic Church And The Bible.
_Does the Catholic Church condemn the Bible and forbid her
people to circulate and read it?_
We answer: NO! On the contrary, the Catholic Church believes the
Bible to be the inspired word of God himself, and constantly
incites her people to its diligent perusal. In testimony of
which, we offer: first, her official declarations; and second,
her unvarying practice.
First, her official declarations.
The holy Council of Trent, which closed its sessions in the year
1564, and whose canons and decrees are the voice of the universal
church, binding upon every Catholic under pain of sin, distinctly
says:
"The Holy OEcumenical and General Council of Trent, ...
following the example of the orthodox fathers, does with due
veneration and piety receive all the books of the Old and the
New Testament, of both which God himself is the immediate
author. ... And, lest any doubt should exist as to what books
this council has thus received, a catalogue of the same is
annexed to this decree. (Here follows a list of the sacred
books, as found in. English Catholic Bibles.) Now, if any one
shall refuse to receive these books entire, with all their
parts, according as they are accustomed to be read in the
Catholic Church and are contained in the ancient Latin Vulgate
edition, as sacred and canonical, ... let him be anathema."
[Footnote 194]
[Footnote 194: _Can. et Dec. Conc. Trid._ Sess. iv.]
{658}
Again, the Pope, who, as the head and mouth-piece of the Catholic
Church, administers its discipline and issues orders to which
every Catholic, under pain of sin, must yield obedience, has
positively declared, "that the faithful should be excited to the
reading of the Holy Scriptures: for these are the most abundant
sources which ought to be left open to every one, to draw from
them purity of morals and of doctrine;" which declaration may be
found in the preface to the English Catholic Bibles now in use.
Second, her unvarying practice.
The Catholic Church, from the beginning, has provided effectual
means, not only for the distribution of the Bible among her
people, but also for their knowledge of the truths which it
contains. One of her holy orders is that of _Reader_, "whose
duty," as her catechism says, "is to read the Sacred Scriptures
to the people in a clear and distinct voice, and to instruct them
in the rudiments of faith." [Footnote 195]
[Footnote 195: _Catechism. Cone. Trid._ pars. ii. De
Ordin.]
Again, from the beginning, it has been made the daily duty of her
priests and religious persons to recite "the divine office,"
which consists of psalms, of readings from the Bible, and of
prayers. The new revision of this office made by Gregory VII., in
which its different parts were first collected into one volume,
became known as the "Breviary," and is still so called. From this
was translated and compiled, in great part, the "Daily Morning
and Evening Prayer" of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the
epistles, gospels, lessons, and psalms of which, thus borrowed,
present, as is well known, so large a portion of the Holy
Scriptures. Indeed, the Breviary is but the Bible, in a form
adapted to devotional uses, and illustrated with pious
meditations and devout prayers. Before us lies a copy, published
in the year 1632, during the Huguenotic wars and persecutions. It
bears the official order of the great Richelieu; and, as we turn
over its leaves, we find that a large part of the whole Bible is
embraced within its pages, and we perceive that as long as this
book can be found in the hands of all her clergy, and is
accessible to every one who seeks it, so long, within the borders
of the Catholic Church at least, the Holy Scriptures will be
widely circulated and intimately known.
Again, in every age, the most eminent and pious of the pastors
and scholars of the Catholic Church have devoted their lives to
the study and explanation of the Bible. The sermons of the first
eight centuries were principally oral commentaries on the sacred
text. The great libraries of valuable Christian works, which have
come down to us from the primitive church, are made up of volumes
directly based on Holy Scripture. Their writers are well known as
men of great intellect, of unwearied zeal, of deep and humble
piety. Look at this list of some of them: In the second century,
Pantaenus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen; in the third
century, Pierius, Pamphilus, Hesychius, and Eusebius; in the
fourth century, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustin, Chrysostom,
and Ephrem; in the fifth century, Cyril, Theodoret, and Isidore
of Pelusium; in the sixth century, Gregory the Great,
Cassiodorus, Procopius, and Primasius; in the seventh century,
Maximus, Isidore of Seville, Julian of Toledo, and John
Damascene; in the eighth century, Venerable Bede, Alcuin, and
Rabanus Maurus; in the ninth century, Christian Druthmar,
Walafridus Strabo, Remigius of Auxerre, and Sedulius; in the
tenth century, OEcumenius and Olympiodorus; in the eleventh
century, Nicetas, Lanfranc, and Theophylact; in the twelfth
century, Euthymius, Anselm, and Rupert; in the thirteenth
century, the great Thomas Aquinas and Hugo de Sancto Caro; in the
fourteenth century, Nicholas de Lyra, Paul of Burgos, and Gerson;
in the fifteenth century, Laurentius Valla, Tostatus, Denis the
Carthusian, Marsilius, and Le Fèvre: in the sixteenth century,
Cornelius à Lapide, Maldonatus, and Jansen of Ghent; in the
seventeenth century, Natalis Alexander and John Baptist du Hamel;
in the eighteenth century, the learned Calmet, of whose work the
famous Dr. Adam Clarke has written: "This is, without exception,
the best comment on the sacred writings ever published, either by
Catholics or Protestants." [Footnote 196]
[Footnote 196: Horne's _Introduction_. Vol. ii. part.
iii. chap. V. sec. iii. § 3, Am. ed. 1836.]
{659}
Certainly, no age, illuminated with such lights as these,
deserves to be called "_dark;_" no people, taught by such
teachers, could ever have been ignorant. And when we remember
that, as an eminent Protestant clergyman has said, "the writings
of the dark ages are made of the Scriptures;" not merely, "that
the writers constantly quoted the Scriptures, and appealed to
them as authority on all occasions, but that they thought and
spoke and wrote the thoughts and words and phrases of the Bible,
and that they did this constantly as the natural mode of
expressing themselves," (_The Dark Ages._ By Rev, S. R.
Maidand, D.D. London, 1853;) and remember, further, that this
could not be so, unless the people who wrote and those who read
alike had free access to Holy Scripture both possessing the books
and being permitted to circulate and use them, we shall be far
enough from believing that in the Catholic Church the Bible has
ever been "_a hidden book,_" or that the doors of its rich
treasure-house were ever closed to men.
Again, the efforts of the Catholic Church to preserve and
perpetuate the Bible have been unceasing. As early as the fourth
century, by the direction of Pope Damasus, St. Jerome entered on
the work of preparing a full and perfect copy of the Scriptures.
He devoted twelve years to the study of the Hebrew, Syriac, and
other oriental languages. He collected at Jerusalem and in the
East all the most accurate versions, both of the Old and New
Testaments. From these, revised, compared, and corrected with
each other, he prepared that Latin version which is commonly
called the "Vulgate," and which, as all biblical critics allow,
is the most perfect and complete copy of the Bible which now
exists. During the period between the fourth and sixteenth
centuries, every great monastery (and Europe was full of them)
had its "scriptorium," or writing-chamber, in which copies of the
Scriptures were constantly produced. Of the 1400 manuscripts of
the New Testament which are now extant, not one was written
earlier than the fourth century, or by other than Catholic hands;
and Protestants themselves have no higher origin for their
Scriptures than these Catholic copies, and no surer ground of
reliance on their accuracy than the fidelity and learning of
Catholic scholars. How easy, if the Catholic Church condemned the
Bible, would it have been to neglect this multiplication of the
sacred books, and to silently destroy existing copies! Yet those
who depend altogether on her labors for their boasted Scripture,
have said, and still will say, that she fears the Bible and would
gladly banish it from men. But when the age of printing came, her
efforts were redoubled.
{660}
According to the popular idea, translations of the Scripture into
the vulgar tongues were never made before the Reformation, or
even till long after it, by Catholics. Nothing could be more
false. The Bible, either wholly or in part, had been translated
and published in no less than _seven_ of the common
languages of Europe, before Luther and his Reform were ever
dreamed of. In the year 1466 a translation into German was
printed, copies of which still exist. This translation passed
through _sixteen_ different editions at Strasburg,
Nuremberg, and Augsburg, in the course of a few years, and was
followed by another translation, of which _three_ editions
were published at Wittemberg in 1470, 1483, and 1490; _two_
at Cologne in 1470 and 1480; _one_ at Lubeck in 1494;
_one_ at Haberstadt in 1522; and _one_ each at Mayence,
at Strasburg, and at Basle, in 1517. Luther first published his
translation in 1530, nine years after the Diet at Worms and
twelve years after he had turned Reformer. Before his time,
therefore, there were no less than _twenty-seven_ different
editions of the Bible in the German language in circulation among
the people, besides almost innumerable editions in Latin, a
tongue with which the clergy and the learned of that age were
well acquainted. In the year 1471 a translation of the Bible into
Italian was printed both at Rome and Venice, and passed through
_thirteen_ different editions before the year 1525. Two
different translations into French were also published; one in
1478, which was printed in _seventeen_ successive editions
before 1546; and the other in 1512, which also passed through
many editions. In 1478 a translation into Spanish was published,
which was reprinted in 1515 _with the express sanction of the
Spanish Inquisition._ In 1475, a translation into Flemish was
published at Cologne, of which _seven_ new editions were
printed before 1530. In 1488, the Bible, in the Bohemian
language, was printed at Prague, and again produced at Cutna in
1498, and at Venice in 1506 and 1511. An edition in Sclavonian
was also published at Cracow in the first part of the same
century. Add to these the different versions made in the "dark
ages," and you have no less than _twenty-two_ translations
and _seventy_ printed editions of the Holy Scriptures in the
vulgar tongues of England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and
Sweden, prepared by the Catholic pastors and scholars of Europe,
and distributed among their people, before Luther and his Bible
were ever heard of. When Protestant historians relate that this
renowned Reformer never saw a Bible till he was twenty years of
age, and had been a student at the university upward of two
years, and depict his wonder and delight at its discovery,
(_Hist. Ref. D'Aubigné_, vol. i. p. 131,) we hardly know
whether to condemn the ignorance of the Reformer or the
dishonesty of the historian, one of which must be true.
Circumstances certainly seem to cast the odium of falsehood on
the latter, rather than that of unparalleled stupidity upon the
former.
After the Reformation began, the Catholic Church applied herself
to preserve and perpetuate the Scriptures with the same diligence
and zeal as of old. A new translation into German appeared in
1534, and passed through _twenty_ different editions within
the century. Another was printed in 1537, and also passed through
several editions. Still another was published in 1630, and during
the past fifty years there have been several others. Between the
years 1525 and 1567, _eight_ different editions of the
Italian translation of 1471 were printed, with the formal
permission of the Holy Office at Rome.
{661}
Another translation appeared in 1532, which passed through
_ten_ editions within twenty years. Another still was
published in 1538, 1546, and 1547, and more recently there have
been several others; the principal of which is that of Antony
Martini, which in 1778 received the written endorsement and
recommendation of Pope Pius VI. _Thirty-nine_ different
editions of the French translation of Le Fèvre, as revised by the
doctors of Louvain, were published between 1550 and the year
1700, since which latter date many new versions, and many
reprints of former versions, have appeared in France; of one of
which the great Bossuet is said to have distributed _fifty
thousand_ copies with his own hands. In Spain, likewise, the
Bible, and especially the New Testament, has been frequently
reprinted. The most famous Spanish edition is the renowned
Polyglot Bible of Cardinal Ximenes, in six folio volumes,
published at Alcala in 1515. In the year 1582, the New Testament
in English was issued from Rheims, and in 1609, the Old
Testament, in the same language, was printed at Douay, the two
together forming the Douay Bible, an edition which, if not the
most elegant in phraseology, is still generally admitted by all
critics to be more faithful and correct than any other version in
the Anglo-Saxon tongue. This latter version has appeared in
almost every form, from the largest and most ornate to the
smallest and least expensive, and may be found in almost every
Catholic family which possesses the ability to read it. Nearly
the same may be said of all other versions in the common
languages of the present age. They were intended not for the
learned, but for the people. The encouragement which they
received came from the people, not in opposition to, but in
consequence of, the permission and recommendation of the pastors
of the church: and it is simply incredible that all these
different translations should have been made, and these numerous
editions printed, unless the Bible had been freely read and
freely circulated among the Catholic masses both of Europe and
America.
So far, therefore, from ever hiding the Holy Scriptures, or even
keeping them in the background, history proves, beyond the
possibility of doubt or denial, that the Catholic Church has
always occupied the foremost position in the preservation and
diffusion of the written word of God; and that to her efforts,
and to her efforts alone, is due not only the continued existence
of the Bible itself, but also of those vast treasures of research
and investigation which tend to throw light upon its meaning, and
enforce its teachings on the hearts of those who read it; nay
more, that Protestants themselves possess a Bible, only so far as
the same church has bestowed it on them; and that their
commentaries and expositions are but mere digests and abridgments
of the laborious and extensive works of Catholic philosophers and
theologians.
How, then, when the Council of Trent--which is the unerring voice
of the universal church--when the Pope, who is the head and ruler
of the faithful--when the unvarying practice of all ages of
Catholics throughout the world--proclaims that the Catholic
Church believes the Bible to be the inspired word of God, and one
of the great means for the enlightenment and instruction of
mankind--how, then, can Protestants ask whether the Catholic
Church condemns the Bible, and forbids its members to circulate
and read it? Does not all history answer them?
{662}
Do not thousands of sermons, homilies, and commentaries answer
them? Do not hundreds of translations, scattered over all ages
and all lands, answer them? Does not their own possession of the
Bible at the present day, which they profess to prize so highly,
and for which they are indebted to that same church, answer them?
How, then, can they believe those slanders which have, for so
many years, been uttered against the church of God in reference
to the Scriptures? Above all, how can they _repeat_ them,
after the often made and complete demonstration of their
falsehood?
Still it is asked, _What, then, about these Bible burnings,
this actual hinderance, in particular instances, to the use of
the Bible? And why does not the Catholic Church join with the
great Bible societies of the age in the diffusion of the Bible,
or at least form societies of her own for the same purpose?_
These are important questions, and questions, too, which must be
answered, if the preceding demonstration would have its full
effect upon the mind; and for this reason we will now consider
them.
What is the Bible? Very few Protestants ever seem to know, or at
least to remember, what the Bible really is. Most of those whom
we have met appear to regard it as a book, delivered in its
present form directly by God to man. But this is not so. On the
contrary, the Bible is a collection of different books, written
at various periods during the space of more than fifteen hundred
years. Some of them were originally in Hebrew, some in Chaldaic,
some in Greek. They had no less than thirty-six different
authors, most of whom were widely separated from each other
either in place or time; and they were neither collected into one
volume nor arranged in the shape of the present Bible, until many
years after the establishment of the Christian church.
Now, it is evident that, when we say, "The Bible is inspired,"
"The Bible is the word of God," we mean just this, and nothing
more, namely, that the original manuscript, which any one of
these authors wrote with his own hand, exactly as dictated to him
by the Holy Ghost, was inspired, and contained the revelation of
God. When a copy of that original manuscript was made, the copy
was not inspired. If it precisely corresponded with its original,
it would give a perfectly correct idea of that original; if it
differed from it, it would, so far, fail to give such idea; and
would, to that extent, fail to be a sure guide to the knowledge
of the written word of God. So with a translation; if it rendered
the ideas contained in the original manuscript into another
language so exactly that a reader of the translation would
receive precisely the same impressions that were intended to be
conveyed by the original--supposing them to be rightly understood
by him--then would the translation, in its turn, make known the
exact truth of God. But if there was in this the smallest
deviation, and the ideas imparted by it were not precisely those
imparted by the original, then it would not convey the word of
God. And since not one of these original manuscripts is now
preserved, it becomes evident that there is not an inspired book
in existence; but, at the best, only copies and translations of
books that were inspired, but have long ago been lost or
destroyed.
{663}
But even these copies which we now possess are not _first_
copies, made directly from the original manuscripts themselves.
Moses wrote his five books of the Old Testament upward of three
thousand years ago; and the oldest existing copy of them was made
within the past nine hundred years. How many successive
generations of copies, so to speak, filled up the intermediate
two thousand years, no one can tell. The same is true, in their
degree, of the remaining books; copy of these also being made
from copy, and so on, until the art of printing was discovered.
All of these copies, both of the Old and the New Testament, were
made by hand, in rude characters, and with ruder implements,
while languages were constantly changing, and different ideas
were being conveyed to different generations by the same words
and phrases. From these copies all of the modern translations
have been made, and these translations are the "Bible," as
commonly read and circulated among men.
Now, we ask in all candor, what certainty there is, on Protestant
grounds, that any of these modern translations is the real word
of God? To be such, the translation must be an infallible
rendering from the copy; the copy must have been exactly like the
preceding copy, and that, again, exactly like its predecessor,
and so on back to the original inspired manuscript itself. And
are Protestants so certain of this, that they have any right to
feel sure that, when they open their Bible, the ideas which they
receive are precisely those which God intended that the words of
Moses, Samuel, Daniel, or the Evangelists should convey? And yet,
unless they are sure of it, how can they really believe what they
read in it, and stake the salvation of their souls on the
correctness and fidelity of copies and translations, about which
they can never, by any possible evidence short of a new
revelation, become satisfied?
Our object is not, however, to destroy faith in the Bible as the
word of God, (a truth which, on Catholic grounds, is thoroughly
demonstrable,) although it is worth while to reflect on the
difficulties which surround the attempt to make it the sole
teacher of divine revelation; but to call to mind how important,
how _absolutely necessary_, it is, that the Bible which we
read should be a _true translation_ from a _correct
copy_ of the original inspired book. And we think the reader
will agree with us when we say, that the greatest care to secure
correctness is none too great, and the most rigid exclusion of
all erroneous, or even suspicious, copies and translations cannot
be too rigid; but that, on the contrary, it is the duty of every
Christian to obtain, and of the Christian church to provide, the
very best and most perfect Bibles possible; and then to abandon
and condemn all others.
And this is exactly what the Catholic Church has always done and
is doing at this day. We have already mentioned the labors of St.
Jerome. This holy man lived at an age when most of the old
manuscripts were still existing, when those copies of the Old
Testament which had been in use during the life of Christ had not
all perished, and when the originals of the New Testament, or, at
least, copies of them which had been made under apostolic
supervision, were still attainable. All these, and many
others--Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, Greek, Latin, and Syriac--he
collected, and, having thoroughly compared them with each other,
and restored the original text to its highest possible purity, he
translated it into the Latin tongue, which was then, and probably
always will be, the most definite and expressive of human
languages.
{664}
This translation is called the "Vulgate." It is the most complete
and accurate version of the Bible in existence, and the only one
which was made from the originals, or first copies, of the New
Testament, and from authoritative copies of the Old. Protestant
critics have said of it: "The Vulgate may be reasonably
pronounced, upon the whole, a good and faithful version."
[Footnote 197] "It is allowed to be, in general, a faithful
translation, and sometimes exhibits the sense of Scripture with
greater accuracy than the more modern versions." [Footnote 198]
"The Latin Vulgate preserves many true readings where the modern
Hebrew copies are corrupted." [Footnote 199] "It is in general
skilful and faithful, and often gives the sense of Scripture
better than modern versions." [Footnote 200]
[Footnote 197: Campbell's _Dissertations on the
Gospels._ Diss. X. part iii. § 10.]
[Footnote 198: Horne's _Int._ Vol. i. p. i. ch. iii. §
iii. p. 277. Am. ed. 1836.]
[Footnote 199: _Ibid_.]
[Footnote 200: Gerard's _Institutes_. Chap. iv. sec. 4,
p. 82. Am. ed. 1823.]
This most excellent Vulgate edition is the very one which the
Catholic Church has sanctioned as the authorized text of
Scripture. The Council of Trent decreed, "that the ancient and
Vulgate edition ... should be deemed authentic in public
readings, disputes, sermons, and expositions, and that no one
should dare or presume, on any pretext, to reject it." [Footnote
201]
[Footnote 201: Sess. iv.]
Moreover, as the original manuscript of St. Jerome was no more
imperishable than others which had gone before it, and as it
could be perpetuated only in copies, the church has put forth
every effort to secure these in abundance and perfection. They
were all written in her own monasteries, under the very eyes of
her priests and bishops. They have been subject to constant and
thorough revision. When printing was invented, and Bibles began
to multiply on every side, (some of them filled with dangerous
errors and perversions,) she remedied this evil by stringent
legislation. Thus, the same council says: "Desiring to impose
some limit upon printers in this matter, who, ... without
licenses from their ecclesiastical superiors, do print these
books of Holy Scripture, ... this Holy Synod decrees and
declares, that hereafter the Holy Scriptures, and especially the
ancient and Vulgate edition, shall be printed with the utmost
exactness; and that it shall be lawful for no one to print, or to
have printed, any books concerning sacred things, ... unless they
shall have been examined and approved by the ordinary. ... This
approval shall be given in writing, and shall appear, either
written or printed, authentically in the front of the book; and
both the approval and the examination shall be made
_gratis_, to the end that good things may be countenanced
and evil things condemned." [Footnote 202]
[Footnote 202: Sess. iv.]
In this manner has the Catholic Church secured the preservation
of the pure text of Scripture. Starting at an age when it was
possible, if it ever was, to obtain an exact version of the word
of God, she, by the hand of St. Jerome, prepared one which has
stood the test of the most hostile criticism. Exercising over
this her constant vigilance, she brought it down to the age of
printing. Then, rigidly excluding all editions which could not
undergo the most searching scrutiny, she openly endorses all
those which are genuine and faithful, so that the Catholic reader
of to-day, seeing in his Latin Bible the approval of his bishop,
and knowing that no bishop could sanction any false version
without being immediately discovered and punished, knows also
that what he reads and studies is the Holy Scripture, as Moses
and the prophets wrote it, as Christ and his apostles used it,
and as the church of all ages has received it.
{665}
Advancing one step further, the care of the church next manifests
itself in the Bibles for the people. These are, of necessity,
translations into the vulgar tongues. They are all made from the
Vulgate by persons duly authorized for the purpose, and must also
be certified as correct by ecclesiastical authority, before they
can be printed, sold, or read. Take, for instance, the English
translation, commonly called the Douay Bible. This version was
prepared by some of the most eminent English scholars on the
continent of Europe, who possessed a wide acquaintance with the
Greek and Hebrew as well as with the Latin and more modern
tongues. This version is admitted by all critics to be exact and
literal, and to exhibit, as far as a translation can do so, the
precise sense of the original text of Scripture. It has received
the approbation of the Holy See and of innumerable bishops; and
every new edition bears the official recommendation of the
ecclesiastical superior, who vouches for its completeness and its
purity. It is hardly possible that, with all these precautions,
the Douay Bible should fail to be, in fidelity of rendering, the
most perfect copy of the Scriptures that exists in the English
tongue.
But the Catholic Church has not stopped even here. No one denies
that in the Bible there are many passages difficult to
understand, and that it is impossible for those who have no
access to the original manuscript and no opportunities for
critical research, to ascertain the true meaning of these
passages without external aid. The object of commentaries and
expositions is to supply this aid; but these have long ago grown
so voluminous and costly as to be beyond the reach of ordinary
men. And so, to meet this final difficulty, the church
accompanies every translation into a vulgar tongue with proper
notes and comments, prepared by competent and pious persons, for
the illustration of the sacred text.
From this brief sketch of what the
Catholic Church has done concerning
the Bible, it will be perceived:
1. That the church possesses, in the Latin Vulgate, the
earliest, purest, and most exact version of the Holy
Scriptures which exists in the whole world;
2. That her translations of the Vulgate into the languages
of the people present them with the purest and most exact
version of the Bible which they can possibly obtain;
3. That by her notes and comments she affords to them freedom
from serious error and mistake in their perusal of the
sacred text.
Now, for a moment, let us turn to the Bibles which Protestantism
offers, and inquire as to their reliability. The ordinary
translations of Protestants are made from Greek and Hebrew
manuscripts. These manuscripts, as we have seen, are copies, not
originals, and, of course, are not inspired. They are, therefore,
reliable so far as they present the exact ideas presented by
their originals, and no further; and the fidelity with which they
do this depends, in a great measure, upon their own antiquity and
their nearness to the originals themselves. But not a manuscript
of the Old Testament in Hebrew now exists which dates back
further than the eleventh century. The oldest extant Greek
manuscripts of the New Testament are not older than the fourth
century; and these are confessedly imperfect, and, in some
places, entirely wanting.
{666}
Out of these manuscripts and later ones, however, Protestant
translators are first compelled to select a text which shall
represent, as near as they can make it do so, the original Greek
and Hebrew, and then, from this text make their translation.
To the first translation this work presented no small
difficulties. They were unskilled in the languages in which these
manuscripts were written. the manuscripts disagreed extensively
among themselves, and many of them were without lines or
punctuation marks, and in characters long fallen into disuse. It
is not surprising, therefore, that the first Protestant versions
were, both in the text and in the translation, exceedingly
erroneous, and in some portions, utterly unreliable. Most of
these difficulties have vanished with advancing years. Protestant
scholars have become versed in Greek and Hebrew. They have
learned to read with accuracy the ancient characters in which the
manuscripts were written, and their extensive research among the
various versions has done much to clear their text from
ambiguity. But the fact still remains, that the best Greek or
Hebrew text, which they can reach, is later by many centuries,
and more fallible by numerous successive copyings, than those
from which the Latin Vulgate was prepared; and, consequently, can
bear no comparison in purity and genuineness with that which St.
Jerome produced from the first copies, if not from the originals
themselves, of the New Testament, and from versions of the Old,
which Christ had sanctioned by his personal use. And it is this
difference, between the sources of the text of Catholic and
Protestant Bibles, which gives the Catholic version its deserved
preeminence, and has won for it the encomiums to which we have
referred.
Extending our view to the translations made and used by
Protestants we perceive this difference still subsisting. Most of
these were the result of private enterprise, and never have
received the sanction of great ecclesiastical authority. Even the
ordinary English, or "King James" version, (which is the one in
common circulation in this country,) was a private venture of the
king whose name it bears; and though indorsed by him as the head
of the state church of England, it has never received the
approval of any authority which can strictly be called
ecclesiastical. The people who now use it have no other guarantee
of its correctness than the fact that their fathers used it
before them. They look in vain for any mark upon its pages which
shall assure them, on an authority they know to be reliable, that
what they read is the true word of God. On the contrary, if they
examine their own writers, they find the sentiment prevailing the
the "king's version" is _not_ the word of God. It is accused
of being "without fidelity," "ambiguous and incorrect, even in
matters of the highest importance;" [Footnote 203] and a
well-known commentator has even said, "That it is not so just a
representation of the inspired originals, as merits to be
implicitly relied on for determining the controverted articles of
the Christian faith." [Footnote 204]
[Footnote 203: _Horne's Int._ Bibliographical Appendix,
p. 37, Am. ed. 1836.]
[Footnote 204: Macknight. _General Preface to Epistles_,
sec, 2, vol i. p. 26, Am. ed. 1810.]
These general statements are applicable to other Protestant
translations as well as to the English. None of them are perfect,
or are even claimed to be so. Each is in turn vilified and
condemned by the authors of the others; and not one of them has
yet received the sanction of such an authority as can assure the
reader that he will find upon its pages the revelations of God.
[Footnote 205]
[Footnote 205: In 1833, the Rev. T. Curtis, an English
Protestant clergyman, published a work _On the Errors and
Corruptions in Modern Protestant Bibles_. The work
contains "Four Letters to the Hon. and Rt. Rev. the Lord
Bishop of London, with specimens of the intentional and other
departures from the authorized standard, to which is added a
postscript, containing the complaints of a London committee
of ministers on the subject; the reply of the universities,
and a report on the importance of the alterations made." In
the course of his work, Mr. Curtis gives various instances of
"the largest church Bibles" "found very erroneous." On one
occasion "an important part of a text he had taken in the
lesson of the day, to his great astonishment was not in the
church Bible when he came to read the lesson. In a note on
the same page, Mr. Curtis says: "The church Bible still in
use in the parish church of St. Mary's, Islington, is a
remarkably erroneous one. A clergyman, who some years ago
officiated in this parish, assured me he was occasionally at
a loss to proceed in reading the lessons from it. One passage
(l John i. 4) has, I have reason to believe, been read
erroneously in this church four times a year for many years."
Mr. Curtis says, (page 80,) "The British and Foreign Bible
Society _have never circulated a single copy of the
Scriptures_ that has not contained THOUSANDS of
_intentional departures_ from the authorized version!"
Who can now say with truth that the pure word of God is read
or heard in Protestant churches or families?]
{667}
Here, then, the matter comes to a distinct issue between the
Catholic and Protestant Churches. The Catholic Church has a
reliable and accurate text from which to translate; a competent
and literal translation, containing all sufficient notes and
explanations; and never publishes a copy of even this without the
express sanction of one whom her people know to be able to judge
and impartial[ly] to decide on its fidelity and truth. The
Protestant churches, on the other hand, have a text confessedly
corrupt and unreliable; innumerable contradictory translations,
each of which is admitted to be, in many respects, erroneous, and
none of which enjoys the sanction of any spiritual authority. How
could the Catholic Church do less than to command those of her
children who wish to read the Bible, to read the one which she
has provided for them? How could she do less than expose to them
the faults and errors of the Protestant translations, and forbid
their use by the faithful? What right would this church, what
right would any church, have to be called a spiritual guide, if,
having the pure wheat herself, she permitted those who follow her
to feed on coarse grain, gathered from the store-house of her
enemies? In reference to such a matter, reason and common-sense
dictate a rigidly exclusive policy; and that is just the policy
which has been, and is now, pursued by the Catholic Church. Her
rules are few and simple, but sufficient. They are these:
1. That those who would read the Scriptures in a vulgar
tongue must read a Catholic version.
2. That not only must this version be a Catholic one,
but it must also have been approved by the proper spiritual
authority.
3. That the version must not only be Catholic and properly
approved, but must be accompanied by approved notes and
explanations.
4. That those who in the judgment of their pastors would
derive more hurt than good from the perusal of the
Scriptures, may be forbidden to read them altogether.
Strict as these rules may seem, we believe that any one who
reviews the reasons for them will now say, that at least the
first three of them are eminently just, and that the Catholic
Church, in prescribing and enforcing them, has acted wisely and
for the best interests of men. And when we further state that she
has never prevented the circulation of any Bible, or taken any
Bible from her people, or burned any Bible, except those false,
imperfect translations which, so far as they are imperfect, are
not the word of God, we believe that it will be admitted that in
this also she has done nothing but her duty toward the people
committed to her care.
{668}
But that the fourth rule is also just, we think a moment's
reflection will determine. At the date of the Reformation, as we
have seen, the Bible had been largely printed in many languages.
When Luther and the other reformers began to preach, they pointed
to their own translations of the Scriptures as the sole divine
authority, and bade all the people to read them and examine for
themselves. And hence arose a Babel of religions, of which we, at
this day, can form no adequate conception. Text was pitted
against text, author against author. Men claimed the most
outrageous license under the name of Christian liberty. The
sacred words of God were bandied from mouth to mouth in jest and
song and ribaldry. The contagion spread even into the borders of
the Catholic Church. The danger was most imminent that, by this
fearful abuse, men might lose all respect, not only for true
learning, but also for the Bible and for Christianity itself. It
became absolutely necessary to put a check somewhere; and the
Council of Trent, therefore, decreed that in order "to repress
all that rashness by which the words of Holy Scripture are turned
about and perverted to profane uses, to wit, to buffoonery, to
fables, vanities, detractions, impious superstitions, devilish
incantations, divinations, lots, and even impious libels," no one
should dare to take the words of Holy Scripture in any manner for
these uses, but that all such "presumers upon, and violators of,
the word of God," should be punished. [Footnote 206]
[Footnote 206: Sess. iv.]
When further measures became necessary, on account of the
increasing turmoil and disputes, the rule which we have cited was
adopted; a rule under which no one who is able to be profited by
the reading of the Bible was ever hindered from perusing it, and
by which, probably, thousands who, but for it, might have made
utter shipwreck of their souls through the abuse of God's holy
word, have been saved from pride and error. But this rule is now
virtually rescinded. The occasion for its exercise has long since
passed away. The increasing learning of biblical scholars, the
progress of intelligence among the masses, the subsidence of the
wild storm of fanaticism and impiety which marked the age of its
enactment, have removed the necessity for enforcing it; and the
sole restraint now placed upon the reading of the Scriptures, is
that contained in those three rules which we have seen to be so
wise and just.
How then, when no conditions are imposed upon the use of the
original Greek, Hebrew, or Latin texts of Scripture, and when
only such ones are imposed upon the use of popular translations
as tend to give the people a more accurate and reliable version
of the word of God, how can it be said, with even the semblance
of truth, that the Catholic Church forbids or even discourages
the reading of the Bible; or how can it be denied that, in
providing her children with complete and accurate Bibles, she has
given them every inducement to their careful and continued study?
But now we think we hear it asked, with redoubled earnestness:
_If the Catholic Church possesses the most perfect of all
copies of the Bible, and really desires it to be read among her
people, why does she not coëperate with the existing Bible
societies in its diffusion, or, at least, form such societies of
her own?_
{669}
The answer is an easy one. The commandment which the Catholic
Church received from Christ was, "Go into all the world and
preach the Gospel," not "Go, distribute Bibles;" and the
commandment which she received she has obeyed. The energies, the
money, which Protestants would have expended in printing and
circulating translations of the Scriptures, she has expended in
founding churches, hospitals, convents, and seminaries, and in
providing the whole world with missionaries, by whose labors,
nations, to whom the Bible could have no access, have been
subjugated to the faith. She recognizes but one means for the
conversion of mankind, and that is, the voice of the living
teacher; and never can she substitute another in its stead.
Moreover, God gave the sacred books of the Old Testament to his
own Israel, not to heathens. Our Lord, through his apostles,
bestowed on Christians, not on pagans, the inestimable treasures
of the New. The Bible is for those who believe already, for the
"man of God," "that he may be thoroughly furnished unto all good
works," not for the infidel and heathen, who perhaps read it, but
are infidels and heathens still. Such is the will of God, as the
Catholic Church has received the same, and the facts of history
prove that she is right. For when Protestantism arose, its great
aim was to spread the Bible. Its history has been the history of
Bible-circulation, and in the Bible Society has culminated the
Reformation. These societies have labored bravely,0. We read that
previous to the year 1834, a single society in Germany had
distributed nearly 3,000,000 copies of the entire Bible, and
2,000,000 more of the New Testament. That by another society in
Great Britain, over 35,000,000 copies of the Bible, or New
Testament, had been put into circulation before 1859; and that
another in New York publishes every year more than 250,000
Bibles, and twice that number of New Testaments, and parts of
Scripture. But what are the results? Where are the nations which
have been added to the Christian fold? Where are the signs of
well-developed and intelligent piety in the great Protestant
empires of the age? Have not their own writers told us that the
boundaries of Protestantism are the same to-day that they were
when Luther left it--that no new nations have been added to its
numbers, and, with the exception of the Anglo-Saxon portion of
this continent, that no new territory has been subjected to its
sway; that for the heathen it has done comparatively nothing, and
for the irreligious of its own lands but little more? Look at the
United States, for instance, all of whose people come of good
Christian stock. The census of 1860 fixes the population at over
30,000,000, while a census of professing Christians, of all
Protestant denominations, estimates their number at less than
6,000,000. Is the proportion greater in Germany or in England?
And what a comment is this upon the boast of these societies,
that they evangelize the world, and that the work they are
performing is the work of God!
And has the Catholic Church by preaching done no better? While
men yet lived who heard the voice of Luther, the Catholic
preachers of Europe had won back to the church more than one half
of what she lost by the Reformation. In a few years longer the
continent of South America, the Canadas, and thousands of the
inhabitants of India, China, and Japan, were sheltered in her
bosom. Another century, and again the Catholic faith was
blossoming in England, and springing green and vigorous from the
soil of our own land. To-day where is the country in which she is
not strong and valorous, strong in the blood of her martyrs,
valorous in the surety of her victory?
{670}
Does history leave a doubt upon the mind as to the true means of
Christian labor? Or who can wonder that the Catholic Church
refuses to substitute the human means for the divine, or even to
waste her energies and money on what experience has shown to be
so fruitless? She has the Bible for her children. She places it
within the reach of all. Those who are able, can buy it for
themselves. To those who are unable to buy, she gives it when
they ask. But never has she taken pains to strew the pure pearls
of written revelation underneath the feet of infidels and
heathen--mindful that, as the Lord warned her, "they will turn
again and rend you."
In conclusion, let us ask of every Christian reader a single
favor more. It is, that he will candidly examine the best
authorities upon this important subject; that he will carefully
reflect upon the reasons we have offered, and decide for himself
the great questions which we have tried to answer. And when he
finds, as he surely will, that the Catholic Church does not
condemn the Bible, or forbid her people to circulate and read
it--that she has never prohibited or burned a Bible which she did
not know to be erroneous and liable to lead her children into
error--that she has never cast her lot in with the Bible society,
simply because she follows the command of Christ--let him undo
the evil he, perhaps, has done, in stating that concerning her
which he now knows is false, and manfully assert the truth he now
has learned, thus doing justice to the church of God.
[Footnote 207(No reference *): Macaulay's Misc., art.
Ranke's _History of the Popes_.]
-------
Sketches Drawn From The Abbé Lagrange's
Life Of St. Paula.
In Three Chapters.
Concluded.
Chapter III.
The government of Paula in her newly founded monastery was
admirable, and she herself was the example of all virtues, as was
also Eustochium. The fame of her rule spread throughout the East,
and went back to Rome, where Marcella still lived and gloried in
her friend.
The chief happiness of the recluses was to study the Scriptures,
which they now read from beginning to end. Jerome read with them,
explaining everything. His grotto was not far off, and he passed
his nights there, by the light of a lamp, surrounded with
manuscripts and assisted by others copying for him; for he was
now growing old, and his failing eyesight no longer allowed of
his enduring the fatigue of writing. He resumed the study of the
eastern dialects in order the better to comprehend the original
of the holy works, and, encouraged by Paula and Eustochium,
resumed his work of translation, which was continued for nearly
twenty years under their saintly influence.
At the end of three years Paula's monasteries, church, and
hospital were all finished, with their surrounding walls, which
in those times were so necessary a protection from the raids of
the neighboring Arabs.
{671}
The number of the recluses had increased, and Paula now divided
them into three communities, each one having an abbess or mother
at its head, after the plan of St. Pacomius.
During the week their vows of enclosure prevented all intercourse
with the outer world. They all went on Sunday to the church at
Bethlehem; for the holy sacrifice of the Mass was not offered up
at their own chapel, St. Jerome never having deemed himself
worthy to mount the steps of the altar, such was his profound
humility; and Vincentius, the only priest they had beside, did
not attempt to officiate where Jerome dared not.
Paula was the soul of her communities. Her austerities were as
great as her charities, and these were without number. St. Jerome
represents her like a devoted mother to each and all of her
spiritual daughters, loving them all and studying their
characters equally, in order to guide each one according to her
individual nature and for the best. Intellectual activity was
greatly encouraged among them by her, and she took care to
furnish them with books and food for the mind. In this Jerome was
of great assistance to her. His convent was the dwelling of
science and letters as well as of asceticism. He had around him
many men of vast erudition, who in taking care of their souls did
not forswear the paths of learning, and in solitude pursued their
studies. They also wrote books which were read with great avidity
by Paula and her religious family. Jerome himself, in addition to
his great works, composed many pious biographies, and among
others the life of St. Epiphanius, at the particular request of
Paula. The latter had now taught her daughters to copy the
Psalms, which Jerome had translated at Rome by the order of Pope
Damasus. This was a work of importance, as exactness was
necessary in order to repair the harm done to the work by neglect
of the original manuscripts. Copying thus became universal in all
monasteries, owing to the impetus given to it by Paula, and to it
we are indebted for the preservation of much that is of
inestimable value to Christianity.
Paula now urged Jerome to revise all his various translations of
the Holy Scriptures, and this prodigious work was concluded by
him as early as the year 390. The book was dedicated to Paula and
Eustochium. To Paula particularly, _palmam ferat qui
meruit_, great praise is due for the holy influence she
exercised for so many years over St. Jerome, to such a noble
purpose, and which produced such fruits in the translation of the
Bible called the Vulgate, still used in the church after the
lapse of so many centuries.
All these pious labors gave great renown to Paula's monasteries,
and she who had thought to hide herself from the world, saw the
curious world appear at her gates, attracted by the beacon light
of Bethlehem. Her buildings could scarcely contain the visitors
who flocked to see her. St. Augustine himself had sent his
beloved friend, Alypius, across the seas to witness these wonders
and to see Jerome and Paula. Augustine afterward wrote to Jerome,
thus beginning a friendship between these two great men, one of
whom was just risen above the horizon of the church, while the
other great luminary was on the decline, though spreading out his
rays in all the splendor of the setting sun.
{672}
But that which most astonished the pilgrims to Bethlehem was not
Jerome nor any other inhabitant of this holy place, but Paula in
the midst of her virgins. "What country," says St. Jerome, "does
not send hither its pilgrims to see Paula, who eclipses us all in
humility? She has attained that earthly glory from which she
fled; for in flying from it she found it, because glory follows
virtue as shadows follow the light."
Among all the visits paid to the recluses, none filled them with
so much joy as that of the venerable Epiphanius, whose early
lessons had had so much to do with the religious training of
Paula. He, too, was delighted; he had seen nothing more perfect
in the desert. The order, the prayerful and fervent nuns, the
austere and laborious monks, the wonderful intellectual activity,
amazed him. He remained some time with his friends at Bethlehem,
praising God for what he saw.
About this time the discussions on Origenism began to trouble the
church of Alexandria, and finally penetrated to Jerusalem and to
Bethlehem. Jerome was estranged from Rufinus and Melanie, and
others of his early friends, by differing with them on the
subject of this celebrated heresy. Paula was afflicted at this,
and foresaw clouds in the future which did not fail to burst on
her own monasteries. The great doctrinal combats of the fourth
century, in which the church was destined to come off victorious,
Paula would gladly have avoided entirely, but in spite of herself
she became involved in them. Her sorrow was great when she saw
her monasteries as well as St. Jerome and herself excluded from
the Holy Sepulchre because of their clinging to their old friend
St. Epiphanius, who was the champion of orthodoxy and the great
antagonist of Origenism, The ordination of a priest for the
monasteries was the ostensible cause of their being put under the
ban. This priest was Paulinianus, the brother of Jerome, and the
validity of his ordination by Epiphanius was questioned by John,
the Bishop of Jerusalem, on the ground of the youth of
Paulinianus, but in reality because John, instigated by Rufinus,
was profoundly irritated against Jerome and Epiphanius on account
of his own leanings toward the doctrine of Origen. He forbade the
entrance of the church of the Nativity or of the Holy Sepulchre
to all who considered the ordination of Paulinianus canonical.
This, of course, included the recluses of Bethlehem. Their dismay
was great.
Epiphanius did not consider it derogatory to his dignity for him
to bend his white head before the younger bishop and sue for
clemency for others. He explained the great want of a priest at
the monasteries, and the motives for the ordination of
Paulinianus, and he begged John, for the sake of charity, to
cease such persecution; and then the illustrious patriarch, on
his knees, conjured him to abjure the false doctrines that had
divided them.
But John would not yield, and talked only of the offence of the
uncanonical ordination. Whereupon, Epiphanius thought it his duty
to expose him, and demanded of the recluses that they should
suspend all communion with the bishop of Jerusalem until the
latter should renounce his errors.
Notwithstanding this moderation, the rancor of John burst upon
them. All ecclesiastical functions were forbidden Jerome and
Vincentius. Paula's catechumens were refused baptism, and his
wrath went so far as to deny religious burial to the hermits as
if they were excommunicated. Paula suffered inwardly from this
warfare, so different from the quiet and repose she longed for.
{673}
Herself untouched by the arguments of the heretics, she became an
object of envy. But the voice of calumny could not disturb the
serenity of her mind, and by no word or sign did she ever show
impatience or anger. She endeavored also to console St. Jerome
for the wounds he had received. She loved to quote Scripture to
him, to soothe his mind. It was in the Bible that she always
found strength to endure every evil.
Finally, Bishop John, carrying his hatred to Jerome to its
climax, passed a decree of banishment against him. Jerome, worn
out by contention, wished to depart at once, but Paula said to
him these touching words: "They hate us and would crush us, but
let us return patience for hatred, humility for arrogance. Does
not St. Paul bid us return good for evil? And when our conscience
tells us that our sufferings do not proceed from sin, we are very
certain that the afflictions of this world are only the assurance
of eternal reward. Bear, then, with the trials that assail you
and do not quit our beloved Bethlehem."
In this way Paula sustained and soothed the old monk by the
delicacy and serenity of her own noble soul, which lived so high
up in the love of God that the storms of this world passed by
leaving her unharmed.
After a while Jerome was freed from this phase of persecution by
the Metropolitan of Palestine, Cesarius, who was a prudent and
wise man. These perils ended, Paula encouraged him to recommence
his great labors on the Bible, and also to renew his
correspondence with his friends, and to think no more of this
painful episode, but to suffer the tempest without to rage and no
longer disturb him. [sic]
We will turn away from these discussions, at which we have
glanced but cursorily, though unavoidably, to rest our minds in
the contemplation of virtue.
Jerome now wrote more of his most admirable letters, and Paula
continued the even tenor and pious practices of her life. She
received a visit from Fabiola, who came from Rome in search of
that peace and solitude which she believed could be best found in
Bethlehem. This visit gave great joy to the recluses; for Fabiola
could tell them of all their friends in Rome, of Paulina and
Pammachius, of Toxotius and his wife Laeta, and of the young
Paula, called after her venerable grandmother. She brought them
messages from Marcella and the Aventine. While Fabiola was with
them, they resumed the habits of former years, and read the Holy
Scriptures together, Jerome explaining it to them. The ardor of
Fabiola was wonderful. After she had ended her visit and left
Bethlehem, much was done by Rufinus and Melanie to estrange her
from her old friends. But she could not be moved and had
determined to settle near them.
At this time, however, dark rumors of invasion threw
consternation among the quiet inhabitants of the monasteries. It
was rumored that the Huns threatened Jerusalem. Other cities had
already been besieged, and they were now before Antioch. Arabia,
Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt were filled with terror. On all
sides preparations for defence were being made, and the walls of
Jerusalem, too long neglected, were now under repair.
To save her monasteries from insult, Paula meditated flight, and
conducted her whole community to the sea-shore, ready to embark
if the barbarians made their appearance. But the Huns having
suddenly diverged in another direction, Paula brought back her
followers to their beloved monasteries, and with a joyful heart
once more took possession of them.
{674}
These events decided Fabiola to return to Rome. When all the
troubles had ceased, Jerome wrote to her: "You would not remain
with us; you feared new alarms. So be it. You are now tranquil;
but, notwithstanding your tranquillity, I venture to say that
Babylon will often make you sigh for the fields of Bethlehem. We
are now at peace, and from this manger, which has been restored
to us, we once more hear the wail of the infant Christ, the
echoes of which I send you across the seas."
Unfortunately, however, the peace and quiet did not last long.
After three years the dispute with the Bishop of Jerusalem was
renewed with great violence. But the bishop, Theophilus, having
only declared himself against Origenism, John was finally brought
to reason by him, and Jerome and Rufinus were reconciled in his
presence, before the altar in the church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Peace now reigned in the monasteries on what appeared to be a
surer foundation.
But other sorrows came pouring in. News arrived from Rome of the
death of Paulina, when she was but thirty, and Pammachius was
left a widower and without posterity.
His loss in the daughter of Paula was great, for theirs was an
admirable and holy union; for Paulina loved her husband and would
have endeavored not only to make him happy, but virtuous. The
grief of Pammachius was overwhelming. He had now but one wish on
earth, which was to do something for the good of Paulina's soul.
It was an ancient custom in Rome at the obsequies of persons of
distinction to give alms in honor of the dead, and to perpetuate
their memory. This was called the _funeraticium_. On the day
fixed for that of Paulina the streets of Rome were thronged.
Troops of the poor, the lame, and the maimed wended their way to
the church in answer to the invitation of Pammachius. The gilded
door of the great basilica was open before them, and Pammachius
himself was there distributing on all sides abundant alms in the
name of Paulina.
Who can describe the grief of Paula when the news reached
Bethlehem of the death of Paulina? She was ill for days
afterward, and Eustochium feared for her life. Jerome wrote to
Pammachius on the sorrowful event. "Who can see," cried he,
"without grief, this beauteous rose gathered before her time and
faded away? Our precious pearl, our emerald, is broken."
Paula's only consolation was in the admirable conduct of
Pammachius. "This death was prolific," said St. Jerome, "for it
gave a new life to Pammachius." He had always been a good
Christian, he now became a heroic one. He thought of heaven,
where his faith made him see his beloved Paulina; the example of
Paula and Eustochium, and of his holy friend Jerome, all combined
to detach him from the things of earth. He felt inspired with the
noble resolution to consecrate to God the remaining years of his
life. He assumed the dress of a monk and passed his time in
charities and prayer. The jewels of Paulina were converted into
money and given to the poor, and also her dower and the house of
the noble senator was thrown open to all who were in want.
Fabiola generously seconded him in founding hospitals, and their
combined resources enabled them to accomplish great charities in
Rome.
{675}
"Ordinary husbands," said St. Jerome, "show their affection and
love by scattering roses and lilies and violets over a grave. Our
Pammachius has covered the tomb of his departed wife with holy
ashes, and with the perfume of charity. These are the aromatics
with which he has embalmed Paulina." Such fruits were a great
solace to Paula. When she heard that he had given away Paulina's
dower to the poor, she exclaimed, "These are indeed the heirs
that I would see my daughter have! Pammachius has not given me
time even to express my wish; he has been beforehand with me!"
In the midst of her grief a ray of joy came from Rome, in the
proposition from Toxotius and Laeta to send young Paula to her
grandmother. They had determined that, in order to secure such
holy training for their child, she should leave Rome and go to
the East, where Paula and Eustochium would bring her up in the
way of truth. Eustochium begged her of Laeta, and young Paula did
eventually come to Bethlehem to join her aunt; but her venerable
grandmother was no longer there to receive her.
The burden of years was now beginning to be felt by Paula. Sorrow
and sadness pressed upon her, yet the ineffable beauty of her
soul was greater than ever. St. Francis de Sales says of her that
"she was like a beautiful and sweet violet, so sweet to see in
the garden of the church." It is this exquisite and rare perfume
which we must enjoy more in speaking of her in the years just
before her death, when God seemed to touch her soul with a
singularly soft and mellow light, like the evening of a fair day.
She had been much disturbed by the renewal of the dissensions
between St. Jerome and the Origenists. We have already said how
she had grieved over the first encounter, seeing bishops against
bishops, friends against friends, hermits against hermits. But
the new struggles were still more painful to her: they had become
personal, and, notwithstanding the reconciliation with Rufinus,
he had attacked St. Jerome's character and writings, and the
latter was obliged to defend himself. Paula had also witnessed
another painful sight. After the council condemning Origen, the
monks accused of sharing his erroneous opinions were driven away
from the desert, and among them were many whom Paula had formerly
known and venerated, and who were now homeless wanderers. The
severity of the Patriarch of Alexandria against them grieved her
deeply; and, the most bitter of all, her tears were those she
shed for the throes of the church and for the evil passions of
men. New sorrows came upon her also. She heard of the death of
Fabiola, her old and dear friend. Then came the death of St.
Epiphanius, who had been to Paula like a beloved father.
Toxotius, her only son, was now taken away. All her children but
Eustochium were dead. What was left for Paula but suffering?
Physical infirmities accumulated upon her the result of her
austerities. Of these she would merely say, "When I am weak, then
it is that I am strong;" and again, "We must resign ourselves to
carrying our treasure in brittle vases, until the day comes when
this miserable body shall be robed in immortality." She also
loved to repeat these words: "If the sufferings of Christ abound
in us, his consolations abound also. Sharers of his bodily agony,
we will also be partakers of his glory."
{676}
The things of earth could no longer touch her, for she had seen
how passing they are and knew that they could not last. The
longing for the heavenly country grew in proportion. She would
say with the patriarchs of the desert, "We are but travellers on
the earth." And when her sufferings increased, she murmured
gently, "Oh! who will give me the wings of a dove, that I may fly
to everlasting rest?"
She no longer belonged to the earth, she was almost in heaven.
Her soul had reached such extraordinary perfection that she
seemed already to see the glory and to hear the harmonies of
heaven. Peace and joy were suffused throughout her being, rising
above her sufferings. Her love of God grew greater, and death
seemed to her not a separation from those she loved on earth, but
an indissoluble union with God, in whom all joys are found again.
"Who," says St. Jerome, "can tell without tears how Paula died?"
He himself wrote immortal pages on the subject, which have
consoled many a dying soul since.
When Sainte Chantal was on her death-bed, she asked to have read
to her once more St. Jerome's account of the death of Paula, to
which she listened with wonderful attention, repeating several
times these words: "What are we? Nothing but atoms alongside of
these grand nuns."
It was in the year A.D. 403 that Paula fell ill. When it became
known that her life was in imminent danger, the whole monastery
was in consternation.
Eustochium could not be comforted; she who had never quit her
mother from childhood could not bear the thought of separation.
Her love for her mother, which had always been so touching, shone
now in all the ardor and strength of her nature. She would yield
her place by the bedside to no one by day or by night. Every
remedy was administered by her hands, and she would throw herself
on her knees by the bed, and implore God to suffer them to die
together and be laid in one tomb. But these tears and these
prayers could not postpone the hour marked by God for the end.
Her time had expired; Paula had suffered enough and wept enough.
She should now see joy, and put on the robes of glory. It became
evident that her strength was failing, and that she had but a few
days left to live. She bore her sufferings with admirable
patience and heavenly serenity. She was grateful for the care
bestowed on her by Eustochium and the devoted daughters of the
house, but her whole mind was given up to the thought of opening
Paradise. Her lips were heard to murmur her favorite verses from
Scripture.
The Bishop of Jerusalem and all the bishops of Palestine,
together with a great number of religious, flocked to her bedside
to witness this saintly death. The monastery was filled with
them. But Paula, absorbed in God, saw them not, heard them not.
Several asked her questions, but she did not answer. Jerome then
approached and wished to know if she were troubled and why she
did not speak. She answered in Greek, "Oh! no; I have neither
trouble nor regret; I feel, on the contrary, great inward peace."
After these words she spoke no more, but her fingers ceased not
to make the sign of the cross. At last, however, she opened her
eyes with joy, as if she saw a celestial vision, and as if
hearing the divine voice of the canticle, "Rise up, come to me, O
my dove, my beloved, for winter is past and the rain has
disappeared." She spoke as if in answer, for she continued, in
low but joyful tones, the words of the sacred song: "Flowers have
appeared on the earth, the time for gathering them has arrived."
Then she added, "I think I see the good things of the Lord in the
land of the living." With these words on her lips Paula expired.
{677}
She had lived to the age of fifty-six years eight months and
twenty-one days; of which time, twenty-five years had been passed
since her widowhood in religious life.
Her obsequies were a marvel. Before consigning her body to the
tomb, it was carried to the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem,
which she loved and where she lay for three days with uncovered
face, for the visitation and veneration of the faithful. Crowds
flocked from all parts to do her honor, and bishops sought to
take part in the funeral ceremonies and to show respect to the
lamented deceased. Among the hermits of the desert, it was almost
esteemed a sacrilege to stay away. John of Jerusalem himself
officiated. But the most touching part of the spectacle was the
long array of the poor, following in the procession, and weeping
for their mother. Death had not altered the noble countenance of
Paula; she was only pale, and looked as if sleeping. The people
could not tear themselves away from this last view of her beloved
features. She was finally interred under this same church, in a
grotto, where her tomb may still be seen up to the present time.
During the week following her burial, the crowd continued to
linger about her tomb, singing psalms in Hebrew, in Greek, and in
Latin or in Syriac.
All this time, the sorrow of Eustochium had been terrible to
behold. Her very being was rent in twain. She could not be torn
away from her mother's body up to the last, but would remain by
her, tenderly kissing her eyes, throwing her arms around her, and
beseeching to be buried in the tomb with her. This continued
until the grave shut out the form of Paula from her for ever.
Jerome tried to console her, though himself bowed down by grief.
Of all the souls he had directed, none were so lofty nor so
intimately connected with his own as that of Paula. So crushed
was he by this loss, that it was long before the world again
heard his mighty voice.
He found some solace in composing two epitaphs in her honor, to
be engraved, one at the entrance of the grotto where the grave
lay, the other on the grave itself. The following is the
translation of the inscription on the sepulchre of Paula:
"The daughter of the Scipios, of the Gracchi, the illustrious
blood of Agamemnon, rests in this place. She bore the name of
Paula. She was the mother of Eustochium. First in the senate of
Roman matrons, she preferred the poverty of Christ and the
humble fields of Bethlehem, to all the splendor of Rome."
In this epitaph, Paula's whole history is told. The other epitaph
of St. Jerome, engraved on the entrance of the grotto,
reproduces, in other terms, the same record of virtue, and, what
is more, shows its sublime origin. It is in the following words:
"Seest thou that grotto cut in the rock? It is the tomb of
Paula, now an inhabitant of the heavenly kingdom. She gave up
her brother, her relations, Rome, her country, her wealth, her
children, for the grotto of Bethlehem, where she is buried. It
was there, O Christ! that your cradle was. It was there that
the Magi came to make you their mystical offerings, O man God!"
Eustochium desired St. Jerome, besides these two epitaphs, to
write a funeral eulogium on her mother. With a hand trembling
with age and emotion, he performed this pious duty. We should
here mention that most of the details we have endeavored to give
in this short narrative, are taken from what is, perhaps,
considered the most eloquent and touching of all his writings.
{678}
At the conclusion, he thus apostrophizes her:
"Farewell, O Paula! Sustain, by your prayers, the declining
years of him who so revered you. United now by faith and good
works with Christ, you will be more powerful above than you
were here below. I have engraved your praise, O Paula! on the
rock of your sepulchre, and to it I add these pages; for I wish
to raise to you a monument more lasting than adamant, that all
may learn that your memory was honored in Bethlehem, where your
ashes repose."
Paula's good works died not with her. Her monasteries were
continued piously and courageously by Eustochium, the worthy
daughter of such a mother. With time, heresies arose to disturb
the atmosphere anew; and the controversy of Pelagius aroused the
latent powers of Jerome, and for some time absorbed him, to the
detriment of his studies. But at the prayer of Eustochium, and in
memory of Paula, he finally resumed his labors, and in the year
403 concluded his great work in the translation of the Bible,
which is called the Vulgate, and was adopted by the church in the
last universal council.
The Pelagians having set fire to the monasteries of Bethlehem,
all the buildings erected by the pious care of Paula were burned
to the ground. This act was odious to the whole world. It was
admirable to see the serenity of Eustochium under this trial. She
went to work, and, using for that purpose the noble dower brought
to her by her niece Paula, who had come to her at Bethlehem, the
monasteries were soon built up again, and filled with their
former inhabitants. About this time, Alaric, King of the Huns,
overran Rome with his barbarian hordes, and numberless Christian
refugees from them came to the East in search of an asylum.
Pammachius and Marcella were dead, but many of their friends were
numbered among the exiles. Eustochium and Jerome received all who
came with wide-open doors, and the hospitality of Paula still
lived in her successors.
Eustochium survived her mother only sixteen years. She expired
without a struggle, like one falling asleep. No further details
are given of her last moments. This was on the 28th day of
September, A.D. 418. Her remains were laid by those of her
mother, according to her wish. St. Jerome did not long survive
her. Her death was his last great sorrow; and he died in the
following year. He was too old now to resist the final dispersion
of what he had called his _domestic church_. Marcella,
Asella, Paula, Fabiola, Pammachius, Eustochium, had all ceased to
live. Rome itself was gone, for, to a Roman heart like that of
Jerome's, her captivity was her death.
He fell into a state of settled melancholy, his voice having
become so weak and feeble that it was with difficulty he could be
heard at all. It was soon impossible for him to be raised from
his miserable couch, but by means of a cord suspended from the
roof of his grotto; and in this position he would recite his
prayers, or give his instructions to the monks for the management
of the monastery. He died at the age of seventy-two years, after
living thirty-four years at Bethlehem. His eyes rested, when he
was dying, on young Paula, who was beside him. She who had been
his spiritual child from her cradle, now performed the last sad
offices for him. We have no details of his obsequies. According
to his request, she placed his remains in the grotto not far from
the venerable Paula, her grandmother, and Eustochium. United in
life, they were so also in death.
{679}
Jerome's principal disciple, Eusebius of Cremona, now assumed the
head of his convents, while young Paula continued to rule those
of her grandmother's. We know nothing more. With the
correspondence of Jerome died all traces of these communities,
and night fell upon the East.
--------
Glimpses Of Tuscany.
II.
The Boboli Gardens.
The high wall of our raised garden binds on the southern entrance
to the Boboli: our white spirae droops down into it like a
willow, so large and in such perfect bloom that strangers stop to
sketch it as they pass. The good grand duke has gone since I last
was here; the Sardinian bayonet is gleaming exactly where the
Austrian sentinel stood. The Boboli has changed masters--not for
the first time--and accepts the situation with the serenity of a
veteran.
It is a bright Sunday morning. There is still time for a walk
there before the Military Mass at Santo Spirito. Twelve years
have not disturbed the placid sameness of this creature of the
hill-side: the laurels are clipped just as evenly, the old busts
and statues look at you, or at each other, just as archly or just
as stolidly. It is all thoroughly man-made--intensely artificial.
Every impulse of nature has been stifled in tree and shrub, until
they no more dare to lean out of line than soldiers on parade.
The very crocuses steal timidly through the grass, as if they
were afraid of doing wrong.
"Grove nods to grove, each alley has its brother;
One half the garden represents the other."
It looks human, every inch; the Lord is completely banished; his
Spirit could not possibly walk in such a garden. And yet this
creature of man seems clothed with imperishable bloom: this death
of all nature seems able to outlive all other life. You cannot
despise it, for it possesses the semblance of indestructibility--
unchangefulness in the midst of change. In the forests,
dissolution and reproduction are palpably waging their unending
warfare; even on the eternal Apennines, the snow comes and goes,
the lights and shadows of the clouds are endlessly shifting. But
in this miniature world monotony counterfeits the terrible fixity
and relentlessness of fate. Nature is deprived of all free-will,
and moves obedient to a fixed design.
It is difficult to say how far civilization, apart from religion,
may go with advantage in remodelling the natural man. It is
equally difficult to say how far art may safely encroach upon
nature in reconstructing a landscape. Some of the grand elemental
presentations disdain our interference. We have no control over
the clouds, or the curves of the ocean, or the nocturnal radiance
of the skies.
{680}
But the surface of the earth is an unfinished sketch, which the
Creator has left us to humanize, in some small degree, after our
fancy. We do not make even the smallest impression upon its
planetary aspect; but, after centuries of toil, we succeed in
partially changing its more immediate expression. We take the
groundwork ready made, accept the laws as we find them, and then,
inspired by the supreme longing after unrevealed beauty, which,
in some shape or other, haunts every human soul, proceed to
establish a little paradise of our own.
But above and beyond that last temporal Eden, there is still
another--the one beyond the grave. I, who am an immortal spirit
capable of sharing the celestial joy of angels, predestined for
the beatific vision; I, whose hereafter should be passed amid
perpetual light, and peace, and beauty; may I not have imaginings
of better forms, of sweeter faces, of fairer prospects, of deeper
skies, and even of diviner stars than those revealed to the
senses? Did Raphael ever see a face that equalled hers of the San
Sisto? Was there ever in the flesh a form to rival the Apollo of
the Vatican? Is there any pattern in nature for Giotto's
Campanile? Is there any voice in the woods or seas to suggest the
melodies of Kreutzer or the harmonies of Beethoven? And may we
not, then, poetize our landscapes too, and throw into the face of
nature the expression of a human soul? But here is precisely the
difficulty: the landscape has a soul of its own, which must not
be murdered, even to make way for ours. The Grand Master has been
at work before us; his works have wandered, of their own sweet
will, into shapes and combinations that exhibit the grace beyond
the reach of art. The mountains, the streams. the valleys, are
full of these sweet surprises. The true artist can do little more
than reproduce them, squared and framed, for parlor
contemplation: the true gardener can do little more than display
them to the best advantage.
It is more than likely, though, that, when the Boboli Gardens
were laid out by the Medici, the artists employed had only to
deal with unornamented slopes of olive orchards and arable land.
The landscape was less to be remodelled than created. The surface
under treatment was artistically as blank as uncolored canvas--
as meaningless as quarried marble. With this difference, however:
that while the groundwork of the painter fades and wrinkles,
while marble stains and shatters, while even the sculptured
arches of great cathedrals crumble into dust, the living canvas
on which the landscape gardener works is not only imperishable,
but so charged with vitality that it gains instead of losing by
duration; or, should a touch of decay at last appear, it is but
in transition to new phases of beauty. One would think that,
where human fancy is free to conceive a garden of delight, and
human means sufficient to ransack the ages and spoil the climes
for its embellishment, the result could not escape being a public
and paramount attraction. I take this Boboli Garden as a sample
of most public gardens or parks. Are they popularly, or even
selectly, attractive? Are they ever thronged, except at stated
hours, when people chiefly congregate to exhibit themselves and
criticise each other? Was an artist, by any miracle, ever caught
there more than once, save in the capacity of casual saunterer?
Are they not startlingly unfrequented, in spite of their superb
richness and beauty?
{68l}
However conducive these civic Edens to municipal health, have not
the park police an almost exclusive monopoly of the fresh air and
gravel? Do these magnets draw by dint of their intrinsic beauty?
It may safely be questioned. And may not this failure be
attributed to our vague, unpronounced repugnance to having nature
out of harmony with itself and ourselves? Notwithstanding all the
gilt and carmine of the new emblazonry, we keep asking the gay
palimpsest to restore the lost features of our first friend.
The curse that fell on Adam also visited the earth from which he
was taken. The heart of fallen man is full of yearning; the face
of nature is full of sympathetic sadness; her voice is nearer a
sigh than a song. More than half the year is clouded, more than
half the hours belong to night, and over more than half the world
goes the wail of the unresting seas. The vast _distances_
are everywhere softened or shaded into pensiveness; the very
sunshine turns to blue and purple on the hills; it is only the
small _near_ which presumes to be glad with the flash of a
rivulet, the song of birds, or the glance of flowers. And, in
these minor poems too, there is apt to lurk some sly suggestion
of the unattained. Even where the universe is transfigured by the
coming morn, and the world thrills with the joyous cry of
reawakened life, the momentary exultation, the piercing delight
of existence, are soon sobered by toil, or care, or thought; and,
bright as the coming day may prove, the impression left on human
hearts is that of promise unfulfilled. The poorest part of
sunrise is the sun itself; the horns on the Rigi are silent as
soon as the orb is fairly up.
It may not be overbold to affirm that some of these grander
parks, such as the Bois de Boulogne, bear no mean resemblance to
the first paradise itself. But our lot is changed since then; the
primitive tradition of Deity incarnate has been fulfilled. Eden
could no longer content us; we would not care to pass those
Cherubim with the flaming sword, even if we dared. Between us and
any possible paradise lies the grave. It is worse than mockery to
expect the sorely laden Christian heart to find more than casual
enjoyment in arbitrary walks, and endless beds of roses, and
artificial fountains, and manufactured grottoes. Sorrow, passion,
death, were encountered by God in descending to man; sorrow,
passion, death, must be encountered by man in ascending to God.
Spiritual felicity is less to be extracted from violets and roses
than from sackcloth and ashes. Temporal happiness is not to be
compassed by meandering through shaded avenues and even lawns,
but by the sweat of the brow and the work of the hands; and in
our respites from toil we like the wild, suggestive
irregularities of nature better than a too glaring array of
brightnesses with which we are seldom in complete accord. The
post-Adamic garden needs depth and gloom and mystery as well as
sunshine and flowers.
I do not mean to say that the Boboli is wholly glad; much of it
is sad or saddening enough. That long, grim avenue of cypress
would suit the valley of the shadow of death. Arnolfo's dark,
mighty wall goes striding down the hill-side like a phantom. The
Boboli was only _meant_ to be wholly glad. Though probably
not designed by a Greek, it is nevertheless Grecian, or rather
Athenian; for, in art, Athens is Greece. By an exceptional
felicity and refinement of mental, moral, and physical
organization, the Athenian realized in himself the most perfect
development of natural civilization.
{682}
The dark, religious mysteries which tinge and sadden Hindu,
Egyptian, and most Gentile life had little hold upon the Greek.
Athens, in her prime, succeeded in escaping the pressure and
responsibility of the hereafter. She aimed at making time a
success independent of eternity. The real heaven of the Athenian
and his disciples, in both classic peninsulas, was this world,
not the next. Eternity was but the ghost of time, a vague
prolongation of the present for better or worse in Elysium or
Hades, the shadow projected by a vast material world as it moved
through endless space. The poets of Greece dictated her popular
theology; her sculptors carried beauty to the very borders of the
beatitude, giving such glory to form that the inspired likeness
is mistaken for the divine original. It is impossible to tell
where the hero ends and the god begins. We have the deification
of man in marble or fable, instead of the humanization of God in
the flesh; or, in other words, the identity of religion and art.
This pleasant way of being one with God, this graceful fulfilment
of destiny, imparted a complacency to Athenian life which we
cannot imitate.
"In every dark and awful place,
Rude hill and haunted wood.
This beautiful, bright people left
A name of omen good.
"Unlike the children of romance,
From out whose spirit deep
The touch of gloom hath passed on glen.
And mountain, lake, and steep;
On Devil's Bridge and Raven's Tower,
And love-lorn Maiden's Leap."
Grecian life, in its highest aspect, was an attempt to reproduce
the perfections of a lost Eden; Christian life, in its highest
aspect, is purification, self-denial, self-immolation, for a
paradise which can never be reached in this world, and only in
the next after life-long fear and trembling. And although we
strive more or less successfully to substitute the joys of the
spirit for those of the flesh, yet "Even we ourselves, who have
the first-fruits of the spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting
for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body."
(St. Paul. [Footnote 208]) After the knowledge of good and evil,
our paradise must have no walls. The broad expanse of which each
one of us may chance to be the centre, bounded by the horizon and
vaulted by the sky--the whole visible landscape, with its fitful
light and shade, its changing blight and bloom, its alternating
sigh and song, whether subdued into use or wild as on the morning
of the first Sabbath--this whole visible universe is the only
garden in harmony with the vast aspiration, the ceaseless
yearning of Christian life. Our opened eyes would weary of the
walled Eden, as Rasselas wearied of the Happy Valley.
[Footnote 208: For the suggestion of this text of St. Paul
the writer is indebted to a notice in the _Freeman's
Journal_ of Father Ryan's beautiful lines, "_Why does
your poetry sound like a sigh_."]
It is a pure and paramount joy to grapple with the rugged earth
and bend it to your will; a joy to pierce the forest to your
liking and smooth a bare expanse into velvet lawn: of mortal joys
perhaps the purest and most enduring. But when all is done?--
Take your stand behind the Pitti Palace almost anywhere high up
the hill, on the observatory itself, if you choose. All the wide
valley of the Arno, with its circumference of cultured hills and
woodless mountains, is before you. For thousands of years
industrious generations have been at work on that fair panorama.
Yellow villas are dotting all the heights; olive-trees are
wrapping all the slopes in pale monotony; the vines are trailing
everywhere in endless procession over mutilated mulberries; the
long gray walls are solemnly parcelling out the small Tuscan
farms.
{683}
All Florence is beneath you, with its domes and towers and
spires, its streets and bridges, its memories and suggestions.
The atmosphere is so transparent, the cultivation so perfect,
that the area described by half the radius of vision seems to
enclose only a vast kitchen-garden. But further on, the mist and
haze are settling; the enchantment of distance is falling;
Vallambrosa, gleaming on its mountain's breast, turns into some
mysterious opal; the records traced by man through all those
centuries are gradually erased by the quiet alchemy of nature,
and the same eternal story reappears as vividly as if the
superscription were but the shadow of a dream.
Turn to the Boboli at your feet. Do you wonder it is a
failure--that Florence never goes there? They love their own
little gardens dearly and the flowers in their windows; for these
are but sweet thefts from nature to embellish home. But for these
attempts to compress universal beauty into a given space, for
this overprizing, overadorning of the _near_, only to be
lost, or merged, or overlooked in the glory of the _far_,
the Christian heart can have but little relish.
The bells of Santo Spirito are ringing; and I wonder, on my way
there, if that cold white hand of Athens will ever quite relax
its hold on Christian life.
-------------
Translated From Le Correspondant.
Anecdotical Memoirs By A Former Page
Of The Emperor Nicholas.
One day, some months after my admission among the pages, as the
classes were being dismissed, I heard a great noise. People were
running to and fro, agitated and hurried; officers of the
service, pages of the bedroom, inspectors, all seemed to be in a
state of extraordinary excitement.
"Gentlemen, look out! look out! the emperor!" cried in an
authoritative tone the head of our company, while his deep,
sonorous voice reechoed throughout the dormitory, where,
according to custom, we were all assembled before dinner.
At this name I was deeply moved. My mother and my companions had
often, very often spoken to me of the emperor in recitals where
legend mingled with reality, but I had not yet seen him face to
face. The officer on duty arranged us in military order, each one
standing near his own bed, and so we waited for him.
Soon the captain of the guard announced that the czar was coming
up the great stairway. The dormitory, ordinarily so noisy, became
perfectly still. There was a moment of solemn silence, religious
in its perfect stillness. We hardly dared to breathe. The
officer, with his helmet on, placed himself at the threshold.
Suddenly, in the opening of the large doorway, appeared a man of
tall stature, in the uniform of a general and in the midst of a
_cortége_ of superior officers.
{684}
His countenance was severe, his whole exterior imposing. This was
Nicholas I.
Since then I have seen, and closely, most of the sovereigns of
Europe, and more than once have been admitted to the honor of
direct conversation with them; but never have I beheld a figure
more royal or more profoundly imprinted with supreme majesty;
never have I since experienced the icy impression that this view
of the czar produced upon me.
He walked straightforward in lordly style, his leaden eyes coldly
fixed on those of each person to whom in turn he addressed
himself, and gazing deeply into each face with a penetration that
seemed to mark the very secrets of the soul. His step impressed
you; his aspect intimidated; and his attitudes, so truly
sovereign, added to a physiognomy so haughty, reflected the
guiding sentiment of his life, his utter contempt for mankind,
and his mystical faith in his own all-powerfulness. Of colossal
height and admirably beautiful in face, his hard and penetrating
eye subjugated you at once. Simply clad, even in peasant attire,
he would have been recognized by his look and his imperial
carriage, and surrounded even by twenty generals in full uniform,
the cry would have resounded, "The emperor! it is he!"
He made the tour of the room, and, after speaking to several
pages, came at last to where I stood. As he neared my bed, the
director approached him and said:
"Sire, this is D----."
"Ah!" bowed the emperor, and turning toward me:
"How is your mother?"
"Well, sire."
"She is a good friend of mine. Are you satisfied with your
present position?"
"Yes, sire."
"How long since he entered among the pages?" asked the czar of
the director.
"About two months since, sire."
"And conducts himself well?"
"Very well."
"Bravo!"
Until now the conversation had been in French.
"And," resumed the emperor, but this time speaking Russian, "have
you learned Russian?"
"Not yet, sire," I replied in French.
"What! here two months, and not yet a word! Why, that is
outrageous. Can't you even say _no_ in Russian?"
"I ask pardon, your majesty; I do speak Russian with my
comrades."
"Well, why then, stupid, if you can speak it with your comrades,
do you answer me in French when I address you in Russian?"
"Because, if I express myself incorrectly to a simple page, I am
not annoyed, whereas, with your majesty--"
"Very well, that will do."
I had heard he wished nothing badly done in his presence, and I
knew too little Russian to dare venture it before his majesty.
"Did you hear that?" said the emperor; and turning toward General
Philosophoff, "Here is one who will never be a fool," added he,
and passed on.
Nicholas I., Paulowitch, the third son of the Emperor Paul III.,
had never dreamed of a crown. He believed himself destined for
the pompous and useless life of a grand duke. Between him and the
empire were two older brothers, both young and both intelligent.
However, since his earliest youth his character had shown itself
self-willed, domineering, and tyrannical, in a manner the presage
of his reign and harbinger of his politics.
{685}
There has been discovered among the books used in his education
while he was quite a child, a volume of the _History of
Russia_, by Karamsin, and on the margin of which are written
in his own hand these remarkable words, "The Czar Ivan IV., the
Terrible, was a severe but a just man, as one ought to be to
govern a nation."
Such sentiments loudly expressed by Nicholas could not fail to
alarm a people and court who still remembered the reign of his
father, Paul I., only dead twenty-three years. The reign of this
crowned fool had, notwithstanding its short duration, tired out
even Russia itself--Russia, too, already so corrupted by the
habit of despotism; and a revolution in the palace had at last
put an end to the follies of this barbarian, this second
Heliogabalus.
During the reign of Alexander I., the court and town spoke freely
of the despot Paul. Nicholas, who neither could nor dared
reinstate the memory of his father, and who considered it
impolitic to permit a people to express themselves irreverently
of a czar, forbade throughout his whole empire even the mention
of a name so abhorred. The legend of his death he especially
interdicted, and so long as the reign of Nicholas lasted, the
memory of Paul I. remained in silence and obscurity.
While his brother Alexander I. governed the empire, Nicholas,
who, as we have said, believing it impossible he should ever
reign, kept himself in comparative obscurity, concentrated all
his attention on the troops, each day passing them in review, and
occupied himself only with the lot of the soldier and the
amelioration of his condition. The marriage of the Grand Duke
Constantine with the Princess of Lowicz brought him unexpectedly
nearer the throne. At the death of the Emperor Alexander, and
notwithstanding the unequal marriage of his brother, he was still
uncertain of his approaching advancement. But when he learned,
first by the will of Alexander, then by the letter of Constantine
intrusted to the Senate, and finally from Constantine himself,
his renunciation of the empire, he accepted the crown, and from
the day he did so, faithful to his character, he understood how
to reign fully and absolutely.
Firmly convinced that he represented celestial power on earth,
sincerely persuaded that to his own people he was the mandatary
of God, and held within himself divine prerogatives, he watched
with an overshadowing jealousy the sacred deposit with which he
believed himself charged, and any attempt against his authority
appeared to him a sacrilege and proved him inexorable. The
conviction that he never pardoned even the simple appearance of
such a crime isolated him in the midst of his court and people,
enveloped him in an atmosphere of gloom and terror, and placed
him at a distance that added to his prestige and the respectful
fear he inspired.
It is said that one evening, about two years after his death, one
of his aides-de-camp, (in the midst of an animated conversation,)
recognizing the portrait of the emperor in the drawing-room,
suddenly left his place, and quickly turned its face to the wall.
"During the life of the czar, I had such a terror of him," said
he, "that I fear the copy, with its terrible eyes fixed upon me,
may disconcert and embarrass me as greatly as did the model."
This very intentness of look was in truth the power of
intimidation which the emperor possessed. Intending to win a
confidence from any one or force a confession, he fastened on his
victim his cold and immovable eyes.
{686}
The unfortunate was literally fascinated. He knew that a word or
a gesture from the autocrat sufficed to annihilate him, and the
least contraction of his brow froze the blood in his veins.
Terror is the necessary auxiliary of every despotism, democratic
or aristocratic, monarchical or republican.
Yet these jealous instincts, and this implacable firmness in
punishment, were not solely due to the character of the Emperor
Nicholas, but also to the sad experiences which signalized the
commencement of his reign. Conspiracies against the new czar,
revolts occasioned by the appearance of cholera, indeed all sorts
of disorders, Nicholas had to suppress on his accession to the
throne. From the very first he learned these bloody retaliations,
and never pardoned.
The first conspirators of his reign, Pestel, Mouravieff-Apostol,
and the poet Relieff, were condemned to be hung. The emperor
signed the decree after the Russian formula, "_Byt po
siemau_" (So be it.) They were then conducted to the place of
execution. Relieff, a poet of the highest order, was the first
one led to the scaffold. Just at the moment when the executioner,
having passed the slip-knot, over his head, had raised him on his
shoulders to launch him into eternity, the too weak cord broke,
and he fell forward bruised and bleeding.
"They know not how to do anything in Russia," said he, raising
himself without even turning pale, "not even to twist a rope."
As accidents of this kind--besides being very rare, were always
considered occasions of pardon, they sent, therefore, to the
Winter Palace to know the will of the emperor.
"Ah! the cord has broken?" said Nicholas.
"Yes, sire."
"Then he was almost dead? What impression has such close contact
with eternity produced on the mind of the rebel?"
"He is a brave man, sire."
The czar frowned.
"What did he say?" asked he severely.
"Sire, he said, 'They know not how even to twist a rope in
Russia.'"
"Well," replied Nicholas, "let them prove to him the contrary."
And he went out.
A wealthy Polish lord, the Prince Roman Sanguszko, had been
condemned, as a conspirator, to serve the rest of his life as a
simple soldier, and to immediately join a regiment fighting in
Caucasia. On the margin of the sentence, the emperor wrote in his
own hand, "On foot!"
Such severity was in him a system. He sincerely believed in it as
a necessity, and a part of the sanctity of absolute power. In
Russia, especially, his knowledge of the character of his people
fortified him in his belief, and he let no opportunity escape to
declare his despotism.
Of all the heterogeneous elements that compose the immense empire
of Russia, there is not one that ever seems likely to develop in
the slightest degree the idea of liberalism; not a single
nationality in which servilism is not innate, and to which the
people themselves are not as much attached as the nations of the
East to liberty. Hence it is that among the Russians, properly
so-called, and who constitute the main portion of the population,
we find the nobility infected with an inveterate sentiment of
servile obsequiousness, and the people predisposed by
temperament, and moulded by past experience, to the most abject
submission.
{687}
They all have the same character as the great princes of Kieff,
who, when under the yoke of the Tartars, went to receive the
investiture of the Khan of the Horde d'Or; and who, after having
held his stirrup and offered him a glass of _koumys_,
[Footnote 209] were obliged to lick from the neck of his horse
the milk that dropped from his moustaches. Do we need greater
evidence of the servility of the Russian people than the reign of
the crowned tiger, Ivan IV. the Terrible, a despot without
parallel in history, whose subjects, more patient than the Romans
under Caligula and Nero, not only were contented to bear with his
follies and crimes, but actually supplicated him to resume the
throne, after his voluntary abdication through disgust of others
and himself? The reign, too, of Peter the Great, whose savage
grandeur could not absolve him from cruelty, and even the
possibility in the nineteenth century of such a despot as
Nicholas I., what greater proofs do we require?
[Footnote 209: Camel's milk fermented.]
As to the half-savage nations of the northern limits of Russia
and Siberia, with populations perhaps only yesterday awakened to
anything like social life, their need is still, as with children,
the master, and the ferule.
It is easy to understand, then, how a man armed like Nicholas
with an iron will and immense authority, and comprehending
perfectly the character of his people, should have conceived this
superhuman idea of his own power. Never thwarted by the least
resistance, only now and then by an occasional murmuring, we can
need no better explanation of his apparently exaggerated
despotism, of his inveterate faith in the sanctity of his
domination, his conviction that in himself centred his whole
empire, and the faculty, in fine, which he possessed in so great
a degree, of entirely ignoring mankind.
One day, a short time before the Crimean war, at a grand military
review at Krasnoe-Selo, the emperor, on horseback, presented his
troops to the empress seated in her carriage. Suddenly appeared
on the drill ground a cariole drawn by one horse, and out of
which stepped a _feld jaguer_, (courier of the palace,)
charged with two autographic letters from the King of Prussia to
the emperor and empress. As the empress was the more easily
approached, he handed her the first letter, and ran toward the
emperor to present the second. But some steps from him he pauses,
turns pale, and bursts into tears. The letter is lost.
Trembling from head to foot, he retraces his steps to try and
find it, but the soldiers, the aides-de-camp, the horses, have
already trodden it in the dust, and the precious envelope cannot
be found.
"What ails that animal?" asked the emperor of one of his
aides-de-camp.
"I do not know, sire."
"Well, go and ask him, and bring me his reply."
The aide-de-camp spurred his horse, and from the lips of the poor
feld jaguer he learned that an autograph letter from the King of
Prussia to the Emperor of Russia had been lost. He brought the
czar the information.
The face of Nicholas clouded instantly; his expression was gloomy
and severe.
"Take charge of this man yourself and without allowing him to
communicate with any one, conduct him immediately to Siberia. Let
him not be harshly treated, but let him never again appear in
Europe."
The aide-de-camp, as well as the unhappy feld jaguer, were both
to set out, without even changing their boots, for this journey
of 2000 leagues. The aide-de-camp returned eight months
afterward, and was recompensed by promotion from the emperor, but
the poor courier was doubtless dying or dead in the neighborhood
of Tobolsk, such faults as his having escaped an amnesty.
{688}
Such instances (I witnessed the one I am about to relate) were
not rare in the life of Nicholas. One morning in the spring, when
a freshet of the Neva had rendered its crossing extremely
perilous, the emperor, on looking from the window of his Winter
Palace, saw a large crowd watching, in evident stupefaction, a
man directing himself, by leaps from one piece of ice to another,
toward the opposite shore.
He called his attendant aide-de-camp.
"Look at that fool," said he. "What courage! Run and see what
motive he has for so exposing his life."
The aide-de-camp learned the particulars and returned.
"Sire, he is a peasant who has bet he would cross the Neva for
twenty-five roubles, and is trying to gain the reward."
"Give him twenty-fire lashes," replied Nicholas; "a man who risks
his life in this miserable way would be capable of anything for
money."
To a desperate caprice of the same kind is due the construction
of the railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, called the
Nicholas railroad. The emperor had in his court a certain
general, Kleinmichel, a disagreeable person, exceedingly
unpopular, and of equivocal fidelity, but who pleased by his
reticence and promptness in executing orders. When the road was
decided upon by a counsel of ministers, and its erection
considered urgent, a map of Russia was brought to the czar, who
was asked to look over the course designated by the different
engineers and give his preference. Nicholas, without saying a
word, took the map, marked a straight line from Moscow to St.
Petersburg, and said to the stupefied engineers:
"This is the line of the railroad."
"But," they all cried, "impossible. Your majesty will find no one
to undertake such a work. It would be to hide treasures in a
desert."
"No one undertake it when I command it to be done!" said
Nicholas. "We shall see."
And signalling Kleinmichel from a corner:
"Kleinmichel," said he, "you see this line?"
"Yes, sire."
"This is a new railroad I propose constructing in my empire."
"Sire, it is magnificent!"
"You think so? Will you charge yourself, then, with the execution
of my orders?"
"With the greatest pleasure, sire, if your majesty orders it. But
the funds, the funds?"
"Don't be troubled about them. Ask for all the money you want."
And turning to the engineers:
"You see," said Nicholas to them, "I can get along without you. I
will build my own railroad."
And the construction of this road lasted ten years. It did not
deviate an inch from the line marked out by the imperial finger;
and leaving on one side, at about a distance of ten leagues, the
villages of Novgorod, Twer, and a host of others equally rich and
important, it traversed, in the midst of marshes and woods,
nothing but immense solitudes; 706 kilometres of iron rail cost
Russia 400,000,000 francs--a little more than half a million a
kilometre--of which the devoted Kleinmichel, but that as a matter
of course, took a good share. Nicholas, however, was right in
saying nothing could resist him.
{689}
Some weeks after the inauguration of this railroad an ambassador
arrived at St. Petersburg. According to custom and to pay him
attention, everything was shown him in detail, all the objects of
interest in the city. He expressed no surprise or admiration; his
oriental gravity was proof against either.
"What could we show him that would astonish him?" asked the
emperor of Menschikoff.
"Show him the accounts of Kleinmichel for the Nicholas railroad,"
replied the prince, laughing.
A few days later, General Kleinmichel, in presence of the
emperor, was discussing with Menschikoff some question upon which
they could not agree. The general proposed to the prince a wager.
"With pleasure," replied the latter, "and this shall be the
stake, if your excellence permits it. He who loses shall be
obliged--at the expense of the winner--to go to Moscow and return
by the railroad your excellence has just finished."
"What joke is this?" asked the emperor.
"A very simple one, sire. The road is so constructed that one is
very sure to break his neck on it; so, you see, we are playing
for our lives."
The emperor laughed heartily at the joke, but Kleinmichel took
care not to accept the bet.
These two instances prove that Nicholas knew how, now and then,
to listen to a truth well said. He was too certain that none of
his subjects dared fail him in the respect he required, so he
could afford to listen to those who were bold and witty enough to
approach him with the truth. Menschikoff, the same who commanded
at Sebastopol, was one of these; better than any other, he always
maintained before the czar his frank speech, and Nicholas, little
accustomed to such frankness, loved him dearly, and frequently
amused himself with his sallies.
General Kleinmichel was the aversion of Menschikoff. One day the
latter entered the cabinet of Nicholas at the moment when the
emperor was playing with one of his grand-children, the Grand
Duke Michel, still quite an infant.
Astraddle on the shoulders of his grandfather, the little prince
made the czar serve for his horse.
"See," cried Nicholas gayly, "see how this little imp treats me.
I am growing thin under it. The little monkey is so heavy, I
shall fall with fatigue."
"Zounds!" quickly replied Menschikoff, "little Michel (in German
_Klein-michel_) ought not to be a very light load, if he
carries about him all he has stolen."
Notwithstanding his jokes, which spared no one, Menschikoff
delighted Nicholas, who could readily enough withdraw him from
the chief command at Sebastopol, but would not deprive him of his
friendship. This was of more ancient date, and founded on the two
good qualities of courage and sincerity. Sometimes, but rarely,
others approached the emperor as familiarly. The celebrated poet,
Pouchkine, for example, dared to express himself in his presence
with a frankness which, even in occidental Europe, and in a
constitutional state, would pass for audacity.
In the palace of the Hermitage, where they were walking together,
the emperor had led the poet into a gallery of pictures that
contained the portraits of all the Romanoffs, from Michel
Fedorovitch to the last reigning sovereign, and had ordered him
to improvise some verses on each.
{690}
Pouchkine obeyed; but coming to the portrait of Nicholas, he was
silent.
"Well, Pouchkine," said the emperor, "what have you to say of
me?"
"Sire!"
"Some flattery, of course? I don't wish to hear it; so tell the
truth."
"Your majesty permits me?"
"I order you. Believe in my imperial word, you shall not suffer."
"So be it, sire."
And he wrote the famous distich:
"Des pieds à la tête la toile est admirable;
De la tête aux pieds le tzar est détestable." [Footnote 210]
[Footnote 210:
"From feet to head the picture is admirable:
From head to feet the czar is detestable."]
The emperor made no reply, but he asked Pouchkine for no more
verses.
Notwithstanding his despotism, and the arbitrary acts that
signalized his reign; notwithstanding the innumerable banishments
into Siberia and Caucasia, it is seen the emperor could sometimes
bear to hear the truth. The instinct of justice was born in him;
despotism had smothered it, unfortunately, but his better nature
frequently triumphed. Often the hereditary grand duke had, in
this respect, to submit to severe reprimands. One day, in 1832, a
year after the revolt of the Poles, whom Nicholas had handled
with implacable rigor, the grand duke, in the presence of his
father, had called them _accursed_. Rebuking publicly his
son:
"Imperial Highness," said Nicholas, "your expressions are
unseemly. If I chastise the Poles, it is because they have
revolted against my authority; but to you they have done no harm,
and you are destined to reign over them. You have no right to
make any difference in your future subjects. Be assured, such
sentiments make bad sovereigns."
The sentiment of gratitude was no more a stranger to the Emperor
Nicholas than the spirit of justice. True, he guarded as
faithfully the remembrance of injuries as of services, and if he
never forgot those who had served or defended him, neither did he
ever forgive those who had made the least attempt against his
power. While the Troubetskois, the Mouravieffs, the
Tchernicheffs, worked in the mines of Siberia, still there could
be seen, at the end of his reign, several generals perfectly
unqualified, yet provided with advantageous employments, without
any great power, it is true, but well lodged, well fed, honored,
and tranquil. If they committed any absurdity, and this
frequently happened, he changed their places according to
capacity, or sometimes secretly directed them in the exercise of
their functions, never failing in his goodness toward them. These
men, in the military revolt of 1826, had offered their swords to
assist his growing power.
Strange character! Curious mixture of faults and good qualities,
of littleness and grandeur; brutal and chivalrous, courageous
even to temerity, and distrustful even to poltroonery; equitable
and tyrannical, generous and cruel, at once the friend of
ostentation and of simplicity! His palace was magnificent, his
court splendid, the luxuriousness of his courtiers dazzling,
while, in his own person, his habits and tastes, he affected an
imposing austerity. His working cabinet was almost bare; he slept
always on a camp bed. The oldness of his uniform, and of his
military cloaks, was proverbial at St. Petersburg. Worn out,
pieced in different places, they evidenced, by their shining
neatness, how carefully they were preserved. At his repasts even,
he drank no wine; he never smoked, and the odor of tobacco was so
disagreeable to him that it was forbidden, not only in the Winter
Palace, but in the streets of St. Petersburg.
{691}
Even the Grand Duke Alexander, the czar truly, and an inveterate
smoker, was obliged to sit under the mantel-piece, to enjoy the
luxury of a cigar in the imperial palace.
Loving beyond everything military discipline, and rigorous in his
formulas, Nicholas, who for thirty years was accustomed to this
refrain, "Master, thy slave is here to obey thee"--Nicholas
could only comprehend order and uniformity. Reviews were his
favorite passion; during his reign, he transformed his empire
into a barrack. He passed his life in manoeuvres, exercises, and
miniature wars. The soldiers adored him, although he was only
eclipsed in the severity of military rule by the Grand Duke
Michel. It is true, the latter pushed his worship of discipline
to such an extent that the emperor himself was often amused at
the expense of his younger brother. One day he met an officer
with his clothes torn and covered with mud, and without helmet or
sword. The officer, finding himself discovered, and knowing he
was to blame, was terribly frightened, and nearly fell backward
in making the military salute. Nicholas fixed a severe look upon
the poor devil, which made him totter. But, suddenly changing his
tone and countenance, he said gayly:
"Go, dress yourself; but take good care you don't meet my
brother!"
Rising with the dawn, and at work from the earliest hour of the
day, whether at his palace in winter or in the field in summer,
he hardened himself, as well as others, to both cold and fatigue.
An excellent rider, his horses were magnificent and marvellously
cared for; he always mounted alone those that were reserved for
him, and out of two or three hundred sent every year to his
stables for his own use, he could scarcely find a dozen to suit
him. In manoeuvres I have seen him twenty times, at the moment of
the loudest cannonade and in the most frightful noise, jerk, in
his impatience, his horse's bit until the jagged lips of the poor
beast were streaming with blood. Sometimes this torture lasted
several minutes; the sides of the beautiful animal whitened with
foam; he trembled in agony, and yet never lost for a moment his
statue-like immobility.
Such methods of proceeding, applied by Nicholas equally to
everything that surrounded him, generals, servants, horses, and
courtiers, were fortunately tempered in him by the sense of
justice, of which I have already spoken, and especially by the
fear of public opinion, not only in Russia, but in all Europe. He
seemed ashamed of the despotism he practised, and strove to
conceal it from the governments and people of the West. In
proportion as he affected to despise their arms, so much the more
did he respect their ideas.
We know that it is customary at the court of St. Petersburg to be
presented to the emperor in full uniform. And even more, that
there is no condition in life, however trifling, which has not
its distinctive costume. It is related that one morning Lord
----, ambassador from England, arrived in his carriage at the
gate of the Winter Palace, was recognized, and went up to the
apartments of the emperor. He was in his great-coat. Seeing it,
the chamberlain-in-waiting, who did not dare remark this
infringement of the laws of etiquette in such an important
person, immediately sent word to the chancellor of the empire.
Count Nesselrode, and meanwhile retained the ambassador under
various pretexts.
{692}
The count arrived in haste, and the morning toilet seemed to have
the same effect on the chancellor as on the chamberlain.
"I am delighted to see you, my dear count," said Lord ---- to M.
de Nesselrode. "I wanted to speak to his majesty on some very
important business, but I have been detained here nearly an
hour."
"Because we do not dare, my lord--"
"Do not dare--what?"
"We cannot introduce you to the emperor in such morning
_négligé_."
"_Négligé!_" said he, throwing a rapid glance at his person,
and aware of his reputation for elegance, and supposing he had
been guilty of some impropriety in his toilet.
"In Russia, no one is admitted in similar costume to the presence
of the sovereign."
"Would full uniform be necessary?" asked smilingly the reassured
ambassador.
"Exactly, my lord."
"Oh! pardon me, then. I will go dress myself." And he left,
shrugging his shoulders.
The emperor was furious when he heard of the adventure.
"Cursed fools!" he grumbled, "they represent me a barbarian!"
When, an hour afterward, the ambassador returned to the palace in
official uniform, the emperor excused himself with great anxiety,
blaming the narrow-mindedness of his servants, and declaring
loudly that he did not occupy his brain with such trifles.
"When you wish, my lord," added he, giving him his hand, "to come
and see me as you did to-day, do not be incommoded, I beg of you,
by any such formula."
This fear of Western irony affected all his relations with
Europeans. We know the flattering reception he gave the Marquis
de Custine, Horace Vernet, and twenty other illustrious
strangers. Those employed in his empire were as anxious to throw
dust in the eyes of travellers as himself. Nothing could be more
amusing than the arrival of a stranger at St. Petersburg, under
the reign of Nicholas. As no one could remain in the city without
a permit, all new-comers hastened to the police to have their
cards presented them, and the scenes enacted were truly comical.
The following dialogue will give a good idea of them:
"You wish to live at St. Petersburg?"
"Yes, sir."
"How long?"
Each one then fixed the probable duration of his stay.
"Well, your permit will be given you."
Here a pause. The policeman gives the necessary order, then
resumes the conversation.
"Well, what do you think of St. Petersburg?"
"It is an admirable city."
"Are not our theatres as fine as those of Paris?"
"Most assuredly."
"Is not the perspective from Newski a superb view?"
"Truly."
"Do they not tell idle stories of us in Paris, and are they any
freer than we?"
"Prejudices these, nothing more. Travellers, like me, are here to
rectify such errors. A proof that Russia is free, I can move
about with perfect liberty."
"Have you seen the emperor?"
"Yesterday evening at the Théâtre Michel."
"Is he not a remarkably handsome man?"
"The handsomest I have ever seen."
{693}
"Sir, your permit must be ready by this time. Will you go and
receive it, and prolong your stay in Russia as long as you
please. You will see that you have judged our country correctly."
Notwithstanding all his efforts to conciliate European opinion,
the Emperor Nicholas was not rewarded in his travels by any
praise whatever. Once out of his own country, he quickly
discovered he had deceived no one, and his despotism was in
Europe the object of universal unpopularity.
From the Holy Father he received his first lesson: a lesson,
however, both given and received with dignity.
It was well known that he had changed hundreds of Catholic into
Greek churches, in all the western provinces of Russia and
Poland.
Curious to visit Rome, he asked permission of Gregory XVI. to
enter the holy city. The pope asked, in return, by what
ceremonial he wished to be received.
"As a Catholic sovereign," replied the emperor.
Lodged at the Quirinal, he went the next day in Eastern style
with a guard of Cossacks to visit the holy father, who received
him standing at the head of the staircase of the Vatican.
Nicholas knelt to receive the benediction of the venerable
pontiff, who, after having given it to him, without being at all
impressed with his Attila-like costume, said to him with a
serenity almost angelic:
"My son, you persecute my sheep."
"I?" cried Nicholas in a disconcerted tone.
"Yes, you, my son. You are powerful. Do not use your strength to
oppress the weak."
"Holy father, I have been slandered."
The conversation continued some time in the cabinet of the pope,
and the emperor remained, during his stay in Rome, on terms of
the most affectionate respect with Gregory XVI. He afterward sent
him a magnificent altar of malachite, that may be admired at the
church of St. Paul, outside the walls. An inscription, dictated
by Nicholas to St. Peter at Rome, recalls his visit to the
Capital of Christianity:--"Nicholas came here to pray to God for
his mother, Russia."
In London, as is well known, he was received with great popular
demonstrations. We need not relate here the tumultuous scenes to
which he had to submit, and how his carriage was more than once
covered with mud.
With a brutality unworthy a sovereign, and at times a delicacy
astonishing in a man of such a character, the most contrary
qualities and defects reproduced themselves in a hundred acts of
his life. For instance, one night I saw him fisticuff a poor Jew
in the face, and accompany the act with the most sonorous oaths,
because in giving light to the postilions of the Berlin imperial,
he had awakened him with a start, by throwing the light of his
lantern into his face. Again, at Warsaw, where he went to receive
the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria, he took Francis
Joseph into his arms to force him to occupy the seat of honor in
his carriage, which the young emperor was unwilling to accept: a
courtesy, according to the Cossack, that would have exactly
suited him.
Yet this man, so rude and so haughty, evidenced occasionally
great delicacy of sentiment. One very cold day, returning from a
review, where he had been almost frozen, he stopped at the house
of a lady, whom he knew to be in ill health, and met the doctor
in the waiting-room.
"How is Madame ----?" said he to the latter.
{694}
"Very poorly, sire. The cold of St. Petersburg is killing her."
"Ah! the cold is injuring her? Feel my hands. They are frozen,
are they not?"
"Very cold, sire."
"Well, I will wait here until they are warm; I would not for the
world increase her malady."
And the emperor waited in this sort of an antechamber, talking to
the doctor, until his hands resumed their natural warmth.
So this character, which, at first sight, appeared all of a
piece, was composed of contrasts the most dissonant. Nicholas
bared his breast to the revolted regiments in 1826 and recalled
them to duty by this single attitude; at the time of the cholera,
alone amid a populace mad with terror and exasperated by famine,
a gesture from him, a single word, could constrain the delirious
multitude and throw them on their knees before him; in cases of
fire, so frequent at St. Petersburg, and under the burning beams,
a hundred times he uselessly risked his life; yet on another
occasion, when the safety of an empire depended upon him, he
resolutely refused to repair to Sebastopol.
His long reign was fatal to Russia. For nearly thirty years it
accomplished nothing. During the lifetime of Nicholas, the
wheel-work of the machine moved regularly under his powerful
hand, the cogs upon which he impressed the movement never being
completely paralyzed. But the evil, being hidden, was not the
less deep or real. Under this show of factitious strength, the
downfall was already visible, and the approaching disaster keenly
felt. The army, upon which Nicholas concentrated all his
attention and intelligence--the army, his strength, his hope, his
pride, began to be disorganized under the influence of an
administration without control. Alone, the will of the czar
sustained the edifice, and his pride sustained his will. And this
word pride embodies to my mind the character, the conduct, the
whole politics, of the Emperor Nicholas. His ruling passion was
pride, a pride incommensurable, a pride such as neither Louis
XIV., Henry VIII., nor Solyman the Magnificent--these three
crowned representatives of capital sins--could ever equal. The
idea of humiliation would leave him smiling, so entirely he
believed such an event impossible. It may be truly said that he
never submitted, for the first repulse he had to suffer killed
him.
This pride in him passed all bounds, and touched sometimes on the
aberrations of a Schahabaham. One day, one of his aides-de-camp
came to him very much excited, and throwing himself at his feet:
"Sire!" cried he, "I beg your majesty to grant me a favor."
"Speak."
"Permit me to fight a duel."
"Never!" replied the emperor.
Nicholas had a horror of duels. In his eyes, all blood was
criminally shed in Russia that was not for the country or in his
service, and he punished the guilty in this respect most
severely.
"Sire, I am dishonored. It is necessary for me to fight."
"What do you say?"
"I have been struck in the face."
"Ah!" said the emperor, contracting his brows. "But no, I cannot
permit a duel. You must come with me."
And taking him by the arm, he conducted him before the assembled
court, and, in presence of all, kissed him on the offended cheek.
{695}
"Go, now," said he, "and resume your tranquillity; the affront is
washed out."
During the war of the Crimea, and especially in the first part of
it, Nicholas, very restless, waited every day for news from the
south. Each one tried his best to conceal the bad turn affairs
had taken; but after the battle of the Alma, the truth had to be
confessed. A courier, Colonel A., was despatched to him in great
haste. He received orders to repair immediately to the czar.
"Well! what news?" said the emperor to him brusquely, giving him
scarcely time to enter or fulfil the accustomed formalities of
etiquette.
"The battle has been fought, sire."
"Finish!" said the emperor, with an emotion that caused his
usually firm voice to tremble.
"Alas!--"
"You say--?"
"Fortune has failed us."
"We are--?"
"We are beaten, sire."
The emperor arose from his seat.
"It is impossible," said he in a quick manner.
"The Russian army has taken flight."
"You lie!" cried Nicholas with a frightful explosion of anger.
"Sire--"
"You lie. My soldiers never fly."
"Sire, I have told you the truth."
"You lie, I say, you lie."
And his eye beaming with anger, his lips contracted, his hand
raised, he threw himself on the military courier and tore off his
epaulettes.
"Go! You are now only a soldier."
The unhappy colonel, pale with shame, smothering his rage and the
tears that rose to his eyes, went out, his soul in despair. But
hardly had he reached the staircase, when he heard the voice of
the emperor begging his return. He retraced his steps, and
Nicholas, running to meet him, embraced him ardently, begged
pardon for his brutality, and offered for his acceptance the post
of aide-de-camp.
"May your majesty hold me excused," replied the poor officer;
"for, in taking off" my epaulettes, you have deprived me of my
honor. I leave them in your hands with my dismissal."
"You are right," replied Nicholas. "It is not in my power to
repair the offence of my hasty action. Ah! we are both unhappy,
and I am vanquished. Yes, completely vanquished!"
And, walking up and down with an agitated step, the subdued lion
in his cage, his heart bleeding with the wound given his pride:
"Go, leave my empire," continued he, turning to Colonel A----,
"and pardon me. We must not meet again. Both of us would suffer
too much in each other's presence."
The mortification attending the first reverses of his army before
Sebastopol was a mortal blow to his health; yet, had not his
stubborn pride brought about these reverses? Self-deceived
thoroughly as to the real condition of his empire, the disastrous
news of the Alma came upon him like a thunder-bolt. Some honest
men, sent to the different stations, signalized the imperfect
state of the fortifications of Sebastopol, the disorganization of
the army, the deplorable condition of the roads. They informed
the emperor that the soldiers, in their march toward the south,
were dying by thousands for want of sufficient nourishment and
necessary clothing. Thanks to the bad quality of the grass and
hay, whole regiments were in a few days entirely dismounted. And
now the alarming news spread with rapidity.
{696}
Each day brought fresh tidings of new embarrassments, new checks,
and new misfortunes. Nicholas at last opened his eyes. He saw the
colossus, with its feet of clay, tremble to its base; he felt his
power crumble in his hands, his prestige fade and disappear. From
the windows of Peterhoff, his loved summer residence, he could
follow with his telescope the evolutions of the allied fleet.
Turkey itself, hitherto so despicable in his eyes, was
transformed into a redoubtable enemy. Now he began to think of
the ravages that continued theft had made in his empire, the
disorders in the finances, the corruption of public morals, and
every one was doomed to punishments. By his order, judgments,
condemnations, banishment to Caucasia and Siberia, were daily
multiplied. It was too late; the gangrene had reached the wound.
Tears of grief and rage flowed with the consciousness of his
impotence. He opened his eyes to the fall of Russia with each
victorious flash of the allied cannons; and the edifice of terror
that had taken him twenty years to build, he saw crumbling, stone
by stone, and felt that the military quackery with which he had
intimidated Europe had frightened no one. With the mocking pride
of Titan, he bled at every pore. Repeated blows of this kind
ended by undermining his constitution, till now so vigorous.
Little by little he sank, bent his haughty head, and tottered,
with slow and saddened step, to the grave.
It was February. Under a gray and cold sky, a penetrating,
driving snow enveloped St. Petersburg in a whitened dust. The
streets, the houses, the beards and furred great-coats of the
passers-by, all were white. The great city resembled a giant
asleep under the snow. An inexpressible sadness took possession
of you, weighed down your whole being, and froze your very heart.
You seemed to be at the pole itself.
On this day the emperor, an early riser as usual, came out of his
bedroom and entered his cabinet, where were already assembled his
general aide-de-camp, his other aides, the chamberlain, and
gentlemen of the bed-chamber. Perceiving his general
aide-de-camp, he called to him, and said:
"I am suffering. Send for Mandt."
"I will go myself, sire."
"Yes. I have a grand review at the end of the week, and must be
there."
Mandt, his attendant physician, Prussian by birth, a man of
science, and an excellent practitioner, hastened to the emperor,
who, after having given his orders, had returned to his
apartments.
"It will be nothing, gentlemen," said the doctor to us on leaving
the imperial chamber; "only the emperor should abstain from going
out, as the least imprudence may aggravate a malady which at
present portends nothing serious."
The emperor remained two days in his room, and there was a
sensible improvement in his condition. But his wasted figure, his
dull eyes, and waxy color betrayed the existence of a hidden
malady. The third day, the courier from the south brought him
news--sad news, certainly, for it had been a long time since his
couriers had anything happy to tell him. The next day was
terribly cold, icy, heavy, impregnated with the boreal fog; yet
this was the day of the review at which the czar wished to
assist.
He threw a small military cloak over his uniform, and at the
appointed hour left his cabinet, to mount his horse.
Mandt was waiting for him in the antechamber.
{697}
"Sire!" said the doctor to him in a supplicating voice, and
trying to retain him.
"Oh! it is you, doctor. I am better, thank you."
"Yes, sire, better, but not well yet."
"Oh! indisposed merely,"
"No, sire, a serious malady. I come to beg your majesty not to go
out."
"Impossible!"
"Sire, for pity's sake--"
"You are crazy, Mandt."
"Sire, you had better be resigned."
"You believe there is danger?"
"It is my duty to warn you of it."
"Well, Mandt, if you have done your duty in warning me, I will do
mine by going out."
And the emperor, without listening to another word, pursued his
way.
Mandt, stupefied for a moment, ran after him, and rejoined him in
the court-yard, at the moment he mounted his horse.
"Sire," cried he, resuming his supplications, "deign to listen to
me--"
"I have said it, Mandt. I thank you, but to insist would be
useless."
"Sire, in this condition!"
"Well?"
"It is your death, sire."
"And then?"
"It is suicide."
"And who has permitted you, Mandt, to scrutinize my thoughts? Go,
and insist no longer. I order you."
After the review, he returned to the palace, pale, trembling, icy
cold.
"I am threatened with my malady," said he to his aide-de-camp.
"Shall I send for Mandt?"
"Useless; he has already warned me."
"He warned your majesty?"
"Yes; that I would kill myself."
The aide-de-camp turned pale.
"Ah sire! what do I hear?"
"To die, is it not the best thing I can do? Farewell, my old
friend, I have need of rest. Let no one disturb me."
All night the imperial family, who had been apprised of his
condition, the doctors, Mandt and Rasel, united in the anteroom,
waited with anxiety--not daring to knock at the door of the
emperor--for the moment he might call to them. Obedience, in this
court, was so blindly servile that it imposed silence on the most
natural and imperious sentiments. Toward two o'clock something
was heard between a groan and a sigh. Mandt thought he might
knock gently at the door of the imperial chamber.
"I have forbidden any one to disturb me," murmured the emperor,
in a voice still feeble, but which retained an accent of
authority.
That night was spent in mortal inquietude, in inexpressible
anguish, and not until the next morning was the doctor informed
by the valet de chambre that his august patient would like to see
him.
"Well, Mandt, you were right. I believe I am a dead man."
These were the first words of Nicholas.
"O sire! I spoke as I did to dissuade your majesty from so great
an imprudence."
"Let us see: look me in the face and tell me if there is yet
hope."
"I believe so, sire."
"I tell you I am a dead man. I feel it. Go on, make use of your
trade. Sound my lungs; I know that science will confirm my
conviction."
Mandt, having accomplished the orders of the emperor, shook his
head.
"Well?"
"Sire--"
"You are troubled, Mandt; your hand trembles. See, I have more
courage than you. Come, let us have the sentence, and quickly,
for I have to settle my affairs in this world, and I have a great
many of them."
{698}
"Your majesty troubles yourself unnecessarily. No case is ever
desperate, and with the grace of God--"
Nicholas gazed at his doctor fixedly in the eyes.
The latter looked down confusedly.
"You know, Mandt, I cannot be deceived easily. Let us have the
truth now, and only the truth. Do you think that Nicholas does
not know how to die?"
"Sire--"
"Well?"
"In forty-eight hours you will be dead or saved."
"Thank you, Mandt," said Nicholas in a voice of deep emotion.
"Now good-by, and send me my family."
The doctor prepared to leave the room.
"Mandt!" called Nicholas, on seeing him direct his steps toward
the door.
"Sire."
"Let us embrace each other, my good old friend. We will perhaps
never meet again on earth. You have been an honest and faithful
servant. I will recommend you to my son."
"What do you say, sire? Never see you again! I sincerely hope the
contrary, and that my attentions--"
"Your attentions will be superfluous. There will be time for me
only to see my ministers and my priest, and make my peace with
God. Human science can do no more for me, and, indeed, I do not
wish to try it."
"And now at the close, sire, I revolt," cried the doctor. "I have
no right, and my duty forbids my thus abandoning you."
"Mandt, do you answer for my cure?"
The doctor hung his head, and could not reply.
"Farewell, then, my friend."
"Sire, if not, then, as your physician, permit me as a devoted
servant to see you again. Who can tell? God is great! and for the
destiny of the Russia which he protects, may work a miracle."
"And because I know that God protects Russia, so neither do I
wish nor hope for my restoration to health. Mandt, let my family
come now. I assure you the time will soon fail me."
Mandt wept. With tears in his eyes, he went out and related to
the courtiers his conversation with the emperor. Strange
contradiction! This man, whom I have tried to depict as so severe
and haughty, was adored by all who approached him. Courtiers,
soldiers, servants, burst into tears. Lost in the crowd with
them, I mingled my complaints and prayers.
Then, after the empress and the grand hereditary duke, the
imperial family, all in tears, entered the apartment of the
emperor. The door closed upon them, and all that passed there,
all that was said in this supreme grief, only God knew. Mandt,
however, with a voice choked with emotion, continued his recital,
and we listened to him with the keenest attention. How and by
what indiscretion the news he had just given us was spread in the
city, I cannot tell; but already, before the death of the czar,
it was believed at St. Petersburg that Mandt had helped to poison
him. From this to the pretended act itself there was but one step
toward belief, and this was soon overcome; so the exasperation,
true or false, against the honest doctor, knew no bounds, and
they would have torn him to pieces in the streets. The name of
Nicholas still inspired such terror that every one endeavored to
give some public demonstration of grief as a claim on his
benevolence in the event of his returning to life. Yet after his
death these manifestations changed their character, and the
contrast between such marks of affection and the epithets with
which they loaded his memory when they were certain he really
ceased to exist, was a lesson for kings to contemplate.
{699}
For the time, though, the anger of the people against the poor
doctor was so blindly furious, that it is related of a thief,
seized by the collar by a passerby, from whom he had tried to
steal his watch, that in order to escape, he raised the cry,
"Hist! hist! it's Mandt, comrades, it's Mandt!"
The interview between the emperor and his family lasted three
hours, three long hours, during which expectation for us was
changed into real anguish. By degrees retired, one by one, the
children, the grand-children, and his brothers. The grand
hereditary duke came out last, bathed in tears. An hour flew by,
and not a sound was heard from the imperial chamber; no one dared
enter. Mandt listened attentively, holding his breath. Suddenly a
loud noise was heard in the corridors; a courier from Sebastopol
arrived. As the whole court knew the impatience with which the
emperor awaited the news from the Crimea, the aide-de-camp
general on duty, thinking to please the emperor, knocked at his
door.
"Do they still want me?" murmured the emperor; "tell them to let
me rest."
"Sire, a courier from Sebastopol."
"Let him address himself to my son; this concerns me no longer."
Soon the primate, followed by the clergy, arrived to offer the
last consolations of the church. Then the ministers were
presented, the Count Orlof at their head. This lasted during the
night. At ten o'clock, the emperor asked for the officers of his
household. His face already bore the impress of death; a
cadaverous paleness betrayed the progress of the decomposition
that preceded the fatal moment; lying on his camp-bed, he
addressed us some farewell words, which the first strokes of
death-rattle interrupted, and took leave of us with a waive of
his hand. None of us slept that night in the Winter Palace, none
of us after that hour ever saw the emperor alive.
The next day, the 18th of February, at mid-day, the grand
chamberlain of the palace was sent for by the physicians to the
imperial bed. At half-past twelve o'clock, returning among us,
"Nicholas Paulowitch is dead," said he.
We went out silent and sad.
The next day, on the walls of St. Petersburg could be read this
inscription: "Russia, grateful to the Emperor Nicholas I. for the
18th of February, 1855."
--------
{700}
Translated From The French
Of The Pere Landriot--
Addressed To Women Of The World.
Household Duties.
"She giveth meat to her household,
and a portion to her maidens.'
We finished the question, vulgar perhaps in one sense, yet so
important in many others, of sleep: [Footnote 211] a benefit of
divine Providence accorded us each day to repair our strength,
renew our life, and provide for the weakness and precipitation of
man; a time for repose and sage counsel.
[Footnote 211: See "_Early Rising_" in _The Catholic
World_ for September, 1867.]
Sleep is a precious dictate, a solitary bath for body and soul,
and a prudent counsellor and daily preacher to remind us of our
approaching and last departure. But like all good things, sleep
is subject to abuse, and then it produces effects entirely
contrary to the will of the Creator: weakening, stupefying, and
dulling the faculties, it becomes for humanity a living
sepulchre. If the abuse of sleep coincides with the quality, that
is to say, if the hours by nature destined to it are considerably
changed--night turned into day, and day into night--the
constitution is assuredly ruined, and an infirm old age prepared,
a never-ceasing convalescence. Parties and midnight revels have
killed more women than the most exaggerated mortifications and if
religion commanded the sacrifice the world requires of its
votaries, the recriminations against it would be unending. In a
hygienic light, physical as well as moral, it is better to retire
and rise early. Everything gains by it--health, business, and the
facility and excellence of prayer. But we must not dissimulate;
and the struggle with the pillow is, in its very sweetness, one
of the most violent that can exercise man's courage; and to break
these _chains of bed_, it is necessary to exercise an almost
superhuman energy. The enemy is deceitful, dangerous in his
caresses, and generally ends in persuading us; we think he is
right; and, after all, it is a cruelty to martyrize ourselves. I
have not wished, ladies, to conceal the difficulties; but I have
pleaded my cause, which is also yours. To your wisdom and reason
I submit it, and I trust to succeed at such a tribunal. If you
wish to appeal, and present the cause before the tribunal of
Idleness, listening to its numerous lawyers, in advance I may
tell you the first judgment will be suspended. Well, I will
consent to lose, but on one condition--that you will insert this
explanation in the judgment: that the case was gained before
Judge Reason; but that, in the supreme court of Indolence,
Idleness, surrounded by his lawyers, revoked the decision.
Now for the end of our text: "_The strong woman giveth meat to
her household, and a portion to her maidens_."
Formerly, ladies, when families and societies were truly
Christian, the domestics, according to the etymology of the word,
were really a part of the house; for _domestic_ comes from
the Latin word _domus_, which signifies house. In those
days, a family formed a body; the father and mother were head,
and the domestics themselves had their place in the organization
of the family; they were only subordinate members, but they were
a part of the body.
{701}
Therefore, they always lived in the house, passed their lives
there; and when they were no longer able to work, they were cared
for with paternal and filial affection; and when the hour of
death came to them by length of time, they had fallen into decay
as a branch dying on its trunk. The relations of benevolence and
Christian charity united masters to servants; and while the
latter accepted the place of inferiority, they felt themselves
loved, and loving in return, a tie was formed stronger than
massive gold--the tie of love. Saint Augustine speaks to us with
much feeling of the nurse who cared for his mother's infancy, and
who had even carried on her back the father of St. Monica, as
young girls then carried little children: "_Sicut dorso
grandiuscularum puellarum parvuli portari solent._" [Footnote
212]
[Footnote 212: _Confessions_, i. 9, c 8.]
"This remembrance," continued St. Augustine, "her old age, the
excellence of her manners, assured her in a Christian house the
veneration of her masters, who had committed to her the care of
their daughters; her zeal responded to their confidence; and
while she exercised a saintly firmness to correct them--to
instruct, she was always guided by an admirable prudence."
Nowadays, ladies, things have changed. Such examples are rare;
but without doubt, there are still honorable exceptions--servants
who love their masters, and who make part of the family as true
children of the house, serving with ease and gentleness, because
they are guided principally by affection, and bearing the faults
of their masters, who, in return, are patient with them, until
household affairs glide on with a smoothness which, though
sometimes very imperfect, is, after all, a small evil. Yes, we do
still find Christian families where domesticity is thus
understood; but alas! they become rarer every day! In our time,
owing to a spirit of pride, independence and irreligion are
spreading everywhere; good servants are hard to find, and perhaps
also good masters; and as two fireplaces placed opposite each
other are mutually overheated, so the bad qualities of the
domestics increase those of the masters, and _vice versâ_.
Servants have exaggerated pretensions; they will not bear the
least reproof; everything wounds them; and on the other side,
masters do not command in a Christian spirit. Thus, everywhere is
heard a general concert of complaint and recrimination; masters
accuse their servants, servants do as little as possible for
their masters; and certain houses become like omnibuses, where
the servants enter only to get out again at their convenience.
I have told you, ladies, that, if I had to preach to your
husbands, I could add a kind of counterpart, not adverse to your
interests, but to complete my instructions; but, addressing
myself to you, my words must be limited to your duties. I would
add here, also, that, if I had to preach to your servants, I
would be obliged to give them advice very useful for your
household organization; but they are absent; my instruction is to
you; so I must leave in shadow all their shortcomings.
It appears to me your duties to them will be well accomplished if
you enter into the spirit of this text: "She riseth while it is
yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her
maidens." Look at the sun; it rises on the horizon, and, in
shedding its beams, seems to distribute work to every creature,
and, by way of recompense, prepares their nourishment in advance.
Is it not he who, while lighting the world, invites the artisan
to his shop, the laborer to his field, and the pilot to leave his
port?
{702}
Is it not he who prepares the germs in the bosom of the
earth--who warms them, and conducts them to that point of
maturity that the statesman waits for as impatiently as the
laborer? "Woman," says the Scripture, "should be the sun of her
household." She should lighten and warm like the planet of the
day. Her rays are emitted in indicating to each one his duties,
in distributing the work in wise and suitable proportions, and,
when all is justly ordered, superintending its execution. Then
everything goes on admirably, because brightened by the spirit of
regularity that guides the mistress of the house. Her glance,
given to all around her, projects the light; and this light is
the strongest and most insinuating of counsellors, as well as a
gracious but severe monitor. A woman who presides well over her
household need talk but little; her presence speaks for her, and
the simple conviction that she has her eyes everywhere, and that
the least detail is not unknown to her, prevents any
irregularity. But see, on the contrary, a house where the
mistress rises late, and sleeps morally the rest of the day.
Everything is left to chance; disorder introduces itself
everywhere, in heads as in business; a general pell-mell of ideas
and objects--a confusion which recalls the primitive chaos. Madam
sleeps late, the servants rise only a little earlier; during the
day, madam dreams, occupies herself with her toilet, in matinees,
and visits, and the house, given up to itself, becomes what it
may. The children are almost abandoned, and work accumulates in
the most delightful disorder.
Woman, the sun of her house, should not be satisfied to
illuminate it; she should warm it also, and with her heart.
You ought, ladies, to watch your servants, demand an account of
their proceedings in-doors and out, watch over them particularly
in their connection with your children; for too often the heart
and mind are lost by servants, and, were it permitted to reveal
all the human heart can tell us in this respect, you would be
seriously alarmed.
About twenty years ago, I had charge of a seminary. One day I
received a visit from a very indignant father, who told me with
bitterness that his child had been corrupted in our
establishment. I knew to the contrary; but I had no defence to
offer, so in silence I bore an unmerited reproach. Some time
afterward I had permission to speak, when I was able to prove to
him that it was in his own house that his child was lost, by
keeping company with a servant.
Watch, then, your children, ladies, by watching your servants.
Watch their going out and coming in, their bearing and their
company; watch their words and actions. But, I beg of you, watch
with kindness, for the light of your supervision should be warm
with Christian affection. Love your servants, and always remember
that they are human--the image of God, and that they have been
bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. As much as possible, speak
to them with kindness, and, if an occasional impatience escapes
you, endeavor to repair it by sincere benevolence. That your
watchfulness may not engender suspicion and restlessness, do not
appear a spy on their actions. We often make people good by
believing them so, and bad by accusing them of qualities they do
not possess; or, at least, we freeze their hearts, and
permanently harden them. Avoid everything which appears like
ill-humor, meanness, or caprice.
{703}
To-day madam is in a good humor, and all goes well; the servants
may be as merry, and make as many mistakes as they please; nobody
notices them. To-morrow the moon reddens in its first quarter:
woe to the inhabitants of the house! woe to the servants! Madam's
coffee is cold, yet it bears its ordinary temperature; the soup
is too salty, yet the usual quantity was put into it. The room is
full of smoke, it was the servant's fault, and yet the poor
creature made neither the wind nor the chimney. A racket in the
kitchen; madam's voice is heard from the cellar to the garret--
from the court-yard to the neighboring houses. Nothing renders
authority more ridiculous than such conduct. The servants are
tired out; they lose every sentiment of affection and confidence,
because they see no regard is shown them; that they are
considered inferior beings, entitled to no respect; and that,
even on days when caprice is not predominant, they only encounter
airs of silent pride and haughtiness.
Without doubt, ladies, there is a just medium to be preserved.
Many servants are unreasonable, and take advantage of favors
accorded them; are exacting and indiscreet; they require masters
without faults, and are completely blinded to their own. "Treat
them as friends," said an ancient philosopher, "and they lack
submission; keep them at a distance, and they resent your conduct
and hate you." [Footnote 213]
[Footnote 213: Confucius, _Entr. Philos_. c. 17.]
The middle course of wisdom is therefore hard to find; but it is
so in all worldly affairs, yet it is necessary to resolve it. The
heart of a Christian woman appears to me best adapted for this
work of conciliation; she can preserve her authority by
demonstrating a wise firmness, recalling the words of Fenelon:
"The less reason you find in men, the more fear requisite to
restrain them." [Footnote 214] The strong woman must be able to
cope with such difficult minds, often so pretentious and
ridiculous in their exactions, and put them in their place when
wisdom and occasion demand it. But, in her ordinary conduct, let
her remember that she commands her brethren, for whom our Lord
died; that love and gentleness are the best, the most Christian
roads to persuasion, and that severity should always be reserved
for circumstances where reason and charity fail.
[Footnote 214: _De l'Education des Filles_, c. 12.]
Fenelon says again that, in certain houses, "servants are
considered no better than horses--of natures like theirs--human
beasts of burden for their masters." [Footnote 215] Nothing can
be more opposed to sentiments of faith and reason; servants are
brothers, to be loved and treated as such; they owe you their
service and fidelity, and if they fail, recall them to duty
prudently, with a charitable compassion and firmness that does
not exclude affection. A single word will often dispel a cloud
and dissipate increasing shadows, and give you, in return, the
deep and solid friendship of your servants. Is this not far
better than forced relations, coldness and constraint that freeze
the heart and poison innumerable lives? The fable itself teaches
us a lesson in telling us that the friendship of the ant is not
to be despised.
[Footnote 215: _Ibid_.]
"The strong woman giveth meat to her household, and a portion to
her maidens." The spirit of God neglects no detail, because in
life everything is important. Let your servants work; nothing is
better for them; but do not traffic with either their food or
duties.
{704}
Treat them a little like the children of the house; you will not
only interest your charity, but your service will gain by it. Do
not calculate with an avaricious hand what may do them good and
alleviate their lot. You will gain on one side what you lose on
the other; and besides, is not the true affection of a devoted
heart worth more than a piece of gold? It is not only food and
material comforts you must assure your servants. How I love to
see the Christian woman enlarge her maternal heart and reserve in
it not only a place for her children, but for all the people of
her household! Yes, she must have a mother's affection for all,
and let the least one understand that he has part in the warmth
of her soul and the fireside of her heart. Thus she realizes the
comparison that I always love to repeat, because she is truly
great in her splendor and simplicity, and, in proportion as she
is examined, new aspects are discovered; then the strong woman is
the sun of her household: _sicut sol oriens_.
The planet of day sheds its light on the clouds, the high
mountains, and the gilded palaces, but he never omits the little
valley flower or the blade of grass that claims his warmth. He
does not give it so abundantly as to the oaks of the mountain,
but it is always the same light, and suffices for their life and
happiness. Thus the strong woman pours her intimate affections on
her family and her true friends, but her soul has still a reserve
for her servants. She gives them less than her husband and
children, but it is all from the same source, and bears with it
for them the same unction.
After such a distribution of work, of care and affection, do not
expect to find no faults in your servants. To these servants, I
would say: Bear with the faults of your masters and mistresses;
the best of them are imperfect, and for you the true way to
modify their defects is to reply only by patience and an
immovable docility; sweetness and patience do much more than
anger and violent recrimination, as various elastic substances
are, we know, among the best agents to arrest the impetuous
movement of the cannon-ball. To you, ladies, I say: Bear with the
faults of your servants, as they are never wanting. With two such
sureties, with the certainty of patience on the part of the
servants, and in return on that of the masters, you will be sure
to pacifically organize the interior of your households. If the
tether of patience is short at one end, you can stretch it at the
other; and such is the admirable teaching of Christianity,
wherever the relations of mankind exist, it establishes
reciprocal duties on so firm and solid a foundation that, if one
is lacking, the other becomes more strong to resist it. Thus it
preaches to the husband love and respect; to the wife, love,
respect, and submission; to masters, benevolence; to servants,
deference and patience; but in such a way that, if the first are
faithless to their duties, the fidelity of the second will more
than repair the defect. Nature evidently holds another language;
if our neighbor fails in his obligations, we believe ourselves
freed from ours, and this spirit of free exchange in point of bad
proceedings is not, perhaps, one of the least causes of our
perturbations in the family and society.
"There are some faults," says Fenelon, "that enter into the
marrow of the bones." "Then," said the Archbishop of Cambrai, "if
you wish to correct such in your servant, he is not wrong to
resist correction, but you are foolish to undertake it."
[Footnote 216]
[Footnote 216: _Lettres Spirituelles_,
193, t. 1. p. 554, éd. Didiot.]
{705}
You have a horse that is one-eyed, you would wish him to see
clearly with both eyes; it is you who are entirely blind. Alas
ladies! in this world we are all slightly one-eyed, therefore we
must bear with each other.
You have a servant who does not always display the judgment you
require of him; tell me, why do you employ him in any delicate
business? He has made a blunder, but were you not the first cause
of it? You have another who never sees more than a few steps
before him; you cannot expect better of him, he is short-sighted.
You are angry because he cannot see leagues off; you are the
unreasonable one. Another one is lame, and him you would have
walk straight; do you not see that you exact the impossible? I
tell you, ladies, that poor human nature is full of weaknesses,
and having once perceived certain infirmities in your neighbor,
keep them in remembrance, and don't demand a reform in what
cannot be corrected. "Bear ye one another's burdens," said Saint
Paul; it is the rule of true wisdom, of peace and domestic
happiness: "_Alter alterius onera portate_." [Footnote 217]
[Footnote 217: Galat. vi. 2.]
But, you say, he is thick-headed, I cannot put up with him. Alas!
thick heads we meet with everywhere. Have you not yourselves
sometimes the same complaint? Besides, don't be so hard to please
in servants; you may end by finding none at all. You have one who
pouts, another who is violent; you may have one impertinent,
another pettish; choose between them. The best course, believe
me, is to put up with the evil, provided it is bearable. This
world and all it contains is only one grand misery; accept your
share of it; murmuring and changing those who surround you will
do no good.
Well and good, I hear you say. You have just spoken of those who
keep many servants; I am more modest; a nurse, or at most a cook,
constitutes my household. In this case, if you will permit me, I
will find you an establishment where the retainers are numerous
and very difficult to govern. The fathers of the church teach us
that the human soul, in its organization, is a house complete in
itself. We find in it intelligence, the soul properly called, the
imagination, and the senses. Intelligence is the husband, the
soul the wife; and imagination, with its numerous caprices,
represents an establishment of troublesome servants; while the
five senses may portray five grooms at the carriage-ways opening
into the street. To listen to such a world as this, and make it
agree, is no easy matter. Intelligence wishes one thing, the soul
another; the husband and wife are just ready to quarrel. Then
imagination comes in with its thousand phantoms, its fantastical
noises, its clatter by night and by day: can you not believe your
household in good condition to exercise your patience? Then the
porters of this castle, the eyes, the ears, without considering
the nerves--a sort of busy battalion which makes more noise than
all the rest. What an interior! what confusion! what a tower of
Babel! Ladies, I will repeat here the words of Scripture: "Rise
early to give work and a portion" to this establishment of
servants; put them in order from the first dawn of day. Clear up
your imagination; it needs more time and care than a disordered
head of hair. See how your ideas fly hither and thither; how the
mad one of this dwelling sings and grows impertinent; how she
reasons, how she scolds, and how absurd she is. Intelligence
would restore her reason; useless to try! time lost!
{706}
She cries louder, and becomes longer and more violently
nonsensical. She makes so much noise that it could be called,
according to Saint Gregory, the multiplied voices of several
servants, whose tongues are perfectly sharpened: "_Cogitationum
se clamor, velut garrula ancillarum turba, multiplicat_."
[Footnote 218]
[Footnote 218: _Moral_, i. I, c. 30, t 1. p. 546, éd,
Migné.]
Here is a beautiful household to organize every morning. You
complain of having no work for it. I have just found you some.
Bring peace into the midst of this distraction; substitute
harmony for confusion, and so adjust this harmony that it shall
last undisturbed until evening, and I will give you a brevet, a
certificate, as an excellent mistress of a house. Formerly, the
poor human head was not subject to such distraction; and why?
Because it was subject to God; and from thence all the powers of
man, mind, heart, will, imagination, senses, all were submitted
to the head of the house, because this head himself was obedient
to God. Since the primitive revolt, all has been upset in man;
and our poor nature has become like a house where all dispute,
husband, wife, and servants, that is, mind, heart, imagination.
There is a simple way to re-establish peace, not quite complete,
but at least tolerable, for this would bring back God into the
house: let God be head, the commander of all; let the thought of
him preside everywhere, and soon order will be entirely restored.
In the morning especially, I know nothing that can pacify us
interiorly and calm all around us better than a look toward
heaven, a thought of love directed on high, and bringing, in
return, the peace of God. In the morning, if the head aches, rest
it at the foot of the cross; if the heart suffers, place it on
the heart of our Lord; if the imagination is feverish, calm it
with a drop of the blood of Jesus Christ; and if the whole being
is in ebullition, ask God to send it refreshment in the dew of
heaven! Be faithful to these recommendations, ladies, and you may
repose the length of the day under your vine and your fig-tree;
that is, you will enjoy the intimate happiness that God has
promised his friends, and which is one of the sweetest
recompenses of virtue: "_Et sedit unusquisque sub vite suâ, et
ficulneâ, suâ, et non erat qui eos terreret_." [Footnote 219]
[Footnote 219: I Mach. xiv. 12.]
-------------
{707}
A Sister's Story. [Footnote 220]
[Footnote 220: _A Sister's Story_. By Mrs. Augustus
Craven. Translated from the French by Emily Bowles. 8vo, pp.
539. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.]
We do not usually go to France for pictures of domestic life;
yet, when we do find a cultivated French family penetrated with
the home instincts which are so much more common on the opposite
side of the channel, and lavishing upon the members of their own
household an affection elevated and sanctified by true piety,
there is a charm about the scene which is apt to be wanting in
our own more commonplace experience. The charm, to be sure, often
asserts itself too boldly; for the Frenchman has a keen relish
for sentiment, and in nine cases out of ten the rapture with
which love fills his heart is only half of it inspired by the
object of his passion, while the other half is an unconscious
admiration of the delicacy of his own feelings. He makes a
romance out of love for his father and mother, and his affection
for his sweetheart is an extravagant poem. Still, unless you
analyze it too closely, which there is no need of your doing at
all, the poem is almost always beautiful and delicate, and
sometimes possesses the true poetical aroma. _A Sister's
Story_ is a romance of love, trial, happiness, and death.
Nobody but a French woman could have written it; yet the
sentiment is not what is commonly called "Frenchy," because it is
etherealized by a genuine Christian refinement, and because,
moreover, it is a true history.
The Count de la Ferronnays, who was French ambassador at St.
Petersburg in 1819, and afterward at Rome, had a large family of
children, one of whom, Pauline, married an English gentleman, and
is the author of this book. Another, Albert, is the hero. They
all loved one another with a rare and touching tenderness, and
loved God, too, with a simple and unaffected devotion. The
revolution of 1830 deprived the Count of his diplomatic
appointment, despoiled him of most of his fortune, and, as he was
a stanch adherent of the Bourbons, left him without hope of a
future career in the service of the state. The family seem,
however, to have accepted their reverses cheerfully, and to have
made little change in their way of life, except by practising a
stricter economy than they had been used to. They passed most of
their time in Italy, mingling with people of rank and
distinction, or travelling in search of health, as one or another
of them showed symptoms of approaching disease. Albert was a
young man of handsome appearance, and, we should judge, of no
mean accomplishments. He was warm-hearted, remarkably sensitive,
somewhat of a dreamer, romantic, poetical, and pure in heart. The
life of a man of society he sanctified with the piety of a
recluse. The revolution which cut short his father's public
career destroyed also the young man's prospects in life, and left
him, just entering manhood, without fixed occupation, and without
much hope of obtaining employment suitable to his rank and
tastes. This enforced idleness, coupled with the delicacy of his
constitution, already perhaps undermined by the pulmonary disease
which was so soon to carry him off, predisposed him to a
melancholy reflectiveness which, though corrected by his devout
aspirations, was nevertheless morbid.
{708}
The feminine delicacy of his nature was developed by close
intimacy with his sisters, and his religious elevation was
doubtless heightened by his frequent intercourse with
Montalembert, whose sentiments he fully shared, though he was
unable to join in his labors, with M. Rio, whom he accompanied to
various parts of Italy, with the Abbé Gerbet, and with other
distinguished Catholics of that brilliant day.
Among the acquaintances of the Count's family in Rome was the
Countess d'Alopeus, widow of the celebrated Russian
plenipotentiary at Berlin, and afterward wife of Prince
Lapoukhyn. She had a daughter, Alexandrine, a beautiful and
amiable girl, apparently, like Albert, of a pensive turn of mind,
and, though a Lutheran, (her mother being a German,) of a
strongly religious disposition. Albert fell in love with her the
first time they met, and from that time love and religion filled
up all the rest of his short life. It was but a little while
before Alexandrine learned to return the tender sentiment. The
intimacy ripened fast; but there were many difficulties in the
way of marriage, and it was only after two years, marked by
severe trials, that they were at last united in 1834. Ten days
afterward Albert burst a blood-vessel, and from that time until
his death, in 1836, their happiness was clouded by the gradual
approach of the untimely fate which they could hardly help
foreseeing. The picture which Mrs. Craven, with the help of the
journals and letters of this dear young couple, has drawn of
their courtship, their love, their few hours of happiness, and
their admirable married life, with all its consolations and all
its sufferings, is full of the most delicious beauty. It could
not have been so natural, had it not been drawn from the life; it
would not have been so exquisite, had not the artist been herself
a poet.
By the side of her husband's dying bed, Alexandrine was received
into the Catholic Church. She appears to have possessed a
stronger though not a more lovely character than Albert, and in
her widowhood its magnificence was fully developed. During the
twelve years she survived her husband, she learned to the full
the great lessons of self-abnegation, humility, and detachment
from all worldly things. Even in the first days of her sorrow,
God rewarded her with a strength which surprised all who knew
her; and this was succeeded after a while by a completeness of
resignation and a spiritual joy which were no less than
saint-like. "We shall see," writes Mrs. Craven, in beginning the
narrative of these final years, "by what efforts of resignation,
by what self-surrender, she obtained peace, and entered upon that
other period of her life which she speaks of in her story, and of
which she once said, 'Even before old age and death, faith gave
me rest!' This rest, which went beyond resignation, even beyond
peace, which Alexandrine had soon recovered; a rest which marked
the latter part of her life by a joyousness unknown to her young
days, she did not attain till she had gone through many fresh
sorrows. It was God's will that she should outlive most of those
who had proved her firmest friends and most tender comforters in
her widowhood. Almost at one time she lost her own brother, my
father, Eugénie, and Olga," (Albert's sisters, to whom she was
deeply attached.) "It may be that this was allowed that, when
after such repeated blows she was still able to say she was
happy, no one might mistake the source whence that happiness
sprang."
{709}
She gave herself up to the service of the poor and suffering, and
in order to make herself more like the objects of her charity,
whom she loved so tenderly, she used to deprive herself of all
the little every-day luxuries and conveniences which belonged to
her station, and in which naturally she took a particular
delight. She made trial of a conventual life, but that was
clearly not the path in which God wished her to walk, and her
director bade her leave it. During the latter part of her life
she resided principally with Albert's mother, in Paris. Here is a
picture of her occupations at that time:
"To meet the deficiency in her resources, she gradually
restricted her own expenditure to the narrowest compass, and
deprived herself of everything short of absolute necessaries.
One day I happened to look into her wardrobe, and was dismayed
at its scantiness. When we, any of us, made this kind of
discovery, she blushed and smiled, made the best excuses she
could find in return for our scoldings, and then went on just
the same, giving away all she possessed, and finding every day
new occasions for these acts of self-spoliation. She had, of
course, long ago sold or given away all her jewels and
trinkets, but, if she ever happened to find among her things an
article of the smallest value, it was immediately disposed of
for the benefit of the poor. For instance, one day she took out
of its frame a beautiful miniature of Princess Lapoukhyn at the
age of twenty, and sold the gold and enamel frame, defending
herself by saying that it was the only thing of value she still
possessed, and did not in the least enhance the value of her
mother's charming likeness. Two black gowns, and a barely
sufficient amount of linen, constituted her whole wardrobe, so
that she had reduced herself, as far as was possible in her
position of life, to a state of actual poverty. Her long
errands were almost always performed on foot, and at
dinner-time she came home often covered with dirt and wet to
the skin. One day, when she was visiting some Sisters of
Charity in a distant part of Paris, one of them looked at her
from head to foot, and then begged an alms for a poor woman
much in need of a pair of shoes. Alexandrine instantly produced
her purse and gave the required amount, with which the sister
went away, and in a quarter of an hour returned, laughing, and
bringing with her a pair of shoes, which she insisted on Madame
Albert's putting on instead of those she was wearing, which
were certainly in the worst possible condition. On her return
from these distant excursions, she usually put on her evening
dress and came down to Madame de Mun's drawing-room, where she
found my mother, who also had often been engaged in similar
charitable duties. During that winter I often joined this
little circle, now so thinned by death, and so soon to break up
altogether. For one brief moment I would fain pause and look
back in thought to that well-remembered room and its long
table, at which my mother and Madame de Mun were wont to sit,
with Eugénie's children playing at their feet; and at the place
near the lamp, where Alexandrine was to be seen every evening,
with her head bending over her work; her brown hair divided
into two long plaits, a way of wearing it which particularly
became her, though it was certainly not chosen on that account.
She did not, however, profess to be free from all thought about
her appearance; on the contrary, she was always accusing
herself of still caring for admiration; and when once she heard
that somebody who had accidentally spoken to her had said she
was pretty, she exclaimed with half-jesting indignation: 'I
really believe that, if I were in my last agony, that would
please me still!' Very pretty certainly she looked on those
evenings, in her simple black dress; always calm and serene,
and brightening up whenever the great interests and objects of
life were the subjects of conversation. Otherwise she remained
silent, occupying herself with her embroidery, or else, taking
her little book of extracts, so full of beautiful thoughts,
from her pocket, she read them over and added new ones from her
favorite books.
......
"Time never hung heavy on Alexandrine's hands. After such
trials and sufferings, she could say as Madame Swetchine did:
'that life was lovely and happy; and ever, as it went on,
fairer, happier, and more interesting.' The melancholy which
was natural to her character in youth, and which the radiant
happiness that for a moment filled up her life had not been
able to overcome--that melancholy which was the sign perhaps of
some kind of softness of soul, and which so many deaths and
such floods of tears could naturally have increased--had been
completely put down and overcome by the love of God and the
poor.
{710}
One day as I saw her moving about her room which she had made
so bare, with an air of the greatest gayety, we both of us
suddenly recalled the terrible days of the past, when her grief
had been full of gloom, and then she said, what was very
striking to any one who knew how deep was her unutterable love
to the very last, 'Yes, that is all true; those were cruel and
dreadful days; but now, by God's grace, _I mourn for my
Albert gayly_.'"
Subsequently she was admitted, as a lodger, to the convent of St.
Thomas of Villanova, in Paris, and there she died with the
peacefulness and holy joy which she had merited by her life. By
what austerities she had prepared for and probably hastened her
end, we may judge from this incident:
"One morning at Mass in the convent chapel, a lady happened to
hear her cough, and noticing her pale looks and poor apparel,
she went to one of the sisters, and told her that there was a
lady in the church who was probably too poor to provide herself
with necessaries, and that she should be very happy to supply
her with milk daily, if she had not the means to purchase it.
This kind soul was quite ashamed when the sister told her the
poor lady was Madame Albert de la Ferronnays; but Alexandrine,
much amused, laughed exceedingly at the mistake, and did not
treat herself better than before."
One loving hand which has traced this beautiful story whose
outlines we have thus roughly reproduced, has illustrated it with
many touching reminiscences of the other members of the charming
family circle, of which Albert and Alexandrine are the central
figures. There is an exquisite pathos in every page, and
"The tender grace of a day that is dead"
is delineated with an unaffected delicacy which must move every
heart. Miss Bowles, we should add, has proved herself an
admirable translator, so good a one that her version reads like
an original.
----------
Translated From The French.
Breton Legend Of St. Christopher.
As every one knows, St. Christopher had very broad shoulders; so
in former times he was ferryman for the river of Scorff. One
bright day, our Lord arrived at the bank of the river with his
twelve apostles. Christopher made haste to take them in his arms,
and was delighted to pay them every possible respect.
"Well," said our Lord, "what are your wages?"
"Ask for Paradise," whispered St. Peter.
"Let me alone, I have my own ideas. If, my Lord, you desire to
bestow a favor on me, promise that every object I wish for shall
be obliged to enter my sack."
"I will do it," said our Lord, "but on condition that you never
ask for money, and only for those things of which you have need."
So, for a long time, things went well; the sack filled only with
bread, fruits, beans, and other vegetables; and often it was
emptied for the benefit of the poor. But alas! who can say they
may not enter into temptation? One morning Christopher was
passing through the street of a neighboring town, when he stopped
before the shop of a money-changer.
{711}
He did wrong, for all those heaps of money excited his curiosity
and gave him very bad thoughts.
"See," said the wicked broker to him, "what you can do with all
this money! You can rebuild the huts of the poor, and make life
for them so happy and desirable. Don't you wish it was all
yours?"
Christopher had a moment of weakness, and the money jumped into
his bag. But don't be severe: Christopher was not yet the saint
he afterward became, only a mere mortal man. So this first
failing led to others, and while it must be confessed he was very
generous to the poor, he loved his own good cheer and did not
hesitate to enjoy it. So one day, as he was reposing on the grass
after an unusually good dinner, the devil passed that way, and
began to bully him and crack some of his disagreeable jokes.
Christopher was not remarkably patient, his fists were itching
for a fight, so in a moment he was on his feet and pitched into
the devil right royally. As the forces were pretty equal, the
battle lasted two days, and the end could not be foreseen. The
thick grass disappeared from under their feet, and from afar the
noise of the blows resounded like two hammers falling and
refalling one upon the other. They would have been at it yet if
Christopher had not happily thought of his sack. "Ah cursed
devil! by the virtue of our Lord thou shalt enter my sack." So in
he popped, and Christopher was not slow to draw the cords tight
and swing him over his shoulders, while he wondered at the same
time how in the world he would ever get rid of him. A forge
appeared as he walked, and two brawny men were beating the red
fire with tremendous blows. This gave him an idea; so he
addressed himself to the smiths, and said: "I have got a wicked
animal in my bag; I could not pretend to tell you all the
villanous tricks he has played in his life; so, if you will forge
him until he is about as thick as a sixpenny piece, I will give
you a crown." They consented; and, notwithstanding the cries and
somersaults of the devil, they hammered and beat him the whole
night long. When the day dawned, a weak voice cried out,
"Christopher, Christopher, I give up; what shall I do to get out
of this?"
"Swear obedience to me for ever, and never trouble me again."
"I swear it."
"Very well; get out with you, and I will not say _Au
revoir_."
From this moment, Christopher entirely changed his life, only
occupied himself in good works, and, when he grew too feeble to
be ferryman for the river Scorff, he retired into the little
hermitage, upon the ruins of which is built the chapel still to
be seen. There he lived in prayer and penitence, and was visited
by many pilgrims, who were attracted by his great reputation of
sanctity. However, when after his death he presented himself to
St. Peter, who, we know, holds the keys of Paradise, he was
refused admittance, because the latter said he had formerly
rejected his advice, and he feared to let him in.
The poor Christopher, very sad, and looking rather snubbed,
wandered about, and in his distraction took the stairs that led
to hell. He descended an unheard-of number of steps, and finally
arrived at a door, where was a very good-looking young man, who
courteously invited him to enter; but Satan happened to pass by,
and, seeing him, cried out nervously: "No, no! not in here; I
know him well. Send him away, he is entirely too cunning for me!"
{712}
So Christopher could do nothing but remount to the entrance of
Paradise, where he could at least listen outside to the delicious
strains of heavenly harmony issuing from within, and he felt more
and more desirous to be admitted. He paused and thought; then,
putting his ear as close as possible, "My Lord St. Peter," said
he, "what admirable harmony you have in there! If you would only
set the door ajar, I might at least hear and enjoy it."
St. Peter was kind-hearted, so he did as he was asked; and
instantly St. Christopher threw in his sack, and sprang in after
it. "At home, at last," said he, "and you can't turn me out." St.
Peter conceded he was right, so he has since remained in heaven,
and we must acknowledge he well deserved so comfortable an abode.
-------------
[Supplement to the article on "The Sanitary and
Moral Condition of New York City" in our July number.]
The Sanitary And Moral Condition Of New York City.
The letter which is published below is an evidence that our July
correspondent's observations on the neglected condition of a
great number of children in New York struck a telling blow in the
right direction, and has called forth one response of the right
kind, which, we trust, will not be the only one. A number of our
good friends have shown themselves to be somewhat hurt by the
remarks made in the article alluded to, on the efforts of certain
Protestant institutions among the vagrant children of this city.
The article was not written for the purpose of showing what the
small number of zealous Catholics--who are alive to the duty and
necessity of rescuing this unfortunate class of our own
children--are doing, but of working up the whole Catholic
community to an active co-operation with these pioneers of
charity, in undertaking that which they are not doing, and cannot
do, while they are so feebly sustained. One principal motive for
doing this is, the fact that sectarian philanthropists are
forestalling us in the work we ought to have attended to long
ago, and drawing away from the fold of the church the lambs we
have neglected to take care of. Every one knows, none better than
the leaders of every Protestant sect themselves, that they have
no more determined adversaries than we are in their aggressions
on the Catholic religion. At the same time, we do not feel called
upon to deny them all humane and philanthropic motives, or to
denounce them as actuated by mere hatred against the Catholic
religion. They do an irreparable mischief to the unfortunate
children whom they draw away from the fold of the church; yet, we
are willing to believe they do it ignorantly, and with an
intention of doing them good.
{713}
So far as their efforts among the young unbaptized heathen of New
York are concerned, they can undoubtedly effect something in
reclaiming them from the wretched condition in which they are. We
desire to confine them to that sphere, and wish them a fair field
to compete with us in, and to show what they are able to
accomplish. We hope, as the result of all philanthropic efforts
for the relief of the degraded classes made by all kinds of
institutions, and by individuals of all kinds of theoretical
opinions, that the superiority of the Catholic Church, and its
necessity to our moral and social well-being, will be
demonstrated. We must demonstrate it, however, by action, and not
by mere argument. We must show practically that we are able to
master and subdue the elements of vice and misery that rage over
the turbulent sea of this vast population. In a former volume of
our magazine, we did full justice to the work which the Catholic
Church has accomplished, and is still carrying on among our own
people in this city, in an article entitled "Religion in New
York." The article in our last number may appear to have too much
overlooked the statistics there given respecting the care of
Catholic children. The statement of the whole number of children
in the city was inadvertently cited from Dr. Harris as being the
number of vagrants, although the correct number (40,000) was
given in several other places. Another quotation from a
Protestant source, which was cited for the purpose of showing the
small proportion of children in Protestant Sunday-schools,
contains a statement that 125,000 children are without
instruction, which also inadvertently passed uncorrected. The
60,000 children in Catholic Sunday-schools, and, we suppose, also
the Jewish children, as well as those who are privately taught at
home, ought to have been deducted. There are said to be 95,000
children in Protestant Sunday-schools. The whole number of
children is estimated at 200,000. There is, then, a vague neutral
ground between vagrancy and the Sunday-school domain, occupied by
some thousands, more or less--how many, we cannot correctly
estimate. We are immediately concerned only with Catholic
children. It is not possible to figure up precisely the numbers,
every day increasing, of these children, in every stage of
neglected moral and religious education down to the most complete
vagrancy. We know, however, that they are to be counted by
thousands, and would be sufficient by themselves to people a
respectable Southern or Western diocese. We know that
comparatively nothing is doing to reclaim them; and as for any
further practical remarks as to what ought to be done, we give
place for the present to the writer of the letter which follows,
who is sorry for these poor children one thousand dollars. We
trust that her good example will be followed by others, and shall
be happy to receive in trust whatever may be contributed toward
the establishment of an institution such as she recommends, and
of which the Sisters of Charity are ready to assume the charge
whenever the requisite funds are provided.--Ed. C. W.
"Rev. and Dear Father Hecker: "The article in The Catholic
World, for July, on 'The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New
York City,' has excited in my mind the greatest interest, and,
I may add, self-condemnation.
"It is true I knew the facts mentioned there before, but never
were they so fully brought home to me as in reading that
article. I could say nothing but '_Mea culpa, mea culpa_.'
{714}
Yes, through my fault, and the fault of every Catholic, these
many thousands of little children are left uncared for; except,
indeed, by those who have been more zealous to spread error,
uncertainty, and darkness than we to give them the true bread
of life. Are we indeed the children of the church? Have we ever
listened to these words of our Saviour, 'Inasmuch as ye have
not done it unto these my little ones, ye have not done it unto
me'? God forgive us, and grant that every Catholic, in reading
that article, may be moved to a true contrition.
"Why cannot the several hundred thousand Catholics in our great
city establish a Central Mission House for these little
neglected ones of the flock? For, of these forty thousand
vagrant and uncared-for children, we cannot doubt that far more
than one half have inherited the Catholic faith. The burden of
supporting this great work of charity should not be borne by
one parish or section of the city, and that the least able to
bear it; but every parish should feel as if this house demanded
its own especial care. And not only every parish in New York
City, but throughout the arch-diocese and the whole country;
for, as the poverty of the Old World finds its first refuge in
our city, so the charity of the New World should be
concentrated here to meet it.
"Father Farrelly is doing a noble work. God bless him for it!
And as to the Reformatory established by Dr. Ives, only God can
know the good it has already done and is yet to do. Catholics
are not accustomed to speak much of what they do, but we who
have done little or nothing cannot shelter ourselves behind
those who, alone and single-handed as it were, have tried to
meet this torrent of poverty and crime. As an act of reparation
on my part for past neglect, I place in your hands a check for
one thousand dollars, ($1000,) as a beginning of this noble
work. The Sisters of Charity or Mercy will surely be ready to
take charge of such a house, for where will they find so true a
work of charity or mercy?
"I beg of you, reverend father, to publish this in your
magazine; for I do not doubt that God has touched other hearts,
and that this little beginning, when known, will grow like a
grain of mustard-seed, and become a great and noble work.
"Yours, etc.,
......"
-------------
{715}
New Publications
Problems of the Age: With Studies
in St. Augustine on Kindred Topics.
By the Rev. Augustine F. Hewit,
of the Congregation of St. Paul.
New York: Catholic Publication House. 1868.
This volume, being chiefly a republication of some of our own
articles, cannot, of course, receive from us an independent and
impartial criticism. We can only state its scope and design,
leaving it to other critics to judge of its merits. The topics
which it discusses relate to the dialectic unity of the natural
and supernatural in the universal order of truth and being. It is
intended to meet the intellectual difficulties of those who
cannot see this dialectic unity, and who, therefore, apprehend a
contradiction between the natural and the supernatural, or, at
least, a chasm between the two, which makes it impossible to
explain their relation to each other on rational principles. It
is more especially adapted to that class of persons who are
rather perplexed by an apparent contradiction between reason and
faith, than to those who are either positive infidels or positive
sceptics. There are many such persons, predisposed to admit a
spiritual philosophy and the truth of Christianity, but still in
a state of doubt respecting both philosophical and revealed
truths. The reason of this is, because the current philosophy of
Protestantism is shallow and sophistical, and the current
theology of Protestantism irrational. It is necessary, therefore,
to present a sound philosophy as a cure for intellectual
scepticism, and a sound rational theology as a cure for religious
doubt. _The Problems of the Age_ is a contribution to this
work. It is neither a system of philosophy nor of theology, but
rather a clue to find both the one and the other. It proposes to
the man bewildered in the labyrinth of scepticism a path which
will lead him out into the open day of certitude, and leaves it
to him to try the path or himself, and ascertain by his own
examination whether it be the right one. Protestantism first
destroyed theology, and then philosophy. Rationalism has tried to
reconstruct both; but, having only the _débris_ to use as a
material, and no formula to work by, has failed signally. The
author of the volume before us has endeavored to derive a formula
from the works of the best Catholic philosophers and theologians
which gives the principles of construction, to present an outline
of the plan according to which all true builders always have been
working, and always must work, in the rearing of that temple
whose porch is science and whose sanctuary is faith. The first
principles of reason and the first principles of faith are
presupposed as given. The existence and the attributes of God are
briefly demonstrated from the first principles of reason, as the
basis of faith in revealed truths. The connection between
rational knowledge and supernatural faith is exhibited, and the
point of transition from one to the other designated. The
principal mysteries of revelation are then taken up, and their
dialectic relation to the great truths of natural theology,
respecting God as the first and final cause of the creation, is
pointed out. As the perversions of Calvinism represent some of
these mysterious doctrines in such a way that they are
irreconcilable with natural theology, a considerable space is
devoted to the clearing away of these misconceptions. The
principal philosophical difficulties in the way of apprehending
certain doctrines are also noticed, and a solution given. The
topics most thoroughly treated are those which relate to the
supernatural destiny of man, his primitive condition, the fall,
original sin, and the final consummation of all things, including
the redemption of the human race through the Incarnation.
{716}
_The Studies in St. Augustine_ is a subsidiary essay
intended to refute the allegation that the Calvinistic doctrines
have been justly deduced from his writings and the authoritative
teaching of the church in his time. In doing this, the evidence
is clearly presented of the fact that several of the chief
distinctive doctrines of the Catholic Church were held by the
whole church at the time when the great doctor flourished. It is
also shown that modern Catholic theology, although far more
precise and definite in many points than the ancient theology
could be, is the only true and legitimate offspring and
development of its principles. The drift of the whole book in
both its parts is to present a clear conception of what the
Catholic doctrine is, and to show that this conception is in
harmony with the rational principles on which a spiritual and
theistic philosophy must base itself. It is adapted, therefore,
to stimulate thought and awaken an appetite for truth, much more
than to satisfy the mind. Those who are influenced by its
arguments must desire a more thorough exposition both of the
principles of reason and of those of faith, in order to perceive
more clearly the objective truth, both of philosophy and of
revelation, unless they are already well-informed on both points.
The first branch of science has been handled in the most
satisfactory and thorough manner in the philosophical articles of
Dr. Brownson's _Review_. There are also some able articles
on the same topics to be found in _The Catholic World_. It
is much to be regretted that these articles are not to be had in
a separate volume, so as to be easily accessible, and that there
is no complete treatise on philosophy, which is sufficient to
meet the wants of our day, written in the English language. The
second branch of science, which embraces the evidence of the
positive truth of revelation, has been more extensively
cultivated. The shortest and most satisfactory way to a
conclusion on that point is, to take up at once the proof of the
divine institution and authority of the Catholic Church. Two
things only are necessary to be proved: First, there is a God;
second, God reveals his truth and law through the Catholic
Church. It ought not to require a very long time, or a very
difficult process, to establish these two truths in any mind not
prepossessed by error and prejudice. Those who are unfortunately
so prepossessed have no other choice but to work their way out
the best way they can, and every one who lends them a helping
hand does a great service to his fellow-men.
----
Parochial and Plain Sermons.
By John Henry Newman, B.D.,
formerly Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford.
In eight volumes. Vol. I. New edition.
Rivingtons, London, Oxford, and Cambridge.
For sale at The Catholic Publication House, New York. 1868.
Truly Anglicanism is a unique phenomenon, or, rather, congeries
of phenomena, and of its phases there is no end. Its newspapers
in this country are rather remarkable for virulent hostility to
the Catholic Church, and offensive language about Catholic
persons and things. Only the other day, the Hartford
_Churchman_, which professes to be decent, gave currency to
the shameless report that the late unfortunate Cardinal d'Andrea
was poisoned. The language used about Dr. Newman has been
frequently vituperative and insolent in the extreme. The English
High Churchmen are usually far more gentlemanly than their
American _confrères_, and their tone and language are often
far more decorous when they speak of Catholic affairs. Even in
England, however, as well as in this country, a smattering of
Catholicism very frequently produces an increase of animosity and
bitterness against the Catholic Church. The more nearly some
approach her, the more they become inflamed, like comets
approaching the sun, and the attraction is suddenly turned into a
repulsive force, which drives them back into the dreariness of
space. There are some, however, in England, among those who cling
to the Established Church, whose spirit is kind and loving toward
those whom they would fain regard as their fellow-Catholics, even
though these are converts from Anglicanism. A remarkable proof
that the number of these is considerable is found in the fact
that a new edition of Dr. Newman's _Sermons_ is announced by
the Rivingtons, and that the first volume has already issued from
the press, with a preface by the Rev. W. J. Copeland, rector of
Farnham.
{717}
The typographical execution of the volume is extremely beautiful.
The preface is sad and tender, like the hymn of a captive
Israelite in Babylon. Dr. Newman has, we believe, consented to
this republication. We remember well the delight and instruction
we received from these _Sermons_ when they were first
republished in this country, and the pleasure we experienced in
visiting, a few months ago, the church of St. Mary the Virgin, at
Oxford, where they were preached. We are not able to say whether
they contain anything un-Catholic or not; if so, it cannot be
sufficient to be in any way dangerous, or to detract from their
generally Catholic doctrine and spirit. The editor says that
their author is not to be considered as reasserting all their
sentiments, and that he would undoubtedly wish some parts of them
altered or omitted. They are models of the most perfect English
style, and, as such, of great value to Catholic preachers. Their
circulation among Protestants to as great an extent as possible
is something most devoutly to be wished, and likely to do an
extraordinary amount of good. No doubt the Protestant clergy
here, whatever may be the case in England, will discourage their
being read; yet the younger clergy of all denominations will
undoubtedly read them themselves, and will not be able to hinder
great numbers of the most cultivated among the laity from doing
the same. They are wonderful compositions, the like of which our
language does not contain; and those who are not already familiar
with them will deprive themselves of a very great pleasure if
they do not avail themselves of the opportunity of becoming so.
We feel extremely obliged to the editor and publishers for
sending out this new and beautiful edition, and we hope its
influence may be to draw the hearts of our Protestant friends and
brethren nearer to us. We are extremely anxious that the violent
and hostile controversy between us should cease, and that we
might have the opportunity of discussing with them, in a calm and
quiet way, the points of difference which separate them from
ourselves. While their tone and manner are so discourteous and
unfair, this is impossible; and we hope they may learn a lesson
from Mr. Copeland, and others among themselves who are of like
spirit with him, as well as from the _ci-devant_ Vicar of
St. Mary's, who is revived once more in his surplice and hood, to
preach again among his former people, as the prophet of the ten
lost tribes.
-----
Appleton's Short Trip to Europe. (1868.)
Principally devoted to England, Scotland, Ireland,
Switzerland, France, Germany, and Italy; with
Glimpses of Spain, Short Routes in the East, etc.;
and a Collection of Travellers' Phrases in French and German.
By Henry Morford, Author of "Over Sea,"
"Paris in '67," etc., etc.
New York: Appletons.
This is a very pretty, convenient, and useful hand-book for
travellers, full of useful advice and valuable directions, which
we can cordially recommend to every person about to make a tour
to Europe for the first time, as the best book of the kind we are
acquainted with. There are some allusions and remarks scattered
through the book which seem intended to enliven it and give it a
flavor of humor, and which will doubtless please a certain number
of its readers. Others, however, may perhaps think they detract
from the general good taste evinced by the author, when he
confines himself to a more quiet and simple style of giving
information.
Sidney Smith's coarse pun on the name of St. Peter, and the
author's own very dull attempt at wit in regard to the relics of
the martyrs in the church of St. Ursula, at Cologne, will not
render the book any the more agreeable to Catholic tourists, and
we should think not to any persons of refined taste. The
allusions made occasionally to the supposed vicious propensities
of a certain class of tourists are still more objectionable. They
are like whispering behind the hand, or exchanging nods and
winks, in good company.
{718}
The guidebooks of Paris are models of the most perfect taste and
elegance in style, and so are those of Baedeker, for the
continent, with the exception of an occasional falsehood or sneer
about something Catholic. In our judgment, these are the proper
models to imitate.
We cannot omit remarking, while we are on the subject of
guide-books, that it would be a work of great service to Catholic
tourists, if some competent person would prepare a guide-book for
their use, with reference to all the places and objects specially
interesting to them as connected with their religion and its
history.
-----
Rhymes of the Poets.
By Felix Ago.
Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co. 1868.
A very amusing satirical essay upon "allowable rhymes," selected
from the verses of a large number of poets.
----
Lake George: Its Scenes and Characteristics, with Glimpses of
the Olden Times; to which is added some account of Ticonderoga;
with a description of the route to Schroon Lake and the
Adirondacks. With Illustrations.
By B. F. De Costa,
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 196.
New York: A. D. F. Randolph. 1868.
This is an excellent little book for tourists to Lake George and
the surrounding country. The first white man who saw Lake George
was the Jesuit missionary, Father Jogues, who, having arrived at
that beautiful lake on the eve of the festival of Corpus Christi,
called it "The Lake of the Blessed Sacrament," a name it retained
until changed by the English to its present one. The author takes
pains to correct the many misstatements of other writers with
regard to historical events which occurred in the vicinity of the
lake. The account of the defeat of the English by Montcalm, 1757,
is given; and the reported connivance of that general in the
massacre of the English troops after their surrender is disposed
of as one of the "wild exaggerations of the day." Yet it is only
a few years ago that a distinguished general, while on a visit to
the lake, reiterated, in a speech to his admirers, the terrible
cruelty of the French in allowing the captives to be massacred in
cold blood, and asserted that it was one of the customs of that
barbarous age, and therefore was not prevented by Montcalm. Mr.
De Costa says, with reference to this reported massacre: "That
class of writers who furnish what may be called apocrypha of
history, have delighted in wild exaggerations of this event.
Drawing their material from the crudest sensation accounts of the
day, they have not hesitated to record as facts the most
improbable fancies. It is to be regretted that these accounts
have crept into so many of our popular school histories, in one
of which, now extensively used, we are informed that, when
Montcalm went away, he left the dead bodies of one hundred women
shockingly mangled and weltering in their blood. The account is
based upon a supposed letter of Putnam's that was never written,
and is of the same authority as that favorite but now exploded
story of the school-boy, which relates Putnam's descent into the
wolfs den." He also truly says that "national enmity has had much
to do with these misrepresentations of Montcalm, who was every
way a noble and humane man, as well as the ablest general of his
day in all North America." Religious animosity had its share in
it, too, and no small share either. The French were Catholics;
the English, Protestants; and it was only in perfect keeping with
the English literature of the day to paint everything done by the
French Catholics in the darkest colors possible. But this calumny
cannot stand the tests of the critic of to-day, and we are glad
to see a little hand-book like this, which must become popular
with the tourist of the Northern lakes, stamp the fictions which
have crept into history as they deserve, and give its readers the
truth.
{719}
The work is printed on good paper, and illustrated with wood-cuts
of the most noted places referred to in its pages.
------
Democracy in the United States:
What it has Done, What it is Doing, and What it will Do.
By Ransom H. Gillett, formerly Member of Congress from St.
Lawrence County, N.Y.; more recently Registrar and Solicitor of
the United States Treasury Department, and Solicitor for the
United States in the Court of Claims, etc.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1868.
This is what, we suppose, will be termed, in the language of the
market, a _seasonable_ book, it being brought out just in
time for, and adapted to, the political campaign upon which the
country has now fully entered. It aims to give a succinct but
complete history of the Democratic party, of its measures and its
leading men, from its beginning down to the present time. We are
not ourselves politicians enough to judge how faithfully or
reliably this has been done. The volume--a compact one of some
four hundred pages--is brought out in the Messrs. Appleton's
excellent style of book publishing, and will, of course, have an
extensive sale.
------
Histoire De France.
Par V. Duruy.
Nouvelle Edition, illustrée d'un grand
nombre de gravures et de cartes geographiques.
Paris: Hachette. (New York: Christern. 2 vols. 12mo.)
This is a part of a course of compendious universal history
prepared by a number of learned writers, under the direction of
M. Duruy. It is a clear and succinct history of France from the
earliest epoch to the year 1815, with an appendix containing a
summary of events from 1815 to 1866. The history of France is of
the greatest interest and importance, and but little known among
us, especially in its Catholic aspects. This book is, therefore,
one of the most useful text-books for the instruction of classes
studying the French language, which can be studied; and most
invaluable also for others, who are able to read French, and who
desire to have a brief but complete exposition of French history.
Besides its numerous and valuable maps, it contains more than 300
remarkably well-executed and artistic woodcuts, which add very
much to its value and interest. The study of the French language
and literature has been too much neglected in our American
colleges and higher schools. Every person of liberal education
ought to read and speak the French language. We recommend this
book to the attention of teachers, parents, and all persons
occupied with the study of French, and also to intelligent
tourists, to whom it will prove an invaluable companion on a
visit to _La Belle France_.
------
O'Shea's Popular Juvenile Library.
First series. 12 vols. Beautifully illustrated.
New York: P. O'Shea. 1868.
The titles of the volumes in this series are as follows:
The Inquisitive Boy and the Little Ragman;
The Picture and the Country Cousins;
Augusta and Christmas Eve;
The Young Guests, and other stories;
The Page, and other stories;
The Young Artist;
The Gray Woman of Scharfenstein, and other stories;
The Young Painter;
Tailor and Fiddler;
Sobieski's Achievements;
Hedwig of Poland;
The Young Countess.
These tales are taken principally from the German and French, and
are unexceptional in matter.
------
The Catholic Crusoe.
Adventures of Owen Evans, Esq., Surgeon's Mate,
set ashore with five companions on a desolate island
in the Caribbean Sea, 1739. Given from the Original MSS.,
by Rev. W. H. Anderdon, M.A.
New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 12mo, pp. 519.
{720}
A notice of Dr. Anderdon's very entertaining story appeared in
_The Catholic World_ for December, 1867. The reprint before
us is very well got up, but lacks an interesting feature of the
original edition, namely, its maps and illustrations.
------
The Queen's Daughter; or, The Orphan of La Granja.
By the author of _Grace Morton_, etc.
Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. Pp. 108.
A pleasant tale for young folk, neatly bound, and, in general
typographical execution, a very decided improvement on its
predecessor, _Elinor Johnstone_.
------
The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell,
with a Memoir of his Life.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1868.
So far as the paper and binding are concerned, this edition of
Campbell is beautifully got up; but we cannot say as much for the
type, which is the very reverse of beautiful.
------
A Popular Treatise on the Art of House Painting,
Plain and Decorative.
By John W. Masury. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
A very useful book, on an important subject, for those who would
preserve their houses, and have them tastefully and, at the same
time, economically painted. The mechanical portion of the work is
executed in the Messrs. Appleton's best style.
------
Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Madonna.
By Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D.
Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1868.
This is an American edition of Dr. Northcote's work, the English
edition of which we noticed in our July number. It is brought out
in very handsome style, and reflects credit on the taste of the
publisher.
------
Announcements.--"The Catholic Publication Society" has in press,
or in preparation, the following new works:
1. Symbolism. By Adam Moehler. This will be ready about
August 1st.
2. Second Series of Illustrated Sunday-School Library. Ready
about September 1st, twelve vols., for titles of which see
advertisement on second page of cover.
3. Memorials of those who suffered for the Catholic Faith in
Ireland, in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth
Centuries. Collected and edited from the original
authorities, by Myles O'Rielly. B.A., LL.D. This will be one
of the most important books relative to Ireland ever
published in this country. It will be ready about September
1st.
4. Cradle Lands--Egypt, Palestine, etc. Illustrated.
By Lady Herbert. Ready November 15.
5. Love; or, Self-Sacrifice. By Lady Herbert.
6. Life of Father Ravigan, S.J.
7. Third Series of Illustrated Sunday-School Library.
------
Books Received.
From P. Donahoe, Boston.
Plain Talk about the Protestantism of To-day. From the French
of Mgr. Segur. 1 vol. 32mo, pp. 253. Price, 60 cents.
From J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia.
Alleghania; or, Praises of American Heroes.
By Christopher Laomedon Pindar.
---------------------
{721}
The Catholic World.
Vol. VII., No. 42.--September, 1868.
The Veneration Of Saints And Holy Images.
The veneration paid to saints by Catholics with the formal
approbation or tacit sanction of the supreme authority in the
church is, together with the use made of their images and that of
Christ in religious worship, under the same sanction, the one
feature of the Catholic system most obnoxious to Protestants.
They do not hesitate ordinarily to qualify it as idolatry, that
is, as a rendering of the worship due to God alone to creatures,
both living and inanimate, similar to that which the heathen
system of polytheism ascribes to its numerous divinities and
their images.
We propose to discuss this matter briefly, not with the intention
of proving that the Catholic doctrine and practice are truly a
genuine outgrowth of the Christian religion by extrinsic
evidence, but of showing their intrinsic harmony with Christian
first principles, and refuting the objections derived from these
first principles against them. As the subject naturally divides
itself into two distinct parts, already clearly indicated in our
opening paragraph, we shall confine our remarks at present to the
first part of it, or that relating to the veneration of saints.
The preliminary charge of idolatry, or a direct contradiction to
the monotheistic doctrine of natural and revealed theology, is
perfectly groundless, and, however it may be modified and
diminished, there is not an atom of truth in it upon which any
objection to the Catholic doctrine can be based.
Idolatry, or the worship of the creature instead of the creator,
originates in ignorance or denial of the true conception of the
one living and true God. God is not worshipped, because he is not
known or believed in. By necessary consequence, something which
is not God is conceived as highest, best, most excellent, most
powerful, without reference or relation to God as the author and
sovereign of all that has any existence. The pantheist is an
idolater of all nature, but especially of himself. Even Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle were not free from idolatrous principles,
although probably free from all sin in the matter, since they
ascribed to the universe a certain amount of being not caused by
the intelligence and will of God as creator.
{722}
Neither are our modern rationalists free from the same error,
since they withhold from God the homage of their reason, and give
it to themselves as to persons possessing intelligence which is
independent of God. Wilful and obstinate heretics are all
likewise in the same category; for, by rejecting a part of what
God has revealed, they, by implication, profess to be superior to
God in intelligence, and substitute an idol of their own vain
imagination in lieu of that eternal truth which is identical with
the essence of God. Idolaters, in the strict sense of the word,
or polytheists, such as the ancient Greeks and Romans were, paid
a formal worship to their gods, as superior beings having a
supreme and irresponsible control over nature and over men. It
was a worship which was a substitute for that originally given to
the true God, totally contrary to it, and an insuperable barrier
to the spread of monotheism as a religion. These false divinities
were, therefore, the rivals of the true God, and filled the place
in the religious worship of the heathen which was filled by him
in the worship established by divine revelation from the creation
of mankind. It is evident, from the very statement of what
idolatry is in itself, that a veneration paid to any creature,
which is proportionate to the degree of excellence which it has
received from the creator, is not idolatrous, and cannot detract
from the supreme veneration which is due to God as the sovereign
lord of the universe. Those who condemn the religious honor paid
to created natures by the Catholic Church cannot therefore lay
down an _a priori_ principle from which to demonstrate in
advance that this honor is necessarily idolatrous, unless they
previously demonstrate that the excellence ascribed to these
natures is such that God cannot communicate it to a creature. The
worship paid to the sacred humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ is
that which is apparently the most obnoxious to the charge of
idolatry of any other species of relative worship which the
church has decreed to be due to any created nature. Our chief
controversy is, therefore, with Jews, Mohammedans, Unitarians,
and others who claim to be pure theists and who deny the
incarnation. What we affirm against these is, that they cannot
demonstrate the impossibility of the incarnation. They cannot
demonstrate the impossibility of a hypostatic union between the
human nature and the divine nature, by virtue of which the
personality of the human nature is divine, and the human nature
is the nature of God, and thus worthy of relative adoration.
Therefore, they cannot argue that the divinity of Jesus Christ
has not been revealed, and that divine worship is not due to him
by the law of God, because God cannot reveal such a doctrine or
command such a worship without contradicting the essential truth
of his nature. Suppose that evidence is given sufficient in
itself to authenticate the revelation of the mystery of the
incarnation, and at once it becomes evident that divine worship
is due to Jesus Christ as God incarnate, precisely because
worship is due to God. The question is then only debatable on the
point whether this revelation has been made or not. If it could
be proved that it has not, and that Jesus Christ is a created and
finite person, it would follow that the worship paid to him by
all orthodox Christians is idolatrous.
{723}
It would be idolatrous to worship any man who should pretend to
be God incarnate when he is not, or who should be erroneously
believed by his disciples to be a divine person, without any
reference to the question whether any such incarnation can be or
has been decreed by the wisdom of God. We are not attempting to
prove the truth of the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ,
or to prove directly that the worship we pay to him is not
idolatrous. Everything, we admit, depends on proving it. If it
cannot be proved, Christianity is a superstition, and must be
classed with Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism. For the
proof of the truth and reality of the incarnation, we must refer
the reader elsewhere. We are intent on showing that no elevation
of created nature which is possible is in any way incompatible
with the supreme dignity and sovereignty of God, and,
consequently, no honor due to such an elevated nature
incompatible with the supreme worship due to the divine majesty.
We are also intent on showing that it is principally the fact of
the incarnation on which the whole question hinges, and the
worship paid to Christ against which the objections of so-called
theists to saint-worship are levelled. The incarnation is the
principle of saint-worship. All orthodox Protestants are accused
of idolatrous saint-worship by Unitarians, Jews, Mohammedans, and
all pure theists. It is true that the orthodox do not regard
Jesus Christ as a mere saint, but all others regard him as being,
at the highest, only the greatest among the saints. All
Protestants who are orthodox on the incarnation, and conformed in
belief to the doctrine of their own confessions and great
divines, believe that the holy humanity of Jesus Christ is
entitled to divine worship. They are obliged to worship not only
the divine nature of Jesus Christ, but also his human nature, his
soul and body. Yet, the human nature of Christ is a created and
finite substance, not possessing a single divine attribute. How,
then, can it receive the worship due to God alone? Evidently it
cannot receive such a worship as terminating in itself, or as
absolute. It is impossible for the intellect to make the judgment
that the substance of the body and of the soul of Jesus Christ is
the infinite, self-existing being whom we call God, and from whom
all things derive existence. Why, then, is the humanity of Jesus
Christ to be worshipped? Because of the divine person to whom it
belongs. The soul and the body of Jesus Christ are the soul and
body of the Son of God. The same person who is God is also man,
and his humanity is inseparable from his person. It is,
therefore, on account of and in relation to his divine person
that his human nature is adored with the worship of latria. If
our Lord should condescend to come upon the earth again, we are
persuaded that every sincere Protestant who believes in his
divinity would gladly prostrate himself at his feet to pay him
supreme adoration, and, if he were able to look upon his face,
would feel that he was gazing upon the very countenance of God,
and that the eyes of the Lord of heaven and earth were fixed upon
him. If there are any whose mind or feelings revolt from the
worship of the Son of God in his human body and through the
medium of his visible form, let them admit at once that they are
no believers in the incarnation, that they have abandoned the
doctrine of the ancient Protestant confessions and are really
Unitarians. Those who fully admit the Catholic doctrine that the
sacred humanity of Jesus Christ is to be adored must range
themselves at once on our side and prepare to defend our common
cause. They must defend themselves and us against the charge of
idolatry.
{724}
They cannot do it without laying down the principle that, when a
created nature is elevated to a special union with the divine
nature, and made to participate with it in dignity, it is worthy
of a proportionate religious veneration. The more orthodox
Unitarians cannot deny this principle without condemning
themselves. They give a veneration at least equal to that which
Catholics call the worship of hyperdulia to Jesus Christ; and as
they do not acknowledge in him any dignity differing in kind, but
only one differing in degree, from that of angels, prophets,
martyrs, confessors, and other saints, they cannot consistently
deny the propriety of giving a lesser veneration, or worship of
dulia, to the saints. Episcopalians and other Protestants
dedicate days and churches in honor of the Blessed Virgin and the
saints, which are acts of very high religious veneration. Only
those who refuse all religious veneration either to Jesus Christ
or to any created nature, because they deny any supernatural
elevation of created nature into a mysterious union with the
divine nature, have any pretext or appearance of consistency in
their charge of idolatry against Catholic saint-worship. Yet it
is precisely the trinitarian Protestants who are loudest and most
violent in repeating this charge. So far as rationalists and
Unitarians are concerned, it is not of much utility to discuss
the question of the veneration of the Virgin and of the saints
directly. The preliminary question of the incarnation has first
to be settled. It is the divine worship we pay to Jesus Christ
which is their great stone of stumbling and rock of offence. We
leave them aside, therefore, to pursue the one direct line of
argument on which we started, namely, that the veneration of
saints flows logically out of the worship of the sacred humanity
of Christ; and is rooted in the doctrine of the incarnation.
Orthodox Protestants are bound to pay divine worship, or the
adoration of latria, to the soul and body of Jesus Christ; a
worship which would be idolatry if the humanity of Christ were
not united to the divine nature in one personality, so that the
worship of Christ as man is necessarily referred to his divine
person and terminates upon it. For the same reason, they are
bound to pay an inferior veneration, or worship of dulia, to the
saints, because they also are united to the divine nature through
the incarnation and in Christ, as his co-heirs and brethren, the
participators of his glory. They are not united with the divine
nature in one personality, therefore they cannot receive divine
worship. But they are in a lesser mode made "partakers of the
divine nature," as the Scripture explicitly declares, and,
therefore, deserve a veneration commensurate with their degree of
union, which is ultimately referred to God, who is "worshipped in
his saints." To compare the veneration of the saints of God with
the Greek polytheism is simply absurd. It is connected with and
springs out of the doctrine of pure monotheism and the worship
paid to the one true God. It does not, in the slightest degree,
supplant this doctrine or worship, confuse the idea of God, or
interfere with the recognition of his sole and absolute
sovereignty. It presents necessarily, and by its very essence,
the saints as the creatures, the servants, the courtiers,
ministers, and favored friends of God, intercessors and advocates
for men before his throne.
{725}
It presents, therefore, necessarily, God as their creator,
sovereign, and as the source and fountain of all their sanctity,
beatitude, and glory, the author and giver of all the blessings
asked for through their intercession. The perpetual presence of
the true idea of God preserves the idea of the hierarchy of
creatures from all corruption or perversion, and keeps
continually before the mind their relation and subordination to
the supreme and absolute Lord of the universe.
In the same way, the presence of the true idea of the incarnation
prevents the idea of the mediation of the saints between God and
man from being corrupted. It is impossible for the Blessed Virgin
or any other saint to take the place in the Catholic idea which
belongs to Jesus Christ as the Redeemer and Saviour of mankind,
the Mediator between God and man. It is clearly understood and
vividly realized that Jesus Christ is the medium of union between
God and man through the hypostatic union of human nature with the
divine nature in his person. His expiation of sin derives its
infinite value from the divinity of his person. His merits derive
their infinite value also from his divinity. He is the source and
fountain of grace and mercy, because he is God and possesses life
in himself. He is the sacrifice perpetually offered in the divine
eucharist, the perennial source of life from which the soul is
fed in the holy communion. The mediation of the saints is derived
from him, subordinate to and dependent on his mediation. The
Blessed Virgin and the saints are honored on account of their
relation to him, and are invoked as his agents and ministers in
dispensing grace. It is impossible, therefore, to attribute to
them any separate merit or independent power; and, so far from
the devotion to Our Lady or the saints impeding the view of
Christ, it only brings him into bolder relief, and by contrast
and comparison enhances the conception of his infinite elevation,
as their and our creator and sovereign, above all creatures even
the most exalted. Dr. Johnson with his usual strong good sense,
saw this, and with his usual manly honesty avowed it, as every
one knows who has read his Life by Boswell. Intelligent
Protestants ought to be ashamed of themselves for perpetually
reiterating the stupid charge against the Catholic Church, that
she substitutes the Virgin and the saints as objects of worship
in the place of God, or as objects of confidence in the place of
our Saviour Christ. The only excuse for those who make this
assertion is invincible ignorance, an excuse not very creditable
to men who profess to be theologians. It may avail for those who
have grown too old to make any new studies or receive any new
ideas, and for those whose intelligence and learning are so
circumscribed that they cannot become acquainted with or
understand the arguments of Catholic theologians. But for those
who have the obligation and the opportunity to study and
understand these grave questions, but yet persist, either through
culpable ignorance or wilful dishonesty, in misrepresenting
Catholic doctrine, there can be no excuse. In spite of our desire
to stretch charity to its utmost limits, we cannot help thinking
that they are afraid to meet the question openly and fairly,
afraid to investigate, and afraid to discuss the issue between us
on its real merits. They apprehend, more or less vaguely or
distinctly, that they cannot maintain their ground if they state
the Catholic doctrines fairly and argue against them as they
really are. Their instinct of self-preservation teaches them that
their only safety consists in the smoke which they create by
their incessant fusillade of misrepresentation, and which hides
the true aspect of the field from their deluded followers.
{726}
We leave this part of our subject with a reiteration of what we
have already affirmed and proved. The attempt to prove _a
priori_ from the idea of God, or from the idea of the
incarnation and mediation of the Word made man, that the
religious veneration of the saints is incompatible with the
supreme worship due to God, and the supreme confidence we are
bound to repose in the merits and grace of the sacred humanity of
Jesus Christ, is perfectly futile. The only real question is one
of evidence: whether the Catholic Church can furnish evidence of
her divine authority to teach that the Blessed Virgin and the
saints have received a subordinate office of mediation, and are
to be honored and invoked by a special and formal _cultus_.
If the evidence which is proposed can be refuted, the worship of
the saints may be qualified as a vain observance, a superstition,
a useless addition to Christianity. But it can never, with any
reason, be denominated idolatry; because it distinctly limits
itself to that veneration which is simply commensurate with a
merely created and derived dignity, leaving intact and perfect
the supreme worship of God. It can never be denominated a
substitution of many saviours and mediators in place of the one
Saviour and Mediator Jesus Christ; because it leaves the doctrine
of his mediation intact and perfect. That this evidence can be
demolished by sound historical learning, scientific exegesis of
the Scriptures, or solid theological arguments, we have no fear.
We do not think our antagonists have much hope of doing it. They
have already said all that can be said on their side, and only
damaged their own cause by it. They cannot get rid of the
universal testimony of all ages and countries to the Catholic
doctrine, without resorting to principles which subvert their own
foundation and leave them to sink down into the pit that has
swallowed up Rénan and Colenso. These topics have been
exhaustively handled by numerous and able Catholic writers, to
whom we refer those readers who wish to investigate them. We turn
now to the second part of our subject, which relates to the honor
paid to the sacred images of Christ and the saints.
Anticatholic writers are so illogical, careless, and confused in
their arguments against Catholic doctrines and practices, and use
so much rhetoric, directed merely _ad captandum vulgus_,
especially when they take up this, which is one of their favorite
themes, that it is very difficult to follow and refute them in a
clear and methodical manner. They deal very much in assertions
and vituperative expressions, in misrepresentations, ridicule,
and low attempts at wit, in unmeaning laudations of themselves as
the only enlightened and spiritual persons in the world, and
wholesale depreciation of Catholics, especially the simple and
pious peasantry and common people of Catholic countries. We
suppose that the substance of their objections against the
veneration of images, extracted and reduced to a clear and
precise statement, would be something like this: The use made of
images in religious worship by Catholics is idolatrous, because
it either is actually an adoration of images as gods in place of
the true God, or, if not, leads to and encourages such a worship,
and bears the outward appearance of being identical with it. It
is, therefore, to be condemned, as intrinsically dangerous in
itself, and therefore prohibited under the old law, and as in
many cases among the uneducated grossly superstitious and
heathenish.
{727}
It is, therefore, on a par with the idolatry of the Greeks and
Romans, and other pagan nations, which is so severely denounced
in the Holy Scriptures, and so unmercifully ridiculed by the
early Christian writers; although enlightened Catholics, like
enlightened pagans, may be free from the grossness of the vulgar
superstition.
A full discussion of the subject would require us to go into the
question of the nature of image-worship among the heathen
nations. This has been done already by Bishop England, who has
handled the whole matter with great learning and ability in his
"Letters to the _Gospel Messenger_." It has also been
briefly but satisfactorily treated in an article on "Is it
Honest?" in a former number of this magazine. We may assert it as
a certain and established fact, that the heathen priests and
other intelligent advocates of polytheism held the opinion, so
far as they were sincere believers in their own system, that the
divinities whom they worshipped were in some way bound to their
images, and acted through them as the soul acts through the body.
They did not, of course, worship the metal or wood of which the
images were composed; but they did worship the images themselves,
as being animated statues informed by a divine virtue, and really
containing the persons they represented. Philosophers like
Socrates, Plato, and others, and persons who were imbued with the
principles of the more sound and monotheistic philosophy, were
not idolaters in the strict and gross sense. They regarded the
divinities of the popular mythology as only a sort of genii, and
probably considered their images as only representations intended
to impress the senses and keep alive the belief and devotion of
the people. But the doctrine of polytheism was not the doctrine
of the sounder and higher philosophy. The system was idolatrous,
both in its substitution of imaginary beings for the one, true
God, and also in its offering of the worship due to God to images
as containing their imaginary divinities. It is necessary to take
into account, in estimating the idolatrous character of this
heathen worship, not only that it terminated upon objects which
were not divine as the ultimate end of the homage given, without
reference to the supreme creator and lord, but also that these
objects were unreal and imaginary beings. It was not, therefore,
merely an undue exaltation of the creature, but a substitution of
mere creations of the imagination in lieu of the true God. It
was, therefore, not only polytheism, or a denial of the unity of
God, and a division of the deity among many beings possessing
divine attributes, but _idol_-worship, that is, the worship
of nonentities in place of the real, infinite Being. The image
represented nothing real. It was worshipped as related to an
imaginary divinity, supposed to reside in it and to communicate
to it a certain divine quality. There being no such person really
existing, the image was a mere idol; and the worship had no real
object to terminate upon except the material of which it was
composed. A man who cherishes and honors the picture of his wife
has a real and legitimate object upon which the affections and
emotions awakened by the picture may terminate; but an artist who
falls in love with a picture painted after an imaginary ideal in
his own mind loves a mere painted form, an idol, and is,
therefore, guilty of an absurd form of picture-worship.
{728}
If this love takes the place of the love of God in his soul and
leads him to place his supreme good in this imaginary being, he
is an idolater. The heathen had nothing in their idols but lumps
of wood, stone, or metal, fashioned to represent some imaginary
being. They were therefore open to all the ridicule and scorn of
the prophets and other servants of the true God, for shaping to
themselves gods which were the mere creations of their own art
and skill. The condemnation of idols in the Holy Scripture falls,
therefore, not chiefly upon the mere use of images as
representing the object of worship, but upon the making and
honoring of images representing beings who, if they existed,
would not be entitled to the worship they received, and who, in
point of fact, had no real existence. Idolatry is also called in
the Scripture demon-worship, because, as we understand it, the
demons by means of it seduced men away from the worship of God,
and also because, by possessing the images of the false gods,
speaking through the oracles, and inciting to the commission of a
multitude of crimes in connection with idolatry, they reduced the
heathen into servitude to themselves.
The prohibition of images to be used in the worship sanctioned by
the divine law was a precept of discipline enacted for a special
reason. The reason was the same which lay at the foundation of
that economy by which the trinity of persons in the Godhead, the
incarnation of the Son in human form, the hierarchy of angels,
the glory of the Mother of God, the exaltation of the saints to a
deific union, were at first obscurely revealed, and only
gradually disclosed to the clear knowledge and belief of the
generality of the faithful. It was necessary to establish first
the doctrine of the divine unity and spirituality, then the
Trinity and Incarnation, so firmly in the faith of the people of
God, that it could not be disturbed by anything similar to the
corrupt worshipping of created things, before it was safe to
allow the glorification of all creation and all nature, which is
the consequence of the Incarnation, to be fully manifested. The
Trinity and Incarnation were but dimly revealed, and only
explicitly known by the _élite_ of the faithful, in order
that the attention of the childish, imperfect minds of those who
lived in those early ages, surrounded by a brilliant and
seductive polytheism, might be fixed principally on the unity and
spirituality of the divine nature. It was the special mission of
the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations to preserve and hand
down the doctrine of the one, true God. There would have been a
danger in distinctly revealing the Trinity before the time, that
the dogma would have been corrupted and perverted by a false
conception of the plurality of persons in the divine being, as of
a plurality of beings. The Incarnation would have been perverted
also into anthropomorphism, or the conception of the divine
nature as identical with human nature. Too distinct a knowledge
of the angelic hierarchy would have dazzled the minds of a people
predisposed and continually tempted to idolatry, and would have
withdrawn them from the contemplation and worship of God.
Sculpture and painting would have affected their senses and
imagination too powerfully, and would have fostered the
disposition to conceive of the divine nature as divided among
many deities, and resembling material, created objects. It was
necessary that Christ should come and manifest himself to men in
his true character, and that he should establish an infallible
church, competent to teach and define the Trinity and Incarnation
in their relation to the divine unity, to condemn all errors, and
to direct the development of theology with unerring certitude,
before the grand and abstruse mysteries of faith could be safely
exposed to the gaze of the multitude.
{729}
Our Lord himself proceeded with great caution in these matters,
and so did the apostles and their successors. The trinity in
unity and the person of Christ had first to be proposed and to be
sunk indelibly into the mind of the church, before the Blessed
Virgin and the saints could be brought prominently forward; and
religion had first to be imbued with spirituality and pure,
robust morality, before the splendor of worship and the riches of
the fine arts, and all the subsidiary means of impressing the
senses and the imagination, could receive their due development.
Nevertheless, that the unity of revelation might be manifest and
the continuity of development be kept unbroken, everything which
was destined to bloom forth in its season in full splendor upon
this grand plant of God whose branches are destined to overshadow
the world, existed in germ and bud from the very beginning. It
would lead us too far to follow up this thought. Orthodox
Protestants will admit it in regard to the principal mysteries of
Catholic faith. The text of Scripture shows plainly that
ceremonial, architecture, and music, in a word, all that was not
liable to lose its symbolic character too easily in the minds of
the people, were profusely employed in the religion of the old
law. Philosophy, poetry, science, and literature were kept in
abeyance to a great extent, and yet given sufficiently for
intellectual culture in the inspired writings. And,
notwithstanding the restriction placed on sculpture and painting,
yet images were to a certain extent made use of, by the divine
commandment, for symbolic purposes in the sanctuary and in the
temple. This is their true and legitimate use, and they are to be
classed with other symbols, emblems, or exterior signs and
representations to the senses of persons and things in the
supersensible and celestial world. Sacraments, holy places, holy
things, temples, altars, vestments, ceremonies, images, all
belong to the same order, and find their reason and principle in
the Incarnation. The Incarnation is the highest consecration and
elevation of material substance and form. The body of Christ is
hypostatically united to the divine nature and made the true,
living image of the Godhead, as the Second Council of Nice
teaches, the medium by which God is manifested in the sensible
and visible order. Through Christ the whole material universe is
sanctified and united with God as its final cause. The fanciful
theosophies and mythologies of the heathen world were only
abortive efforts to express this truth. Mr. Gladstone has
recently given utterance to this idea in very beautiful language,
so far as Greek polytheism is concerned, in his review of _Ecce
Homo_. Heathen art was similarly a perverted foreshadowing of
Catholic art, copied after the ideal, not of redeemed and
glorified but of fallen nature, not of heaven but of hell, which
is but a dark counterpart of heaven.
Modern Protestants will generally admit the lawfulness and
utility of sculpture and painting, considered as the outward
expression of the Christian ideal of beauty, the representation
of persons, scenes, places worthy of respect, means of improving
the senses and imagination with religious ideas.
{730}
They are not like their ancestors, who defaced sanctuaries,
rifled the tombs of the saints, burned relics, broke
stained-glass windows, destroyed sculptures and paintings, and,
with barbarous vandalism, did what they could to efface the
glorious monuments of the ages of faith. The remnants of these
sacred relics of antiquity which they have now in their
possession they preserve with jealous care. They even make use of
sculpture and painting to perpetuate their own heretical
tradition, as well as to set forth what they have retained that
is truly Christian. They adorn their churches with works of art,
and erect monuments and statues to their own chiefs and leaders,
as, for instance, the monument to the English pseudo-martyrs at
Oxford, and the statue of Luther recently unveiled with so much
pomp and ceremony at Worms. They are, therefore, precluded from
making objection to the use of sculptured or painted images of
Christ and the saints in general, and are restricted to
objections against certain uses of these images in religious
rites or worship, and certain acts of respect and veneration
which are exhibited toward them. We will, therefore, proceed to
show that this use of images is precisely identical in principle
with that use of them to which Protestants do not object, and in
conformity with the natural and necessary laws of the human mind,
which even the most violent iconoclasts cannot break.
The human mind is forced to use images as its media; and,
although it is not necessary to have these images sculptured or
painted, it is by reason of the aforesaid necessity of using
images of some kind that man instinctively seeks in sculpture and
painting a suitable outward form and expression of his
intellectual images, and finds so much pleasure in beholding
these intellectual images expressed in works of art by others.
The human intellect is incapable of contemplating the divine
essence immediately. It forms an intellectual conception or image
which represents God to itself, but which is most imperfect and
inadequate. Any one who should believe that God really is like
the conception or imagination he is able to form of him, would
commit as great an absurdity as one who should believe that he is
like a venerable old man with a long white beard. Not only is the
conception or intellectual image of God formed by the mind always
inadequate, but it is often false in certain respects.
Aristotle's conception of God was essentially a false one; so is
that of the Deists, of the Calvinists, and of those Universalists
who deny his retributive justice. Even the highest
contemplatives, as they themselves positively affirm, although
they speak of a certain purely spiritual and imageless view of
God, never contemplate God so directly that they can dispense
with every intellectual species or image as a medium, and intend
only by imageless contemplation to designate a degree of
subtility in their intellectual operations which renders them
pure and spiritual by comparison with those of grosser minds.
Probably most persons of uncultivated intellects represent God to
their imagination under some majestic and venerable human form,
and think of him as seated on a throne, in a superb palace, with
his ministering angels, also clothed in corporeal forms,
attending upon him. Those whose clear intellectual conceptions
enable them to rid themselves of every image borrowed from the
human figure in thinking of God, will still find that their minds
make use of certain emblems, figures, or images of the divine
attributes, such as light, the sea, the atmosphere.
{731}
Much more will they find themselves compelled to transfer to
their conception of the divine intelligence and volition the
analogy of their own manner of thought, of their sentiments and
affections. In the same manner, when a person thinks of Jesus
Christ, meditates on his life, death, and glorified state in
heaven, he will form to himself images which represent his ideal
conception, images so much the more distinct as they reflect the
humanity of Christ with which we are far more immediately united
than we are with the divine nature, and which we are therefore
able to represent more exactly and vividly to our imagination.
Are we to say, then, that every person worships the image of God
or of Jesus Christ which his intellect has formed, and becomes
thereby an idolater? Certainly not. His reason and faith assure
him of the existence of God and Christ as objectively real,
distinct from his own mental conception, and surpassing all his
apprehensions. His intention in worship is directed to God as he
really is, and is true worship, although the intellectual media
which the soul is obliged to make use of are imperfect and
inadequate.
The case is no way altered if the sculptured or painted image of
Christ is made use of, instead of or together with the
intellectual image. The crucifix is only a permanent image
affecting the exterior senses, as the intellectual representation
is a transient image affecting the interior senses. Coleridge
says that a picture is "an intermediate somewhat between a
thought and a thing." The same may be said of a statue, though a
statue is more of a thing than a painting is. The material
substance employed by the artist is merely the substratum of the
form, which is something ideal, as language is merely the medium
of thought. In painting or sculpture of real merit, the higher
and more perfect conceptions of men who possess the artistic gift
are transferred to the minds of those whose ideal conceptions are
of an inferior order, or who, at least, are not able to give
their conceptions an outward and permanent expression. The artist
who makes a statue or painting of our Lord intends to represent
him according to the ideal which he has in his own mind. His
object is to bring the ideal conception of Christ vividly and
distinctly before the imagination of the beholder. The more
completely he succeeds in producing the desired effect, the more
perfect will be the identification of the image with the object
it represents in the imagination of the beholder; that is, the
image, the more completely it is an image, the less does it
attract attention to its own separate reality, and the more does
it fix the attention of the mind on the object it represents. A
person whose mind is susceptible to the influence of art, looking
at a masterpiece of painting or sculpture, forgets that it is
only a representation, and seems to himself to be looking at the
reality. His imagination transports him to the scene of
crucifixion, and he is spell-bound as he gazes on the face of the
dying Christ. The same emotions arise in his mind that would
arise if he were actually gazing upon the crucifixion itself. If
he is a Christian, he will spontaneously elicit acts of worship
toward the Son of God dying on the cross. These interior acts
will manifest themselves by exterior signs, by the respectful
posture, the silence, the reverential expression of countenance,
the moistened eye, which betray the workings of the soul within
to any attentive observer. Suppose that he kneels down and offers
a prayer, that he kisses the feet of the image of Christ, that he
exclaims aloud, "My Lord and my God!" is that idolatry?
{732}
Is he worshipping a picture or a statue? If he is, then all the
merely interior and mental acts of a person who is affected by a
statue or picture of Christ are equally idolatrous. If the
sculptured or painted image of Christ is really substituted for
Christ himself, and receives as a reality, distinct in itself,
any homage or affection which it terminates as an ultimate
object, then all admirers of works of art are guilty of the same
species of absurdity, commit the same unreasonable act, in a
lesser degree, which culminates, in the case supposed, in the
supreme folly of adoring marble, ivory, canvas, and paint. That
class of persons who go into raptures over works of art,
therefore, have nothing to say against the Catholic use of the
crucifix which is not contradicted by their own practice and
avowed sentiments. If the devout sentiments awakened by a
crucifix or a painting of the crucifixion are legitimate for once
and for the space of half an hour, they are legitimate at all
times. If it is lawful to go to a picture-gallery in order to see
a masterpiece, it is lawful to buy it, to hang it in an oratory,
to visit it every day, and to make a regular and constant use of
it, as a means of exciting devotion. If the inward sentiments it
awakens are lawful, so is their outward expression; and if this
outward expression is in itself lawful, it may be prescribed as a
law by the ritual of the church. The same principle that
justifies the making of a crucifix, and the looking upon it with
emotion, justifies the church in placing it above the altar,
bowing or genuflecting before it, incensing it, exposing it on
Good Friday to veneration, and chanting the words: "Ecce lignum
crucis, _venite adoremus_."
The crucifix, considered as a material object, is merely treated
with the same respect which is shown to a Bible, an altar-cloth,
a chalice, or any other object devoted to sacred uses. As a
representation, it is not distinguished from the object which it
represents, and the acts of interior or exterior veneration which
terminate upon it are merely relative, and are referred
altogether to Jesus Christ. They are like the kiss which a man
imprints upon his wife's picture, or the uncovering of the head
when a procession passes the statue of Washington. There is only
one question, therefore, in regard to the veneration given to the
crucifix, and that is, Does the object or person represented,
that is, our Lord Jesus Christ, deserve the worship of latria, or
divine worship, which we pay to him, and which we signify by
these exterior marks of respect toward his image? The same is the
case with the images of the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The
veneration paid to them has no respect to the material of which
they are composed, but passes to their prototypes, that is, the
persons represented. The only question, therefore, is, Do these
prototypes deserve the honor we intend to pay them? If they do,
it is right to signify this honor by marks of respect to their
images, such as bowing, offering incense, burning lights,
decorating the shrines in which they are placed with flowers, and
kneeling before them to offer prayers.
We have already shown that those who have the mere devotion of
taste and imagination toward statues and pictures act in a manner
precisely analogous, and pass through the same mental process
which is exhibited by the Catholic in the respect which he pays
to the sacred images of Christ and the saints.
{733}
The only difference is, that the latter makes use of his
imagination in the service of a real and practical faith and
piety. His devotion is not a mere intellectual or sentimental
devotion, but a spiritual exercise. It is, therefore, less
dependent on the artistic merit and excellence of the
representation than the merely sentimental excitement of the
votary of art. A rude crucifix or a simple image of the Blessed
Virgin is sufficient for the only purpose for which the devout
Catholic makes use of them, as a help to fix the senses and
attention, a sort of step-ladder by which he may raise his mind
to the contemplation of Christ and his blessed mother. Many other
circumstances give value to sacred objects besides their
intrinsic worth. Their history, their antiquity, the associations
connected with them, the traditions of past ages which cluster
about them, often give them a sacredness far beyond the charm of
symmetry and beauty. Of the two, we should much prefer to have
Bernini's exquisite statue, over which the Rev. Mr. Bacon goes
into raptures which betray his refined love of art, destroyed,
rather than the venerable statue of St. Peter, which, with
manners the reverse of exquisite and refined, he calls "a grimy
idol." Even persons of the most exquisite taste often love an old
house, old portraits, old articles of furniture, and many other
old things, intrinsically ugly and valueless, far more than any
similar objects which are new, costly, and fabricated in the
highest style of art. For the same reason, certain objects of
devotion, which are devoid of all artistic excellence, may be
very dear and venerable to Catholics of the most cultivated
taste. Much more, then, it is natural that rude and unsightly
statues or pictures should be objects of devotion to Catholics of
uncultivated taste. Protestants make a great mistake in judging
of the sentiments of the common people in Catholic countries.
They attribute to superstition what is really to be ascribed only
to uncultivated taste. The sentiments which are awakened by
masterpieces of art they can understand; but they cannot
understand that ordinary and even grotesque images are
masterpieces of art and models of beauty to the rude and childish
mind of the multitude. To their prejudiced and distorted fancy,
these images appear like idols, and the devotion of the people
toward them like a stupid idol-worship. They do not appreciate
the fact that they are to these simple people what
_chefs-d'oeuvre_ of religious art are to them--a vivid
representation, in outward form, of their own highest ideal. The
susceptibility of these untutored minds to those emotions which
are awakened through the senses is far greater than that of the
more educated, though it is not so chastened. This is especially
the case with the southern races. Poetry, music, painting,
everything which appeals to the imagination, finds a ready
response in their ardent temperament. It is, therefore, a proof
of the highest wisdom in the church that she has taken advantage
of all these means of impressing religious ideas upon the minds
of all classes of men in every stage of intellectual development.
There are some whose devotion takes a more purely intellectual
form, and who elevate their minds to God and heaven more easily
by interior recollection and meditation than by any exercise of
the imagination or any outward aids. A few prefer the solitude of
a cell or a cave to Cologne Cathedral, and an hour's abstracted
contemplation to all the pageantry of St. Peter's.
{734}
Such are permitted and encouraged to follow the bent of their own
inclination and the leading of the divine Spirit. The mass of
men, however, even of the educated and cultivated, need the help
of the exterior world to give them the images and emblems of
divine and spiritual things without which they cannot fix their
attention or awaken their emotions. The quality and quantity of
the helps and instruments with which they worship God vary
indefinitely. The devotion of those whose state is a kind of
intellectual childhood, or in whose temperament imagination and
passion predominate, will necessarily be more sensuous than that
of more cultivated minds or races of a more cool and sedate
temperament. It is the same principle, however, which pervades
and regulates all; the spirit is one, though the form varies. The
true mystic, who is absorbed in the contemplation of the divine
nature, does not deny to the sacred humanity of Christ, to the
Blessed Virgin, the saints, or to any holy things, their worth
and excellence, although he does not fix his attention upon them
so frequently and so directly as others. The great saints and
theologians of the church never despise the devotions of the
people or accuse them of superstition. The distinction between
the intelligent few and the superstitious many in the Catholic
Church, is one which the most highly educated and spiritually
minded Catholics disdain and repudiate as a dishonor to
themselves. It is made by sciolists, who are unable to answer the
arguments of our theologians or to deny the sanctity of our
saints, and who seek to evade in this way the overwhelming force
of the evidence for the truth of our religion. The veneration of
saints and the use of images in religious worship, they say,
though it does not prevent the _élite_ of Catholics from
offering a supreme and pure worship to God and looking up to
Jesus Christ as their only Saviour, leads the multitude to
superstition and idolatry. We are better judges of the fact than
they are. They know next to nothing of the practical working of
our religion, or of the ideas and state of mind of our people. We
know these things. We have, at least, as much abhorrence of
idolatry as they have, and as much zeal for the enlightenment and
spiritual welfare of the multitude. We know that there is no
taint of superstition or idolatry in the devotion of our people.
The Catholic Church keeps the ideas of God and Christ vividly
before the minds of her children; they realize them in a manner
of which those who are out of the church have no conception. The
accusation of withdrawing from God and our Lord that which is due
to them--to divide and scatter it among inferior beings--comes
with a very bad grace from Protestants. What have they done to
reclaim mankind from polytheism and to spread the worship of the
true God? They have done nothing, except to cripple the efforts
of the Catholic priesthood by sowing dissension in Christendom
and giving the scandal of disunion to infidels. They have bred
anew the old heresies against the Trinity and the Divinity of
Christ which had become extinct, together with the more monstrous
error of pantheism. We, the Catholic priesthood, have conquered
the ancient heathenism, have planted everywhere Christianity,
have established on an immovable foundation the doctrine of the
divinity of Jesus Christ, together with the worship of his
adorable name.
{735}
We are now carrying on the work of converting the heathen, and of
defending theism and Christianity against the hosts of enemies
raised up against them by the revolt of the sixteenth century. If
Christianity is to gain in the future new and more glorious
triumphs over the false religions of the world, it will be
through our labors and our blood that she will win her victories.
Not only do the defence and advancement of the supernatural order
rest on us; we are obliged also to defend nature, reason, the
arts, the poetry and romance of life, from a gloomy Puritanism, a
hopeless scepticism, a desolating materialism, which would sweep
away all spiritual philosophy, all sound science, all gayety and
charm in life, all joyousness in religion, all ideality and
heroism in the sphere of human existence. It is against a
universal iconoclasm we have to contend--an iconoclasm which
seeks to throw down and deface the image of celestial truth and
beauty, to break the painted windows through which the light of
heaven streams in upon this earthly temple, to efface those
angelic and saintly forms with the Madonna who is the queen of
the whole bright multitude, to overthrow the cross, and finally
to drag down the sacred humanity of Christ, together with the
deity that dwells in it and is worshipped through it, leaving
mankind without a temple, an altar, a Saviour, or a God. We have
learned the nature of the warfare we are engaged in too well from
the conflicts of eighteen centuries, to be deceived or misled. We
know that an attack on the smallest portion of the edifice of the
Catholic Church means its total subversion, and that,
consequently, it is just as necessary to resist it as if it were
avowedly aimed at the foundation. We know that we cannot and must
not yield up the smallest fragment of Catholic truth for any
plausible end whatever. Although, therefore, the veneration of
saints and holy images is not among the most necessary and
fundamental parts of the Catholic religion, yet, as the principle
from which it proceeds is an integral portion of Catholic
doctrine, we shall always maintain it with the same fidelity as
we do the primary truths of the Creed, the Unity and Trinity of
the Godhead, the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus
Christ. The images of Christ, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the
saints, will always remain above our altars and on the walls of
our churches; the Salve Regina and Litanies of the Saints will
never cease to be chanted in our solemn services; and we shall
continue to adore the Incarnate Word in his sacred humanity with
the worship of latria until the end of the world.
------
{736}
Nellie Netterville; Or,
One Of The Transplanted.
Chapter XV.
Before leaving the guard-room, Ormiston poured out a large goblet
of wine from a flask which he had sent one of the soldiers to
procure at a wine-tavern hard by, and insisted upon Nellie
drinking it to the last drop.
The remainder of the flask he gave to Roger, who, truth to say,
was almost as much in need of it as Nellie; and they then all
went forth together, O'More having previously pledged his word,
both to Ormiston and Holdfast, to consider himself merely as a
prisoner at large, until they themselves should release him from
his parole.
Their way led them from the gate-house into Bridge street, and
from thence to Ormond Gate, Earl's Gate, "Geata-na-Eorlagh," as
it was then sometimes called. With Major Ormiston in their
company, this was opened to them without a question, and they
afterward proceeded, as fast as Nellie's strength permitted, up
the steep hill street, debouching into the Corn Market. Entering
the latter, they found themselves face to face with Newgate, the
great criminal prison of the city. There it stood, dark, strong,
and terrible--too strong, Roger could not help thinking, to be a
fitting prison for the frail, dying woman it was guarding for the
hangman. It seemed, indeed, almost like an abuse of power to have
cast her there, so helpless as she was, and powerless, in the
strong grasp of the law.
Newgate had originally formed a square, having at each of its
four angles a tower, three stories high, and turreted at the top.
Two of these however, those facing toward the city, had been
recently taken down; and when Nellie looked upon it for the first
time, it consisted merely of the gate-house, with its portcullis
and iron gates, and a strong tower at either end. Near the prison
stood the gibbet, metaphorically as well as really; for few,
indeed, in those sad days, were the prisoners who, once shut up
within the walls of Newgate, ever left them for a pleasanter
destination than the gallows. From the position in which it
stood, they could hardly avoid seeing it as they passed onward
toward the prison; but in the faint hope of sparing at least poor
Nellie's eyes this terrible apparition, Ormiston stepped a little
in advance of his companions, and placed himself between her and
it. Roger, however, upon whose arm she leaned, knew, by the
sudden tremor which shook her frame that this tender caution had
been in vain. Nellie, in fact, had already seen and guessed at
the ghastly nature of its office there; and as her eye glanced
reluctantly--and almost, as it were, in spite of herself--toward
it, she felt as if she had never before thoroughly realized the
awful position in which her mother stood. What wonder that she
grew sick and giddy as the thought forced itself, in all its
naked reality, on her mind, that her mother--_her mother_,
the very type and personification of refined and delicate
womanhood--might at any hour be dragged hither, shrinking and
ashamed, beneath the rude hangman's grasp?
{737}
What wonder that her very feet failed to do their office, and
that Roger was compelled rather to carry than to lead her past
the spot, never pausing or suffering her to pause until they
stood before the gates of Newgate?
Here, as at the city gate, the name and authority of Ormiston
procured them ready admission, the jailer receiving them with
courtesy, and showing them at once into a low, vaulted room on
the ground-floor of the prison. Notwithstanding this, however,
Ormiston had no sooner announced the name of the prisoner they
had come to visit, than the man showed symptoms of great and
irrepressible embarrassment.
"The prisoner had been very ill," he muttered; "had burst a
blood-vessel in the morning, and the bleeding had returned within
the hour. A doctor had been sent for, and was at that moment with
her; but if Major Ormiston could condescend to wait, he would
call his wife, who was also in attendance on the poor lady, and
would tell her to announce the arrival of a visitor. It must be
done gently," he repeated over and over again, "very gently; for
the doctor had already told him that any sudden shock would of
necessity prove fatal."
Ormiston eyed the man curiously as he blundered through this
statement. He knew enough of Newgate, as it was then conducted,
to doubt much if the visit of a doctor was a luxury often
vouchsafed to its inhabitants; and feeling in consequence that
some mystery was concealed beneath the mention of such an
official, he was almost tempted to fancy that Mrs. Netterville
was already dead, and that, on account of the presence of her
daughter, the man hesitated to say so. The next moment, however,
he had leaped to another and more correct conclusion, though for
Nellie's sake, and because intolerance formed no part of his
character, he made neither question nor comment, as the jailer
evidently expected that he would, on the matter. Greatly relieved
by this apparent absence of suspicion on the part of the English
officer, the man brought in a stool for Nellie to sit upon, and
then once more announced his intention of going in quest of his
wife. Just as he opened the door for this purpose, Ormiston
caught a glimpse of a tall, gray-haired man, who passed down the
passage quickly in company of a woman. The jailer saw him also,
and with a sudden look of dismay upon his features, closed the
half-opened door, and turned again to Ormiston.
"It was the doctor," he said with emphasis--"the doctor who had
just taken his departure; and as there was nothing now to prevent
their seeing the sick lady, he would send his wife at once to
conduct them to her cell."
A long ten minutes followed, during which time Nellie sat quite
still, her face hidden by her hands, and shivering from head to
foot in fear and expectation. The door opened again, and she
sprang up. This time it was the jailer's wife who entered.
"The poor lady had been informed," she said, "of the arrival of
her daughter, and was longing to embrace her. Would the young
lady follow her to the cell?"
Nellie was only too eager to do so, and they left the room
together. Ormiston hesitated a moment as to what he would do
himself; but not liking to leave Nellie entirely in the hands of
such people as jailers and their wives were in those days, he at
last proposed to Roger to follow and wait somewhere near the cell
during her approaching interview with her mother.
{738}
To this Roger readily assented, and they reached the open door
just as Nellie entered and knelt down by her mother's side.
More than a hundred years later than the period of which there is
question in this tale, the treatment of prisoners in the Dublin
Newgate was so horrible and revolting to the commonest sense of
decency and humanity as to demand a positive interference on the
part of government. There is nothing, therefore, very astonishing
in the fact, that the state in which Nellie found her mother
filled her brimful with sorrow and dismay. The cell in which she
was confined was low, and damp, and dark, and this she might have
expected, and was in some degree prepared for; but she had not
counted on the utter misery of its appointments; and the sight of
her pale mother--death already haunting her dark eyes, and
written unmistakably on her ghastly features--stretched upon the
clammy pavement, a heap of dirty straw her only bed, and a
tattered blanket her only covering, was such a shock and surprise
to Nellie that, instead of joyfully announcing the fact of her
reprieve to the poor captive, as she had intended, she fell upon
her knees beside her, and wept over her like a child.
"Mother! mother!" was all that she could say for sobbing, as she
took her mother's hand in hers and covered it with tears and
kisses. Mrs. Netterville appeared for a moment too much overcome
to speak, or even move, but gradually a faint flush passed over
her wan face, and her eyes at last grew brighter and more
life-like, when Nellie, making a strong and desperate effort to
command her feelings, suddenly wiped away her tears and bent over
the bed to kiss her.
"O mother! mother!" the poor girl could not refrain from once
more sobbing, "is it thus that I see you after all?"
"Nay, child," the mother gasped with difficulty, "you should
rather thank God for it on your knees. See you not it is an
especial mercy? If I had not burst a blood-vessel to-day,
to-morrow--yes, to-morrow"--a shudder ran through her wasted
frame, and she broke off suddenly.
"But I have brought you a reprieve," sobbed Nellie, hardly
knowing what she said, or the danger of saying it at that
moment--"a reprieve which is almost a pardon. Only a few days
more, and you would have been free, whereas now--now"--tears
choked her utterance, and, hiding her face on her mother's scanty
coverlet, she sobbed as if her heart were breaking. Mrs.
Netterville half raised herself on her pallet bed. For one brief
moment she struggled with that desire for life which lurks in
every human breast, and which Nellie's exclamation had called
forth afresh in hers. For one brief moment that phantom of life
and liberty, lost just as they had been found again--lost just as
they had become more than ever precious in her eyes--that
contrast between what was to be her portion and what it
_might_ have been, deluged her soul with a bitterness more
intolerable than that of death itself, and her frail body shook
and trembled like an aspen leaf beneath the new weight of misery
thus laid upon it. That one unguarded word of Nellie's had, in
fact, changed, as if by magic, all her thoughts and feelings and
aspirations. Death and life, and health and sickness, freedom and
captivity, had each put on a new and unexpected aspect in her
eyes, and that very thing which, only a minute or two before, had
seemed to her soul as a source of real consolation, had suddenly
taken the guise of a great misfortune. It was as if God himself
had mocked her with feigned mercy; a weaker soul might so have
said, and sunk beneath the burden! But with that strong and
well-tried spirit the struggle ended otherwise.
{739}
Clasping her wasted hands together, and lifting up her eyes to
heaven, the dying woman exclaimed, in a voice which none could
hear and doubt of the truth of the sentiments it uttered, "My
God! my God! Thy will, not mine, be done!" Then she fell back
quietly on her pillow, exhausted indeed with the effort she had
made, but calm and smiling and resigned, as if that sudden
glimpse of renewed happiness and life had never, mirage-like,
risen to mock her with its beauty.
The first use Mrs. Netterville made of her victory over nature
was to comfort Nellie.
"Weep not, dear child," she whispered tenderly; "weep not so
sadly, but rather thank God with me for the consolation which he
has given us in this meeting. Where is Hamish?" she added,
turning her dim eyes toward the open door, where Ormiston and
O'More were lingering still, and evidently fancying that one or
other of them was her absent servant--"where is Hamish? He has
done my bidding bravely; why comes he not forward, that I may
thank him?"
"Hamish is not here, mother; I left him with my grandfather."
"God help you, child!" moaned Mrs. Netterville, a sudden spasm at
her heart at the thought of her unprotected child, "God help you!
have you come hither all this way alone?"
"Mother," said Nellie in a smothered voice, "I am not alone.
Roger More came with me. Without him it would have been
impossible."
"Roger More--Roger More," repeated Mrs. Netterville, trying to
gather together her memories of the days gone by. "It was in the
arms of a Roger More that your father breathed his last."
"In mine, dear lady!" cried Roger, unable any longer to resist
the temptation of presenting himself to Nellie's mother--"in
mine! And knowing that the father did me the honor to call me
friend, Lord Netterville has had the great kindness to entrust me
with the daughter in this long journey, which the love she bears
you compelled her to undertake."
Something in the tones of Roger's voice, rather than in the words
he uttered, seemed to strike on the mother's ear. She smiled a
grateful smile of recognition, and then turned a questioning
glance, first upon his face and afterward on Nellie's. Perhaps
Roger interpreted that glance aright. At all events,
he took Nellie's hand, and, as if moved by a sudden inspiration,
laid it on her mother's, saying:
"Only the day after that on which I saw her first, I told her
that I would never ask for this dear hand until her mother was by
to give it."
"Her mother gives it," said Mrs. Netterville solemnly. "Yes! for
I guess by Nellie's silence that her heart is not far from you
already."
"Mother, mother!" cried Nellie, resisting Mrs. Netterville's
feeble efforts to place her hand in Roger's--"not here--not
now--not when you are dying."
"For that very reason," gasped the mother. "My son," she added,
fixing her eyes full on Roger, "_you_ can understand. I
would see my Nellie in safe hands before I go."
"It would be the fulfilment of my dearest wish," said Roger
earnestly, "if only it be possible."
{740}
"It _is_ possible," she was beginning; but pausing at the
sight of Ormiston, who had by this time joined himself to the
group around her bed, she added in an apprehensive tone, "but
there is a stranger present."
"Not a stranger, but a friend," the young officer replied, in a
tone of sincerity it would have been impossible to doubt, even if
Nellie had not whispered, "A friend, indeed! Without him we could
hardly have been with you now."
"Then I will trust him as a friend," Mrs. Netterville replied.
"The gentleman who left me as you entered--"
"The doctor," Ormiston interrupted, with a marked emphasis on the
word.
"Well, the doctor," she replied, with a languid smile. "He can do
all I need, and he lives close at hand, with the merchant William
Lyon, who knows him not, however," she added, mindful of the
safety of the person named--"who knows him not in any other
character than that of a lodger and chance sojourner in the
city."
"In ten minutes he shall be here," said Ormiston, "if I can
induce him to come with me. Meanwhile I will give orders to the
jailer to leave you undisturbed."
"If you permit it, Major Ormiston, I will go with you," said
Roger, not only zealous for the success of the embassy, but
anxious, likewise, that before taking such a decided step Nellie
should have the opportunity of a private conference with her
mother. "I think my name, and a word which I can whisper in his
ear, may be of use--otherwise he might fear a snare."
Ormiston assenting to this proposition, the young men departed,
and for the first time since the commencement of their interview
mother and daughter were alone together.
For some minutes, however, neither of them spoke. Mrs.
Netterville lay back, endeavoring to recover breath and strength
for the coming scene, and Nellie was completely stunned. The
shock of finding her mother dying at the very moment when she had
hoped to restore her to new life--the bodily weariness consequent
on her journey--the sudden, and, to her, the most inexplicable
resolution to which Mrs. Netterville had come in her regard--all
combined to paralyze her faculties, and, hardly able to think or
even feel, she sat like a statue on the floor beside her mother.
From this state of stupor she was roused at last by the sound of
the dying woman's voice:
"Nellie!"
"Mother!" cried the girl; and then, as she felt that poor
mother's hand feebly endeavoring to twine itself round her neck,
she burst into a fresh flood of tears. They saved her senses,
perhaps--who knows? Creatures as strong in mind as she was, and
stronger far in body, have died or gone mad ere now beneath such
a strain on both as had been put upon her for weeks.
"Nellie, my child--my only one--weep not!" her mother whispered
tenderly. "Believe me, little daughter, that I die happy."
"O mother, mother!" Nellie sobbed; "and I thought to have given
you life!"
Mrs. Netterville paused a moment, and then, in a voice tremulous
with feeling, she replied:
"Nellie, I would not deceive you. Life is no idle thing to be
cast off carelessly as a garment; and for one brief moment the
thought that, but for this sudden malady, I might yet have lived
some years longer, filled my soul with sorrow! But it is over
now--more than over--and I am at peace. Why should I not? for you
are safe--you for whom I chiefly clung to life! Yes! now that a
man good and generous, as I long have known Roger More to be, is
about to take my place beside you, I go without repining--nay,
'repining' is not the word," she said, correcting herself--"I go
in great joy and jubilation to the presence of my God."
{741}
"O mother!" sobbed Nellie, cut to the soul by this allusion to
her marriage, "that is the worst of all. Do not insist upon it, I
entreat you."
"Silence, Nellie!" Mrs. Netterville answered, almost sternly.
"Think you I could die happy if I left you--a child--a
girl--unprotected in this wild city?"
"Mother, be not angry, I beseech you," Nellie pleaded, "if I
remind you that I came hither safe!"
"Ay, but you were coming to your mother, and the world itself
could say no evil of one bent on such a mission. To-morrow,
Nellie, you will be motherless, and I will not have it said of
you hereafter, that you went wandering through the country
protected by a man who had no husband's right to do it. Child,
child!" Mrs. Netterville added, in a tone of almost agonized
supplication, "if you would have me die in peace, if you would
not that your presence here (instead of joy) should cast gall and
vinegar into the cup of death, you will yield your will to mine,
and go back to your grandfather a wedded woman."
"Mother!" cried Nellie, terrified by the vehemence with which her
mother spoke, "dear mother, say no more! It shall be even as you
wish. I promise. Alas! alas! this weary bleeding has commenced
again--what shall I do to aid you?"
Mrs. Netterville could not speak, for blood was gushing violently
from her lips, but she pointed to a jug of water on the floor.
Nellie took the hint at once, and dipped a handkerchief into the
water; with this she bathed her mother's brow, and washed her
lips, until by degrees the hemorrhage subsided, and the dying
woman lay back once more pale and quiet on her pillow.
Just then, to Nellie's great relief, the jailer entered, bearing
a lighted torch; for the sun was going down, and the cell was
almost dark already.
After him came Ormiston and O'More, accompanied by the
gray-haired man who had been with Mrs. Netterville at the moment
of their own arrival in the prison. Ormiston took the torch from
the jailer's hand, and placing a gold piece there instead,
dismissed him, with orders to close the door behind him, and to
give them due notice before shutting up the prison for the night.
As he set the torch in the sconce placed for it against the wall,
the light fell full upon Mrs. Netterville's face, which looked so
pale and drawn that for a moment he thought that she was dead,
and whispered his suspicion to the stranger.
The latter drew a small vial from his bosom, and poured a few
drops upon her lips. They revived her almost immediately; she
opened her eyes, and a smile passed over her white face as they
fell upon her visitant. "You here again, my father!" she murmured
beneath her breath. "I thank God that you have had the courage.
You know the purpose for which I need you?"
"I know it--and, under the circumstances, approve it," the
stranger answered quietly. "The sooner, therefore, that it is
done the better it will be for all."
"Poor child--poor Nellie!" murmured Mrs. Netterville, as she
caught the sound of the low sobbing which, spite of all her
efforts at self-control, burst ever and anon from Nellie's lips.
"Poor little Nellie! no wonder that she weeps. It is a sad,
strange place for a wedding, is this prison-cell!"
{742}
"These are strange times," said the priest kindly, "and they
leave us, alas! but little choice of place in the fulfilment of
our duties. Nevertheless, sad as all this must seem at present, I
am certain that your daughter will, some day or other, look back
upon her wedding in this prison-cell with a sense of gladness no
earthly pomp could have conferred on marriage; for she then will
understand, even better than she does now, how, by this
concession to a mother's wishes, she has secured peace and
happiness to that mother's death-bed. That is," he added, turning
and pointedly addressing himself to Nellie, "if sorrow for her
mother's state is the sole cause for all this weeping?"
Nellie felt that he had asked indirectly a serious question, and
she was too truthful not to answer it at once. She did not speak,
however--she could not; but she gave her hand to Roger, and made
one step forward.
"Come nearer," whispered her mother, "come nearer, that I may see
and hear."
Roger drew Nellie nearer, until they both were standing close to
the sick woman's pillow.
"Raise me up," the latter whispered faintly.
He lifted her in his strong arms, for she was as helpless as a
child, and placed her in a sitting posture, with her back
supported by the wall near which her bed was placed.
As soon as she had recovered a little from the faintness
consequent on this exertion, she waved her hand to Roger as a
signal that the ceremony should begin. The priest turned at once
to the young couple, and commenced his office, making it as brief
as possible. Brief, however, as it was, and bare of outward
ceremonial, Ormiston, as he stood a little in the background,
could not help feeling that he never before had looked on, might
never again behold, such a strangely touching scene. The wasted
features of the poor mother, for whom death seemed only waiting
until her anxiety for the safety of her child had been set at
rest for ever; the fair face of Nellie, pale now with grief and
watching, but ready as a budding rose to flush into yet brighter
beauty with the first return of sunshine; Roger, with such a look
of grave yet conscious gladness in his eyes as best suited the
mingled nature of the scene in which he was a foremost actor; the
priest, who, at the risk of his own liberty or life, was
fulfilling one of the most solemn offices of his sacred calling;
the vaulted roof above, glistening in the damp as the light
flashed on it, and the bare, bleak walls around, with the names
of many a weary captive inscribed upon them; joy and sorrow, hope
and fear; life springing forward, on the one hand, to its
brightest hours, and sadly receding, on the other, into the
shadows of the tomb--all were gathered together in that
prison-cell, and combined to form a picture which would have
needed the pencil of a great master to render in its full force
and truth.
It was done at last! Nellie had said the word which made her a
wedded wife, and Mrs. Netterville folded her in her arms, and
whispered, "Thank you, dearest, thank you; for I know what this
must have cost you!" and then placing her hand in Roger's, added,
"Take her, my son--take her; God is my witness that I give her to
you without a fear for her future happiness. To you in whose arms
the father died I may well intrust the daughter!"
{743}
"You shall never repent it, mother--never!" said Roger, with
that calm, determined manner which better than many words, brings
assurance to the soul, of truth. "I loved her from the first day
I saw her, not so much for her brightness and her human beauty,
as for that higher beauty which I thought I discovered in her
soul, and which she has bravely proved since then. Over beauty
such as that time has no power; the love, therefore, that springs
from it must last for ever."
"It is well, my son," replied Mrs. Netterville, "I thank you, and
believe you. And now, be not angry if I bid you go! For this one
day Nellie must be all my own--to-morrow there will be no one to
dispute her with you."
She spoke the last words hurriedly, for the jailer entered at
that moment to inform Ormiston that the prison was about to be
shut up for the night, and that it was his duty to see that all
strangers left it.
"But not Nellie--not my child?" said Mrs. Netterville, with an
appealing look, first to the jailer and then to Ormiston. "Surely
you will leave Nellie with me?"
"They must!" cried Nellie passionately, "for by force alone can
they drag me from you."
"Sir," said the dying woman, addressing herself this time to
Ormiston alone, "add this one favor, I beseech you, to all the
others you have done me, and let my child close my dying eyes?"
"I cannot refuse you, madam," he replied, much moved. "But is
your daughter equal to the effort? Would it not be better to have
the jailer's wife as well?"
"No--no!" cried Nellie, answering before her mother, who looked
half inclined to assent to this proposition, could reply. "I am
equal, and more than equal. I would not have a stranger with us
to-night for the world."
"Come for her, then, at the first dawn of day," said Mrs.
Netterville, with a glance, the meaning of which they understood
too well. She gave her hand in turn to each of the young men, and
then signed to them to withdraw. Ormiston did so at once; but
Roger turned first to Nellie, and taking her passive hand, lifted
it silently to his lips. Not to save his life or hers could he
have done more than that in the solemn presence of her dying
mother.
He then followed Ormiston. The priest lingered a moment longer to
speak a word of cheer to his poor penitent; but the jailer
calling him impatiently, he also disappeared, and the cell-door
was closed behind him.
Chapter XVI.
The rattling of the key in the lock as the jailer shut them up
for the night came like a death-knell on poor Nellie's ear. So
long as Ormiston and Roger had been there beside her, she had,
quite unconsciously to herself, entertained a sort of hope that
something (she knew not what) might yet be devised for the solace
of her mother; and now that they were gone indeed, she felt as
people feel when the physician takes his leave of his dying
patient, thus tacitly confessing that all hope is over. The lamp,
which, in obedience to a word from Ormiston, the jailer had
brought in trimmed and lighted for the night, revealed the cell
to her in all its bleak reality, and as she glanced from the
straw pallet, which at Netterville they would have hesitated to
place beneath a beggar, to the pitcher of cold water, which was
the only refreshment provided for the dying woman, Nellie felt
anew such a sense of her mother's misery and of her own inability
to procure her comfort, that, unable to utter a single syllable,
she sat for a few moments by her side weeping hopelessly and
helplessly as a child.
{744}
Mrs. Netterville heard her sobbing, and, after waiting a few
minutes in hopes the paroxysm would subside, said gently:
"Nellie--my little one--weep not so bitterly, I entreat you; you
know not how it pains me."
"How can I help it, mother?" sobbed the girl, unable to conceal
the thought uppermost in her own mind. "_You_ suffer, and
the lowest scullion in the kitchen of Netterville would have
deemed herself ill-used in such poverty as this!"
"Is that all, my child?" said her mother, with a faint smile.
"Nay, dear Nellie, you may believe me, that, to a soul which
feels itself within an hour of eternity, it is of little moment
whether straw or satin support the body it is leaving. Eternity!
yes, eternity!" she murmured to herself "Alas! alas! how little
do we realize in the short days of time the awful significance of
that word, for ever!
"Mother, you are not afraid!" burst from Nellie's lips, a new and
hitherto unthought-of anxiety rushing to her mind.
"Afraid!" Mrs. Netterville echoed the expression with a smile.
"No, my daughter, by the grace of God and goodness of Our Lady I
am not afraid. Nevertheless eternity, with its ministering angel
Death, are awful things to look on, Nellie, and if I could smile
at aught which makes you weep, it would be to think that such a
silly grievance as a straw pallet could add to their awfulness in
your eyes."
"Not to their awfulness, mother," Nellie sobbed, "but to their
sorrow; it is such a pain to see you comfortless."
"And has no one else been comfortless in death?" Mrs. Netterville
whispered almost reproachfully. "Only consider, Nellie, this
straw bed which you lament so bitterly is a very couch of down
compared to His, when he laid him down upon the hard wood of the
cross to die."
"Mother, forgive me; I never thought of that," said Nellie
humbly. "I only thought of your discomfort."
"Think of nothing now, dear Nellie, but this one word of
Scripture, 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord;' and hope
and pray that it may be so with me to-night. Now, dry your eyes
and listen, for I have much to say, and but little time left
wherein to say it. Dry your eyes, for I cannot bear to see you
weeping thus. Your tears have almost the power to make me repine
at death."
The last hint was sufficient. Nellie resolutely checked her
tears, and laid her head down on her mother's pillow, in order
that the latter might speak to her with less danger of fatigue.
Then, in a few earnest, touching words, Mrs. Netterville set
before her daughter the duties of her new state of life, and gave
advice, which, precious as it would have been at any time, was
doubly precious then, coming as it did from the lips of a dying
mother; after which, true to an idea ever uppermost in the Irish
mind, and which she had too thoroughly adopted her husband's
country not to feel as keenly upon almost as he could have done
himself, she adverted to her own place of burial.
"It cannot be at Netterville, I know," she said. "I may not
sleep, as I had ever hoped, by the side of my brave husband! But
in your new western home, dear Nellie--in your new western home,
where the churches, I believe, are yet undesecrated--there, if
it be possible, I would gladly take my rest--there, where you can
come sometimes to pray for your poor mother, and where, when my
husband's father follows me, as no doubt he must full soon, he
can be laid quietly to sleep beside me."
{745}
She paused, and Nellie muttered something, she hardly knew what,
which she hoped would sound like an assent in her mother's ears.
Not for worlds would she have saddened her at such a moment by
allowing her to discover that Roger, like themselves, had been
robbed of his inheritance, and that, instead of that quiet
western home of which she spoke so confidently, her wedded life
with him must be spent of necessity in a foreign land.
Whatever she did or did not say, her mother evidently fancied it
was a promise in conformity with her wishes, and went on in that
low, rambling way peculiar to the dying:
"It was not thus--not thus that I had thought to visit that wild
land. I dreamed of a resting-place and a welcome--a meeting of
mingled joy and sadness--and then a homely life, and at its close
a peaceful ending. But it is better as it is--much better. Our
next meeting will be all of joy--joy in that eternal home where
God gathers together his beloved ones, and bids them smile in the
sunshine of his presence. Yes, yes! it is better as it is!"
"As God wills. He knows best--he knows," and then Nellie
stopped, powerless to complete the sentence.
"Remember me to my father, Nellie, "Mrs. Netterville continued
faintly--"for father I may truly call him who has been in very
deed a parent to me ever since I was wedded to his son. And poor
Hamish also--let him not think himself forgotten, and tell him
especially of the gratitude I feel for this great consolation
procured me by his faithful service--my Nellie's heart to rest on
in dying--my Nellie's hands to close my eyes in death."
The last words were barely audible, and after they were uttered
Mrs. Netterville lay for a long time so mute and still that,
fancying she was asleep, Nellie hardly dared to move, or even
almost to breathe, lest she should disturb her. At last she felt
her mother's hand steal gently in search of hers.
"Your hand, dear Nellie," she whispered softly. "Nay, do not
speak, my daughter, but take my hand in yours, that I may feel,
when I cannot see, the comfort of your presence."
Nellie took her mother's hand in hers. It was as cold as ice, and
she gently tried to chafe it. But the movement disturbed the
dying woman.
"It prevents me thinking, Nellie," she whispered faintly, "and my
thoughts are very sweet."
The words sent a gush of tenderness and joy to Nellie's heart,
telling her, as they did, that her mother's was at peace. But the
physical condition of that poor mother still weighed heavily on
her soul, and taking the mantle from her own shoulders, she laid
it on the bed, hoping thus gradually and imperceptibly to restore
warmth to the failing system. Mrs. Netterville perceived what she
had done, and, true to that forgetfulness of self which had been
the chief characteristic of her life, she would not have it so.
"Nay, nay, child," she murmured as well as she could, for she was
by this time well-nigh speechless, "put it on again, for you need
it, and I do not. This death-chill is not pain."
{746}
She tried to push it from her as she spoke, and became so uneasy
that Nellie, in order to calm her, was forced to resume the
garment. Satisfied on this point, her mother closed her eyes like
a weary child, and fell into a dozing slumber. It was the stupor
preceding death, but Nellie, never suspecting this, felt thankful
that her mother's hacking cough had ceased, and that her
breathing had become less painful. For more than an hour she sat
thus, her mother's hand in hers--praying, watching,
weeping--weeping silent, soundless tears--not sobbing, lest it
should disturb the sleeper.
The night passed onward in its course, but day was yet far off
when the lamp began to waver. Sometimes it flickered and
sputtered as if just going to be extinguished, and then again it
would flare up suddenly, casting strange shadows through the
gloomy space, and deepening the pallor on the sleeper's brow,
until it almost seemed as if she were dead already. Lower still,
and lower, after each of these fresh spurts, it sank, while
Nellie watched it nervously; but just as she fancied that it had
actually died out, it flashed up high and bright again, full upon
her mother's face. Nellie turned eagerly to gaze once more upon
those dear features. Even as she did so, a rush of darkness
seemed to fill the cell--darkness that could be almost felt--and
a pang seized upon the poor girl's heart, for she knew at once by
intuition that the lamp was now gone indeed, and that she had
looked for the last time on the face of her living mother.
The sudden change from light to darkness seemed somehow to
disturb the invalid. She opened her eyes wearily, and something
like a shudder passed over her; but when she felt her daughter's
hand still clasping hers, a heavenly smile (pity that Nellie
could not see it then--she saw its shadow on the dead face next
day, however) settled on her features, and she whispered:
"You here still, dear child? Thank God--thank God for that!"
"Mother, what would you?" Nellie asked, amid her tears.
"It is coming, Nellie; be not frightened, dearest. It is coming
like a gentle sleep. Pray for me, dear one; pray loud, that I may
hear you."
What prayer could Nellie say at such a moment? An orphan already
by the loss of her father, she was about to be doubly orphaned in
her mother's death, and her thoughts turned naturally and
spontaneously toward that other Parent whose home is heaven, and
who, Father as he is to each of us, has pledged himself to be so
in a yet more especial and individual manner to the fatherless of
his earthly kingdom.
The words of the "Our Father" seemed to rise unbidden to her
lips.
"Our Father who art in heaven."
"Who art in heaven," her mother repeated after her; and then came
a pause of sweet, and solemn meditation.
"Thy kingdom come," Nellie once more found voice to say. Mrs.
Netterville had ever kept the desire of that kingdom in her heart
of hearts. Surely he was now calling her to enjoy it in eternity!
So Nellie thought, and the thought gave her strength and courage
to go on.
"Thy will be done!"--that _will_ which was calling her last
parent from her side. Nellie sobbed aloud as she uttered the
words, but Mrs. Netterville took them up, and, in a voice of
ineffable love and sweetness, kept repeating over and over again,
as if she never could weary of the sentiment.
"Thy will be done; _thy_ will--_thy_ will--thy will,
ever merciful and to be adored--thy will, my God, my Father, and
my Redeemer--thy will, not mine, be done!"
{747}
Nellie listened until she almost felt as if she herself were
standing with her mother on the threshold of eternity. A sweet
and awful calmness settled on her soul. She knew intuitively that
her mother was in the very act of dying, but she no longer felt
fear or sorrow. It was as if the Judge of the living and the
dead, not stern and exacting, but tender and approving, was
descending in person to that bed of death to speak the sentence
of his faithful servant. It was as if saints and angels were
crowding after him, bowed down, indeed, beneath his awful
presence, but yet glad and jubilant over the crowning of a sister
spirit, and bringing the songs and sweetness of heaven itself on
the rustling of their snowy wings. And in the midst of such
thoughts as these, Nellie still could hear her mother's voice
repeating, "Thy will, my God, not mine, be done."
Fainter still and fainter grew that voice, as the soul which
spoke by it receded toward eternity; then all at once it died
away, and Nellie felt that the last word had been said in heaven.
It was very dark now, and very cold--the cold that precedes the
dawn--cold in Nellie's heart within, and cold in the outside
world around her. She shivered, and was scarcely conscious that
she did so. Was her mother really dead? She knew it, and yet
could scarce believe it. For a little while she knelt there
still, waiting and holding in her breath in the vague, faint hope
that once more, if it were even for the last time, once more that
sweet, plaintive voice might greet her longing ear. But it never
came again. At last, by a great effort, she put forth her
trembling hand and touched her mother's face. It was already
growing cold, with that strange, hard coldness which makes the
face of the dead like a marble mask to the living hands that
touch it. She shuddered; nevertheless, with an instinctive
feeling of what was right and proper by the dead, she did not
withdraw it until she had pressed it gently on the eyelids, and
so closed them without almost an effort.
That done, she knelt down once more, and, hiding her face in the
scanty bedclothes, tried to pray.
......
Day began to dawn at last, and a few sad rays forced their way
into that gloomy cell; but Nellie never saw them. Sounds began to
come in from the newly-awakened city, but Nellie never heard
them. The prison itself shook off its slumbers, and there was a
slamming of distant doors and an occasional hurried step along
the passages; and still she took no heed. She knew, in a vague,
careless way, that at one time or another some one would be sent
to her assistance, and that was all she thought or cared about
it. In the mean time she prayed, or tried to pray; but when at
last they did come, they found her stretched upon the floor, as
cold almost and quite as unconscious as her dead mother.
Chapter XVII.
"To the memory of Francis, Twelfth Baron of Netterville, one of
the Transplanted, and of Mary, the widow of his only son."
{748}
Nellie stooped to decipher the inscription, but it may be doubted
if she saw aught save the stone upon which Hamish, in obedience
to his master's dying orders, had engraved it, for her eyes were
full of tears. A hurried journey to the west, another death-bed,
and a few weeks more of tears and renewed sense of desolation had
followed the events recorded in our last chapter, and then at
last a holy calmness settled upon Nellie's soul--a calmness and a
happiness which was all the more likely to endure that it was
founded upon past sorrows bravely met and meekly borne, in a
spirit of true and loving resignation to the will of Him who had
laid them on her shoulders. From the day of her departure from
Clare Island, the old lord had drooped like a plant deprived of
sunshine, and he died on the very evening of her return, his hand
in hers, smiling upon her and her brave husband, and leaving for
only vengeance on his foes the inscription which heads this
chapter, to be engraved upon his tombstone.
Nellie laid him to rest beside her mother; for through the
kindness of Ormiston she had been enabled to carry out Mrs.
Netterville's dying wishes, and to bear her remains to that
western shore which she had so fondly and so vainly fancied was
to be her daughter's future home. Ormiston had done yet more. He
had obtained a reversal of the sentence of outlawry against
Roger, coupled with the usual permission to "beat his drum," as
it was called, for recruits to follow his banner into foreign
lands, to fight in the armies of foreign kings. It was the evil
policy of those evil times.
To rid Ireland of the Irish was the grand panacea for the woes of
Ireland, the only one her rulers ever recognized, and of which,
therefore, they availed themselves most largely, careless or
unconscious of the fatal element of strength they were thus
flinging to their foes. As a native chieftain and a well-tried
soldier, Roger had a double claim upon his people, and short as
had been the time allotted to him for the purpose, fifty men, of
the same breed and mettle as the soldiers who fought at a later
period against an English king until he cursed, in the bitterness
of his heart, the laws which had deprived him of such subjects,
had already obeyed his summons. They assembled under the
temporary command of Hamish, near the tower, waiting the moment
for embarkation, and the ship that was to convey them to their
destination was riding at single anchor in the bay on that very
morning when Nellie and her husband knelt for the last time
beside her mother's grave. It was like a second parting with that
mother. But with Roger at her side she could not feel altogether
friendless or unhappy, and they prayed for a little time in
silence, with a calm sense of sadness which had something of
heavenly sweetness in it. At last it was time to go, and Roger
laid a warning finger upon his young wife's shoulder. She did not
say a word, but she bent down once more and kissed her mother's
name upon the stone; then she gave her hand to Roger, and they
left the churchyard together. While she had been lingering there,
Henrietta had landed with Ormiston at the pier to bid her a last
adieu. The quick eye of the English girl instantly perceived the
goodly company of recruits assembled near the tower, and with a
little smile of malicious triumph she pointed them out to her
companion. Ormiston shook his head reprovingly. He was too
thoroughly a soldier not to lament the policy which drafted large
bodies of men into foreign armies, but he was full at that moment
of his own concerns, and had little inclination to waste time in
discussing the wisdom of his leaders. The truth was, Henrietta's
reception of him on his arrival from Dublin the night before had
disappointed him.
{749}
He had come in obedience to her own written orders, as conveyed
to him by Nellie, and instead of the frank, loving meeting which
his own frank and loving nature had anticipated, he had found her
shy, cold, and, he was forced to confess to himself, almost
unkind. At first he consoled himself by attributing this in a
great measure to the presence of her father, before whom she
always seemed naturally to assume the bearing of a spoiled and
unruly child; but when at her own invitation he had rowed her
that morning to Clare Island, and her manner, instead of
softening, as he had hoped, grew even colder and more constrained
than it had been before, he became seriously distressed, and
unable to endure the suspense any longer, they had hardly landed
from the boat ere he turned short round upon her, and said:
"Henrietta, before you move one step further, you must answer me
this question--are we in future to be friends or foes?"
"Not foes! Oh! certainly, not foes!" Henrietta stammered, taken
quite aback by the suddenness of the question. "Oh! certainly,
not foes!"
"Because I cannot endure this uncertainty much longer," he went
on as if he had not heard her. "I must have an answer, and that
soon. I might, indeed, insist upon your own letter, but I will
not. It was written under a sudden impulse, and the word that
gives you to me for a wife must be said with a calm consciousness
of its import. What shall that word be, Henrietta--yes or no?"
"Yes, if you will have me," she said, in a low voice,
half-turning away her head as she did so.
"If! So long and so faithfully as I have loved you, and do you
still talk of _if?_" he answered, almost reproachfully.
"There is an 'if,' however," said Henrietta; "and when you have
heard me out, you will have to decide the question for yourself."
"Nay, the only 'if' for me is the 'if' that you really love me,"
he replied wistfully, and in a way which showed he felt by no
means certain upon that score.
"That is the very thing," she answered, flushing scarlet. "Harry,
dear Harry, remember that I have never had a mother's care, and
promise to be still my friend, even if what I have got to tell
you should alter all your other wishes in my regard."
"What can you have to say that could do that?" he asked
impatiently. "For God's sake, Henrietta, say it out at once,
whatever it may be!"
"It is not so very easy, perhaps," she said in a low voice. And
then she added quickly: "They call me a woman grown, Harry, and
yet in some few things I think that I am still almost a child."
"In a great _many_ things rather, I should say," he could
not resist saying, with a smile.
That smile reassured her, and she went on quickly: "You know that
it has never been a new thing to me to consider myself your wife,
Harry. My father has treated me from childhood as your affianced
bride, and we have played at being wedded in the nursery. You
cannot be surprised, therefore, if in my feelings toward you
there has been something of unquestioning security, which does
not enter usually, I think, into the relations in which we stood
toward each other. This kind of sisterly feeling--oh! do not
look so cross, Harry," she cried, suddenly stopping short, "or I
shall never be able to go on." "Do not talk of sisterly feeling,
then," he answered moodily, "for _that_ I cannot bear."
{750}
"I need not, for I do not feel in the least like a sister to you
now," she answered, with a pretty _naïveté_, that made him
almost depart from the attitude of cold seriousness in which he
had elected to receive the confessions of his betrothed. He
checked the impulse, however, and signed to her quietly to
proceed.
"You know, for you were with us at the time," she accordingly
went on, "how much I was charmed with this wild western land when
my father first brought me hither. You know, too, of my
indignation when I found that the real owner had been deprived of
it in order to our possession. True, I had heard before of the
law of transplantation enacted for the benefit of our army, but
not until it stared me in the face as an act of private
injustice, done for the enrichment of myself, did I thoroughly
appreciate its iniquity. From that moment the very abomination of
desolation seemed to me to rest upon this land, which I had once
felt to be so beautiful. I grew angry and indignant with all the
world--with my father chiefly, but with you also, Harry, because,
though I acquitted you of all active share in the robbery, I yet
felt that it was your character as a good officer, capable of
holding it against the enemy, which had encouraged him to commit
it. From dwelling upon the injustice, I went on almost
unconsciously to question of its victim. At first, however, I
only thought of him with a sort of contemptuous pity, as of a
half-tamed savage wandering sadly among the hills which had once
been his own. But one day I met him. You remember that evening
when I returned home so late, that you and my father became
alarmed and went out to seek me? I told you then that I had lost
my way, but I did not tell you that it was the O'More who had
helped me to regain it, and who, finding I was nervous at the
lateness of the hour, had walked back with me nearly to the
gates. He was a gentleman, there was no mistaking that; and there
was something so foreign in his look and accent, that I never
even dreamed of him as the owner of the Rath, until I asked him
to come in and make the acquaintance of my father. Then--I can
hardly tell you in what words, but I know that they were
courteous, and that I felt them to be all the more cutting for
that reason--he told me WHO he was. In my surprise and shame, I
tried, I believe, to stammer out something like an apology for
the wickedness of which he had been the victim; but he cut me
short with a cold, quiet smile, pointed to the gate, which we had
by this time almost reached, saluted, and so left me. Harry, from
that moment, wild dreams began to float through my brain as to
how I might restore him to his own. There was one way, and only
one way, in which, as a woman, I could do it. Remember, I was not
yet seventeen, dear Harry."
"I have need to be reminded of it," he answered bitterly, "when I
am forced to listen to such things as you are saying now."
"And yet I loved you all the time, Harry; I did, indeed," she
answered in a low, earnest voice. "I loved you, although I think
I knew it not--should never, perhaps, have known it quite, if we
had not at last quarrelled and parted, as I thought, for ever. In
the first keen suffering which that parting caused me, my heart
woke up all at once to a true knowledge of itself, and I felt
that, dormant as my love for you had been, it had yet become so
deeply rooted in my whole being that by no effort of my own will,
(and you know that it is a pretty strong one, Harry,") she added
with a faint smile--"by no effort of my own will could I have
transferred it to another."
{751}
"Go on," said Harry, now smiling in his turn, for she had paused
in a little maidenly confusion at this full and frank avowal of
her sentiments in his regard--"go on, for I can listen to you
with patience now, Ettie."
"I never dreamed again, Harry, of any other than yourself," she
answered softly; "and When, the day after your departure, I went
to Clare Island to warn him of a coming danger, (but not, I do
assure you, with any other motive,) I saw at once that if he ever
cared for any woman in the world, it was, or soon would be,
Nellie Netterville. It did not grieve me that it was so, but I
confess it wounded my woman's vanity a little, and for a moment I
felt inclined to be angry with her. But I was ashamed of the
pitiful feeling, and for the first time in my life, perhaps, I
tried to conquer my evil passions. In this her sweet, quiet
frankness greatly helped me, and her forgetfulness or forgiveness
of the great injury I, or at all events, my father, had inflicted
on her, made me blush for my own unkindness. If ever you take me
for a wife, Harry, and that you find me a more manageable one
than I have given you reason to expect, remember that you will
owe it entirely to her example."
"Nay, nay! not entirely!" here interposed Harry, "for the sun
shines in vain upon a barren soil."
"And now," continued Henrietta, regardless of the compliment,
"can you forgive me, Harry? Believe me, you know all, I have told
you the truth, and the whole truth. I would not deceive you in
such a matter for the world."
"My love, I believe you, and I am more than satisfied," he
answered in a tone of trustful tenderness which left no room for
doubting in Henrietta's mind.
"And, Harry," she added pleadingly, "our home that we have left
in England is as pleasant, if not so sublime, as this, and we can
call it, at all events, honestly our own!"
"Some day, dear Ettie, we will go there; and should your father's
death ever place these lands at our disposal, we will leave them
to their rightful owner."
"O Harry! how could I doubt you?" she said remorsefully. "Can you
ever forgive me for it?"
"Yes, if you will never doubt again," he answered with a bright
smile. "But, hark! the bugle sounds, and yonder is Roger and his
wife talking to old Norah at the tower-gate."
Henrietta looked in that direction, and she saw that Nellie was
taking leave of the old woman, who had flung herself at her feet,
and was sobbing bitterly. This much she could guess from the
attitude and action of both parties; but she could not guess the
infinite delicacy and feeling which Nellie contrived to put into
that last farewell, nor yet the reverent admiration with which
Roger watched his young wife, as, silencing her own deeper
sorrows, she soothed the old woman's clamorous grief over the
departure of her hereditary chieftain and his bride, "her
beautiful, darling, young honey of a new mistress!"
Nellie was still occupied in this manner when the bugle once more
sounded. The soldiers, who at the first summons had mustered
together under the command of Hamish, instantly put themselves
into motion, and, with flags flying and pipers playing, marched
past the tower, saluting Roger as they did so, and coming down to
the place of embarkation amid the wails of music which, martial
and spirit-stirring in the beginning, had died gradually away
into such wild, plaintive strains as best befitted the thoughts
of men who were leaving their native land for ever.
{752}
Another moment, and Nellie threw herself into Henrietta's arms,
and the two girls sobbed their farewells in silence. Then some
one separated them almost by force, there was a short bustle of
departure and a clashing of oars, and when Henrietta could see
again through her blinding tears, Nellie had nearly reached the
ship which was to convey her to her new home; while over the
crested waves came the voices of the soldier-emigrants singing
that farewell song which rang so often and so sadly in those days
along the coasts of Ireland, that it has left, unhappily, many an
echo _still_ to wake up thoughts of bitterness and distrust
in the minds and memories of her living people.
Years afterward, when Henrietta was a happy wife and mother in
her quiet English home, and her friends, thanks to her generosity
and her husband's, were once more settled in that western land
which was dearer to them than all the shining kingdoms of the
earth, the music of that wild "Ha-till" would strike at times
suddenly on the chord of memory, and she would weep again almost
as bitterly as she had wept upon that late autumn morning when,
floating over the waters of Clew Bay, came those voices to her
ear, sadly singing:
"Mute in our grief, our fortunes broken.
Land of Eire, [Footnote 221] farewell, farewell!
Sad is that word--half-wept, half spoken--
Sad as the sound of the passing bell.
Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore!
"Ever in dreams to see thee weep!
Ever to hear thy wail of pain!
Bitter as death, and as dark and deep.
The grief that we carry across the main.
Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore!
"Happy the dead who have died for thee!
More happy the dead who died long ago!
Who never in sleep had learned to see
The grief and shame that have laid thee low.
Ha-till, ha-till we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore.
"Farewell! we have poured out our blood like rain,
We asked for naught but a soldier's grave;
Yet say not thou we have sought in vain.
While foes confess that thy sons are brave.
Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore."
[Footnote 221: The ancient name for Ireland.]
The End.
---------------
{753}
The Holy Shepherdess of Pibrac,
Canonized By Pope Pius IX. In 1867.
In the latter part of the sixteenth century, beneath the walls of
Toulouse, bloomed, almost unseen and unknown, a little flower of
the fields, whose delicate chalice emitted a perfume scarcely
perceptible to mortal sense. It passed away, and seemed
forgotten; but its odor still lingered where it had blossomed;
and after a few years had gone, its dust was gathered into the
sanctuary, that the holy place might be filled with the celestial
fragrance.
Germaine Cousin was born at Pibrac, a village of nearly two
hundred families in the environs of Toulouse, about the year
1579. The parish church was dependent on the great Priory of the
Knights of Malta in that city. The chateau belonged to the Du
Faur, Lords of Pibrac. The actual proprietor was Guy, famous at
once as an orator, a poet, and a successful courtier. Once the
proudest remembrance of the place was the visit of Catharine de
Medicis and her daughter, Margaret of Navarre, who were
magnificently entertained by the Lord of Pibrac. But now the
visit of the two queens, and the fame and opulence of the great
orator, are nearly forgotten; while the memory of our holy
shepherdess has lived for nearly three centuries in the hearts of
all the inhabitants of Pibrac. The chateau is a forsaken ruin;
but the church has become a place of pilgrimage, because Germaine
prayed beneath its arches, and there found a tomb.
Her father was a poor husbandman, to whom tradition gives the
name of Lawrence. Her mother's name was Marie Laroche. From the
first moment of her existence, she seemed destined to suffering
and affliction. She was infirm from her birth, being unable to
use her right hand, and afflicted with scrofula. While yet a
child, she became motherless; and, as if these were not trials
enough to accumulate at once upon the head of one so frail, her
father did not long delay to fill the vacant place on his hearth.
Absorbed in her own children, this second wife, instead of
pitying the hapless orphan whom Providence had confided to her
care, conceived an aversion for her. But the trials to which
Germaine was subjected were proofs of the divine favor. To them
she was indebted for the brilliancy of her virtues, especially
humility and patience.
As soon as she was old enough, her step-mother, who could not
endure her presence at home, sent her forth to guard the flocks.
This was her occupation the remainder of her life. But even in
the depths of her lonely life, our shepherdess created for
herself a more profound solitude. She was never seen in the
company of the young shepherds; their sports never attracted her;
their jeers never disturbed her thoughtful serenity; she only
spoke sometimes to girls of her own age, sweetly exhorting them
to be mindful of God!
We know not from whom Germaine received her first religious
instructions--what hand, friendly to misfortune, revealed to her
the great truths of salvation. Doubtless, it was the curé of the
parish; for holy church despises not the meanest of her children;
and her sagacious eye is quick to discover the chosen of God.
{754}
But, whoever it was, he did but little, and there was little to
be done. God himself perfected the religious training of his
handmaiden. She early learned what must for ever remain unknown
to those who do not recognize in him the fountain of all wisdom.
Living amid the wonders of creation, she contemplated them with
the intelligent eye of innocence. Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God--see him in the brilliant stars, the
burning sun, the unfathomable heavens, and the changing
clouds--see him in the flowers and plants that cover the surface
of the earth! Germaine learned from the open book of nature a
wondrous lore; and her attuned ear caught and comprehended that
mysterious, anthem of praise, which, floating through creation,
is unheard by more sinful man. Her pure soul united in the
eternal song: _Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino: laudate et
superexaltate eum in saecula!_
Although Germaine was a poor infirm orphan, subjected to the
heavy yoke of a severe step-mother, and exposed by her occupation
to the inclemency of the weather, she bore all her trials with
cheerfulness, never brooding over her sorrows. One of the
characteristics of the saints which particularly distinguishes
them from ordinary Christians, is, _the use made of the common
occurrences of life_. They share in common with other men, and
often in a greater degree, the trials common to humanity; but
they are chastened, purified by them, and they look upon the
afflictions of this life as a means of assimilating them to Him
who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Even in the
manifest ill treatment and injustice of the malignant and wicked,
they disregard the channel, but accept the suffering, as a means
of perfection.
The extent to which this principle is carried, is peculiarly
Catholic; and, in reading the lives of our saints, we cannot but
be struck by it. They never struggled against their trials, and
therefore were cheerful under them; for the greater part of our
wretchedness proceeds from struggling against the current of
life. This is the key to the saying of Fénélon: _Non-resistance
is a remedy for every ill._
The paternal roof was not for Germaine, as for most--even the
most wretched--a refuge and a place of repose. And yet neither
her poverty, nor sorrows, nor infirmities, could have rendered
her insensible to that which surpasses all the other pleasures of
life--the happiness of being loved. By a divine foresight, God
has placed in the hearts of parents, by the side of that fount of
love for their offspring, a well of singular tenderness for the
unfortunate child, the black lamb of the flock. This peculiar
love Germaine had not. She had not even the legitimate share of
her father's heart. She was denied a place at the fireside; she
was hardly allowed shelter in the house. Her step-mother,
irritable and imperious, would send her away to some obscure
corner. She was not permitted to approach the other
children--those brothers and sisters whom she loved so tenderly,
and whom she was always ready to serve without manifesting any
envy on account of the preferences of which they were the object,
and she the victim. The inflexible harshness of her step-mother
obliged the infirm girl to seek a place of repose in the stable,
or upon a heap of vine branches in an out-house.
{755}
But Germaine knew too well the value of sufferings not to accept
with joy these humiliations and this injustice. And, as if her
cross were yet too light, she imposed upon herself additional
austerities. During the greater part of her life, she denied
herself all nourishment but bread and water.
So great a conformity to her poor, suffering, and persecuted
Saviour, kindled in the heart of Germaine an ardent love for his
adorable humanity. Notwithstanding her feebleness and other
obstacles, she assisted every day at the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass. Even the obligations of her calling could not keep her from
church at that hour. Confiding in God, she left her flock in the
pasture, and hastened to the foot of the altar. It is a misguided
piety which induces us to neglect the duties of our state of life
in order to satisfy our devotion; but with Germaine this was the
result of prompt obedience to a special inspiration. She knew who
would guard her sheep; while she, poor lamb of Christ's flock!
went to refresh herself at the fountain of living water.
Even when her sheep were feeding close by the wood of Boucone,
which skirted the fields of Pibrac, and abounded with wolves, at
the sound of the church bell she would plant her crook or her
distaff in the ground, and hasten to the feet of the divine
Shepherd. At her return, she always found her sheep unharmed. Not
one was ever devoured by the wolves, nor did they ever stray into
the neighboring fields.
Long after St. Germaine's death, the peasants of the hamlet
remembered the unearthly brightness of her face as, week after
week, she approached the holy sacraments.
"A celestial brightness, a more ethereal beauty,
Shone on her face and encircled her form when, after confession,
Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her."
In the Holy Eucharist she found a compensation for every grief.
That divine Spouse to whom she was pledged placed himself as a
seal upon her heart, thereby strengthening it to endure the
trials of life, and enriching it with such abundant grace that,
while dwelling at large in the great temple of nature, her life
gleamed before him, brightly, and purely, and constantly, like
the undying lamp of the sanctuary!
Like all the saints, Germaine had a singular devotion to
Mary--that devotion so dear to the Catholic heart, and which is
considered by the fathers as a mark of predestination. The world
does not realize how much it has owed to Mary during these
eighteen hundred years; yet some, some of us know how dark and
almost unbearable it would be with its sorrows, and cares, and
privations, if over all were not diffused the beauty and
softness, the sweet charm of virginity and love, from the divine
face of Mary!
To Germaine, the Ave Maria was another salutation of the angel
preluding the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost; and she murmured
the sacred words with infinite tenderness, above all, at the hour
when they are on every lip. As soon as she heard the Angelus
bell, which has three times a day, for six centuries, intoned the
Ave Maria between heaven and earth, it was remarked that,
wherever she might be, she immediately fell upon her knees as if
insensible to the incommodiousness of the place.
The Rosary was her only book; and to her this devotion was no
vain repetition. "Love," says Lacordaire, "has but one word, and,
in saying that for ever, it is never repeated."
{756}
"Ever transformed to meet our needs.
Oft as Devotion counts her beads,
As if those beads had caught the light
In her celestial girdle bright,
But each with its own colors dight.
Thus, whensoe'er that prayer is heard,
Fresh thoughts are in each solemn word:
An orb of light comes from the skies
To kindle holy liturgies;
It gathers and gives back their rays.
Now turned to prayer, and now to praise."
The love of God insensibly leads to the love of one's neighbor.
Germaine, when she could, used to draw around her the little
children of the village, and endeavor to explain to them the
truths of religion, and sweetly persuade them to love Jesus and
Mary. This little school, held in the shade of a thicket of the
lone fields, was a spectacle worthy of the admiration of angels,
and is a proof of the unselfishness of real piety, even in the
most lowly.
Although the piety of Germaine produced a profound impression in
the village, yet the world is the same everywhere, and always
conceives a secret aversion to piety. It cannot avoid censuring
it in some way, however unobtrusive a piety it may be. Religion
imposes esteem upon the world, and the world avenges itself by
raillery. So the wits of Pibrac persecuted Germaine with mockery;
they laughed at her simplicity, and called her a bigot.
But if God permits, for the perfection of the saints, that their
virtue be turned into ridicule, he knows, when it pleaseth him,
how to render them glorious in the eyes of the world.
In order to reach the village church, Germaine was obliged to
pass the Courbet, a stream she generally crossed without
difficulty in ordinary weather; but after heavy rains, it was too
wide and deep to be passed on foot. One morning, as she was going
to church, according to her custom, some peasants who saw her
afar off stopped at a distance, and asked one another in a tone
of mockery how she would pass the stream, now so swollen by the
rain that the most vigorous man could hardly have stemmed the
torrent. Dreaming of no obstacle, and perhaps not seeing any,
Germaine approached as if none existed. ... O wonder of divine
power and goodness! As of old the waters of the Red Sea opened
for the passage of the children of Israel, so those of the
Courbet divided before the humble daughter of Lawrence Cousin,
and she passed through without wetting even the edge of her
garments. At the sight of this miracle, afterward often repeated,
the peasants looked at one another with fear; and from that time
the boldest began to respect the simple maiden whom they had
hitherto scoffed at.
After having thus glorified the faith of Germaine by dissipating
the material obstacles to the performance of her duty, God wished
also to glorify her charity to the poor.
If any one could believe himself exempted from the obligation of
charity and alms-giving, it was certainly our shepherdess. She
had no superfluities; she lacked even the necessaries of life.
What was there, then, to retrench, in her life of extreme
privation and severe penance? How economize the _reward_ of
her labor, which consisted only of a little bread and water? But
charity is ingenious; and, seeing only our suffering Lord in the
person of the poor, Germaine often deprived herself of a part of
the bread which was allowed for her nourishment, doubly glad to
give it to the hungry, and increase the treasure of her
privations. Such are the deeds of the saints which will one day
reproach us with terrible power! What will the rich man say when
he beholds, rising up to confront his hardness of heart, the alms
of Lazarus!
{757}
The pious liberality of Germaine made her an object of suspicion
to her step-mother, who, not divining her resources, accused her
of stealing bread from the house. One day she learned that
Germaine, who had just gone with the flock, carried in her apron
some pieces of bread. Furious, and armed with a cudgel, she
immediately ran after her. Some of the other inhabitants of
Pibrac happened to be on their way at this very moment to the
house of Lawrence Cousin. Seeing this woman almost beside herself
with passion, they divined her intentions, and hastened to
protect Germaine from the ill treatment with which she was
menaced. Overtaking the step-mother, they learned the cause of
her anger. Finding Germaine, she seized her apron, and instead of
bread, it was filled with bouquets of roses, although it was a
season when those flowers were not in bloom. Thus God confounded
the malice of her implacable enemy by renewing a miracle,
likewise wrought in favor of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and other
saints.
From this time, Germaine was regarded as a saint. Lawrence
Cousin, conceiving more tender sentiments toward this pious child
whom he had so little known, forbade his wife's annoying her any
more, and wished to give her a place in his house with the other
children. But Germaine, accustomed to suffering and loving
privation, besought him to leave her in the obscure place which
her step-mother had assigned her.
It was now that Germaine attained and proved the perfection of
her humility. We must not consider it a trifling honor to have
been esteemed at Pibrac; nor a small reward to have had a place
at the fireside of Lawrence Cousin. Human nature is the same
everywhere. There is no theatre too small for ambition. We know
there are as many cabals for the first place in a village as for
the chief place in an empire.
Perhaps it may not be entirely useless to speak of the exterior
of the blessed Germaine. The manners and customs of the remote
provinces of France retain so much of primitive simplicity, they
change so little year after year, and the people in these
localities have such a marked appearance, that we may form a
reasonable idea of her person and habits.
She is represented in paintings and engravings as we see scores
of shepherdesses in the south of France at this day--seated on a
hillock in the fields, and surrounded by her flock. With a
spindle in her hand, and under her arm the distaff laden with
flax, she is spinning, after the primitive manner of that
country. She is rather below the medium size, and is slight in
form. She has the long head of the Toulousains, and their dark,
Spanish complexion and eyes. The face, half hidden by the
picturesque scarlet capuchon, is expressive of silence,
_interior_ silence; and forcibly speaks of the deep, deep
calm within. A pleasing sadness, or rather a subdued joy, veils
her face. There is an introspective look about the eyes which
shows that her spirit has passed the bounds of sense, and is
concentrated in one mysterious thought--some dream of a heavenly
world. Sitting alone, away from her kind, her thoughts were pure
and holy and bright, like the fragrant flowers of her own green
meadows. She must have seemed to the other peasants like some
phantom of unearthly love, as she sat there enveloped in a divine
ethereal atmosphere.
{758}
In the distance rise the towers of the church, and the antique
château of the Lords of Pibrac, and between murmurs the Courbet.
Over all, is the sunlight of her own bright clime.
Perhaps the miracle of the roses is the most popular
representation of Saint Germaine, as something not quite so
unearthly. There is no mystery about the look of the fierce
step-mother, as with one hand she raises the cudgel over the head
of the resigned-looking girl, and with the other grasps the apron
from which tumble out the bright and fragrant flowers. The face
of Germaine is somewhat sad, and her eyes are cast down in fear
to the earth. Tremulous and mute she stands before her
step-mother, for she is humble and sore afraid. There is a
reflective charm about her of which she is wholly unconscious,
for it emanates from that spiritual beauty visible only to the
intelligences and bright ardors around the throne.
Saint Germaine died soon after the miracle of the roses. Almighty
God, having sanctified her by humiliations and sufferings,
withdrew her from this world when men, becoming more just, began
to render her the honor her virtue merited. She terminated her
obscure and hidden life by a similar death, but according to
appearance this terrible moment, which confounds human arrogance,
gave her no terror or pain.
One morning, Lawrence Cousin, not seeing her come out as usual,
went to call her where she slept--under the stairs. She made no
reply. He entered and found her upon her bed of vine-branches.
She had fallen asleep while at prayer. God had called her to
enjoy the reward of eternal life. She had ceased to suffer.
It was about the commencement of the summer of the year 1601 that
Saint Germaine entered into the joy of her Lord. She was
twenty-two years of age.
That same night two pious men were overtaken near Pibrac by the
darkness of night, and obliged to await the return of day in a
neighboring forest. All at once, in the middle of the night, the
woods were flooded with a light more brilliant than the dawn, and
a company of virgins, clothed in white garments and surrounded by
a dazzling light, floated by on the darkness toward the house of
Lawrence Cousin. Soon after they returned, but there was another
in their midst--more radiant still--who had on her head a chaplet
of fresh flowers. ...
People came in crowds to her funeral, wishing to honor her whom
they had too long despised, whom too late they had known. This
was the first testimony of public veneration. Her body was buried
in the church in front of the pulpit. Forty-three years after, it
was found entire and preserved from corruption. It had been
embalmed with her virginal purity. In her hands were a taper and
a garland of pinks and heads of grain. The flowers had scarcely
faded. The grain was fresh as at the time of harvest.
The holy body was removed and finally placed in the sacristy,
where people of all ranks, incited by the wonders wrought at her
tomb, came to offer their homage.
In 1843, more than four hundred legally attested miracles had
been wrought at her shrine, and so excited the faith of the
people in her power before God, that the Archbishop of Toulouse,
and nearly all the other prelates of France, petitioned the Holy
See for her beatification. It had been desired before the French
Revolution, but it was not attempted till the time of Gregory
XVI.
{759}
When the commissioners went to examine the condition of the
remains of the venerable Germaine, a most extraordinary scene
took place. The inhabitants of Pibrac, thinking that the
beatification of their shepherdess might terminate in the loss of
their holy treasure, came in a body to the door of the church.
They received the commissioners with threats and even with
stones, so it was only with difficulty an entrance could be
effected into the church. The furious multitude followed, and the
examination was made in the midst of a frightful tumult. "No!
no!" was heard on all sides. "No beatification. St. Germaine
cures us when we are sick; that is enough. She belongs to us. We
wish to keep her."
The brief for the beatification of Germaine Cousin was issued by
the order of his holiness Pius IX., on the 1st of July, 1853.
The Triduo which was held at Pibrac, in 1854, in honor of this
event, manifested the joy and the faith of the people. Altars,
lighted up by the bright sun of France, were erected in the
fields once trod by the feet of Germaine, so that hundreds of
Masses could be offered at once. The whole country around poured
in. Toulouse seemed vacated. There were eighty thousand persons
assembled around that shrine. On the first day there were
fourteen thousand communicants. In the procession were eighteen
hundred young ladies robed in white. They all held white lilies
in one hand, and wax tapers in the other, and as they entered the
church and passed the altar, they deposited their tapers on one
side and their lilies on the other. Conspicuous in the procession
were those who had been healed by the intervention of the holy
shepherdess. Lights were in their hands, and they made an
offering of gratitude at the altar.
The house in which the blessed Germaine had lived was endangered
during those days of religious triumph. It was in a tolerable
state of preservation, but every one seemed anxious to secure a
portion of the walls that once sheltered her, and especially of
the spot sanctified by the angel of death.
A resident in the south of France at the time of the
beatification of Saint Germaine, as she was even then, with one
accord, called in that country, I was forcibly impressed with the
enthusiastic veneration and confidence with which she was
regarded by all classes. Every week I heard of some new miracle
at her tomb; so they soon ceased to excite wonder, and seemed to
belong to the established order of events. There was scarcely an
individual in my circle of acquaintance who had not been, at
least once, to prostrate himself at her shrine, and there was a
lively faith in her protection, which proved to me how strongly
the spirit of the middle ages still animates the hearts of the
faithful.
So popular a devotion was a novelty to me--a "_native
American_"--but I could not long remain insensible to its
influence. One misty October day found me likewise an humble
pilgrim at the shrine of the holy shepherdess of Pibrac.
The very air of that antique chapel inspires devotion. A
supernatural influence seemed to impregnate everything around me.
I saw, too, that I was not the only one who felt this subtle
influence penetrating to the very heart; for the faces of all the
pilgrims, priests, religious, and laymen of every rank who are
constantly arriving and departing, were indicative of a holy awe.
Though I got there at a late hour, and it was raining, Masses
were still being celebrated, and the church was full. It was no
festival. It was so every day. Masses were said at every altar
from early dawn till the latest canonical hour.
{760}
Prostrate groups from different parishes were always there,
clustered in the nave, or gathered about the shrine; and here and
there were lone pilgrims who, like me, had been brought from the
ends of the earth. And around and over all were constellations of
brightly burning tapers, emblematic of the prayer of faith, left
there by the pilgrim as loth he slowly left the hallowed
sanctuary.
The tomb of Saint Germaine is in a side chapel, protected by a
grate. Her relics are covered with gold and silver and precious
stones, _ex votes_, which gleam in the light of the votive
candles around. Involuntarily there comes to the heart in this
fitting place, and to the lips, the strain, _Exaltavit
humiles!_
"Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick!" is the cry of every
weary, sin-laden heart; above all here, where thou dost love to
display thy goodness and thy power. The sacred heart of thy
humanity, ever touched with feeling for our infirmities, is not
hardened. It is still as tender and as compassionate as when thou
didst weep over the grave at Bethany, and thy hand is as
powerful. I believe that thou, who art honored in thy saints,
dost heal here both soul and body of those who approach thee with
faith and with love, especially with _love_. "Many sins are
forgiven her, because she hath loved much," was uttered centuries
ago, but has been repeated times without number since, over
penitent, loving souls. O power of love over the divine heart! It
is only the cold, the feeble in faith, who have no power to draw
from this inexhaustible well of compassion.
If every Catholic heart were, as it should be, a _chapelle
ardente_, all aflame with the love of God, how soon would the
spiritual infirmities of entire humanity be healed, and the
wounds of Christ's bleeding body be bound up!
Reader! let the aspiration of divine love, indulgenced by our
sovereign pontiff on the 7th of May, 1854, in honor of the
beatification of Germaine Cousin, be often on our lips and in our
hearts: "Jesu, Deus MEUS, AMO TE SUPER OMNIA!" Jesus, my God, I
love thee above all things!
----------
{761}
From The Latin Of Prudentius.
An Elegy.
Aurelics Prudentius Clemens, the glory of the early Christian
poets, was born in Spain in the year 348. He studied eloquence in
his youth under a celebrated master. He was twice made governor
of provinces and cities, raised to the highest rank, and placed
at the court by the Emperor Theodosius I., next in dignity to his
own person.
But in the vigor of his age, he quitted worldly honors and
employments, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and thence returning to
Spain, led a secluded life, consecrating his leisure to the
composition of sacred poems. He is esteemed the most learned of
the Christian poets, and, for the sweetness and elegance of his
verses, has been compared to Horace.
Venient citò saecula, quum jam
Socius calor ossa revisat,
Animataque sanguine vivo
Habitacula pristina gestet.
Quae pigra cadavera pridem
Tumulis putrefacta jacebant,
Volucres rapientur in auras,
Animas comitata priores.
Quid turba superstes inepta
Plangens ululamina miscet?
Cur tam bene condita jura,
Luctu dolor arguit amens?
Jam moesta quiesce querela,
Lacrymas suspendite matres,
Nullus sua pignora plangat:
Mors haec reparatio vitae est.
Sic semina sicca virescunt
Jam mortua, jamque sepulta,
Quae reddita cespite ab imo
Veteres meditantur aristas.
Nunc suscipe, terra, fovendum,
Gremioque hunc concipe molli;
Hominis tibi membra sequestro,
Generosa et fragmina credo.
{762}
Animae fuit haec domus olim
Factoris ab ore create;
Fervens habitavit in istis
Sapientia, principe Christo.
Tu depositum tege corpus;
Non immemor ille requiret
Sua munera fictor et auctor,
Propriique aenigmata vultûs.
Veniant modò tempora justa,
Quum spem Deus impleat omnem;
Reddas patefacta necesse est,
Qualem tibi trado figuram.
Non si cariosa vetustas
Dissolverit ossa favillis,
Fueritque cinisculus arens,
Minimi mensura pugilli;
Nee si vaga flamina, et aurae
Vacuum per inane volantes
Tulerint cum pulvere nervos,
Hominem periisse licebit.
Translation.
The hour is speeding on amain
When back into its olden form,
Once more with ruddy life-blood warm,
The spirit shall return again.
The freed soul soars aloft through space:
So, dust with dust, aloft through air,
This heavy clay swift gales shall bear
From its sepulchral resting-place..
Why doth the crowd surviving fill
The air with a lamenting vain?
Why with such idle griefs arraign
The justice of the Eternal will?
{763}
Oh! end these pangs with murmurs rife,
O mothers! cease your tears, your woe;
Weep not for your dead children so,
Death the renewal is of life.
The dead, dry seed lies hid from view,
To burst forth to new glorious bloom;
The former beauty to resume,
The ancient harvest to renew.
O earth! in thy soft bosom keep,
And quicken with new warmth this clay,
This sacred frame to rest we lay.
It smiles in thy embrace to sleep.
'Twas once the immortal spirit's cell.
That breath breathed from the lips divine;
Here was the living wisdom's shrine,
Here deigned the Christ supreme to dwell.
Guard it beneath thy faithful sod,
For He, one day, will re-demand
From thee this labor of his hand.
This breathing likeness of its God.
Oh! for the appointed hour to rend
The grave! the hope God gives is sure:
Safe, beauteous, through these gates obscure
What now descendeth shall ascend.
Yes, though this frame divinely planned
Be wasted by decay and rust,
And naught left save a little dust.
The filling of the smallest hand:
Though these strong sinews ashes be
On wandering breezes wafted wide,
Inviolate ever shall abide
The mortal's immortality.
C. E. B.
---------
{764}
Translated From Der Katholik.
The Ancient Irish Church.
The history of the ancient Irish church, for many reasons, claims
our respectful attention. In the time of the migration of the
European races, this church had a great mission to accomplish
among the Germanic tribes. When the Goths had overrun Spain, the
Franks and Burgundians conquered Gaul, the Anglo-Saxons invaded
Britain, the Vandals spoiled Africa, and the Lombards gained
strongholds in Italy; when the Alemanni and Sueves had penetrated
into the valleys and claimed the mountains of ancient Helvetia;
who was it in those stormy times that elevated the moral
condition of those peoples, drew them out of the darkness of
German paganism, or converted them from Arianism; regenerated
them internally, civilized and incorporated them into the kingdom
of God, after they had devastated the provinces of the Western
empire, leaving ruins, deserts, confusion, and desolation behind
them in their plundering march? It was the missionaries of the
ancient Irish church that rescued Europe from the barbarism of
that period. Evidently sent by God, those Irish missionaries
founded new Christian colonies in different lands, hewed down the
forests, civilized the deserts, founded churches, schools, and
monasteries. As the Roman empire without the barbarians was
nothing but an abyss of slavery and rottenness, so would the
barbarians have been a wild chaos without the monks. The monks
and barbarians combined produced a new world which we call
Christendom.
Germany also owes much to the missionaries of the ancient Irish
church. In the olden time Ireland was called the "island of
saints and sages;" as her people in our days receive from us the
honorable title of "martyr-nation of the west," for their
inflexible fidelity to their faith during three centuries of
shameless and brutal persecution. "No one but God in heaven knows
the number of the saints whose dust is mingled with Irish soil,"
wrote one of the oldest Irish writers, the biographer of St.
Ailbe of Emly. We count, not by hundreds, but by thousands, the
holy Irish bishops, abbots, priests, monks, and virgins. Even in
the days of St. Patrick, and still more after his successful
apostolate, Ireland was not only a great training-school for
foreign missionaries, but a second Thebais, in which the
exercises of the spiritual life were thoroughly practised, and
where students could devote themselves in solitude to the study
of philosophy and holy writ under the ablest professors. Pious
men went from Britain, from the European continent, from France,
and even from Rome, to the classic and holy "island of saints,"
to learn the doctrines of Christian perfection, literature, and
theology, in the renowned monasteries of the land of Columba and
Colombanus.
Even to this day Ireland is specially favored by God. There are
no snakes in it or other venomous reptiles. The very dangerous
portion of the animal kingdom is entirely excluded from its
sacred ground; and all attempts to naturalize poisonous creatures
there have been unsuccessful. The old Irish rhyme reads:
{765}
"St. Patrick was a holy man,
He was a saint so clever,
He gave the snakes and toads his ban,
And drove them out for ever."
Throughout Ireland there are great fields of wheat and grain of
every description, and many lakes. The climate is mild, and snow
so rare that cattle can graze in the fields all the year round.
Rain showers are frequent, and give such fertility and verdure to
the soil as no other land in Europe possesses, so that the island
is known as "Green Erin," or the "Emerald isle." The plants,
flowers, and trees of Ireland, in their shape, color, and
material, remind one somewhat of Normandy in France, or of
Asturia in northern Spain.
The _History of the Ancient Irish Church_ has been just
presented to the public by an author who is in a better condition
than most of his contemporaries to write such a work, which
charms us more and more the more frequently we read it. We speak
of the recent work of the Bishop of St. Gall, Dr. Charles John
Greith, in which we recognize one of the greatest efforts of
German historical literature. We cannot, therefore, refrain from
imparting to our readers an epitome of the contents of this
remarkable and highly interesting production. The right reverend
author considers his work of four hundred and sixty-two pages as
an "Introduction to the history of the Bishopric of St. Gall." He
published the book on the commemoration and centenary of the
consecration of the cathedral of St. Gall, August 17th and 18th,
1867, and dedicated his literary effort to the chapter and the
clergy of his diocese. From early youth the distinguished author
has been familiar with the legends and history of St. Gall, and
studied them with love and veneration. Love for that great Irish
missionary saint, whose worthy successor Dr. Greith is, inspired
the work whose continuation we desire most earnestly. "St. Gall
has left behind him a world-wide reputation as the apostle of the
Swiss Alps. Centuries have not diminished his fame, which the
gratitude of Christians sanctions."
Veneration for St. Gall has been spread far beyond the boundaries
of Switzerland; from the foot of the Alps to Upper Burgundy and
Alsace, even to the limits of the Vosges; then into Brisgau and
the Black Forest, to the Suabian Alps, and thence into Nibelgau,
and Algau. In all these regions, the monks of St. Gall imparted
the blessings of religion and education. Full of admiration for
the Christian zeal of St. Gall and his disciples, our author
recalls the words spoken by Ermenreich of Reichenau, to Abbot
Grimald of St. Gall, over a thousand years ago: "How could we
ever forget the island of Ireland, from which the rays of
Christian light and the sun of Christian faith have shone upon
us!" Taking this expression for his motto, the right reverend
writer gives us his magnificent _History of the Ancient Irish
Church and its Connection with Rome, Gaul, and Germany_.
Divided into six books, the work describes in the two first the
migrations of the barbarians and the fall of the Roman empire;
then the heresies which swarmed in the church of the period; then
the school of the island of Lerins, where St. Patrick, the
apostle of Ireland, was instructed. The four last books are
consecrated to St. Patrick and his apostleship in Ireland; to St.
Columba, the apostle of Scotland; to St. Colombanus and his deeds
in France, Flanders, and the north of Italy; and to St. Gall, the
apostle of Germany. The sixth and last book treats of
Christianity and its customs in the Irish church.
{766}
The illustrious author made use of manuscripts as well as printed
works in the compilations of his history. Many manuscripts were
at his disposal in St. Gall itself. The original sources of
ancient Irish history consist of different materials; genealogies
which trace the origin of kings or saints and their relatives;
annals which give the year of the death of saints, or of other
distinguished characters; church calendars which give the day of
the month on which the death of a saint occurred; and finally,
the lives of the saints themselves. These biographies are
copiously used. We cannot restrain our desire to quote what the
author thinks of those sources of history. "Erudition is not
sufficient for us to judge the biographies of the ancient saints;
we must have sympathy with them in their zealous labor; and a
spiritual relationship in their faith. Every age must be judged
according to the ideas, and customs which prevail in it; and
every saint according to the circumstances in which he lives."
The poetic as well as the historical element, the legendary as
well as the authentic, must be combined in forming a correct
estimate of a saint's character.
Even in the early part of the middle ages, every cathedral
church, large monastery, or distinguished hermitage, possessed
its hagiographers, who wrote the lives of the saints of the
place, either from authentic written documents, traditions, or
from knowledge acquired as eye-witnesses. Since John Moschus
published his collection of legends, extraordinary diligence in
the criticism and sifting of the ancient biographies of the
saints has been manifested in the church. The collection and
critical works of the Bollandists, of Lurius, Mabillon, d'Achery,
and others, keep their reputation undiminished to the present
day. These writers display such a thoroughness in their
researches, that the modern rationalists have been unable to find
a flaw of any consequence in their criticism. The truthful
historian must describe those apostles of religion and
civilization among the Germans, such as they were, children of
their century, representatives of its ideas, views, and manners.
Following this method, he will not cast doubt on the purity of
their motives, or try to lessen their merit in drawing entire
nations of barbarians out of the darkness of paganism and
immorality into the light of Christianity and virtue. The blind
party spirit of our times recognizes no justice, and modern
paganism is only satisfied when it can throw everything that is
noble and holy out of history. The modern pagans tear with scorn
the Holy Scriptures into shreds before our eyes, and subject to a
lawless criticism the ablest records of ecclesiastical history,
while they try to overturn every monument that might shelter the
weary pilgrims of earth on their road to heaven.
II.
The most trustworthy documents regarding the first traces of
Christianity in Ireland, inform us that up to the time of Pope
Celestine I., (a.d. 422-432,) that country had not been
converted. Up to the year of our Lord 432, no Christian
missionary had trodden the soil of the island, or caused the
light of faith to shine over the hills and through the valleys of
green Erin. Palladius and Patrick were the first apostles, (A.D.
430.) It is true, several High-Church English writers have
endeavored to prove the establishment of an Irish church prior to
St. Patrick; but this theory is unsupported by any authentic
documents.
{767}
Besides, the attempt of those writers was prompted by the
partisan desire of proving an original separation in belief
between Ireland and Rome. Nevertheless, it is not improbable that
many non-commissioned Christians may have gone from Britain and
Gaul into Ireland before the year 430, and formed small
communities, or lived scattered among the heathens. "On the wings
of every day commerce, the flower-seeds of Christian faith must
have been borne to Erin from Britain and Gaul; as from the
earliest times direct business relations were kept up between
Nantes, other harbors of Armoric Gaul, and Ireland. To the
north-west of Gaul also came the Irish rovers, under the guidance
of some distinguished chieftain, in quest of plunder, and
frequently carried off Christians into captivity. In this way St.
Patrick, when a youth of sixteen years of age, was taken from the
coast of Armorica by the pirates of King Niall, and with many
thousand others detained in bondage, as he informs us himself in
his writings," (p. 86.)
Besides the fact that there was no Irish church prior to St.
Patrick, though there may have been individual Christians in the
country, we must prove that the Christianity imported into
Ireland was Roman, and that her apostles received their mission
from the pope. Pope Celestine, in the year 431, sent Palladius,
deacon or arch-deacon of the Roman church, as the first
missionary. This apostolic man, who had long been casting his
eyes toward Britain and the other western islands of Europe, had
a double and very important task to execute in Ireland, namely,
to strengthen the dispersed Catholics in the faith, and to
evangelize the heathens. He landed in Hay-Garrchon, penetrated
into the interior of the country, baptized many, built three
churches in the province of Leinster; but, taken altogether, his
mission was unsuccessful, and he met with much opposition. "But
when Palladius understood that he could not do much good in
Ireland, he wanted to return to Rome, and died on the voyage, in
the territory of the Picts. Others say that he received the crown
of martyrdom in Ireland."
What Palladius begun--but which God's providence willed to remain
incomplete--Patrick accomplished in sixty years of apostolic
labor. Him God chose as the instrument, and fitted him for this
holy work. That he received his commission from Rome from the
hands of Pope Celestine, A.D. 432, cannot be doubted; for the
fact is confirmed by a crowd of witnesses, both Roman and Irish.
We must, therefore, consider and reverence Patrick as the apostle
of the Irish people.
All the early Irish annalists unanimously agree that his mission
began in the year 432, and that he died in 493--an apostleship of
sixty years! How great and glorious for him and for his people!
Patrick was born A.D. 387, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, in modern
Picardy, and was of noble Roman origin. In his sixteenth year, in
a marauding expedition of an Irish clan called Niall, he was
carried prisoner to Armoric Gaul; thence to Ireland, and there
sold to a pagan officer named Milcho, whose swine he herded for
six years. After this, he escaped, and returned to his native
land. Having fully determined to consecrate himself to the
service of God, he went to Marmontiers, the monastery of St.
Martin of Tours, to study there the principles of Christian
science and perfection.
{768}
A few years after, he visited the happy island of Lerins, near
Marseilles, at that time one of the most famous schools in
Christendom, and met there, as fellow-students, the holy monks
Honoratus, Hilary, Eucherius, Lupus, and others. An interior
voice there told him that he should return to Ireland to preach
the Gospel in that country; and he therefore travelled from
Lerins to Rome, in order to represent to the holy see the
darkness of heathenism which brooded over Ireland. But, as the
apostolic see was not then in a condition to provide for the
Irish mission, Patrick went back to Gaul, and remained with St.
Germain of Auxerre, under whose guidance he made further progress
in holiness and learning. Such was his life up to the year 429.
In this year he accompanied Bishop Germanus and Lupus to Britain,
who were sent by the pope to root out Pelagianism in that
country. Thus was Patrick prepared for his apostleship.
It was then he heard of the mission of Palladius, and its
failure. (A.D. 431.) The holy Bishop Germanus cast his eyes on
Patrick, who knew the Irish language, people, and country from
personal observations. Did he not seem peculiarly fitted--sent,
in fact, from heaven, to undertake the conversion of the Irish
nation?
Patrick, therefore, with the priest Legetius as his companion,
went to Rome, and received from Pope Celestine his blessing and
the necessary authority to undertake the task of converting
Ireland. It is hard to tell now whether he was consecrated bishop
by Celestine before his departure, or by Bishop Amatorex, of
Eboria, a city in north-western Gaul. He reached Ireland in the
first year of Celestine III. A life of continual triumphs began
for him. He was repulsed from the coast of Dublin: no matter; he
sailed for Ulster, and landed at Strangford. He converts the
chieftain Dicho and his whole house, and celebrates his first
Mass in Ireland in a neighboring barn. At the royal city of Tara,
he meets King Leoghaire, with all his clan; defends and explains
Christianity in their presence, and gains a victory over the
Druids. Dublach, a Druid and poet, is converted, and sings, for
the future, only hymns in the honor of the true God. The
daughters of the king, Ethana and Fethlimia, also bow to the yoke
of the Gospel, and consecrate their virginity to God, and many
other holy women follow their example. Thus, a happy beginning
was made in the island.
Soon the converts number thousands. Everything succeeds; the
conversion of the Irish people was effected without persecution
or martyrs. Patrick frequented the national assemblies, and used
the occasion to preach to the multitudes. He destroyed idolatry
and idolatrous practices throughout the whole land, and built
churches to the living God on places that had hitherto been
dedicated to the worship of idols. Wherever he went, he baptized
crowds of men, provided the new Christian communities with
churches, made the most virtuous of his disciples priests and
bishops, and appointed them to govern the faithful, and extend
the reign of the Gospel.
Thus did he labor year after year, going about preaching,
baptizing, and blessing, in Leinster, Ulster, Munster, and
Connaught; and everywhere his astonishing activity and self
sacrifice effected wonderful results. Everywhere the people were
ready and docile for the reception of Christianity. Divine
Providence wonderfully protected him from all danger.
{769}
But when the whole island was converted to Christ, congregations
formed, and churches erected in all parts of the country, St.
Patrick thought of building a metropolitan cathedral for the
primate of Ireland. He chose for this purpose the heights of
Admarcha, or Armagh, near which stood the old royal fortress of
Emania. After the building of his cathedral and the conversion of
the Irish, St. Patrick passed the remaining years of his life
partly at Armagh, partly at his favorite spot at Sabhul, where he
began his missionary career. He assembled a few synods, wrote his
_Confession_, as it is called, on the approach of death, and
was attacked by his last illness at Sabhul. When he felt his end
approaching, he collected his remaining strength, and endeavored
to go to Armagh, which he had chosen as the place of his burial;
but, warned by a voice from heaven, he returned to Sabhul, and
died there eight days after, on the 17th of March, 493.
III.
Let us now glance at the disciples and followers of this great
man. They followed up his work with such zeal and indefatigable
activity that, at the end of the sixth century, Christianity was
spread over all Ireland. We distinguish, in the Irish church,
"Fathers of the First Order," and "Fathers of the Second Order."
The holy men from Rome, Italy, Gaul, and especially from Wales or
Cambria, who followed St. Patrick as their leader, and aided him
in his labors, are the "Fathers of the First Order." Patrick
brought with him from Rome, in the year 432, nine assistants; in
the year 439, Secundinus, Auxilius, and Iserninus, were sent to
him from Rome. The two former of these, together with Benignus,
were present as bishops at the first synod of Armagh, in the year
456. Bishop Trianius, a Roman, another disciple of St. Patrick,
imitated so exactly the life of the great apostle, that his food
was nothing but the milk of one cow, which he took care of
himself. The first mitred abbot of Sabhul was Dunnius; and the
first bishop of Antrim was Leoman, Patrick's nephew. The oldest
Irish bishops appointed by Patrick, were Patrick of Armagh, Fiech
of Sletty, Mochua of Aendrun, Carbreus of Cubratham, and
Maccarthen, of Aurghialla. Seven nephews of St. Patrick, who
followed him from Cambria, are invoked in the Irish litanies as
bishops. They are the sons of Tigriada, Brochad, Brochan,
Mogenoch, Luman; and the sons of Darercha, Mel, Rioch, and Muna.
When the heathen Anglo-Saxons conquered Britain in the year 450,
and sought to destroy the old British church, many learned and
pious men fled to Ireland, and joined Patrick. Thirty of them
were made bishops, and devoted themselves to the special task of
converting the neighboring islands. The most renowned of these
Welsh missionaries are Carantoc, Mochta of Lugmagh, and Modonnoc,
who introduced the rearing of bees into Ireland, where they had
never been seen before. Three companions of St. Patrick--Essa,
Bitmus, and Tesach--were expert bell-founders, and makers of
church-vessels. The fact that Patrick was sent from Rome, that
his first assistants were Romans, and that his co-laborers from
Gaul and Britain were sons of the Roman church, completely
destroys the Anglican hypothesis of an Irish church independent
of Rome.
{770}
Even Albeus, who, on account of his services, was called the
second Patrick, Declau, and Ihac, the apostles of the Mumons;
Enna, or Enda, the founder of the great monastery of Aran;
Condland, Bishop of Kildare, all disciples of St. Patrick, were
educated and consecrated bishops in Rome. There also were Lugach,
Colman, Meldan, Lugaidh, Cassan, and Ciaran, consecrated and
afterward numbered among the earliest bishops and fathers of the
Irish church.
From the time of St. Patrick, continual communication was kept up
between Rome and Ireland by countless pilgrims, as many documents
attest, (Greith, p. 142-156.) Patrick left his love and reverence
for the Apostolic See of Peter as a precious legacy to his
immediate disciples; and they, in turn, to their successors up to
the present day. The frequent pilgrimages of Irish bishops,
abbots, and monks, are facts so well proven, that the Anglican
theory of a separate Irish church is shown to be a pure
invention, no longer contended for as truth by any respectable
historian.
Let us now pass to the fathers of the second order in the Irish
church, and their illustrious foundations. The founders of those
numerous Irish monasteries, which counted their inmates by
hundreds and thousands, those men who were mostly brought up by
the immediate successors of St. Patrick, belong to the "Second
Order of Irish Fathers." Twelve of them, instructed by the
renowned Abbot Finnian, at Clonard, are called the twelve
apostles of Ireland. At their head stands Columba, the apostle of
the Picts, shining among them like the sun among the stars. Their
names are, Columba, of Iona, Corngall, of Bangor, Cormac, of
Deormagh, Cainech, of Achedbo, Ciaran, of Clonmacnoise, Mobhi, of
Clareinech, Brendan, of Clonfert, Brendan, of Birr, Fintan,
Columba, of Tirgelass, Molua Fillan and Molasch, of Damhs-Inis.
These holy men erected all over Ireland and in the adjacent isles
churches and convents, which became centres of art, learning, and
sanctity. The monastery of Clonard, founded in Meath by Abbot
Finnian, contained during his lifetime three thousand monks. At
Clonmacnoise, a monastery founded by St. Ciaran, in the middle of
Ireland, agriculture was made a special study; and Monastereven
on the Barrow, Monasterboyce in the valley of the Boyne,
Dearmach, etc., were renowned institutions. These first and
oldest Irish monasteries were not large, regularly-built houses,
but composed of numbers of separate cells or huts, made of
wicker-work, stalks, and rushes. The church or oratory stood in
the midst of the huts, and was made of the same material. It was
at a later period that the Roman architecture was introduced into
Ireland; and then stone edifices took the place of the primitive
structures. Special mention is always made in the Irish annals of
the erection of a stone church, for the people preferred wooden
buildings, and their preference shows itself up to the twelfth
century. The stone churches were looked upon as the fruit of
foreign architecture, as St. Bernard informs us in his life of
St. Malachy. The Roman church gradually introduced into Ireland
the fine arts and a higher order of architecture, as she had done
at an earlier date in Gaul and Britain. Choral singing became
usual. The church hymns took the place of the Druidical
rhapsodies; and the muses of Inisfail forgot to sing of heroes,
and learned to tune their harps to sing the praise of Christ and
his saints.
The Irish missionaries reclaimed barren lands and made them
fertile, ameliorated the condition of agriculture, spread
commerce, and discovered new islands in the sea. Many of the
Irish saints, at the period of which we are writing, were great
navigators.
{771}
Dr. Greith paints in glowing colors the life of St. Columba and
his labors in Ireland, the Hebrides, and Scotland, as well as the
discipline and rules of the Abbey of Hy, which was founded by
him. We cannot enter into details, but refer the reader to Dr.
Greith's book. Columba was born on the 7th of December, 521. In
the first half of his life, Ireland was the scene of his zeal;
the second half was spent among the Scots and Picts. In Ireland
he founded Durrow, Derry, and Kells. He went with twelve
disciples to Caledonia in the year 563. Christianity among the
Scots had degenerated; and the Picts were still pagans. The king
of the Picts, Brudrius, gave him the island of Iona or Hy, where
his works began which God crowned with wonderful success. He soon
became the beacon light for all the faithful priests and laity of
Ireland and Caledonia. He visited Ireland to counsel his noble
relatives, settle their disputes, or oversee the churches and
monasteries which he had established, and travelled among the
Picts preaching the Gospel, founding monasteries, and erecting
churches which should consider Iona as their mother. He built
thirty-two churches, to most of which monasteries were attached,
in Scotland; and eighteen among the Picts, in the space of
thirty-three years, (563-597.) Even during his lifetime he was so
celebrated that, from all sides, princes, nobles, bishops,
priests, monks, and the faithful of all classes ran to him for
counsel in their difficulties, consolation in their distress, and
help in their necessities. Columba fought against the
superstition of the Picts, the cunning of their magicians, and
the wickedness of lawless men. Princes' sons, whose fathers had
lost their lives and crowns in battle, went to Iona to lay their
grievances before Columba, and to each one according to his need,
the saint gave consolation and hope. The common people brought
their children to him, to ask him to decide their vocation. It
was not an unusual spectacle to see kings and nobles lay aside
the insignia of their greatness at Iona, and break their swords
before its altars. Columba's prayers were very powerful. His
blessing controlled the elements and the forces of nature. He
seemed to rule nature as a lord. He had also the gift of
prophecy. He died June 9th, A.D. 597. His departure from life was
made known to many holy men in different parts of Ireland and
Scotland at the same time, who declared that "Columba, the pillar
of so many churches, had gone to-night to the bosom of his
Redeemer." The isle of Iona was illuminated by a heavenly light,
emanating from the countless angels who came down to take up the
happy soul of the saint to the bosom of his God.
The Irish monasteries increased wonderfully during the sixth
century. Finnian's monastery at Clonard, as already mentioned,
contained 3000 monks; and that of Bangor and Birr had the same
number; St. Molaissi had 1500 monks around him; Colombanus and
Fechin had each 300; Carthach, 867; Gobban, 1000; Maidoc,
Manchan, Natalis, and Ruadhan, each 150; Revin and Molua were
each the head of several thousand. There was no common rule for
all those convents, like that which St. Benedict wrote for the
religious of his order, (A.D. 529.) Each monastery had its own
laws. Columba had made no special rule for Hy or for his other
monasteries. St. Colombanus was the first who collected and
methodized the customs and traditions of Irish monastic life.
{772}
A thorough investigation of the most ancient custom of the Celtic
church, proves that it was in communion with the church of Rome.
The trivial differences between the two churches regarded neither
dogma, nor morality, nor the essentials of the Liturgy, of the
Mass, or the Blessed Sacrament. The supremacy of the pope was
recognized by all the Irish; and the celibacy of the clergy
observed as in the other Western churches. In the ceremonies of
the Mass, it is true, there were certain usages and forms
observed not Roman, as was the case also in the churches of Spain
and Gaul. The rites of baptism in the Irish church were simpler
than those of the Roman. The difference mainly consisted in the
style of the tonsure and in the time of celebrating the Easter
festival. The Irish and Britons did not keep the reckoning of the
Abbot Dionysius the Little, as he is styled, regarding Easter,
and tenaciously clung to the old Roman calculation. Every
departure from it seemed to them contrary to the traditions of
their fathers. It was only in the year 716, and after hard and
bitter fighting, that perfect union between Rome and Ireland was
effected in this particular.
The history of the Irish, as well as of the British church, is of
the greatest importance for Germans who want to know the origin
of Christianity in their own land. But we shall develop this
point in a second article.
----------------
European Prison Discipline.
I. -- Newgate.
We take pleasure in offering to American readers the following
record of a visit to Newgate, as exhibiting the enlightened
humanity shown in the treatment of public criminals in London.
The guide whom we have selected as the interpreter of Newgate's
mysteries is an imaginary personage. He expresses the
impressions, thoughts, and comments of several persons, not the
convictions of a single individual.
This way, sir, please. Yes, the passages _do_ seem gloomy,
coming in out of the sunny street, crowded with free men hurrying
to and fro on business. Here we are in the kitchen; you see the
good allowance of meat and potatoes the prisoners have for dinner
four times a week; the other three days they have a good strong
soup instead of meat; morning and night a mess of oatmeal, and
with each meal half a pound of bread. Yes, they are well fed;
better here, many of them, than they would be outside. Just look
over your shoulder, sir. Through that low iron door behind you
the condemned prisoners pass out into the square to be hanged.
Why through the kitchen? Can't say, sir. It has always been so
and that's all, I suppose. Do they take it quietly for the most
part? Why--sometimes they give us a little trouble, but--yes,
generally they bear it pretty well, poor fellows!
{773}
More narrow passages, with grated rooms like aviaries on each
side. These are the apartments where the prisoners receive their
friends, separated from them by two gratings several feet apart.
It will remind you of the picture in _Old Curiosity Shop_,
where Mrs. Nubbles and Barbara's mother go to see Kit in prison.
A prisoner can receive a visit once in three months, write one
letter, and receive one; but they are seldom here so long.
Newgate is only a house of detention before trial, except for
those condemned to death--a mere jail. Here we are in one of the
great oblong halls with tiers of cells opening on to galleries.
Up this iron staircase in the middle of the hall and across this
little bridge, and we stand outside a cell door. In the American
prisons you have seen, you say that the cells open on a corridor,
with a grated door, and sometimes a grated window. Not so, here.
The door is solid, with merely a small hole for purposes of
_surveillance_, and a trap below it through which food,
etc., may be passed. If the prisoner wants anything, he rings a
bell, the action of which is curious. Fix your eye on the
bell-spring outside. I pull the bell inside and a tin flap flies
back, showing the number of the cell. Thus the officer knows what
bell has rung, and the prisoner, having no power over the flap
when it has once sprung back, cannot avoid discovery if he has
rung merely in order to give trouble. The cell is sufficiently
large, you see, and is lighted from the court-yard through that
arched window near the ceiling. A nice little room enough, with
the bedding stowed away on one of those shelves in the corner. On
the shelf below is the prisoner's bowl with the spoon lying on
it. Everything must be in its place. If the spoon were on the
shelf, it would be out of place; it must lie on the reversed
bowl. Resting against the wall is his plate, and on the lowest
shelf are his books. Oh! yes, you may examine them--the same in
all the cells, Bible, Prayer-Book, hymns, and psalms. [Footnote
222] The other volume comes from our library, and is changed
every day, if necessary> At this little turn-up shelf the
prisoner takes his meals, or reads by the small shade-lamp above
it. In the corner is a nice copper basin with plenty of water.
There are two apertures, one to admit warm air, the other for
ventilation; every comfort provided for him, you see. Yes, we
keep the prisoners entirely apart from each other, never two
together, unless some one comes here for drunkenness, and has
delirium tremens, and then we put two others with him for
safety's sake. Now we'll go up to the next corridor; in the one
below are the doctors' cells, where fresh prisoners are kept
until they have passed through a sanitary examination.
[Footnote 222: Prisoners who do not belong to the Established
Church can be visited by a priest or by a dissenting
minister.]
Step into this cell, occupied, as you see, by a mere boy. There's
his pile of oakum on the floor. Go on with your dinner, my man;
no need to stop for us. As we go up higher, more light comes in
from the courtyard; the upper cells are reserved for prisoners
who are likely to be here some time. The next cell occupied too,
you see, though we've not many prisoners here now, the trials
being just over. Yes, sir, this man is trying to educate himself
a little; has a dictionary on the shelf beside the
library-book--a volume of travels this time. Now that we are in
the corridor again, let me tell you that this same shock-headed
young man is condemned to ten years of penal servitude and twenty
lashes, for highway robbery with violence. The lashes are to be
received before he leaves Newgate, but more on that subject
presently.
{774}
Here we are in the old part of Newgate. In your reading, no doubt
you've come across the name of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry. It was in this
same long, dark room that she used to assemble the prisoners, and
read and pray with them. No, I have no means of judging of the
durability of her conversions. It is easy to talk of converting
criminals; but perhaps her chief merit lay in setting the example
in England of a friendly and trusting intercourse with these poor
wretches. Yes, it is strange to see the whipping-block in this
room, but indeed, sir, corporal punishment has become an absolute
necessity. It is never used to force prison discipline, but is
administered in execution of a sentence, imposed by a magistrate
for wanton violence. It is a curious fact that these brutes, who
go about garroting inoffensive travellers, breaking jaws and
skulls with their brass knuckles or dusters, as they call them,
are the veriest cowards on earth when physical pain comes to
themselves. In this very room they will cry like children, and
beg to be forgiven, I don't feel half the pity for them that I do
for the poor creatures going to be hanged. [Footnote 223] This
iron door survived the fire in the Gordon riots, you see. Come
through here, if you please, sir. This is another of the large
rooms in old Newgate, where prisoners were kept before the
solitary system came into vogue. The change is a most fortunate
one for all concerned, I'm confident.
[Footnote 223: We are not fully convinced of the wisdom of
introducing the whipping-block once more into the honorable
company of penal inflictions in England. One of the most
satisfactory cases of reformation we have known among persons
guilty of grave crimes, was that of a "garroter." It is our
strong impression that corporal punishment would have
degraded him beyond all human hope of redemption. At least,
great care should be taken to keep the use of this instrument
of torture within the bounds of absolute necessity.
Imprisonment may soften the heart; perhaps many persons have
died well on the scaffold, who would have died impenitent
under other circumstances; but however great may have been
the number of spirits crushed by flogging in prisons, we
venture to doubt whether there is a single instance on record
of its having produced or aided reformation.]
I've no question that many a crime was hatched here among the men
herded together in these cells. You can see for yourself what
kind of talk there would be among them. Perhaps some footman was
sent here for stealing his master's purse. What a chance for an
old hand to get a little useful information in a friendly way:
"Your master was an easy, comfortable kind of a man, was he?
Well, them well-to-do city-men mostly is easy-tempered. Not
partickerlerly well-to-do, an't he? Old family he belongs to, eh?
What lots o' plate some o' them poor noblemen do have! Wonder
myself that they don't sell it and get the good out on it, 'stead
of hiding it away at the banker's? Don't keep it at the bankers!
Pity the poor cuss as cleans it, then! Go to Brighton or Bath, of
course, when the season's over; I thought as much; it takes poor
folks to travel," etc., etc. And then, the first step after
getting out of Newgate would be to make love to the maid-servant
when the family was out of town. Very devoted he'd be, until some
evening he'd think it "such a pity there were no oranges in the
house, or something else to cool your mouth with; there was such
a nice, respectable place round the corner; wouldn't she just
step round there and choose something for herself?" And then,
while the the poor girl was gone, the accomplices, well
instructed as to the whereabouts of the plate, would ransack the
safe at their leisure. You may depend upon it, sir, it was a good
thing for society when the present discipline was adopted.
{775}
The little court-yard we are crossing now is one of those where
the prisoners take their exercise. Oh! yes, sir; they all have
regular times for exercise, and in these yards within the
building there is no possibility of their making their escape. I
am going to show one of our cells for solitary confinement. Let
me turn up the gas in this small room. You see this door which I
open, and again an inner door, which I open too. Step in, sir.
Now, turn so that your eye may catch the gaslight outside. Here
is a bedstead; you can feel it, if you don't see it. In this
cell, pitch-dark and cut off from the rest of the prison so
completely that no shouts or screams would be heard, unruly
prisoners are confined for any period between one hour and three
days, with only bread and water for food. There is ventilation
and warmth here, as in the other cells. The doctor comes each
morning to see that mind and body are sound. Only by sentence of
a magistrate can the confinement be prolonged beyond three days.
Yes, sir, it is an awful place; and then, too, the men look upon
it as sheer lost time. We have soldiers in here sometimes, and
they say that they can make up for three days on bread and water
in the guard-house, by spending their whole pay in eating and
drinking when they come out; but here it's just loss of rations,
and nothing else. You'll hardly ever catch an old thief in here.
"Oh! don't stop my grub, whatever you do," he'll say, and so he
takes care to behave well enough to keep out of "solitary." The
prisoners who mind it least are little ragamuffins, accustomed to
creep into any dark hole, to curl themselves up and go to sleep.
They are never afraid of anything. Decent boys, in prison on
suspicion of forgery or whatever, are dreadfully scared. But
you'll be glad to get out into the daylight again, I am thinking,
sir.
I'll show you our chapel now. In that screened gallery the women
sit, where they can see everything without being seen. There is
divine service here every morning, as well as on Sundays. No,
sir; I've no authority to show you the female side of the prison,
which is quite distinct from ours, and has female warders, and a
committee of lady visitors. The system of female keepers works
perfectly well; but it would have been impracticable before we
adopted separate cells, because the talk among the prisoners was
such as no decent woman should hear. A wicked woman is a thousand
times worse than a bad man, and less intelligent, too. You see,
sir, a woman falls because she is either pretty, or silly, or
unprotected. Now, bad men and boys are often the most intelligent
of their class, and are selected as tools for that very reason,
by older rogues than themselves. It is one of the terrible
features of the case, that the country loses valuable servants in
these quick-witted outlaws.
Here we come out upon the sloping passage, leading to the
criminal courts--Birdcage-walk, the old thieves call it.
Over-head we get the light through the open iron-work, you see.
Under the flags are buried all those who have been hanged, and
the initial letter of the name is scratched on the wall above the
grave. That iron door at the end leads to the court-rooms. Yes,
indeed, sir, some of the prisoners one learns to like best are
those awaiting execution here, educated men sometimes. Oh! yes; I
know the names that all these letters stand for. Muller lies
there. No, he was not much of a man, any way. Here's Courvoisier,
who murdered Lord Russell; he was my lord's valet.
{776}
Those five letters stand for five pirates. This one was a
coachman, who murdered a female in the city, and burned the
remains in his stable. Here's a man who killed his wife. Why,
yes, sir; there are a good many in here for wife-murder;
aggravating, I suppose, at times. That was an Italian, who killed
another female in the city. This man hung his own child in the
cellar. Oh! no, he was not insane; jealous of his wife, or
something of the sort, I believe. There are a good many more
here, but their cases were not so well known. Another court-yard
to be crossed, sir, and here we are in one of the condemned
cells. A good deal larger it is than the common cells, you see,
with a bedstead, a good-sized table, and a long bench. From the
time of his condemnation, the poor fellow is never left alone,
night or day; two officers take turn and turn about in staying
with him. Oh! certainly, sir, they talk with him; not about his
case, of course, but of any book they have been reading, or of
things outside the prison, and so on. The idea is not to let his
mind dwell much on what is before him, and so spare him all the
suffering we can.
You are right, sir; it would be absolutely impossible to dispense
with capital punishment in this country. Murder is common enough
now, but I am confident it would be much more frequent if the
fear of death were withdrawn. Your professional thief
_never_ commits murder. All rogues have an especial line of
business. A house-breaker is never guilty of highway robbery; a
highway-man never picks pockets; and they none of them commit
murder. Now, sir, there is a deal of talk about the horrors of a
public execution, and the bad effect such a sight must have on
the people. Well, sir, I am of a different opinion. The people
who come to a hanging are the very scum of London. Some gentlemen
there are, too, I know, by the looks of the windows opposite; but
the crowd is chiefly made up of the mere scum and dregs of
London. I think, sir, it is a lesson to them, and a lesson they
need badly. Sometimes we say to the little ragamuffins who get in
here, "Did you ever go to a hanging?" "Yes, sir." "And what did
you think of it?" "Why, I wasn't in a very good place, sir; I
couldn't see much." "Well, don't you know that if you go on as
you're going now, you may come to commit murder one of these
days, and be hanged yourself?" "Oh! no, sir! I mustn't commit
murder." He has learned that much, if he's not learned anything
else. [Footnote 224]
[Footnote 224: We present this argument simply as a statement
of one side of an oft-mooted question, but we are far from
being convinced of its validity.]
I believe that if capital punishment were abolished, a thief,
instead of leaving his pal (as the vulgar term is for accomplice)
in a mask, to watch the man and wife while he searches for plate,
would kill them both. He would know that he could only be
transported for life, and if he killed the officers placed in
charge over him, the law could only repeat the same sentence.
Yes, sir; you are right; capital punishment is sometimes too
severe a penalty, in proportion to the crime it punishes. It
falls, now and then, on a man who has not led a bad life in
general, but who is possessed by one passion--jealousy, or
revenge, or whatever. There should be a clearer distinction of
circumstances in pronouncing sentence. A man who sets out to do a
thing, with a distinct determination to take life if he can in no
other way accomplish his purpose, commits murder.
{777}
A man devoured by passion, and acting under its influence, should
be judged less severely. And yet, sir, since the penalty of death
is less designed as a punishment of criminals than as a defence
of the public, even this distinction is very hard to make. We can
only hope that our children will judge the matter more wisely
than we do.
This room, sir, inclosed in glass, is the apartment where a
prisoner meets his solicitor. The door is closed upon client and
counsel, and the officer in attendance cannot hear their talk, or
learn what points are to be used in the defence.
Here we are in the room where the prisoner is prepared for
execution. I'll get the key, and unlock the closet where our
irons are kept. This is the old style, sir, very cumbrous, as you
see. Here are the identical irons Jack Sheppard wore. They would
be so much too large for me, that I could slip my foot out at
once; but in those days they wore pads around the ankle, so that
the ring fitted close. When you read of Jack's breaking loose
from his irons, it sounds very grand; but all he did was to
unwind the pad from his ankle, and draw his foot out. These are
the irons we use in travelling with convicts; here are common
handcuffs, as you see; and here is the sort of harness worn by
prisoners about to be executed. It pinions the arms firmly, and,
at the last moment, fastens the legs together. Why, no, sir; I
can't say that educated men bear it any better than ignorant
ones. I've seen educated men most awfully frightened. I think it
was death they feared, sir, not shame. When they are ready, they
pass through this passage, and out through the iron door I showed
you in the kitchen, on to the square. Step into this cabinet a
moment, sir. On those shelves are casts taken after death from
those who have been executed. There is Muller, there is
Courvoisier, there is Marchand. The young fellow with negro
features was only nineteen. He murdered his fellow-servant. Yes,
the one next him looks like a negro too; you are probably right,
sir. The one with the well-formed, dimpled chin little thought
how his pleasure-loving youth would end. Surprisingly life-like
they all are. Yes, these are the men who lie under the flags in
the Birdcage-walk. This way, sir, for your hat and cane. Good
day, sir. Astonishingly fine weather for the season.
II. Saint Lazare.
The ancient convent of Saint Lazare, in Paris, once the home of
St. Vincent de Paul, is now a prison for women taken from the
lowest depths of Parisian life. Their name is legion; their
sufferings from sickness and neglect before arrest are
unutterable. France has no law for such as they beyond the will
of the prefect of police. What alleviation, you ask, has been
found for this corrosive social evil? A more effective one than
disbelievers in French virtue would anticipate. All females who
come under the notice of the police for sanitary reasons or
criminal matters, are sent to Saint Lazare, where, instead of
jailers, there are fifty-five Sisters of Charity. [Footnote 225]
[Footnote 225: Or, more strictly speaking, fifty-five Sisters
of Marie Joseph, the sisterhood devoted to prison discipline
in France.]
How many of the miserable creatures are converted by intercourse
with these noble and refined women, God only knows. The day of
judgment will reveal the difference between real and apparent
success. But a woman who has been first the plaything and then
the scorn of society, must think more tenderly of God in Saint
Lazare, than in any ordinary prison or workhouse.
{778}
Two objections which may be made to the system of treatment
adopted at Saint Lazare, I will try to answer before enumerating
the very details which would probably suggest them.
In the first place, it may be urged that the prisoners are made
so comfortable that imprisonment becomes a reward rather than a
punishment, a bribe rather than a threat. Secondly, it may be
with truth asserted that the wicked poor receive better care in
such an establishment, than society gives to the virtuous poor
who have never seen the inside of a jail.
To the first objection I answer, that imprisonment is never easy
for such women to bear, because the passions which bring them so
low, love of excitement and vanity, find no food in a
well-ordered prison; that the opposite system has been tested
ever since the world was, and still the world overflows with
impenitent sinners; that at least half the prisoners of Saint
Lazare are wicked for want of precisely what they find
there--judicious training; a decent dwelling-place, good example;
and, last and best reason of all, that this system is the one
most in accordance with the teaching and example of Christ.
And my answer to the second objection is this. Let us seek out
the honest poor, provide them with decent lodging-houses at low
prices, with practical education, useful and entertaining
reading, innocent amusement, and, above all, with religious and
moral instruction; but do not let us relax our efforts to reform
sinners merely because we have shamefully neglected our duties
toward saints. We may say truly that the respectable poor are
hard to find, because their very virtues conceal them from the
public eye. We have no such excuse where sinners are concerned;
for they are festering in every jail, penitentiary, and almshouse
in every city throughout the world. Justice, not charity, demands
that society should provide decent asylums where its victims may
hide their wretchedness.
But let us examine the discipline of Saint Lazare in detail, that
the reader may judge for himself whether these objections have
been satisfactorily disposed of.
The inmates are divided into three classes: 1st. Women who have
been tried for crimes and condemned; 2d. _Filles publiques_,
consigned to St. Lazare by the police for sanitary or other
reasons; 3d. Young girls and children sent thither by their
parents (_correction paternelle_) for safe keeping, or
brought there by the police as vagrants.
The uniform is neat and inconspicuous, dark blue for one class of
offenders, and maroon for the other; I think the children wear no
uniform. The clothes-rooms are arranged very methodically,
under-clothing and dresses being laid on shelves in orderly piles
which would satisfy the most fastidious Yankee housekeeper. The
common prison garments are comfortable and well made; but there
is a higher grade of clothing for those who can afford to pay for
it, who are there on "pistole," as the technical term is, taken
from an old French coin. The same is to be said of food and
lodging; comfortable accommodations being provided for all, while
small luxuries can be purchased at a small expense. Tariffs are
posted all over the prison, that the inmates may know the fixed
prices of various articles, and not be subjected to dishonesty on
the part of sub-officials.
{779}
The present writer, who endured the terrible ordeal imposed on
all conscientious visitors, of tasting everything the various
kitchens produced, can answer for the excellent quality of soup,
coffee, bread, etc., etc. Having been allowed to content himself
with visual proof in passing through the well-ordered pharmacies,
he can only vouch for their neatness and apparent convenience.
The work-rooms are generally furnished with tiers of benches
graduated nearly to the ceiling, so that one sister can
superintend a roomful of work-women. The gentleman who
accompanied me in my first visit showed me with some pride the
comfortable straw seats. "The empress came here one day," he
said, and asked the prisoners if they were in need of anything.
They told her the wooden benches were uncomfortable, and her
majesty ordered these seats to be made, where they can sit and
sew all day without great fatigue. Yes, our empress is a good and
charitable soul."
Many institutions send work to be done at Saint Lazare, and each
prisoner receives a certain proportion of the proceeds of her
labor, that she may have the wherewithal to begin an honest life
when her term is out. Each day's earnings she writes down in her
own little account-book, a dingy record of hopes, as it must be
to some of them. The court-yards, where there is an hour's
recreation twice a day, are large and cheerful. In the centre are
large tanks where the women are allowed to wash small articles of
clothing; an inestimable privilege, as any one knows who has seen
prisoners trying to extemporize a laundry in their cells with a
tin wash-basin. These courts are the favored haunts of sparrows
who twitter as cheerfully within the old prison walls as under
the eaves of good men's dwellings. A magpie was hopping about in
the cloister with the air of an _habitué_, looking amazingly
as if he were there on sentence.
There are a number of infirmaries, all tended by Sisters of
Charity, and well supplied from a kitchen devoted to hospital
diet. The patients are of the lowest class, their maladies the
saddest that flesh is heir to. That such a hospital should have
any attraction to the visitor is impossible; but remembering the
hosts of such forlorn creatures who throng our jails and
almshouses in America, I longed to transport wards and warders to
the other side of the Atlantic and inaugurate a change in prison
discipline for women. [Footnote 226]
[Footnote 226: In the February number of _The Catholic
World_ appeared an article entitled _Paris Impious, and
Religious Paris_, giving some interesting details
concerning Saint Lazare.]
I had the good fortune to be accompanied by a gentleman
associated for many years with prison reforms, and charged with
high authority in the matter of prison discipline in Paris. He
makes it his rule to visit the prisoners at all times and
seasons, that he may detect any breach of discipline or lack of
fidelity on the part of the superintendents. He is a man who
under the wretched disguise of vice recognizes humanity, no
matter how defiled; who looks rather to remove the causes of sin
than to procure its punishment, and sees in every culprit a good
man spoiled. Let no one suppose that I mean to advocate a feeble
administration of justice. No; in a prison, over-indulgence means
chaos; present weakness means future severity. At Saint Lazare
steady, unswerving vigilance is observed, and silence enforced
among the prisoners. Discipline being maintained evenly, not
spasmodically, the prisoners can be allowed privileges very
important to them.
{780}
Visitors are admitted twice a week to converse with the women
through two gratings, as at Newgate, a sister standing in the
narrow passage between. Recreation in the yards is taken in
common, instead of separately. It is surprising to find how a
prisoner clings to the privilege of seeing his fellow-creatures,
even when there is no chance of communication. The peculiar pangs
inflicted by the solitary system, when endured for a long time,
can only be appreciated by those who have had confidential
intercourse with prisoners.
The prisoners' chapel is very cheerful, and has a pretty
sanctuary with stained-glass windows, and an altar beautifully
cared for. One of the points most worthy of approval in Saint
Lazare, is the attractive form under which religion is everywhere
presented. In each dormitory, infirmary, and work room, is an
oratory; or, at least, some image or picture suited to impress
the souls of the prisoners.
One part of the establishment is full of tender associations to
every Christian soul--the sisters' private chapel, whose
sanctuary was once the cell of Saint Vincent de Paul. The stone
floor in the recessed window where he used to pray is worn hollow
with the pressure of his knees. Saint Lazare was frequented in
those days by many pilgrims, and in his cell the saint sought
refuge from distraction and dissipation of spirit. It is from
kneeling-cushions such as his, that the prayers go up to heaven
which work true reforms, which achieve immortal victories whose
laurels are fresh centuries after the conqueror's soul glories in
the presence of God. I have never stood in any cathedral with a
soul more filled with veneration than in this little chapel of
Saint Lazare, where Saint Vincent de Paul prayed; and where his
children pray still, devoted to the work most repugnant to human
nature, that of tending beings who remind us what we should all
be but for the grace of God.
One infirmary is a lying-in hospital. The mothers can keep their
young children at Saint Lazare, or send them away as they choose.
In this infirmary shone forth the kindly spirit of my guide.
"This always touches me," he said; "for I am a _père de
famille_" and he went from baby to baby with gentle looks and
womanly sweetness, a man stalwart of frame as a grenadier. And it
touched me, too, though I am not _père de famille_, to see
the lines of little cribs, and the poor, forlorn mothers tending
their tiny waifs and strays.
There is one serious defect in the construction of Saint Lazare,
making it in that respect unsuitable for a prison. There is but
one large dormitory for the adult prisoners who are in good
health. The others sleep, two, three, or even four in a large
cell, and with no arrangements for _surveillance_ beyond a
small aperture in the door, covered with glass. I remarked upon
the imprudence of this arrangement, and was told that the danger
was fully appreciated and deeply regretted. The French government
is too generous in its treatment of public institutions to leave
this evil long unremedied, I am confident.
Another defect in the regulations surprised me. There is no daily
Mass in the public chapel of Saint Lazare, the prisoners hearing
Mass on Sunday only. I had no opportunity of asking the reason of
this omission, and will therefore refrain from making farther
comment upon it. The third department in Saint Lazare is the most
interesting, being the portion devoted to young girls and
homeless children.
{781}
The sentence is for six months only, but can be renewed if found
expedient. My guide called to him child after child, and talked
with them as he might talk with his own children at home. One
little thing cried bitterly. Her mother had turned her into the
streets to shift for herself, and the police, finding her
wandering about the city, had brought her to Saint Lazare. He
held her little hand in his and patted it softly as he said all
the comforting things he could think of; there was not much to be
said, one must confess. I asked where she would be sent when the
six months were out. "To some industrial establishment under the
charge of Sisters of Charity," was the answer; "The empress sees
to all such things."
The young people are kept entirely separate from the prisoners,
in the new part of Saint Lazare. They have several hours'
schooling, and have their working hours, in which they earn money
for themselves and for the establishment, as the women do. Each
child has an exquisitely neat cell to herself for the night,
opening with a grating on to a corridor, so that the watching
sister can exercise a strict _surveillance_.
Whenever I see the right thing done in the right way for public
offenders, I think of the man who first turned my attention to
the subject of prison discipline--Governor Andrew, as he will be
to us all in Massachusetts, no matter who holds the state reins.
Surely the sun has not often shone on any spirit more steadfast
or more tender than his; surely, the days of chivalry produced no
knightly courage more unblenching than his; surely, whatever
blessings come to Massachusetts in her future career, her
children will never forget how valiantly that brave man fought
for judicious legislation, for a humane execution of the laws,
and for the equal rights of Catholics and Protestants--will never
forget John Albion Andrew!
--------------
Translated From Le Correspondant.
A Heroine Of Conjugal Love.
Marquise De La Fayette.
When, at the end of the year 1864, the children of Madame de
Montagu, having overcome the natural scruples of filial modesty,
consented to open to the public the treasure of noble examples
and Christian virtues enclosed in the remembrances of their
mother, _Le Correspondant_ was the first among the public
organs to announce the lively interest felt in the recital. The
success more than justified our predictions. There is no one who
would not be edified by the perusal of the life of Madame de
Montagu, and the book has already taken its place in our
libraries.
{782}
Since that publication, the Duchess of Ayen, around whom are
grouped five daughters widely differing from each other, and each
with a strongly marked individuality, has become in some sort the
type of the Christian mother in modern society.
Indeed, maternal love was in truth the terrestrial passion of her
heart, and would entirely have occupied it, had not the care of
this dear flock borne with it higher duties, and rendered greater
her accountability. The marvellous gift had been given her to
form souls; to develop the budding good within them, and, while
respecting the originality peculiar to each, to arm them with
incomparable strength.
We need not return to what, four years ago, we have already
published of the Christian discipline, the simple and retired
life to which the Duchess of Ayen had accustomed her daughters,
realizing in them her type of true womanhood, making the heart
superior to destiny, neither dazzled by fortune or success, nor
cast down by the ills of life. When the life of Madame de Montagu
was first published, only in episode we recognized those of the
noble daughters of the Duchess d'Ayen, reserved by Providence for
the rudest trials, or destined for a bloody immolation. We speak
of the Viscountess de Noailles, who with her mother and
grandmother, the old Marchioness of Noailles, perished on the
scaffold, and Madame de La Fayette, the voluntary prisoner of
Olmutz, in truth one of the most touching heroines of conjugal
love. In the life of their sister they are but secondary figures;
but as it is permitted even among the saints of paradise to have
a preference, we must confess that, in this beautiful group of
heroic figures, our predilection has always been for the two
eldest. It will be readily understood, then, with what respect
and emotion we have opened the book, in which we would not only
find the abridged recital of the actions of Madame de La Fayette,
but could see her act, hear her speak herself of her dearly loved
mother, listen to the passionate accents of her voice, and,
indeed, almost feel the very beatings of her heart.
This volume, printed by Téchener with great typographical care,
contains the life of the Duchess of Ayen, written by Madame de La
Fayette, in the fortress of Olmutz, on the margin of a Buffon,
with a little India-ink and a tooth-pick, and subject to the
hateful inspection of the Austrian jailers. We could not find a
more touching relic. Nowadays we mount distinguished autographs
in gold; should this ever pass into public sale, would it not
justify unheard-of extravagances? And we have now this life of
Madame de La Fayette compiled by a daughter worthy of her, Madame
de Lasteyrie, herself the representative of the virtue and
charity of a race of which, according to an expression applied to
an eminent royal family, all the daughters were chaste and the
sons valiant. And to these two recitals we add another document,
that we had the good fortune to publish in April, 1847, in which
the good Abbé Carrichon, an ecclesiastic full of zeal, but timid
in character, and who only by the grace of the holy ministry
could rise to intrepidity, relates, in the most perfect good
faith, the anguish he endured, when to his lot it fell to give to
the three condemned ones the peace and consolation of last
pardon. Those who may be astonished to find in a whole generation
of the same family so many and such extraordinary virtues, may
rest assured of its truth. Imagination has added nothing to the
edifying recital of these beautiful lives. The original documents
that we give to-day in their sublime nakedness, bear an accent of
austere heroism and holy enthusiasm that strengthens the heart
and penetrates it with the love of good; they vouch for our first
publication.
{783}
In the rapid analysis we will try to make from these documents,
we will present the most striking traits of the character and
life of Madame de La Fayette. Adrienne de Noailles, second
daughter of the Duchess of Ayen, was of ardent temperament, of
deep sensibility, with a lively imagination and a mind well
informed. She ever refused to adopt any idea imposed upon her,
that could not be subject to a free discussion. She seized
difficulties and penetrated to their depths. While still a child,
she was troubled by doubts of her religion, even when, at the age
of twelve, she was prepared for her first communion. She does not
give us the nature of these doubts, but it is clearly seen they
never interfered with the practice of piety; on the contrary, her
thirst for truth increased her fervor. Her pious mother was not
alarmed at this state of her soul; she divined the source, and
waited with confidence for grace to dissipate the clouds. Only,
she believed it best to defer the first communion of her daughter
until, calm and reassured, she could enjoy her supreme happiness
in all its plenitude. And she did not presume too much on the
integrity of her daughter; never was more solid piety or firmer
faith implanted in a heart of deeper conviction.
If we were to study anew the perfect model of a mother which the
Duchess of Ayen presents in the portrait drawn of her by Madame
de La Fayette, a portrait depicted, too, with a sincerity that
does not fear to let us penetrate the shadows, and so prove its
reality, we should dwell upon the profoundly Christian spirit
that directed her in the choice of her sons-in-law. We there see
her rising above all worldly considerations, seeking above all
things in them the moral qualities which may assure the happiness
of her daughters; for she did not look upon marriage, as is too
often done, as a simple affair of interest, of fortune, or of
vanity, but it was, in her eyes, the sacred tie in which love
should bear the greater part. God, who united man and woman, and
who said, "Man shall leave father and mother, and cleave to his
wife, and they two shall be one flesh," has he not made love the
duty of Christian marriage? Under the old _régime_ and among
the nobility, marriages were contracted early, and Mesdemoiselles
de Noailles were scarcely twelve or thirteen years old when the
first proposition for their hands were made for them to their
mother. One of these candidates, the Marquis de La Fayette, was
himself only fourteen years old. "His extreme youth, his isolated
position, having lost all his near relations, an immense fortune
suddenly acquired, which the Duchesse d'Ayen looked upon only as
a temptation," all these considerations, which in a purely
worldly view would have seduced many a mother, decided her at
first to refuse him, notwithstanding the good opinion she
entertained of his character. The Duke d'Ayen strongly insisted
on an alliance which combined every advantage of rank and wealth,
but the duchess for several months none the less persisted in her
refusal; and it was only after a more attentive examination of
the character of M. de Lafayette had reassured her of the future
of her daughter, that, demanding a delay of two years, she
finally gave her consent. The idea of the moment when she must
resign her daughters into the keeping of another, filled her with
apprehension; evidently, she desired for them a felicity that she
had not enjoyed herself, that of entire conformity of tastes,
thoughts, and character in the companions of their lives; and
when the marriages were resolved upon, it is delightful to read
in the recital of Madame de La Fayette the detail of touching
cares with which this tender mother charged herself, to prepare
these eldest daughters for their new stations--one to espouse
the Viscount de Noailles, a cousin whom she had loved since her
infancy, and the other to be united to M. de La Fayette.
{784}
"'My heart attracted me to M. de La Fayette,' says with much
simplicity the manuscript of the prisoner of Olmutz, 'and with
a sentiment so profound, that our union has always been one of
firmness and tenderness through all the vicissitudes of this
life--through all the good and evil that have been our lot for
twenty-four years.
"With what pleasure I discovered that, for more than a year, my
mother had looked upon and loved him as her son! She detailed
to me all the good she had known of him--what she thought of
him herself, and I soon saw he possessed for her the filial
charm that made the happiness of my life. She occupied herself
in aiding my poor head, especially about this time so empty and
so weak, to keep from going astray during such an important
event. She taught me to ask, and she asked for me, the
blessings of heaven on the state I was about to embrace.
"'I was then only fourteen and a half years old, and, having
new duties to perform, my mother believed it her duty to
reapply herself to the care of forming my sister and myself for
our future destinies. The confidence with which we always
conversed with her, gave her abundant opportunity. It was not
the kind of confidence to which, I believe, mothers oftener
pretend than obtain from their children--that inspired by a
companion of one's own age--but the perfect and intimate trust
which needs the direction and approval of a parent, and causes
a pang of fear in any step, visit, or conversation, of which
she may not approve. A confidence, in fine, which always
returns to its support--to its guide, in whose light it would
repose as well as in its tenderness; a guide who, if even one
could not always approve its decisions, and might encounter its
reproaches, would still be considered necessary, and to whom
the idea of dissimulation would be insupportable.
"'Such was my feeling toward my mother, who often permitted me
to argue with her.'"
The ceremony of the marriage accomplished, the husband of sixteen
years set out for his regiment, and the young bride testified by
her grief at this separation all the affection she experienced
for him. He returned: the religious education of Madame de La
Fayette was completed, she made her first communion with an
entire faith and in the most humble dispositions, and soon after,
on the 15th of December, 1775, she became a mother for the first
time.
The faculty of loving knew no bounds in this youthful heart.
Identified in all the tastes, aspirations, sentiments, and
interests of him who had given her the right to say, in all
sincerity, "I love you religiously, worldly, passionately," she
adopted the political faith of her husband, and, without any
personal afterthought, without weakness or hesitation, from her
most tender age, valiantly accepted all the sacrifices and all
the perils of the public life of a man whose political
preoccupations governed him exclusively. He held the best part of
her heart; but, immovable in her religious faith, Madame de La
Fayette never sacrificed a principle nor a practice of piety to
her conjugal idolatry. It is remarkable, also, that this ardor of
passion for her husband never weakened the vivacity of her
tenderness for her mother, her children, and her oldest sister,
who, from the cradle, had been her dearest friend.
{785}
Inasmuch as she was sufficient for every duty, so her soul was
sufficient in all its affections. The war which broke out about
this time between England and her American colonies, opened to
the Marquis de La Fayette the brilliant arena that would give
immortality to his name; but for his young companion began an
existence full, at the same time, of anguish and delirious joy,
of grief and devotion. The family of Noailles had strongly
adopted philosophical ideas, and willingly followed the liberal
views of the eighteenth century. The generous enthusiasm,
however, which led M. de La Fayette to devote himself to the
service of the American people vindicating their independence,
was at first severely disapproved of and considered madness by
the Duke d'Ayen and the Marshal de Noailles. The marquis was
nineteen; he had been married three years, was already a father,
and soon expected a second child. Madame de La Fayette and the
Duchess d'Ayen alone understood the motives that determined the
departure of M. de La Fayette; the former studied in every way to
conceal the torture of her heart, preferring to be considered
insensible, or too much of a child, to giving the appearance, by
showing her grief, of wrong to the object of her worship.
Meanwhile, the great struggle, of which the new world was the
theatre, and in which aristocratic England found herself at war
with the principal democracy of modern society, held all Europe
in suspense. The greatest interest was felt in France for the
success of the Americans. While the French government, though
understanding how matters stood, hesitated, nevertheless, to take
an open part in the quarrel, public opinion declared itself still
more favorably for the United States; the various incidents of
the war were greedily sought after, each success of the
insurgents excited enthusiasm, and soon all hearts beat in unison
with that of Madame de La Fayette, for the success of the young
hero who had so actively contributed to such glorious results.
We must transport ourselves to this time, recall its events,
watch the fever of public opinion, to understand what must have
been, after two years' absence, the first return of M. de La
Fayette, and the intoxication of joy his wife experienced. He was
not long in setting out again for the new world, and did not
return from there finally until 1782, after the brilliant
campaign of which his valor assured the success, and which
terminated by the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. His return was
unexpected, a surprise for the court as well as the city: the
_memoirs_ and _memories_ of the Count de Segur
furnished curious testimony to support what we have said. We
read:
"All who lived in that day will still remember the enthusiasm
occasioned by the return of M. de La Fayette, an enthusiasm of
which the queen herself partook. They were celebrating, at the
Hotel de Ville, a brilliant _fête_ on the occasion of the
birth of an heir to the throne. The news came of the arrival of
the conqueror of Cornwallis. Madame de La Fayette, who assisted
at the _fête_, received a special mark of favor; the queen
placed her in her own carriage, and drove to the Hotel de
Noailles, where the marquis, her husband, had just alighted."
[Footnote 227]
[Footnote 227: Tome i. p. 180.]
The excess of sentiment of Madame de La Fayette for her husband
at this time, was such that she suffered intensely in his
presence. She endeavored to conceal her passion for him, and
trembled lest she might seem importunate, and weary him. Some
years after, she confessed to M. de La Fayette this passionate
attraction for him which she had so resisted; "but," she added
gently, "you need not be dissatisfied with what is left."
{786}
We, who have only known M. de La Fayette soured and old, and do
not feel well disposed toward him, because, under the
restoration, he shadowed his glory as liberator of two worlds by
intrigues with secret societies; we find it difficult to imagine
him so charming, "carrying away every heart." But it was even so;
and, at the same time that popular favor rendered him so powerful
among the multitude, the most beautiful, the proudest, the most
brilliant ladies of the court, were madly in love with him.
But we are not writing a biography of M. de La Fayette, and it
will be understood that, in an article on the saintly companion
of his life, we would not wish any controversy on so illustrious
a person, and for whom, with some reservation, we profess great
and sincere respect. We will not speak, then, of the events of
the revolution, in which he played so prominent a part, only
inasmuch as our heroine was mingled with and took part in them.
The abolition of the slave-trade was one of the philanthropic
preoccupations of M. de La Fayette. He bought a plantation at
Cayenne, _la belle Gabrielle_, in order to give an example
of a gradual enfranchisement of the slaves, and referred to the
active charity of his wife the details of his enterprise. With
this view, she kept up a correspondence with the priests of the
seminary _du Saint-Esprit_, who had a house at Cayenne. If
circumstances did not permit the realization of her hopes, at
least she had the consolation of knowing that, thanks to the
religious instruction given to the blacks on this plantation,
they were guilty of less horrors than at any other point in the
colonies.
We must recognize here, too, and to its eternal honor, that
America has always been the portion of the globe where liberty of
conscience, loudly proclaimed, has never ceased to be practised.
It was not so in old Europe and in France before 1789, so the
contrast presented by this free state of things, and the numerous
vexations to which the different religions were exposed with us,
could not but forcibly strike M. de La Fayette on his return.
After a journey to Nimes, where he studied more closely the
situation of the Protestants, he was able to present, with full
knowledge of the case, a proposition to the Assembly of the
Notables in 1787, demanding their restoration to the civil rights
of which they had been despoiled.
I love to remember that an eminent Catholic clergyman, Mgr.
Luzerne, Bishop of Langres, and later, Cardinal, warmly supported
the proposition for this act of justice. Madame de La Fayette
shared these sentiments, and received with lively interest the
Protestant ministers whom the result of the affair attracted
around her husband. A zealous child of the Catholic Church, she
detested the persecutions that could only alienate her children,
and which appeared to her so opposed to the spirit of
Christianity.
After 1783, M. de La Fayette, whose family had increased
considerably, and whose political importance had reached its
height, left the hotel de Noailles, to establish himself in his
own house, _rue de Bourbon_, now the _rue de Lille_.
And there the ever-increasing wave of the revolutionary movement,
that was never able to overcome the virtue and brightness of a
king, the most estimable as a man of any who ever wore a crown,
found our heroine. The high position of M. de La Fayette, deputy
of the nobility, member of the Constitutional Assembly, and
commander-in-chief of the Parisian National Guard, imposed
obligations on him in which his wife never repudiated her part.
She was seen to accept the successive demands of each of the
districts of Paris, to the number of sixty; to preside at the
blessing of flags and other patriotic demonstrations. The general
kept open house, and did its honors in a manner to charm his
numerous guests.
{787}
"'But, says her daughter, Madame de Lasteyrie, initiated into
her most secret thoughts, 'what she suffered in the depths of
her own heart, only those who heard her speak, can tell. She
saw my father at the head of a revolution of which it was
impossible to foretell the end. Every evil, every disorder, was
judged by her with a complete lack of illusion in her own
cause; yet she was so sustained by the principles of her
husband, and so convinced of the good he could do, and the evil
he might avert, that she bore with incredible strength the
continual dangers to which she was exposed. Never, said she to
us, did I see him go out during this time, without thinking
that I heard his last adieu. No one was more terrified than she
by the dangers of those she loved; but in these times, she rose
above herself, and in her devotion to my father, hoped he could
prevent the increasing crime.'"
We may infer from these words the perpetual anguish of Madame de
La Fayette during the three first years of the revolution. In the
Duchesse d'Ayen she found a support full of sweetness and
tenderness; who, though sharing none of the opinions of her
son-in-law, believed firmly in the rectitude of his intentions.
Her angelic sister, the Viscountess de Noailles, felt exactly as
she did, loved equally a husband, young, handsome, brave, and
charming, associated in the most advanced ideas of M. de La
Fayette, and, like him, a member of the Assembly. The eldest
daughter, too, of Madame de La Fayette, began at this time to be
of much comfort to her; she had her make her first communion in
1790. It was, in the midst of the great political events of that
epoch, the first concern of her maternal heart.
The civil constitution of the clergy was to be one of the most
sensible tribulations of Madame de La Fayette. She considered she
should, more particularly on account of her personal situation,
declare her attachment for the Catholic Church; consequently she
was present at the refusal of the oath which the curé of Saint
Sulpice made from the pulpit, of whom she was a parishioner; she
was constantly meeting there with persons most known by their
opposition to the new principles, and with those then called the
_aristocratie_. She took part assiduously in the offices, at
first in the churches and afterward in the oratories where the
persecuted clergy took refuge.
She continually received the nuns who fled to her for protection;
or priests not under oath, whom she encouraged in the exercise of
their functions, and the preservation of their religious liberty.
She well knew that such conduct was hurtful to the popularity of
her husband, of great importance to her to preserve, but no
consideration could stop her in what she considered a duty.
M. de La Fayette never interfered with the conduct of his wife;
he held as nobly to his principles of liberty of conscience in
this respect as in all others. Aloud he disapproved of the oath
extorted from the Catholic priests, opposed it wherever he could,
and was at least successful in preventing the articles relative
to this civil constitution of the clergy from being
constitutional; on the contrary, they were even rejected from the
class of ordinary laws that any new legislature might revise. For
General La Fayette deluded himself that the constitution of 1791
was destined to last. But whatever his sentiments, that which
made him respect the religious convictions of his wife, and
oppose all his power to the persecution of the clergy, does great
honor to his character.
{788}
As the priests under oath were habitually received by the
commander of the National Guard at Paris, Madame de La Fayette
never dissimulated before them her attachment to the ancient
bishops; but she mingled in her expressions so much adroitness
with her sincerity that she never wounded them. Only once she
deviated from the rule of tolerance that she imposed on herself
on her husband's account, and that was when the newly elected
constitutional Bishop of Paris, came to dine officially with the
general. She would not recognize by her presence the quality of
his diocese, and dined out, although she knew by doing so it
could not fail to be made a subject of remark.
Meanwhile, the ever-increasing revolutionary delirium multiplied
disorders, paralyzed the efforts of the constitutional party, and
rendered the part of M. de La Fayette more and more difficult. He
was suspected on both sides, by the court and by the Jacobins,
and was rapidly wearing out the remains of an expiring popularity
in an already useless struggle.
The king, to escape the odious tyranny of which he was the
victim, attempted to fly from Paris; we know the rest. Arrested
at Varennes, brought back to the Tuileries, he and his family
were placed in the closest confinement. The unhappy prince at
last resigned himself to accept the constitution, the Constituent
Assembly terminated its sittings, and was replaced by the
Legislative Assembly, and General La Fayette, sincere in the
illusion that the revolution was finished and the future secured,
gave in his resignation as commander of the National Guard, and
set out for Auvergne with his wife and children. Now in the
destiny of Madame de La Fayette there came a short truce of
happiness; the journey from Paris to Chavaniac was a series of
ovations that popular enthusiasm spread, for the last time,
before her idol. The Duchess d' Ayen and the Viscountess de
Noailles came a little while to share this apparent and
transitory calm; but the Duke d'Ayen had emigrated to
Switzerland, and Madame de Montagu had taken refuge in England.
The formation of three grand army corps had been decreed, in
imminent danger of a foreign war; the command of the centre was
confided to General La Fayette, who repaired to his camp in 1791.
The year 1792 saw the hideous journey of the 20th of June, soon
after followed by the scenes more lamentable still, of the 10th
of August.
At the news of the wicked attempt of the 20th of June, the
General de La Fayette did not fear to address to the assembly,
from Maubeuge, where were then his head-quarters, a letter in
which he declaimed with indignation and vehemence against the
Jacobins; and finally, quitting his camp, he hastened to Paris
and appeared at the bar of the Assembly; there to brand
energetically the violences committed at the Tuileries, and
demand the punishment of the guilty. Was not this act of courage
alone sufficient honor for a lifetime? But finally, seeing he had
nothing to hope from the Assembly, he attempted to organize a
resistance at Sedan in order to save Louis XVI. The triumphant
Jacobins replied, on the 10th of August, by a decree of
proscription to the refusal which M. de La Fayette made to
recognize the fall of the king; a price was put upon his head,
and, constrained in his turn to seek a refuge in a foreign land,
the patriot of 1789 fell on the frontier into an Austrian post,
was arrested with his aides-de-camp, conducted first to Namur,
then to Wesel, and considered by the allied powers as an _enemy
of universal peace_, whose liberty was incompatible with the
surety of European governments.
{789}
The arbitrary detention of MM. de La Fayette, Latour Maubourg,
and Bureaux de Pusy, remains one of the disgraces of the
government of the Emperor Francis II., and he cannot be blamed
enough for it; but in the condition of parties and in view of the
renown of M. de La Fayette, had it not for him some great
advantages? In our eyes, the five years of _carcere duro_
inflicted upon the hero of American liberty, completed his glory.
Such were the sentiments of Madame de Staël when she wrote to
congratulate him on his release: "Your misfortune has preserved
your glory, and if your health can be restored, you will come out
perfect from the tomb where your name has acquired a new lustre."
But dating from this epoch, what was not the ineffable anguish of
Madame de La Fayette? Informed of the arrest of her husband, she
had but one thought--to release him or share his captivity. But
she had two other duties to fulfil; to get her son out of France,
and, if possible, to confide him to the friendship of General
Washington, and to protect the interests of the creditors of
General La Fayette by giving them the sequestrated estates for
security, and in both she experienced great difficulty. Arrested
at Chavaniac, where she was resting with her son, aged thirteen,
her two daughters, and the aged aunt who had brought up M. de La
Fayette, she obtained from Roland, then minister of the interior,
permission not to be taken to Paris, but to remain at Chavaniac
on parole. Encouraged by this testimony of humanity, and hoping
to be delivered from an engagement that weighed so heavily on
her, she smothered her natural pride and again addressed herself
to Roland:
"'I can only attribute to a sentiment of kindness,' she wrote
him, 'the change you have brought about in my situation. You
spare me the dangers of too perilous a journey, and consent to
give me my retreat for my prison. But any prison, be it what it
may, is insupportable to me, since I have learned this morning
from the gazette of M. Brissot, that my husband has been
transferred from town to town by the enemies of France, and is
being conducted to Spandau. Whatever repugnance I may feel to
owe a service to those who have shown themselves the enemies
and accusers of him whom I revere and love as he only is worthy
of being loved, yet it is in all the sincerity of my heart that
I vow eternal gratitude to him who, while relieving the
administration from responsibility and giving me my freedom,
will afford me the opportunity to rejoin my husband, if France
is sufficiently free to allow me to travel without risk.
"On my knees, if necessary, I ask you this favor. Judge of my
present state of mind. Noailles La Fayette."
A faithful friend bore this letter to Roland. He appeared deeply
moved, and replied immediately:
"I have placed your touching appeal, my dear madam, before the
committee. I must observe, however, that it would not appear to
me prudent for a person of your name to travel in France, on
account of the unfortunate impressions just now attached to it.
But circumstances may change. Be assured if they do, I shall be
the first to seize upon them for your advantage."
For three months the poor woman was without any news of the
general, though she redoubled every effort to obtain it; she
wrote to the Princess of Orange, to the Duke of Brunswick, to
Klopstock, but all in vain. Toward the middle of June, there came
to her, through the interposition of the United States minister,
two letters from M. de La Fayette; they were dated from the
dungeon of Magdebourg, and the inquietude they gave her
concerning the health of her husband made her more than ever
anxious to join him.
{790}
Governeur Morris, then American minister, proved her constant and
faithful friend, and from him she accepted the loan of money of
which she had need, to pay some debts and for the daily expenses
of her family. At this time many of the wives of emigrants
believed it necessary for their personal security, and
preservation of their fortunes, to be divorced; Madame de La
Fayette would never consent to save her life by such an act, and
whenever she found it necessary to present a petition or make a
demand, she took a pride in commencing all she wrote, "The wife
of La Layette." In the midst of all these terrible agitations,
the fervor of our heroine never decreased. She submitted with
sweet resignation to the divine will, and associated in her
exercises of piety the women of the village, who, like herself,
were deprived of the holy sacrifice of the Mass, which was no
longer celebrated. These innocent meetings were the subject of
many denunciations; of _aristocracy_ they could not accuse
her, but now it was _fanaticism_. At the end of the year
1795, after the complete defeat of the Girondins, the
persecutions against the priests and the _ci-devant_ nobles
were redoubled, and some of the effects of the general were
exposed to sale. This courageous wife repaired to Brionde, where
the auction took place. "Citizens," said she, to the district, "I
feel myself obliged to protest before the sale about to take
place, against the enormous injustice of applying the laws of
emigration to him who now is the prisoner of the enemies of
France. I demand of you certificate of my protestation."
The 12th of November, Madame de La Fayette was informed she would
be arrested the next day; and truly she was carried off in the
evening by a detachment of the National Guard, and incarcerated
at Brionde. Her children remained at Chavaniac, but at the end of
a few months the jailer was won over, and M. Frestel, preceptor
of the young Georges, conducted them, one after the other, to
their mother. ... It was in this prison of Brionde that the news
reached her that Mesdames de Noailles and Madame d'Ayen, both
arrested, had just been transferred to the Luxembourg; then in
May, 1794, came the order to bring the Citoyenne La Fayette to
Paris. She entered there the 19th Prairial, eve of the
_fête_ of the Supreme Being, three days before the one when,
according to Madame de Lasteyrie, "they built up terror upon
terror." Placed at _la petite Force_, at the end of fifteen
days she was transported to Plessis, where she found her cousin,
the Duchess of Duras. The massacres of the revolutionary tribunal
at this time were no less than sixty a day; everything seemed to
announce to the prisoner that she was being led to certain death.
One of the buildings of Plessis served as a depot to the
_Conciergerie_, and each morning saw twenty prisoners depart
for the guillotine. "The idea that one may soon be of the
number," wrote Madame de La Fayette, "gives firmness for such a
spectacle." She made a will at Plessis, of which several passages
are given; nothing could be more noble and beautiful. It begins
in this way:
"Lord, thou hast been my strength and my hope in the extreme
evils that are poured down upon me; thou art my God."
{791}
Fifty days were thus passed by the prisoner, when on the 10th
Thermidor, a great tumult being heard in the street, it was
supposed the populace were rushing to massacre all in prison; it
was the announcement of the death of Robespierre.
The representatives, Bourdon de l'Oise and Legendre came soon
after to visit the prison and assign the fate of each. All were
set at liberty except Madame de La Fayette, on whom they were not
willing to pronounce sentence until they sent for the decision of
the committee. The unhappy woman was but little concerned at the
prolongation of her captivity; for she had just learned that her
mother, her grandmother, and her sister had perished on the 4th
Thermidor. Her grief was overwhelming, but she never revolted,
her prayers preserved her. "Now," she wrote to her children, "I
find the sentiments of those I mourn, those, too, that I desire,
and those that I pray God to put in my heart, and sometimes I
obtain all at once." Notwithstanding the active solicitations of
Mr. Monroe, the new minister from the United States, Madame de La
Fayette was not liberated; Le Piessis was used for other
purposes, so she was transferred to the Maison Delmas, rue Notre
Dame des Champs; she remained there four months, and met there
with the strangest people, for it was now the partisans of the
reign of terror who peopled the prisons; but there, as
everywhere, she gained the respect of all. Her physical
sufferings were great during the rigorous winter of 1794 and
1795. Everything froze in her room, and she was peculiarly
sensitive to cold. God granted her in her distress a precious
consolation in the visits of the Abbé Carrichon. He gave her all
the details she hungered after of the death of the three dear
persons that he had accompanied to the scaffold, and with him she
made a complete examination of all the faults of her life. On the
23d of January, 1795, the deliverance, so long retarded, of
Madame de La Fayette was finally signed, and she was set at
liberty.
Her first care on leaving prison was to hasten to Mr. Monroe and
thank him for all he had done for her, and begged him to finish
the good work by obtaining passports for herself and family. She
had but one aim, to rejoin her husband in Germany with her
daughters, and place her son in safety in America. The letter she
wrote General Washington, in which she portrays with simplicity,
firmness, and dignity the obligations she was under to M. Frestel
for his devotion to her and her family, and begs for him the
regard he deserves, is truly remarkable. As to her son, she
expresses herself thus: "My wish is, that my son may lead a very
retired life in America, and continue the studies that three
years of misfortune have interrupted; and that being far away
from scenes which might abase or too strongly irritate him, he
may work to become an efficient citizen of the United States, of
which the principles and sentiments are entirely in accordance
with those of French citizens."
When the time came to part with her only son, the separation
seemed cruel to her mother's heart; but she was firmly convinced
she acted in this matter as her husband would have dictated. She
found her strength in this thought. As we read of so many
sacrifices, sufferings, and sorrows so valiantly supported, we
find ourselves so associated in the sentiments of this
incomparable person, that we wait with feverish anxiety the
moment when she should rejoin her husband. The memoirs of Madame
de Montagu give us the details of the touching reunion of Madame
de La Fayette at Altona with her two sisters and her Aunt de
Tessé; they will be found in the account of Madame de Lasteyrie.
{792}
The conversation with the Emperor of Austria is also there given.
He granted her permission to shut herself up at Olmutz, and by
opening heaven to her, he could scarcely have made her happier.
"'We arrived,' wrote Madame de Lasteyrie, 'at Olmutz, the 1st
of October, 1795, at eleven o'clock in the morning, in one of
the covered carriages found at all the posts, our own having
been broken on the way. I never shall forget the moment when
the postillion showed us from afar the steeples of the town.
The vivid emotion of my mother is ever present with me. She was
almost suffocated by her tears; and when she had sufficiently
recovered herself to speak, she blessed God in the words of the
canticle of Tobias: "Thou art great, O Lord, for ever, and thy
kingdom is unto all ages, for thou scourgest and thou savest,"
etc., etc. My father was not informed of our arrival; he had
never received a letter from my mother. Three years of
captivity, the last passed in complete solitude, inquietude
concerning all the objects of his affection, and sufferings of
every kind, had deeply undermined his health; the change in his
countenance was frightful. My mother was struck by it; but
nothing could diminish the intoxication of her joy, but the
bitterness of her irreparable losses. My father, after the
first moment of happiness in this sudden reunion, dared not ask
her a question. He knew there had been a reign of terror in
France, but he was ignorant of the victims. The day passed
without his venturing to examine into her fears, and without my
mother having the strength to explain herself. Only at night,
when my sister and I were shut into the next room assigned to
us, could she inform my father that she had lost on the
scaffold her grandmother, her mother, and her sister.'"
Madame de La Fayette shared her husband's captivity twenty-seven
months. She paid with her health--we may say with her life--the
privilege of being reunited to him she loved, and proving to him
her tenderness; but it was such great happiness to her that,
whatever the severity that accompanied it, it seems not even at
such a price to have been too dearly bought.
At last the success of the French arms opened the dungeon of
Olmutz. The French plenipotentiaries, in signing the treaty of
Campo Formio, exacted that the prisoners should be immediately
set at liberty. The gates of the fortress were therefore opened
to them, and the 16th of September, 1797, they set out for
Hamburg. It was just five years and a half since their arrest.
Happy to owe his liberty solely to the triumph of the French
army, M. de La Fayette addressed to General Bonaparte the
expression of his gratitude and that of his companions in arms,
in these terms:
"Hamburg, Oct. 6, 1797.
"Citizen General: The prisoners of Olmutz, happy to owe their
deliverance to your irresistible arms, have enjoyed in their
captivity the thought that their liberty and life were attached
to the triumphs of the republic and to your personal glory.
To-day they enjoy the homage they would love to render to their
liberator. It would, indeed, have been gratifying to us,
Citizen General, to have offered in person the expression of
these sentiments, and to have looked upon the theatre of so
many victories, the army that won them, and the hero, who has
placed our resurrection among the number of his miracles. But
you know the journey to Hamburg has not been left to our
choice. It is from the place where we have said good by to our
jailers that we address our thanks to their conquerors. In the
solitary retreat in the Danish territory of Holstein, where we
will go to try and re-establish the health you have saved, we
will join to our vows or patriotism for the republic the most
lively interest in the illustrious general, to whom we are not
only attached for the services he has rendered our country and
in the cause of liberty, but for the particular obligations
that we delight to owe him, and that the deepest gratitude has
for ever engraven in our hearts. Salutation and respect.
"Lafayette,
Latour Maubourg,
Bureaux de Pusy."
{793}
Among all the marks of sympathy showered upon the escaped victims
of Austrian tyranny, none touched M. de La Fayette more deeply
than one from Madame de Staël--full of respect and emotion.
Mathieu de Montmorency added to it a few lines in which these
words strike us: "The constant occupation of your misfortunes and
your courage has outlived in me, and ever will, my alienation
from all political activity; but I believe I should renew all my
ancient enthusiasm to welcome one so constant in the cause of
liberty."
Although the health of Madame de La Fayette was destroyed, she
preserved her wonderful activity and force of character. It was
she, the only one of her family, whose name was not on the list
of the banished, who was able the first to enter France, and
there regulate her affairs and the return of all her relations.
It was she again who, after the 18th Brumaire, understood that
General La Fayette should return immediately without waiting for
any authority that might possibly have been refused him. Sure of
the marvellous tact with which she judged her surroundings, he
followed her advice without any other information. The news of
his arrival in Paris was not pleasing to the first consul; he
wanted the general to return to Holland and solicit his entrance,
like every one else. Madame de La Fayette called upon him, was
graciously received, exposed the peculiar position of her
husband, and the favorable effect that his return could not fail
to produce on all honest and patriotic men, and proved herself
noble, skilful, and prudent. "I am delighted, madame," said the
first consul to her, "to have made your acquaintance; you have
great good sense, but you understand nothing of business."
However, it was agreed to that M. de La Fayette might remain
openly in Paris without asking permission. Madame de Lasteyrie,
in her recital, in which the most noble sentiments are expressed
so simply and happily, has given us a page that portrays the
whole soul of her heroic mother.
"Retirement would still have been preferable to my father under
the consular magistracy of Bonaparte; under the despotism of
Napoleon, it was, through honor, enforced upon him. In either
case, it fulfilled the wishes of my mother. After so much
suffering and exhaustion, a retired life--perfect quietude
would not have been necessary for her--in which in peace she
could consecrate the affections of her soul to those dearest to
her, was the only earthly happiness she sought. She felt too
deeply, too passionately, I may say, the emotions of family
life to desire others. Neither the grandeur of her former
state, nor the _éclat_ even of her misfortunes, had
excited in her that pride of imagination which cannot bear a
simple existence. Her devotion rose above every trial, but the
sentiments and easy duties of an obscure destiny sufficed for
her heart. Love filled it entirely."
What can we add to this picture? Nothing, only to ask the perusal
of the admirable letter of M. de La Fayette, which ends the
volume. He there relates the long agony, the tender and charming
delirium of the heavenly creature whose affections he possessed.
To have seen him a practical Christian would have been the
realization of her most cherished wish. "If I am going to another
home, you must feel," she said to him once, "that I shall be
occupied there with you. The sacrifice of my life would be very
little, however much it may cost me to part with you, if it could
assure your eternal happiness."
Another time, she said to him: "You are not a Christian?" As he
did not reply, she said: "Ah! I know what you are, a fatalist."
"You believe me proud," answered the general, "are you not a
little so yourself?" "Oh! yes!" she cried, "with all my heart. I
feel that I would give my life for that sect."
{794}
Another time, in this half delirium which led astray her ideas,
but never her heart, she said: "This life is short, troubled; let
us be reunited in God, and set out together for eternity." Her
God and her husband were her thoughts to the last moment. She
died on Christmas night, the 25th of December, 1807, pressing the
cherished hand and saying, "I am yours for ever."
Those who wish to finish this picture of conjugal love, must do
as we have done, seek in the memoirs of an illustrious
contemporary the scene that completes it. In the _Memoires de
M. Guizot_, in the year 1834, we read:
"Some months before M. de Talleyrand had retired from public
affairs, another celebrated man, very different in character,
and celebrated in other ways, had disappeared from all worldly
scenes. No life had been more exclusively, more passionately
political than that of M. de La Fayette; no man had more
constantly placed his political sentiments and ideas above all
other preoccupations and all other interests, and yet in his
death he was completely estranged from them. Having been ill
for three weeks, he approached his last hour; his children and
family alone surrounded his bed. He spoke no more, and they
supposed he could not see. His son George noticed that, with an
uncertain hand, he sought something on his breast; he came to
the assistance of his father and laid in his hand the medallion
that M. de La Fayette always wore suspended from his neck. He
pressed it to his lips, and expired."
This medallion contained the likeness and hair of Madame de La
Fayette, his wife whom he had lost twenty-seven years before.
Thus, already separated from the entire world, alone with the
thought and image of the devoted companion of his life, he died.
When his obsequies were spoken of, it was a recognized fact in
the family, that M. de La Fayette wished to be buried in the
little cemetery adjoining the convent of Picpus, by the side of
Madame de La Fayette, in the midst of the victims of the
revolution, for the most part, royalists, and of the aristocracy,
whose relations had founded this pious establishment. This wish
of the veteran of 1789 was scrupulously respected and carried
out. An immense crowd, troops, national guards, people of all
kinds accompanied the funeral procession through the avenues and
streets of Paris. Arrived at the gate of the convent, the crowd
was stopped; the interior enclosure could not admit more than two
or three hundred persons; the family, the near relations, the
principal authorities entered alone, walked silently through the
convent into the modest garden, then penetrated the cemetery.
There no political manifestation took place; no discourse was
pronounced; religion and the intimate memories of the soul alone
were present; politics had no place near the death-bed or the
tomb of the man whose life it had filled and governed.
Léon Arbaud.
-------------
{795}
Translated From The Revue Du Monde Catholique.
Flaminia.
By Alexandre De Bar.
"So you really believe that the soul lives for ever?" said the
Baron Frederic.
"Certainly I do," answered the Count Shrann.
"That is very strange," replied the first speaker, emptying at a
single draught a tankard of beer whose size a German could alone
look at without trembling.
"And you believe that those whom we have loved in this world we
shall again love in the next, and they will remember us even as
we shall remember them?"
"Certainly I do!" again replied the count.
"This is yet more strange," observed the baron; and then both of
them continued to smoke on in silence. They seemed, indeed, so
completely absorbed in the contemplation of the bluish clouds of
smoke which they continued to puff forth so regularly into the
already misty and thickened atmosphere, that one might reasonably
have thought that the discussion would end there; but such was
not the case.
Let us profit by this interval to make known to our readers who
were the Count Shrann and the Baron Frederic. They were two old
fellow-soldiers, of whom the recollection yet remains in the
minds of those who knew them, as being the most perfect type of
that warm and devoted friendship which is less rare than one
thinks or than one will admit. They were two brave Germans, who
had courageously held their places during the wars in the
commencement of this century. They had fought side by side with
all the ardor of their youth and patriotism, and had on many
occasions saved each other's lives by their bravery. This
community of dangers and obligations had yet further strengthened
the links of a friendship commenced in their childhood; so that
when the peace of 1815 gave to Europe, wearied out by war, a time
of rest, our two friends placed their experience and capabilities
at the service of their country, as they had already offered the
tribute of their blood and courage, each taking on himself the
tie and responsibility of married life. Both married on the same
day the two daughters of a neighbor whom the war had ruined; and
if their brides were little endowed with worldly possessions, at
least they were rich in virtues, and that is a wealth which
equals the former, although it be much less sought after, and, we
may even add, more difficult to find.
Unfortunately these marriages so alike in happiness were far less
so in their duration; for at the end of two years Gertrude, the
wife of the Baron Frederic, died, leaving in the heart and life
of her husband a void which nothing could fill. Many were the
efforts made to console the poor baron, many were the mothers who
lavished on him their sweetest smiles; many were the maidens who
directed on him their chaste regards, and who pictured to
themselves a brilliant future in which his name and fortune held
a prominent place; but all was useless, for the baron remained
quite insensible to these efforts and designs.
{796}
His friend, and even his sister-in-law, counselled him to seek in
a new marriage that close and loving friendship which he was so
well adapted to appreciate; but at length, seeing him so
obstinately faithful to the memory of Gertrude, they feared to
afflict him, and so ceased to press him on the subject, trusting
all to time, which, nevertheless, rolled on without bringing any
change to the baron's regrets and resolutions. His was one of
those strongly organized minds where the impressions, lively as
they are lasting, resist the stronger that they are unaccompanied
by outward efforts. Hence was it that the baron supported,
without giving way an instant, the blow which had struck him, and
yet the wound in his heart remained as sensitive and as painful
as on that day when with his own hands he placed his well-beloved
Gertrude in her shroud. Old age came on, bringing with it its
longing for rest, and then the two friends quitted their public
life as they had entered it, side by side. The baron went to live
with his brother, for thus he designated his friend; and only
once every year left his castle to visit his own property and
tenants, toward whom he showed a kindness without limit. Some of
these tenants abused that kindness, and paid their rent year
after year, with tears, excuses, and complaints, the worthy baron
leaving them unmolested; and when his steward spoke to him of
sending off the estate these families, he replied: "Better that
this should happen to me, who have patience with them, than send
them away to those who probably would have none." No sooner was
he returned to the castle than he forgot all these things, and
recommenced spoiling and fondling his nephews and nieces, of whom
he had no small number; for the Count Shrann was a descendant of
those ancient families who seemed to have presented the prolific
virtue of the golden age; nor did the number of his nephews and
nieces give any anxious thoughts to the baron, since often would
he say to his friend:
"Why torment yourself so much about the future of your children?
You will always have enough to settle them all in life; and
besides, I myself, who have but cousins in I do not know what
remote degree of affinity, I find it but just that these my
nephews should inherit my property before them."
And then the count became silent, for he found the baron's answer
quite natural, and such as he himself should have made, had their
positions been reversed. Between these two men, so closely united
by affection and so similar in heart and understanding, there was
but one subject on which their point of view was diametrically
opposed, and that was the one with which they were engaged at the
opening of this chapter. Count Shrann, who had been brought up by
a loving and pious mother, was a Catholic both in heart and soul;
whilst the Baron Frederic had, on the contrary, lost both his
parents at a very early age, and had been brought up by his
uncle, who boasted of being the friend and the protector of the
Encyclopedists; so that Frederic had been educated in that cold
and barren school of materialism which Voltaire has the doubtful
honor of having founded. Baron Frederic believed in nothing
spiritual, a circumstance which caused great chagrin to his
friend, whence it happened that on this, as on so many former
occasions, the two friends, after the dinner-hour, had passed
long hours in smoking and drinking huge tankards of beer, whilst
making the same questions and the same answers on this, the one
great subject of their difference in opinion and faith.
{797}
"So you believe that the soul lives for ever?" said the baron.
"Certainly I do," replied the count.
"It is very strange," answered the baron; and then both
recommenced to smoke yet more vigorously than before. After a
lapse of time during which two less serious men would have
discussed three or four such subjects of conversation, the count
recommenced: "What do you see so strange in my remark?"
"It is to see a mind such as yours give way to similar ideas and
tales fit only, to say the best of it, to frighten children
with."
"I, for my part, am yet more astonished to see a man so logical
as yourself refuse to believe it; and how dare you treat as
springing from weakness of mind that belief which you cannot deny
fortifies the soul and places it above the blows of adversity?"
"The soul, the soul," replied the baron, "what is the soul? A
name without a substance, and I do not know what of indefinable
and vague. A something that we can neither see nor touch, and
which eludes both the senses and the understanding. I, for my
part, believe in nothing but that which I can see or touch."
"I would remind you, my dear friend, that there are a crowd of
things in which you believe, without ever having seen them."
"It is because science explains those things, and I believe in
her."
"Science! why, you are too clever not to admit of her inability
to give you a full explanation of any one thing. Science proves
that the fact exists, but she does not explain the first cause of
its existence. She discovers the eternal laws which rule the
universe, and it is by that means that she conducts the
unprejudiced spirit from the discovery of things created to the
knowledge of the Creator of all things; but the first causes of
these same laws are utterly unknown to her."
"And what tells you that she will not yet discover them?"
"Never! For if the human understanding is immense, yet it is not
infinite. We have seen many discoveries and marvels; our
great-grandchildren will witness yet many more; but these will
not be produced in any more developed sense than that which I
just now indicated to you. The first causes will ever rest
unknown to them as for us."
"But where are the proofs which prove the existence of the soul,
and render it palpable to the eyes of the understanding?"
"The eyes of the heart, do they not equal those of the
understanding?" quickly answered the count. "What! You feel
within yourself a soul which thinks and which loves, which
possesses in itself a longing for happiness, a thirst for truth,
so utterly beyond the happiness and the truths of this world that
it can only be a _souvenir_ or a revelation, from on high,
of something purer and more perfect; you love the good and you
spurn the evil, even to self-sacrifice; nay, more, you prefer
death to the evil; you hear in the depths of your heart that
powerful voice which cries to all humanity that the soul cannot
die; and yet you ask for a proof of the existence of this soul,
and of its immortality! Death is visible to us on every side. He
menaces us; he presses upon us; all that is above, beneath, on
each side of us, is dead or dying.
{798}
Man alone drives back before him that supreme law of final decay
and oblivion; he whose life is comparatively much shorter than
that of all other existences in this world, he alone hopes for an
eternity which has no type here below, and which he could not
even have conceived in himself, had it not been revealed to him.
Surrounded by errors, he dreams the truth; wretched in this life,
he dreams of a happiness without alloy; mortal, he dreams of
immortality. Is not all this an infallible proof of his future
destiny? God, who created man, would not he be both cruel and
unjust had he given him all these profound aspirations toward a
future state of happiness, only to plunge him finally in the
abyss of eternal death? That secret voice speaks to you also, my
friend; it resounds in the silence of your heart, and offers to
you, as it does to others, its consoling hopes. Why do you not
listen to it? When you saw before you, pale and discolored,
destined to an inexorable decay, the body of her whom you so much
loved; when the mouth that had so lately spoken to you, closed
for ever; when those eyes, in which you had ever read their
tenderness, became fixed, dull, and without expression; when that
hand, which had but a moment before sought yours to press it for
a last time, fell for ever powerless, equally insensible to the
kisses with which you covered it, and to your tears, which rained
on it--" Here the baron, without trying to hide his emotion,
dried, with the back of his hand, the tears that this
recollection of his beloved Gertrude caused him. The count
continued: "That mouth, those eyes, that hand, they are the same;
but where is the soul which animated them? Did you not then hear
that interior voice which called with yet greater force, Thou
shalt see her again? That body which the earth will hide
to-morrow is but the form, and not the essence--the outward
shape, but not the living spirit. A soul which you loved, and
which rendered to thee an equal affection, animated that form,
and rendered it palpable to your senses; that soul has fled, and
the body falls back lifeless. The outward form rests here
motionless and insensible, but the soul has remounted toward that
celestial country where it shall await your coming, ready again
to love you with an affection which shall have to suffer no
second separation. And this is so true, my friend, that even
whilst you deny this consciousness that the soul has of its
future life and of its existence, you yourself obey that feeling;
for you are faithful, not to the simple memory of Gertrude, but
to Gertrude whom you feel to be still living, though far distant
from you, and you desire to be able to say to her, when the
moment of your meeting shall come: 'Thou seest that no other love
has ever been mingled with thine in my heart; my own beloved one,
thou didst wait for me, and I am come as full of thy recollection
and of thy love as on that day when thou didst leave me.'"
Whilst the count was thus speaking, the baron had literally
hidden himself in clouds of smoke, out of which came forth, by
and by, a voice, trembling and changed by deep emotion, which
answered:
"Ah! that I could believe as you do! In taking away from men
these consoling thoughts, the materialists cried loudly that they
were but working for the happiness of humanity yet wrapped in the
shades of superstition; whilst, in truth, they were but plunging
it into a gulf yet more profound and more implacable; for there
is no real happiness possible where there exists a constant fear
of losing that happiness.
{799}
I know very well that the error was much more pleasant than the
truth, and that in place of the hope, perhaps false, but
certainly full of consolation, to re-find our friends one day,
they have left us but the terrible certainty of having for ever
lost them, and that they leave us with the heavy burden of misery
which is crushing human nature, after having broken the very
support that aided man to bear its weight. Now that the evil is
done, how remedy it? And if I do not believe, what must I do that
I may believe?"
"Acknowledge humbly our utter helplessness; humble the pride of
an imperfect reason, which is irritated by the thought that there
is something above it; listen to our conscience which speaks
within us; and then, meekly kneeling down before the God who has
created the universe, repeat to him, with simplicity and faith,
these words of the blind man in the gospel, who cried, 'Lord,
that I may receive my sight!' God is not deaf to persevering
prayer. Pray, therefore, and you shall see likewise."
"Certainly," said the baron, "if I saw, I should at once believe;
but who ever saw a soul?"
"My great-grandfather did," answered the count.
"You are joking."
"Not at all. Adolphus Shrann, my great-grandfather, saw not only
one soul, but even two!"
"He was dreaming, then."
"No, for he knew what he was going to see, and that thought alone
was sufficient to keep him awake."
"Ah! then in that case somebody made a jest of him, and by some
optical delusion caused him to believe that he had seen a
veritable supernatural vision."
"No, I assure you it was not so," replied the count. "I am
determined to relate the history to you in full, this evening;
and," added he, with a voice changed by the ardent friendship
that he felt for the baron, "I should esteem myself really happy
if its recital could cause you to kneel down side by side with me
before the altar of that God whom you are so worthy to know. It
is but there that we are separated, and did you know all that my
true friendship suffers in the thought that, after living these
long years together, and after having shared all the trials and
the pains of this life until our old age, notwithstanding this, I
should yet be alone when the hour comes to receive the
recompense. Ah! my dear Frederic, that single thought would
suffice to empoison the joys of paradise."
Here the two friends warmly shook hands, and after having again
replenished their tankards and their pipes, the count commenced
the story that you are going to hear.
"You know," said the count, "that the Shrann family has always
been cited as one of the most fruitful in all Germany."
"And you! you certainly have not derogated from the example of
your ancestors," said the baron.
"Neither had the Count Franz, the same who was raised from the
rank of baron to that of count by Ferdinand III., in 1645, since
he was the father of fifteen children, eight boys and seven
girls; and of these lads Adolphus, the seventh son, was the only
one who remained to perpetuate the name and race, for the others
gave their lives to defend their country and the empire. But if
this numerous offspring was an honor to the family, it was also a
great cause of anxiety to the count; it being a fact that though
a numerous family be a source of fortune to a poor farmer, such
is not the case with a poor nobleman; and it was no slight task
to place advantageously all these children, so that they might
worthily bear and uphold their family name.
{800}
Count Franz made, therefore, the most active endeavors to marry
his daughters and to establish his sons; and he succeeded as well
as he had hoped, since only one son remained at home, and that
was Albert, the youngest child; nor did the future of this the
last scion of his race much disturb the count, destined as he
was, by him, from his very youth, to enter the church. But divine
Providence often smiles at and overthrows our wisest
calculations, and this is what occurred in Albert's case; for,
notwithstanding the serious tendency given to his education, it
was found that of the eight sons of the count this, the youngest,
showed the greatest courage and taste for war. This martial
spirit was the great despair of his tutor; for the lad left on
the smallest pretext his studies and his books to play with an
old rusty sword that he had found in one of the lumber-rooms of
the castle, and with this he amused himself for hours, fencing
against his desk or stool, and shouting all the war cries and
songs that he had heard or read. When the vexed tutor complained
of his pupil's conduct to the count, and of his little attention
to his more serious studies, joined to his openly expressed
contempt for them, the count answered, 'Bah! never mind; time
will change all this, and you know that it is only natural that
he should have imbibed a little of the family taste for war.' The
seventh son, Adolphus, likewise distinguished himself by his
recklessness of danger and by his great courage. This conformity
of tastes, yet more than the similarity of their ages, had
closely united these the two youngest brothers together; so that
when the day came that the younger saw the elder leave home as a
lieutenant in the army, to engage in that life of adventure and
danger of which they had so often talked together, he was seized
with a yet stronger repugnance to the future destined for him.
The prospect of spending his days in the retirement of the
cloister, instead of sharing with his brother the glorious
achievements of a soldier's life, inspired him with not only a
strong distaste for this future, but even with an aversion to all
that then surrounded him. Albert fell into a great despair and
lethargy; no longer did his tutor dread that rusty sword with
which Albert had been wont to frighten him; not that his studies
progressed any better for that; for although he read with
pleasure the Iliad and the AEneid, he shrunk back with distaste
from the study of theology, and when any observations were made
to him on the subject, alleged that 'he should always know enough
to cause him to die from _ennui_.' Not that the sentiment of
religious feeling was dead within him, far from that; he was, on
the contrary, animated with the liveliest and most sincere faith;
nor was it that he felt an invincible repugnance to the
obligations of the priesthood, for he was generous, sober,
charitable, and patient, and therefore esteemed slightly the
sacrifices that the ecclesiastical state requires. What he
disliked and dreaded above all was a life of uniformity and of
repose, such as seemed to him the life of a priest. This
antipathy to the future for which he was destined grew from day
to day, when, unable at last to fight any longer against his
inclinations, he armed himself with all his resolution, and
respectfully represented to his father his invincible dislike to
becoming a priest, and asked of him the favor of being allowed to
become a soldier.
{801}
Great was the discomfiture of the count on hearing this demand.
What was he to do? he who had made all his arrangements in order
that Albert might become a bishop; and here was this son who in
place of bearing the mitre and pastoral staff, desired nothing
less than to wield the sword and don the coat of mail.
"'It is very perplexing,' at last answered the count, after
having scratched his ear several times; 'this idea of yours
completely upsets all my plans; but rather than see you become a
bad priest it shall be as you desire. Although,' again added he
with a heavy sigh, 'it is very perplexing.'
"Albert, after having again explained to his father all the
reasons for his repugnance to the life of a priest, continued,
'You see, my dear father, that it is not a taste for the
pleasures of the world that drives me from the priesthood; it is
only my dislike to the monotony of such a life that hinders me
from embracing it. My vocation leads me to follow a career of
danger and of change, and not one of ease and uniformity. But I
think that there is a means of conciliating the ideas that your
tenderness had suggested for me and my own tastes.'
"'I desire nothing better than that,' answered the count with
visible chagrin, 'but how to do so, that is the question. I wish
you to become a bishop, and you desire to become a captain; now,
we are no longer in the days when bishops wore a suit of mail
inside their robes.'
"'That is true, dear father; but you could place me in a position
to become one day a knight-commander,' (here the count lifted up
his head with an air of satisfaction.) 'The order of St. John of
Jerusalem,' continued Albert, 'is a glorious order, assimilating
to the church by its vows and its constitutions, and to the army
by its obligations and labors. The Turks are now menacing
Christendom; what more glorious use can one make of one's sword
than to defend one's brothers in Jesus Christ, and to oppose
one's self against the barbarity of the Mussulman, who already
regards Europe as a wild beast does his prey? What more glorious
destiny than to consecrate one's courage and one's life to force
back even to the very sands of Asia those hordes of infidels
whose domination, similar to a pestilential atmosphere, has
brought ruin and death upon the fertile countries where it
extends?
"'If, then, as I hope, you will consent to my desires, I shall
find in that career the occasion to place in a yet higher rank
the glorious name that you have given me; and thus both my
ancestors and yourself shall have reason to be proud of their
descendant."
"My worthy ancestor, on hearing this proposition, felt a similar
satisfaction to that which a man would feel who, after being shut
up in a chest during some hours, could at last stretch his limbs
out again in liberty. Therefore was it that he seized eagerly a
proposition which drew him out of a great difficulty; for between
ourselves, be it said, the worthy man was more accustomed to
fighting than to solving difficult questions. It was easy for the
count to prove the sixteen quarters of nobility which the rules
of the order required for the admission of Germans; moreover, he
had several friends in the order whose influence he made use of;
nothing, therefore, opposed itself to the realization of Albert's
desires; and, in consequence, a few weeks after the above related
conversation, he left Germany, and became page to Nicholas
Coroner, then Grand Master of the order, and Governor of Malta.
{802}
In this position he did not fail to make himself very soon
remarked by his dauntless courage and impetuous audacity. The
requisite occasions did not fail him; each day the galleys of the
order darted from their ports, as the eagle from his eyrie, and,
powerful as the eagle, seized on some one of the innumerable
Turkish pirates which were then ravaging the coasts of the
Mediterranean, burning villages, and carrying off their wretched
inhabitants to reduce them into a painful and degrading slavery.
In this manner the order rendered the most important services to
Europe, whilst the most adventurous spirit in it found means, in
this incessant warfare, to satisfy his thirst for danger. Albert,
ardent and indefatigable, scorning danger and braving Death, who
seemed to shrink back before so much bravery and audacity, fought
so often and so well, that scarcely was the time of his novitiate
finished, than, by the general consent of his companions in arms,
and the approbation of the grand master, he was created knight.
In truth, it was impossible to show more valor and
self-diffidence. This latter quality shows forth the more, that
it was not an ordinary virtue in the order. Some years thus
rolled on, during which the bravery of Albert had caused him to
be known and remarked in all the commanderies of Europe; but the
time was come when at length he should appear on a field more
worthy of his talents.
"I will not here give you a recital of the events which brought
the troops of Mohammed IV. under the walls of Vienna; since, in
the first place, you recollect them as well as I do; and in the
second place, it is too sad a thought for him who feels within
him a soul truly German, to reflect that there was a day when
German hearts beat with fear before the standards of Mohammed! At
the time when the Hungarians, with a blindness that even their
excess of patriotism does not excuse, called into the heart of
Europe those born enemies of European civilization, Albert was in
Germany. At the first news which reached him of the march of
Mustapha on Vienna, he hurried to the commanderies that were
nearest to him, and animating the zeal of the knights, united
together without great difficulty a few of his companions, with
whom he hastened on to that city. They reached Vienna on the very
day that Leopold I. left it; and terrible was the consternation
then reigning in that town, abandoned by those who ought to have
been the first to face the danger and animate the courage of
others by their example.
"The brave Count of Staremberg commanded the fortress which he
did not dare hope to save, although he was determined to die in
its defence. The aid that Albert brought was joyfully accepted by
him; for he had but eight or ten thousand men to defend the city
against the Turkish army, whose number was three hundred
thousand; and besides this, the city was badly provisioned and
insufficiently armed. Nevertheless, the defence was organized in
the best manner possible; arms were distributed to all the
citizens; and even the schoolboys were taught to carry arms, and
perform the active service of the defence of the walls; whilst
the entire population determined to suffer famine, and all the
other horrors of a prolonged siege, rather than yield tamely to
the enemy. These preparations made, they awaited the infidels;
nor did they wait long; for in a few days after the departure of
the emperor, the Turkish army encamped before Vienna, and opened
its first trench.
{803}
Then began in earnest that terrible siege. Albert performed
prodigies of valor; now directing a sortie, then driving back an
assault, ever in the foremost rank, he, as it were, multiplied
himself, going on every side; he foresaw and provided against all
emergencies; his courage excited even the most timid, whilst his
unchangeable calm reassured their fears. In the midst of all this
peril, which seemed endless, he alone seemed at his ease; so much
so, that the Count of Staremberg used to say, 'Oh! that I had
only one hundred knights like him; for then, in place of resting
here blocked up, like a rat in his hole, I would drive back, and
follow up these three hundred thousand Turks to the very walls of
Constantinople!' During all this time, notwithstanding the
pressing demands of the Pope, Innocent IX., and in spite of the
necessity which bound the other Christian nations to prevent
Vienna's falling into the hands of the infidels, the aid so much
needed was but slowly organized. Already had the siege lasted two
months, and nothing had yet happened to relieve the despair of
the wretched inhabitants, already weakened by famine. There
seemed to them no alternative between a cruel and lingering death
and a yet more painful slavery. Almost were they reduced to the
last extremities. It was quite impossible to obtain provisions,
and the ammunition was nearly exhausted, whilst many of the
cannon had become useless for service; and yet no voice was heard
that spoke of surrender. Soldiers and citizens, alike excited by
the example and firmness of the chiefs, supported with courage
and resignation all the horrors of a desperate defence. At last
the signals and banners of King John Sobieski were seen from the
walls as he came to their rescue, leading the combined forces of
Europe. It was time! The King of Poland, notwithstanding the
immense inferiority of his troops in point of numbers, hesitated
not a moment to take the most favorable position for giving
battle to the enemy. Mustapha, on his side, divided his troops
into two divisions, the one destined to make a last and desperate
assault upon the city, and to enter it by main force through the
breaches already made in its walls; whilst the second division
was to stop the passage of Sobieski, and to hinder him from
giving any aid to the besieged. But the impetuosity of the attack
of the Christians was such that the battle became but a rout on
the side of the Mussulmans, as they fled before their pursuers on
every side, and were as soon and as completely dispersed as is a
wisp of straw before a hurricane. Vienna free, Europe breathed
again, being once more delivered from the immediate fear of the
crescent, whilst awaiting the day when the Mussulman should be
for ever driven back to the arid sands from whence he came. This
heroic defence spread a new lustre upon the arms and reputation
of the order. But none of its knights had acquired a similar
renown to that of Albert. The name of this young warrior was in
every mouth, his souvenir in every heart, and he shared with John
Sobieski the enthusiastic ovation made by the Viennese to their
deliverers. The loudest acclamations of admiration and gratitude
greeted him during the day that he accompanied the King of
Poland, who, still covered with the blood of his enemies, went in
solemn state to the cathedral of St. Stephen, there to assist at
the Te Deum which was sung in thanksgiving to God for this
miraculous delivery of the city from the Turks.
{804}
Mustapha, forced to make such a speedy retreat, had left in the
possession of the Christians all his treasures, tents, and
baggage. Among the spoil was found the standard of the Prophet.
This, it was decided, should be offered to the pope as a gage and
as a memorial of the victory, and it was Albert who was chosen to
perform this honorable mission. His old father nearly died with
joy on learning of the glorious renown of his son; and I leave
you to guess if he did not praise himself in his heart for not
having resisted the desires of Albert. The old count foresaw in
the future his family giving a grand-master to the Order of St.
John, and he trembled with happiness in thinking of the honor
which would thus result to the Shrann race and name. In fact, one
could hardly say where would have stopped the worldly honors of
Albert, had not God reserved for him a yet more sweet and
glorious recompense for his labors in his service."
At this point of his story, the count took a few minutes' repose,
minutes that were fully employed, to judge by the manner in which
he emptied the tankard that stood before him; and as the two
friends did nothing without each other's aid or example, the
baron hastened to imitate his friend; and when his tankard left
his lips, there did not remain sufficient in it to satisfy the
thirst of a wren. Then, grasping with a firm hand the immense jug
of beer which awaited their good pleasure, he filled his own
glass and passed the jug on to the count, who, with an equal
dignity and silence, took his share. It is true that the baron
paid but a slight attention to all these details of a family
history that the count so complacently related to him; perhaps he
was getting impatient for the appearance of the two souls that
had been promised him; but he let no indication of his impatience
escape him, and continued to smoke on with great tranquillity,
puffing forth clouds of smoke which seemed timed to the cadenced
sounds of an old clock that stood beside him, whose sculptured
oak case would have delighted the taste of an antiquary. At
length the count recommenced: "The Turks appeared to have
abandoned their projects upon Germany, but the war yet continued
with activity between themselves and the order and the Venetians
on the shores of the Mediterranean. Notwithstanding the greatest
sacrifices, and the most valiant efforts on the part of the
Turks, Candia had fallen into the hands of the order; a new
expedition was then resolved upon to lay siege to Coron, and
Hector de La Tour de Maubourg, having been chosen as its
commander, he made choice of Albert for his lieutenant.
"Upon one of the galleys that the pope had joined to the allied
fleets of the Knights of St. John and of the Venetians, the young
Giovanni Balbo, only heir to one of the most distinguished names
in the republic of Venice, had been sent out by his father. This
illustrious family had long been a friend to our house, and, in
fact, we counted several alliances between the two families.
When, therefore, Giovanni learnt that Albert was in the fleet, he
made several attempts to become acquainted with him; and
succeeded so well, that in a short time they became the greatest
friends in the world.
"On this event, so slight in its appearance, nevertheless
depended the destiny of Albert. You must have remarked, my
friend, that it is the same with us all. The acts the most
important in our lives, those which decide our future, and from
which result our happiness or misery in this world, have always
as their first commencement, some circumstance which is perfectly
indifferent in itself, but the results of which have an influence
on our entire destinies.
{805}
"One would say that divine Providence mocked our proud reason, in
thus making use of events which at first sight seem so utterly
unfitted to arrive at the end which it proposes to itself; and I
might even add, that this impenetrable mystery would alone
suffice to eyes less wilfully blinded than your own, to prove the
existence of an unseen power that is unrestrained by human laws
and prejudices. Does God owe to each one of us a miracle? Ought
he to suspend for each individual man the eternal laws which
govern the universe? Can we not believe in him unless we see the
very rivers flow back to their sources? Does he not manifest
himself to us at each instant of our lives, on each side of us
and in us? Is not the admirable connection of events which exists
in this world sufficient to make the certitude of his power and
of his incessant action shine forth to the vision of the soul, as
shines forth before the eyes of the body the brilliant multitude
of planets that have each their appointed path in the wide space
of heaven? The siege was terrible, and its success cost to the
Order of Malta one and twenty of its bravest knights; Hector de
la Tour de Maubourg was among the number of the dead, and Albert,
who had flown to his side to protect him, had fallen covered with
wounds, which caused his life to be despaired of. His youth, the
strength of his constitution, and, above all, the tender care
taken of him by his friend Giovanni, finally triumphed over the
severity of his wounds, and as soon as he was sufficiently
recovered to bear the fatigues of the voyage, Giovanni brought
him to Venice to visit his family, who received him with the
warmest hospitality. I have told you that Giovanni was the only
heir of the Balbo family; this was but partly true, since there
were two daughters, Flaminia, who had then attained her
eighteenth year, and Antonia, who was but seventeen.
"Nothing could be more unlike than these two sisters, Flaminia
and Antonia. Although both were in looks and in character equally
charming, Heaven had gifted them with very dissimilar talents and
tastes. Nevertheless, this did not impede the existence of an
intimate friendship between these two natures so diametrically
opposed; and, later in their lives, it proved no hinderance to a
complete confidence. It is thanks to this confidence--that arose
between them one day by reason of an imperious necessity of
mutual aid and sympathy--that I can now describe the more
intimate particularities of this history. Antonia, as you may
judge from the portrait of her hanging in the room, was one of
that sort of beauties that seem to overflow with vigor and life.
Her complexion slightly brunette; her eyes of a deep black, ever
glistening under her well-arched eye-brows, notwithstanding the
depth of her eye-lashes; her mouth ever smiling, with its full
and firmly designed lips; her perfectly chiselled nose, whose
nostrils dilated at every instant; and, above all, the extreme
vivacity of her face, where was portrayed, as in a mirror, every
emotion that agitated her, even the most fugitive; all in her
appearance indicated one of those vigorous natures that have need
of real physical exertion. An over-rich development of physical
forces impedes the flight of the imagination. Thus, Antonia was
always remarked for the vivacity of her impressions, for the
impetuosity of her sentiments, and for the sallies of her quick
and brilliant spirit.
{806}
But that world of reverie, peopled with vague and indefinable
forms; that world illumined by a supernatural light, where we
catch the glimpses of a happiness unknown here below; that world
which is created by the soul and colored by the imagination, was
to her quite unknown. Whilst her sister delighted in all this,
and listened with her whole heart to those harmonious voices
which spoke to her of a coming happiness penetrating and sweet as
the joys of heaven, Antonia was bounding like a young fawn among
the trees of their garden, or, mounted on a spirited horse,
rapidly ascended the paths of the mountains that surrounded the
town. The same impetuosity was to be remarked in her sympathies
and antipathies; she could not moderate her expression of them,
nor did she even seek to impose upon herself a useless constraint
on this subject. On the other hand, Flaminia seemed already to
bear in her entire appearance the impress of those sorrows that
she was destined to suffer. Her look, so sweet and sad even in
its smile, was half veiled with her eyelids, and gave to her face
an indefinable expression of melancholy. That expression could be
again found in her delicately shaped mouth, and even in her
movements full of languor and grace. Whilst Antonia, lively and
petulant, employed by every outward effort the too abundant
forces of her life and youth, Flaminia seemed to place hers in
reserve for the terrible moment of need. She concentrated in the
depths of her soul all her impressions; nor could she give to
herself a reason for so doing. She had the consciousness of her
exquisite sensibility, and protected it, under the shield of
indifference and affected calm, against all contact that could
have wounded it. But under this apparent indolence an attentive
eye could have easily recognized the marks of an ardent soul and
of a strong nervous organization. A sudden flame would at moments
lighten up those glances usually veiled in indifference, the soft
and musical voice took an accent of enthusiasm, and her whole
expression changed, being animated by the power of an emotion
that she no longer restrained, and whose vibrations were the more
violent, because her soul, far from pouring itself on all that
surrounded her, as did Antonia's, was one of those that at a
given hour in life is destined to concentrate all its force on a
single thought and on an only affection. Outwardly cold and
impassible, her excessive sensibility showed itself by scarcely
perceptible signs; but later in life, happy to find at her side a
heart filled with similar ideas, all this ice melted. Is there
not in us, at the moment when life commences, that is to say, at
the epoch when the soul awakes from the long slumber of infancy,
a vague presentiment of our future destinies? For the same reason
that we have so often seen the bravest soldiers tremble on the
morning of a battle, feeling beforehand that death will call them
during the day, is there not likewise in us a voice which warns
us of the trials that we shall have later in our lives to endure?
The birds have a presentiment of the coming storm, even when the
atmosphere is yet full of splendor; the very insects that crawl
upon the ground foresee in the autumn the rigors of the
approaching winter, and envelop their eggs with a double covering
of silk; and why should man be less favored than the birds or
insects? Why should he be the only creature that is delivered up,
as it were, with his hands and feet bound, to the rigors of the
future?
{807}
It is possible that Flaminia obeyed that sentiment of moral
modesty that causes us to hide from all eyes our better
qualities--those secret riches of our hearts, that we may lavish
them without stint upon the hidden object that we have chosen.
She knew herself to be incapable of half-loving any object, and
she felt that her heart was a fragile instrument; that, if
touched by a skilful hand, it would render harmonious sounds, but
that it would infallibly break under a rude or awkward touch; and
she wished to preserve it from such a fate. None of those
surrounding her suspected the power of this instrument; on the
contrary, her great outward calmness passed for the evident
indication of a certain coldness of heart, whilst the expansive
nature of her sister was considered as the sign of an extreme
sensibility. Flaminia was much grieved at being thus
misunderstood, and very often, in the silence of the night,
bitter tears flowed from her eyes; very often the ivory crucifix
which hung at the head of her couch, saw opening before it that
soul so full of purity and love, that came to seek, at that
inexhaustible source, a present consolation and a future
strength. Sometimes she fancied that she heard in herself the
distant mutterings of the heart's tempest; then she prayed with
ardor, almost feverishly, as she listened to the murmur within
her of those mysterious voices which warned her of a near peril,
and told her to spread around her those riches of affection full
of loving ardor, that then devoured her, and that one day would
consume her. In these moments of instinctive alarm, she drew
herself yet closer to God, hiding herself under the shadow of his
protecting hand, ever lifted up over those who with faith invoke
it; and then she felt herself reassured. At such moments as these
was it that she felt herself to be so completely alone,
notwithstanding the parental tenderness that surrounded her, and
she suffered by this loneliness. In truth, Flaminia was
right--she was alone; for though both the Prince and Princess
Balbo cherished their daughter, yet time seemed to have passed on
for her alone, and not for them. The child had merged into the
young girl; the _naïve_ graces of the infant had given place
to the more opened charms of youth, yet they had remarked nothing
of all this. They dreamt not even that parental affection ought
to be modelled after the child of whom it is the object, and
ought to transform itself and grow with that child. They did not
understand that the protecting tenderness accorded to the infant
who shelters himself under it as does a bird in its nest, becomes
insufficient for the heart that time has developed, and that has
need of leaning upon sentiments less protecting and more
friendly. One of the most dangerous shoals in the difficult task
of educating children, is doubtless that of noticing the first
moments when the child whom we have held until then under our
hand, and caused, as it were, to live of our own life, lays aside
the trammels of infancy, and seeks to fly with his own wings. It
is then that we ought to know how so to modify our affection that
we may inspire that freedom and that confidence in ourselves that
will protect this second period of life, as a salutary fear
protects the first.
"Now for the development of these sentiments, so fragile and
delicate, we must seize the instant when the child commences to
become a man, when he first feels awakening in him thoughts and
sensations that are his own, and not simply the echo or
reflection of our own.
{808}
It is at that moment, and then only, that we can ever arouse such
confidence. If we allow this fleeting and critical period of his
existence to escape us, never can we hope to recall it; and
however powerful may be his sense of filial affection, the child
will never again show us that confidence that we have repulsed;
we shall have left his young heart, just awakening to the dawn of
life, in an isolation that is always painful, and oftentimes
dangerous, since it lends to the already strong voice of the
passions the charms of solitude and mystery. Unhappily--and this
is almost always through an ill-advised tenderness--we too often
close our eyes to this transformation; habit blinds us, and the
child escapes from our control. Such had been the case with
Flaminia. Her mother was one of the most virtuous and excellent
of women; the prince, as I have already told you, adored his
children; but both of them, as well as Giovanni, who was fifteen
years older than the eldest of his sisters, regarded these two
lovely girls but as the two children who so lately had charmed
them by their _naïveté_ and grace. This situation, in which
the two sisters shared, should have sooner given rise to a
confidence equal to their friendship; but besides that their
difference of tastes often separated them, no exterior event had
yet happened to show them the power of their mutual affection and
the community of ideas that ought to be its consequence. Thus
Flaminia lived alone and gave herself up without reserve to the
sweet charm of vague reverie; she listened with a deep joy to
those mysterious aspirations that spoke to her of happiness, nor
could she assign any form to these thoughts, that, all uncertain
as they were, yet threw her into a delicious trouble. She sought
solitude, and spent long hours sitting at the balcony of her
window, her forehead leaning on her long white hands, while her
eyes filled with tears that had no sorrow as their source, as she
regarded the deep and large purple shadows which the setting sun
cast on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Although she was
unconscious of the meaning of these frequent reveries, and would
have been unable to explain the reason of that melancholy, so
full of mingled pain and pleasure, into which she loved to plunge
herself, yet she hid most carefully from every eye the state of
her mind, dreading above all things lest any one should suspect
the happiness she felt in yielding to its charm. At the moment
when providence was about to bring together Albert and Flaminia,
he also found himself in some such a state of mind as that which
I have just portrayed. A glorious renown had at first seemed to
him the only thing in this world worthy of envy; but that idol so
ardently followed had been, little by little, despoiled of its
brilliant _prestige_; the nearer he approached it, the more
faint and dim became the aureole of splendor with which he had
believed it surrounded; and when he at last saw himself in full
possession of his desire, when the renown of his name had
resounded to the most distant commanderies of his order, which
regarded him as its firmest support and most assured hope; then
he saw with affright that a glorious name is insufficient in
itself, and that it must be regarded in a Christian life, or at
least in connection with some one who is dear to us, and whose
heart would rejoice and sympathize with our glory. When Albert at
last understood the truth, he felt himself sad and unhappy; for
be looked vainly around him--he was alone!
{809}
An immense void then made itself felt in his soul--a void that
even his glory was unable to hide from him, and which friendship
was powerless to fill. Like Flaminia, he felt himself isolated on
the earth; but while her solitude was sweetened by a hope as
vague as her thoughts and desires, that of Albert was a
bottomless abyss, full of discouragement and despair.
"The profound darkness of night then fell upon his soul, an
obscurity similar to those sombre and cold nights in winter, when
the eye sees not a single star piercing the sky covered with
clouds; and when the sad heart hears but the moans of the wind
that bends the tops of the bare trees as it passes over them,
mingled with the boding cry of the birds of prey which slowly
wheel around in the thick and misty atmosphere. A lassitude had
fallen on him similar to that which a traveller feels at the
sight of a straight and monotonous road which extends as far as
the eye can reach in a dry and burning plain. Seeing nothing
around him that seemed worthy either a desire or an effort, he
allowed himself to be carried slowly on by time toward the common
end; nor did he hasten that course by his vows; for even whilst
he firmly believed in the joys of eternity, he felt not his soul
drawn toward them. If he had run forward to meet death, it was
through his natural intrepidity; for he felt in its presence but
the same desolating indifference that he had shown at the moment
of his recovery to life. Such were the secret sentiments of
Albert and Flaminia when their mutual destiny placed them for the
first time in presence of each other in the ancient _salon_
of the Palace Balbo. We are both of us, my dear Frederic, so far
distant from the time when our hearts first experienced these
impressions of affection, that there now remains to us but a very
slight recollection."
"You are deceived," interrupted the baron; "from the day when for
the first time I saw my poor Gertrude, until that when I placed
her in her tomb, I have forgotten nothing of all that has passed
between us. There is not an hour of that much-regretted time
which is not present in my memory; not an incident, however
slight it may have been, that I cannot recall in even its
slightest details!"
"You can the more easily understand, then," continued the count,
"how it was that these two souls united themselves so closely the
one to the other, that there soon existed between them but a
single life, a single taste, and a single thought; and how it was
that they both preserved, even until their very last moment, the
most absolute certainty of their mutual affection, without ever
having interchanged a single word on the subject. Scarcely had
they been but a few days together, when already Albert had
penetrated into all the thoughts of Flaminia. He read in her
heart as in an open book; he divined all its secrets; that soul
which to all others was closed, he saw opening, and breathed all
its perfumes< foresaw all its destinies! Was it, then, in a few
commonplace conversations that he had gained so complete an
insight into that heart habitually closed? No; he had not judged
Flaminia by any acquaintance that he had gained of her character
by her words or actions; he had only looked upon her, and
instantly, by intuition, he had understood her; and this was so
true, that there were moments when it might have been said that
he saw her think. On her side, Flaminia saw the soul of Albert by
that same light which I should call supernatural, did I not
consider it as one of the eternal laws instituted by the Creator.
{810}
She knew him to be loyal and generous, and she saw his
unchangeable goodness and patience; not because he had had any
occasion of showing them before her, but because a lively and
penetrating light thus showed him to her. All that Albert felt
found in her an echo; the mirror does not more faithfully produce
the image than did her soul his slightest sensations. By his side
she felt happy, because she felt herself understood and loved. A
new existence then opened for her; movement and activity
succeeded to her vague reveries and habitual indolence; new
horizons showed themselves each day to her soul. Nature became
more beautiful, the flowers more sweet, the sun more brilliant;
it seemed to her that her eyes had been shut until then, and that
they now opened for the first time. At the same time that a new
affection acquired over her soul a stronger influence than her
affection for her family had yet exercised on her, even these
became more lively and more complete. Nevertheless, it was no
longer at that source whence she had so long drawn her sensations
and ideas that she now went to seek them: all came to her from
Albert, or had reference to him. She saw by his eyes and thought
by his ideas; her tastes, her desires, were nothing else than the
tastes and desires of Albert. Were he present, she seemed to live
with delight; in his absence it seemed to her that her life lost
its intensity, and all became sad and indifferent to her; he was
the soul that gave life to all. In a word, he had become a part
of herself, an indispensable condition for the perfection of her
being and existence. I have no need to tell you that she did not
render to herself so exact an account of the state of her soul as
that which I have just sketched to you. She had, in truth, the
consciousness of the change that was taking place in her, but the
reasons of this change remained enveloped in a profound obscurity
that her spirit could not penetrate; she obeyed her feelings of
tenderness without being able to analyze them. And yet the more
she felt that Albert alone filled her heart and thought, the more
she instinctively enveloped herself exteriorly, with regard to
him, in her mantle of ordinary indifference. But when hazard left
her alone with Albert, then a sudden transformation took place in
her. All that indifference melted away, as do the last snows of
springtime under the heat of the sun. She delivered herself up
unrestrainedly to the generous enthusiasm of her loving nature,
her expression became more gentle, her voice more tender, and her
heart beat faster in her bosom, which rose and fell agitated by
an emotion so delicious and powerful that it resembled even
grief; for in our weak nature, joy and suffering have a very near
resemblance."
Concluded In Next Number.
----------
{811}
John Sterling.
Whatever importance may attach to the life and writings of John
Sterling, is due to the fact of his having been a representative
man. Without being supremely original, without anything wonderful
in his career, he has been made the subject of a memoir by two
eminent men, Archdeacon Hare and Thomas Carlyle. The one
represents Anglican belief, which is partial infidelity, and the
other nineteenth-century belief, which is infidelity, pure and
simple; and both the one and the other have drawn the portrait of
their friend and hero in colors of their own mind. Archdeacon
Hare has traced with regret the lapse of Sterling into unbelief,
while Carlyle has seen in that very lapse a rise into
transcendental faith of the highest order. Neither of them has
neglected, but, on the contrary, both keenly appreciated
Sterling's literary labors and merits; and both would concur in
pointing him out as a type of that new creation of thinkers and
supposed philosophers in whom doubt and trust are ever contending
for the mastery--who are ever seeking, and never able to come to
the knowledge of the truth--a mongrel breed, sprung from an
unnatural union between scepticism and Christianity.
John Sterling was born at Kaimes Castle, in the Isle of Bute, on
the 20th of July, 1806. His father rented a small farm attached
to the Castle, and the first four years of Johnny's life were
spent on a wild-wooded, rocky coast, among headlands, storms, and
thundering breakers. Nature gave him a good schooling; for, when
he left the Isle of Bute, it was for the well-grassed,
many-brooked village of Llanblethian, in the Vale of Glamorgan.
Five years more passed in that pleasant spot, and time never
effaced the lovely images it imprinted on Sterling's mind. Every
line and hue, he said, were more deeply and accurately fixed in
his memory than those of any scene he had since beheld.
Beautifully and with deep feeling did he retrace the impressions
they made on his childish fancy, in an article written in the
_Literary Chronicle_ in his twenty-second year. He had not
seen the spot since he was eight years old, yet he described the
old ruin of St. Quentin's Castle, the orchard of his home, the
school where he used to read the well-thumbed _History of
Greece_ by Oliver Goldsmith, and the garden-sports of himself
and his playmates, with as much distinctness as if they had been
_souvenirs_ of the previous spring. Very precious are such
recollections, for one personal experience is worth a hundred
facts learnt from books.
When Napoleon returned from Elba, in 1815, little Sterling was in
the midst of French school-boys, at Passy, shouting, _Vive
l'Empereur_. His father had become a writer in the
_Times_, under the name of _Vetus_, and was in hopes of
being appointed one of its foreign correspondents. The Hundred
Days which convulsed Europe drove the Sterlings from France; and
fortune, who tries literary aspirants with her ficklest moods,
shifted the father from Russell Square and Queen Square, to
Blackfriars Road and the Grove, at Blackheath. At last he rode at
anchor, and was permanently connected with the _Times_.
{812}
John was sent to Dr. Burney's school, at Greenwich, and afterward
came under the tuition of Dr. Waite, at Blackheath, and of Dr.
Trollope, the master of Christ's Hospital. He was twelve years
old when his younger brother, Edward, died. It was an early age
to become familiar with death. John felt the loss as if he had
been a Catholic. God or nature, one knows not which, taught him
the communion of saints. "Edward is near me now," he used to say
to himself. "Edward is watching me. He knows what I am doing and
thinking. He is sad for my faults. I must, I will strive to do
what he would approve." Very active was his mind at this period.
His keen eye observed everything; his soul was winged. He read
the entire _Edinburgh Review_ through, from the beginning,
and cart-loads of books from circulating libraries, "wading," as
Carlyle says, "like Ulysses toward his palace, through infinite
dung." No advantages of education were denied him. At the
University of Glasgow he was tutored by Mr. Jacobson, since
Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford and Bishop of Chester; and
in 1824, when he was in his nineteenth year, he removed to
Trinity College, Cambridge, where another man of eminence,
Julius, afterward Archdeacon Hare, became his tutor and his
lasting friend. He was in all respects worthy of such friendship.
A youth who, with a delicate frame, could stand waist-deep in the
river, to aid in passing buckets to and fro, when the buildings
of King's Court were on fire, must have had a singular disregard
of self, and readiness for all moral enterprise. "Somebody must
be in it," he said, when his tutor remonstrated with him. "Why
not I, as well as another?" Friendships were the best gift
Sterling received from Cambridge. The classical knowledge he
acquired there was not very exact, nor did he submit to any
strict discipline. In the Union he was "the master-bowman," and
out of such comrades as Charles Buller, Richard Milnes, John
Kemble, Richard Trench, and Frederic Maurice, he made of the two
last dear and intimate friends. He and Frederic Maurice, indeed,
married two sisters; and to him and Coleridge he owed chiefly the
formation of his opinions and character. The latter was at that
time beginning to found a school of thought, and the former,
Frederic Maurice, is now, and has long been, a recognized leader
of the Broad Church party, in the Anglican communion.
If ever there was a moonstruck prophet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
was one. As a poet, he was a star; as a divine, an _ignis
fatuus_. He subjected faith to reason, coquetted with
infidelity, embraced Germanism, and discoursed by the hour on the
church and the _Logos_ in language all musical and shining,
but conveying no meaning whatever to any one of his hearers.
[Footnote 228]
[Footnote 228: Carlyle's _Life of Sterling_, p. 73.]
Your reason (_Vernunft_) bound you to accept a multitude of
facts and principles which your understanding (_Verstand_)
rejected. With a good understanding only you might be an
unbeliever, but reason would exalt you into a Christian.
Everything depended on this distinction, and if you could not
comprehend it, (which nobody could,) so much the worse for you.
Yet English society was fast being ensnared by such theosophic
nonsense and hazy "Kantean transcendentalism." The clear dogmas
of traditional faith and the simplicity of Scripture, likewise,
were being observed in a cloud of jargon.
{813}
Dr. Pusey in his youth was sliding into German subtleties; Isaac
Taylor was watering Christianity down into human philosophy; Dr.
Arnold was pleading for an Erastian church comprising all sects
and denominations; Dr. Hampden's terminology was effacing the
time-hallowed language of the schools; Coleridge, with his
drunken imagination, and Milman, with his rationalistic solution
of Scripture miracles, were paving the way for Strauss and Renan;
and if it had not been for the Oxford revival of primitive
tradition and patristic lore, the English mind would have
wandered away into the bleak desert of infidelity without one
oasis--one guiding path by which to return to the fresh pasture
of truth and peace.
Sterling, unfortunately, was not brought under this happier
influence. The seed sown in him by Coleridge and his compeers
produced, as we shall see, its natural fruit, and made him a
forerunner of that worship of humanity which is now to so large
an extent superseding the worship of Christ. After spending a
year in Trinity College, Cambridge, he migrated to Trinity Hall,
and in 1827, quitted the university altogether. He had to seek a
profession, and knew not what to choose. He tried a private
secretaryship, and ended, of course, with literature--the
profession of all clever men who have none. For that, and
especially for periodical literature, he was best fitted, for his
thoughts were quick and brilliant, "beautifullest sheet-lightning
not to be condensed into thunderbolts," deriving their momentum
from swift strokes, not from metallic weight.
The copyright of the _Athenaeum_ being for sale, Sterling
and his gifted friends thought it would make a fine opening for
them. He wrote much in it in the years 1828 and 1829, together
with Maurice, who was editor. His "_Shades of the Dead_,"
"Alexander the Great," "Joan of Arc," "Wycliffe," "Columbus,"
"Gustavus Adolphus," "Milton," and "Burns," are full of thought,
color, and enthusiasm, but they produce a saddening effect. They
are "a beautiful mirage in the dry wilderness; but you cannot
quench your thirst there!" Sterling knew not the stand-point from
which alone the characters of past times can be duly appreciated.
He describes Joan of Arc as "perhaps the most wonderful,
exquisite, and complete personage in all the history of the
world," yet he maintains that "her persuasion of the outward
appearance of divine agency was caused by a _diseased_
excitability of the fancy." As if to hear a voice from heaven "to
assist her in governing herself," to see an angel, and receive
visits from the departed, implied of necessity a diseased
imagination! He sees in Wycliffe a Gospel hero almost as full of
"immortal wisdom" as Coleridge, his "Christian Plato," He couples
him with Erigena, who "questioned transubstantiation--the
master-sorcery," and Berengarius, who "opposed the same monstrous
doctrine." But he tells us in praise of these new lights, what
may well be regarded as dispraise, that "they encouraged
themselves to cast away the belief of all that Luther afterward
rejected by the simple study of the Bible, _unaided by general
knowledge, and without the guidance of sufficient
interpreters_." Such is the fatal admission of one of whom his
friend and biographer, Archdeacon Hare, writes that "the most
striking and precious quality in his writings is the deep
sympathy _with the errors and faults, and even with the sins,
of mankind_." Here, then, is another admission--an admission,
not of the disciple, but of the master, that while Sterling
combated that Catholic religion which is from first to last the
worship of Christ, he was already exhibiting the most decided
symptom of Positivism, or the worship of Humanity.
{814}
He dwells, again, with delight on the goodness and greatness of
Columbus; he assures us that he was a diligent student of the
Bible, had a childlike simplicity of faith in the truths of
religion; was, in his own belief, the chosen minister of
providence, watched over by saints and angels, pointed in his
path across the waters by the mother of the Lord, and holding in
his hand the cross as the only ensign of triumph; and yet, with
strange perversity, he comes to the conclusion that the mind of
this fearless discoverer was "in many respects dark and weak,"
and that his faith, though nobler than that of the multitude
around him, was "not the purest Christianity." Sterling himself,
in short, held a purer creed, (if he could only have defined it,)
and we shall see presently to what it led.
When his mind first came into Coleridge's plastic hands, it was
simply chaotic as regards religion. Instructed by the oracle of
Highgate, he engrafted a belief in Christianity, such as it was,
on his original "piety of heart," (as Carlyle calls it,) and his
"religion, which was as good as altogether ethnic." In this new
phase of mental hallucination, his sceptical zeal against what he
deemed superstition abated, and his radicalism, toning down, lost
some of its wildest features. In this frame he wrote and
published a novel called _Arthur Coningsby_. It was then his
only book, and it brought him little satisfaction. The babe was
still-born, and had it lived, the father, as it seems, would have
had little love for his own offspring. Coleridge's moonshine
glittered on his pages, but its outlooks into futurity were
confused and sad. It was "gilded vacuity," opulent misery. The
hero is himself--a youth plunging into life without any fixed
principle to guide him; full of democratic, utilitarian, and
heathenish theories; he suffers shipwreck--the shipwreck of the
mind; and then by the hand of some semi-Christian quack, like
dreamy Coleridge, is guided into a port which is no harbor, and a
church where there is no anchorage. Such was _Arthur
Coningsby_. But to Carlyle Sterling never mentioned the name
of the novel, nor would hear it spoken of in his presence.
During the years in which it was planned, written, and published,
from 1829 to 1832, Sterling wooed and won Susannah Barton, a
kindly and true-hearted wife, to share his pleasures and trials;
made an intimate friend of General Torrijos, a Spanish exile; and
was silly enough to aid him and a little band of democrats
(including an Irishman named Boyd, who had more money than wits)
to purchase a ship in the Thames, arms and stores, for the
purpose of invading Spain and proclaiming a republic! Sterling
himself was to have taken part in the mad expedition; but Cupid,
as usual, was stronger than Mars; and Susannah, who was not yet
Mrs. Sterling, prevailed on her lover to lay his armor aside. Of
course, the Spanish envoy got tidings of the plot; and the ship,
with its crew and cargo, was seized in the king's name when
dropping down the river. Coleridge's moonshine, it seems, was not
strong enough yet to dispel the dark frowns of democracy.
In 1830, the marriage contract was sealed; but alas! in this
fallen world the glad moment of our realized hopes is almost
always dashed with some strange and unexpected sorrow. Sterling's
health failed, and his lungs, menaced by consumption, asked for a
warmer climate.
{815}
The year 1831 found him in the island of St. Vincent in the midst
of tropic vegetation, tornadoes, and slaves as yet unworthy of
freedom. One hurricane, fiercer than its fellows, stripped the
roof from the house where Sterling lived, and whirled about the
cottages of the negroes as if they had been chaff. Meanwhile, in
December, 1831, Torrijos, the deluded democrat general, reaches
Spain, runs ashore at Fuengirola with fifty-five desperadoes like
himself, seizes a farm, barricades it, is surrounded, surrenders,
is haled with his comrades to Malaga, and with them all, the rich
Irishman included, is swiftly fusiladed. "I hear the sound of
that musketry," wrote Sterling; "it is as if the bullets were
tearing my own brain." No wonder, for to his brain the folly of a
wild enterprise was mainly due.
Repentance came; religion was his study; and prayer, earnest
prayer for guidance, arose from his lips as he sat under the
dates and palms, and gazed on the mirror of summer seas. Such
prayer had been answered more fully if teachers such as
Coleridge, with his gift of words, and Edward Irving, with his
gift of tongues, had not already imbued him with a multitude of
truths which were half untruths, and untruths which were half
truths. He believed himself to be "in possession of the blessings
of Christ's redemption;" and though he scarcely as yet knew the
elements of Christianity, he began to think of teaching it. It is
always the way with pious Protestant youths. They have vocations
to preach before they are schooled; and what ought to be taken
for presumption is hailed by their friends as the most signal
proof of grace. So Sterling, wearied of West India life, formed a
vague scheme of anti-slavery philanthropy, and turned his face
toward Europe and his thoughts toward the ministry of the
Established Church.
It was in June, 1833, and on the banks of the Rhine, that the
unripe aspirant for holy orders met his old friend and tutor, the
Rev. Julius Hare. That worthy gentleman encouraged a desire he
should rather have checked, and Sterling was not long in arriving
at a determination to become Mr. Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux
in Sussex, and wear, at least, the surplice and stole, though he
had no hood or academical degree to adorn himself withal. So on
Trinity Sunday of the following year, he came out of Chichester
Cathedral a raw deacon, and established himself with his family
in a modest mansion in a quiet, leafy lane of Hurstmonceaux. Very
diligent was Sterling in his pastoral duties; but the fervor of
his zeal soon cooled. In September he began to have misgivings,
and in February following he had quitted the path he had
prematurely chosen. The reason assigned was loss of health; but
Carlyle guessed shrewdly, and with too much truth, that Sterling
was disappointed even to despair by the church whose garment he
had spasmodically caught by the hem. The virtue he expected did
not go forth from it, and the glimmer of truth which reached him
came through a dense cloud of confused writings. The very names
of these betokened chaos, and the twilight that struggled through
them was sufficient neither to cheer nor to guide. Many pages of
Archdeacon Hare's memoir are filled with extracts from Sterling's
letters, and accounts of his favorite studies at this period.
They form a labyrinth none can thread, where he wanders to and
fro without landmarks, bourn, light, or hope. The more he reads
the Old Testament, the less can he believe in its miracles; and
having no guide who speaks with authority, he applies for
satisfaction in vain to one charlatan after another as confused,
fanciful, and blind as himself.
{816}
Fancy a system of theology taught by Tholuck, Schiller, and
Olshausen; by Schleiermacher, Mackintosh, and Milman, by the
Koran and Kant, by Jonathan Edwards, Coleridge, and Maurice! Such
were Sterling's instructors, and it is not to be wondered at that
they created more doubts than they removed, and that under their
influence he discarded all faith in a hierarchy, a church, and a
Bible written by plenary inspiration. Christianity, he thought,
could only become true by changing with the times; and if any
existing society or church was to be the nucleus of a new system,
it could only be by the sloughing off of much that was old. How
utterly deplorable would be the condition of the human race if
left to the teaching of such philosophers and divines. After two
thousand years of Christian schooling, it would know nothing more
than ancient Greece and Rome of God and of its own destinies. All
revelation must be doubted of anew in order that anything may be
believed, and the _improved_ Christianity to be given in
these last days to the world would owe all its changes and
improvements to men as feeble and fallible as ourselves. Better,
far better, had it been for you, John Sterling, to be instructed
by a simple parish priest bred among the mountains, and
ministering in that church which is the pillar and ground of the
truth, than be handed over as you were by Coleridge, Maurice, and
Hare, to Strauss, Mill, and Carlyle--from unbelief in the bud to
unbelief in full, gaudy, flaunting blossom.
We cannot discover anything imposing in Sterling's talents. Even
in secular learning he was a reed shaken by the wind. His essays
and poems want definite view and bold outline. It is a grand
thing to see both sides of a question, but it is a pitiful thing
to say as much for one side as for another. The want of first
principles makes all Sterling's pages dreamy and pointless. He
has no point to steer from, no harbor to steer to; he is always
toiling against wind and tide, making no way, and accounting it
triumphant success only not to be shipwrecked. Had he confined
his criticisms to matters of taste, he might have been endured,
but he _will_ be piercing the clouds without any ballast to
steady or rudder to guide his balloon.
In February, 1835, Sterling first became personally acquainted
with that extraordinary writer, Thomas Carlyle. He met him in his
natural element, the society of brilliant free-thinkers. He was
side by side with John Stuart Mill at the India House, and then
at Sterling's father's with the Crawfords and other
_literati_, with whom unbelief was wisdom. His writings, and
particularly _Sartor Resartus_, made a great impression on
Sterling, though he saw the strange and extravagant defects of
its style, and labored hard to convince the author of his own
belief in a "personal God." But the poison did its work. The
strong inward unrest, the Titanic heaving of Teufelsdröckh's
spirit communicated itself to Sterling's, and whirled it away
still further from central peace. Carlyle could only stimulate
the intellect, and fill it with exuberant images. He had heard
without regret of Sterling's abandonment of democracy, and he saw
with greater satisfaction his defection from parochial work. He
regarded the pen as his vocation, and the greatest instrument for
good in the world. Not that Sterling broke outwardly with the
church, or declared himself a renegade.
{817}
On the contrary, he now and then performed service for a friend
at Bayswater, but it became more and more evident that his faith
in Christianity was partial and unsound. His mind was not in the
highest degree devotional, nor had he that fear of the Lord which
is the beginning of wisdom.
His knowledge of German writers hitherto was confined to
semi-sceptics and self-appointed evangelists, Neander and the
like. Carlyle introduced him to higher souls, if literary merit
constitutes height. He brought him to the feet of Goethe,
Richter, Schiller, and Lessing, and with these he tried to
satisfy the void which an imperfect religion had been unable to
fill. Mr. Dunn, an amiable Irish clergyman, became one of their
chosen circle, and we learn from Sterling himself that _his_
theology was compounded of the Greek fathers, mystics and ethical
philosophers, and that its main defect was an insufficient
apprehension of the reality and depth of sin. The very word sin
is considered objectionable in the school of Carlyle and Mill,
because it, is the correlative of grace. Sterling's friends
seemed fated to be the enemies of his soul. He had another named
Edgeworth, a nephew of Miss Edgeworth the novelist. He was well
read in Plato and Kant, yet even less of a believer than they.
"He entertained not creeds, but the Platonic or Kantean
_ghosts_ of creeds." So says Carlyle, of whom Sterling bears
witness, that "_his_ fundamental position is the good of
evil, and the idleness of wishing to jump off one's own shadow."
Deplorable health again, in 1836, drove Sterling to a sunnier
clime. He was always dodging and jerking about "to escape the
scythe of Death." At Bordeaux his feeble frame revived, and he
delved in the mines of literature for fine gold. The theological
fever in his mind had abated. Such is Carlyle's account--and the
health of pure reason returned, or almost returned. He had done
with theology, rubrics, church articles, and "the enormous
ever-repeated thrashing of the straw." But did he find the grain?
If theology is chaff, where shall we look for wheat? Will the
heart of mankind accept literature as the _summum bonum_,
the guide of life, the antidote of sin, sorrow, and death? Yet
for it Carlyle and Sterling bid farewell to Christianity, and
cry: "Adieu, ye threshing-floors of rotten straw, with bleared
tallow-light for sun; to you adieu!" _The Sexton's Daughter_
was a poem which indicated Sterling's gradual renunciation of
those fragments of Christianity which still clung to him. He even
began to think of attacking revelation, on the principle of folly
rushing in where angels fear to tread. The Christian religion, he
believed, would be really indebted to him for meddling with its
foundations, and he should be "doing good to theology," by
writing what would for ever exclude him from ministering even in
the Church of England. His letters at this period are full of
distressing jumble, which Archdeacon Hare records as Christian
with a certain unction, and Carlyle, more sagacious, claims as
antichristian with a chuckle of delight.
A _sickly_ shadow of the parish church still hung over
Sterling's compositions, according to the latter biographer, and
he gives an amusing description of the parson-like way in which
his friend read aloud the _Sexton's Daughter_ at Blackheath,
and gave painful effect to its maudlin morality. It was "a dreary
pulpit, or even conventicle manner; that flattest moaning hoo-hoo
of predetermined pathos, with a kind of rocking canter introduced
by way of intonation, each stanza the exact fellow of the other,
and the dull swing of the rocking-horse, duly in each."
{818}
The invalid poet had returned from Bordeaux, but he did not
remain long at Blackheath. Again he crossed the waters in
cheerful quest of balmier air, and the manifold bliss of health.
Daily he rode among the rocky slopes and redundant foliage of
Madeira, writing to Carlyle often for recreation, and reading
Goethe's Life and Works with fear and delight. He called him "the
most splendid of anachronisms," and spoke of his life as
"thoroughly, nay, intensely pagan, in an age when it is men's
duty to be Christian. In truth," he adds, "I am afraid of him, I
enjoy and admire him so much, and feel I could so easily be
tempted to go along with him." Thus all things conduced to lead
Sterling's mind down the steep. Lyell's _Geology_ opened a
new flutter (not line) of thought, and bewildered him with the
view it presented of "the abysmal extent of time."
From Professor Wilson, alias Christopher North, the presiding
spirit of Blackwood, Sterling received great
encouragement--perhaps more than he deserved. But ingenious
madness is all that the public requires in the magazines of some
countries. _Laudari a Laudato_ is always a rare delight. Had
Carlyle been editor, his criticisms on Sterling's Tales and Poems
would have been more severe, yea, and more just than Wilson's--he
of the _Isle of Palms_. Thus he says of _The Onyx
Ring_: "There wants maturing, wants purifying of clear from
unclear; properly there wants patience and steady depth. The
basis is wild and loose; and in the details, lucent often with
fine color, and dipt in beautiful sunshine, there are several
things misseen, untrue, which is the worst species of
mispainting." This it was that blurred and marred all poor
Sterling's productions; everything was _misseen_, and
therefore mispainted. In one particular he was to be praised and
envied--he saw things on the sunny side. In spite of sickness, he
was cheerful, and buoyancy of spirit kept him afloat on a sea
where many would have sunk. John Stuart Mill was now editing
_The London and Westminster Review_, and Sterling was
sufficiently vague and unsound to be thought a valuable
contributor. In that _Review_ he discoursed of Montaigne,
Simonides, and Carlyle, while in the _Quarterly_ of 1842, he
criticised Tennyson. Of these critiques the best is that on
Simonides, for the subject was best fitted to Sterling's taste
and powers. He was a better judge of Greek poetry and Greek
character than of writers like Montaigne, Carlyle, and Tennyson,
who have lived in Christian times, and must be judged by
Christian rules. He could hardly wander wide of his theme while
dealing with the bright wine, luscious fruit, honey, and crystal
founts of Ceos, while gathering up the costly fragments of its
gifted bard, and rendering in English the chaste and delicately
chiselled verses of him who has "not left a single line inspired
by love."
But the case was altered when Sterling tried to appreciate
Montaigne, The task was above him. He was neither a believer nor
an unbeliever, but partly both. He could neither wholly praise
nor wholly blame Montaigne's scepticism. He had an instinctive
leaning toward the writer who adopted _Que sçay-je?_ as his
motto, and followed the natural religion of Sébonde. He honored
one whose writings were condemned at Rome, and thought, for that
very reason, they must have some good in them.
{819}
He admired an essayist who sat loose to the received opinions and
belief of his time, chose Plutarch for his favorite author, (as
Rousseau and Madame Roland did after him,) and "of all men seemed
most thoroughly to have revered and loved the saint, prophet, and
martyr of pagan wisdom, Socrates."
Perhaps Socrates would not be in such good odor with the sceptics
of our day, if he too had not been in some sense an unbeliever.
Perhaps it is in his _protesting_ character that they
chiefly admire him, and trace in him some resemblance to the sage
of Wittemburg. They admire him, and set him up as a model,
because he was a witness against the established and popular
religion of his country. Yet it may be that Socrates had really
more faith than they have, and with all the disadvantages of
paganism, made, if we may so speak, a better deist than
nineteenth-century sceptics. Perhaps his mind was clearer, after
all, than Montaigne's, or than Sterling's, who wrote of Montaigne
that, "in the bewilderment of his misunderstanding at the
immensity and seeming contradictions of the universe, perhaps he
even hoped that _one day or other_ the puzzle of existence
would find its solution in _the accompanying puzzle of
revelation_."
We have not time, in this place, to follow Sterling's review of
his friend Carlyle's works. Suffice it to say, what we believe to
be the fact, that he discovered Carlyle's intellectual stature to
be high because the literary world had already recognized it as
such; but he did not discover the extent of Tennyson's powers
because the literary world had not yet recognized them. This is
not very complimentary to Sterling's critiques or
penetration--but dreamy and indistinct beauty is all that he ever
reaches, and his _exposé_ of Carlyle's philosophy is as hazy
and unsatisfactory as his appreciation of Tennyson is hesitating
and imperfect.
After founding the Sterling Club, our hero once more turned his
face toward the sweet south. In company with his friend. Dr.
Calvert, he crossed the Alps, and wandered from city to city
through the garden of Europe, till he reached, in the winter of
1838-9, the city without a rival. Perhaps Sterling was apt to let
other people reflect for him. If he had set his own thoughts
originally to work, he could hardly have failed to detect in the
metropolis of Christendom something more than he pretended to
find. A philosophic mind, even of a minor order, could not allow
itself to dwell on Rome, the Holy See, and the pontifical line,
without finding in them matter for the greatest consideration and
most searching inquiry. Whence the mighty, the enduring influence
of these on mankind and mankind's history, if there lie not at
their root, principles which escape the glance of superficial
observers? Whether divine, human, or diabolical, they must
deserve philosophical research, were it only for the magnitude of
their results. Yet Sterling is bold enough to affirm that "one
loses all tendency to idealize the metropolis and system of the
hierarchy into anything higher than a piece of showy
stage-declamation, at bottom thoroughly mean and prosaic." Again
he tells us that "The modern Rome, pope and all inclusive, are a
shabby attempt at something adequate to fill the place of the old
commonwealth." So warped was his judgment that St. Peter's itself
found little favor in his eyes. His artistic notes are as unsound
as his religious ones. Prejudice jaundiced all. "I have seen the
pope," he says, "in all his pomp at St. Peter's; and he looked to
me a mere lie in livery."
{820}
But to him perhaps St. Peter on his cross would not have appeared
truth in undress. He derived, it is to be feared, little good
from his visit to the tombs of the apostles. To him they were
tombs indeed--vaults, charnel-houses, painted sepulchres. Mrs.
Sterling's premature confinement recalled him to England, and in
the summer of 1839 he was housed at Clifton, and enjoying the
noxious friendship of an amiable deist, Mr. Frank Newman, brother
of the great convert to Catholicism of the same name. He, too,
had once professed Anglican Christianity, but he resigned his
fellowship at Oxford, and openly combated the divinity of the
Holy Ghost.
At Clifton Sterling became familiar with Strauss; we do not mean
Strauss in person, but in his still more dangerous _Life of
Christ_. Here was, indeed, a "lie in livery," yet Sterling
pronounced it "exceedingly clever and clear-headed, with more of
insight, and less of destructive rage than he expected." It would
work, he said, deep and far, and it was well for partisans on one
side and the other to have a book of which they could say, "This
is our Creed and Code--or, rather, Anti-Creed and Anti-Code."
Alas! John Sterling, are you come to this? The "lie in livery"
whom you saw in Rome would have taught you better. He bid you
adore him whom Strauss denies, and hold fast to him as the Way,
the Truth, and the Life.
There is little to be said of Sterling's poetry, and that little
such as his ghost might not like to hear. It never caught the
public ear, and if it had caught, could not have charmed it. He
had not the slightest taste for music, nor any tune in him. His
verses were merely rhymed, and barely rhythmical _speeches_,
not _songs_. "The thoughts were not much above the sound,
and the latter was as unmusical as a drum. Carlyle strongly
advised him to stick to prose, and declared that his "poetry" had
"a monstrous rub-a-dub, instead of a tune." Whether in prose or
verse, haze, insufficiency, and failure marked all he attempted.
At Falmouth, as at Clifton, he moved in a luminous atmosphere of
intellects gone astray. While there he published _The
Election_, a poem in eleven books, which describes in heroic
verse the contest between Frank Vane and Peter Mogg for an
English borough. There were graceful touches here and there; but
the pages wanted that originality which is the only passport to
permanent success. The _Election_ was followed by
_Strafford_ and _Coeur de Lion_, but the one subject
was _too_ dramatic, and the other one _too_ epic, for
Sterling's muse.
In 1842, he was listening to rhapsodists reciting Ariosto on the
mole at Naples, or boating round the promontory of Sorrento. His
spoiled and purposeless existence was drawing near its close. A
painful sense of its uselessness forced itself frequently on his
mind. His life, he wrote, had ceased to be a chain, and fell into
a heap of broken links. Versatility in his father became
irresolution in him. That father, Edward Sterling, possessed an
improvising faculty without parallel, and had a fair field for
its display in the pages of the _Times_. There,
conjurer-like, he set forth "three hundred and sixty-five
opinions in the year upon every subject." There, day after day,
he hit the essential _animus_ of the great Babylon with
extraordinary precision. There he performed to admiration his
marvellous somersaults, not only without shame, but with the ease
and daring of one who is always right.
{821}
There he appeared as Whig or Tory, Peelite or Anti-Peelite, not
as the whim took him, but as it took the blatant public for whom
he wrote. There "Captain Whirlwind," as Carlyle used to call him,
let loose his winds, and, securely anonymous, looked forth from
his cave on the seething seas and thundering surges which he
rolled on the shore. The son could not but reflect in a degree
the father's face. Hence, in John Sterling we find, to his
misfortune, great and habitual uncertainty. "Christianity," he
wrote, not long before his death, "is a great comfort and
blessing to me, although I am _quite unable to believe all its
original documents_." What kind of Christianity was this which
comforted him, and whence did it derive its evidences? The same
inconsistency and vagueness appears in his remark--and it was
one of his latest--that he had gained but little good from what
he had heard or read of theology, but derived the greatest
comfort from the words, "Thy will be done." As if these words did
not involve the whole circle of theology, as the egg contains the
chicken, and the acorn the oak.
In the beginning of 1843, Sterling broke a blood-vessel; his
mother also became seriously ill; and his father's mansion at
Knightsbridge, "built on the high table-land of sunshine and
success," was filled at once with bitterness and gloom. Very
affectionate and pious were Sterling's letters to his mother; nor
can it be said that death came to either of them unawares. They
saw the grim shadow approach, and awaited his stroke with such
fortitude as their sense of religion gave them. "Dear mother,"
wrote Sterling, "there is surely something uniting us that cannot
perish, I seem so sure of a love which shall last and reunite us,
that even the remembrance, painful as that is, of all my own
follies and ill tempers cannot shake this faith. When I think of
you, and know how you feel toward me, and have felt for every
moment of almost forty years, it would be too dark to believe
that we shall never meet again."
On Good Friday, 1843, Sterling's wife had borne him another
child, and, with her infant, was doing well. The post arrived on
the Tuesday following, and Sterling left her for a moment to read
the tidings brought of his mother. He returned soon with a forced
calm on his face, but to announce his mother's death. Alas!
another bereavement, still more desolating, was at hand. In two
hours more his beloved wife also was numbered with the dead. His
two best friends were cut down by a single blow; to him they died
in one day--almost in one hour. A mother's love is unique: there
is nothing like it in the world; a wife's love is all that
imagination can picture of earthly affection; and to Sterling
they were now both things of the past. Alone, alone he must
pursue his pilgrimage, haunted by the perpetual remembrance of
joys never to return. "My children," he cried, "require me
tenfold now. What I shall do, is all confusion and darkness."
It is in such seasons of bereavement especially that the Catholic
realizes his church as the mourner's solace and the outcast's
home. But Sterling, unhappily, was debarred from this best and
sweetest consolation. Friends he had in abundance, but they were
almost all errant meteors like himself, and stars shining in
mist. By the death of his mother he became rich, when riches
could no longer purchase increase of joy. He took a house at
Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, and there strove to live for his
children and in a sphere of poetry.
{822}
But his lyre had few listeners; and it would be but loss of time
to criticise at length what is now forgotten. Now and then he
went up to town, and even entertained friends in his father's
desolate dwelling at Knightsbridge. It was like "dining in a ruin
in the crypt of a mausoleum." His silent sadness was manifest to
all through the bright mask he sometimes wore. "I am going on
quietly here, rather than happily," he wrote from Ventnor to Mr.
Frank Newman; "sometimes quite helpless, not from distinct
illness, but from sad thoughts and a ghastly dreaminess. The
heart is gone out of my life." That life was fast ebbing away,
and he knew it; he was drifting into the vast ocean of eternity,
and he watched without regret the receding shore. A certain piety
sustained him. "God is great," he would exclaim with Moslem
fervor, "God is great." His heart yearned especially toward
Carlyle, and the Maurices were constantly at his side. Infidelity
and semi-Christianity, in death as in life, were his presiding
genii. He clasped the Bible in his feeble hand, though he
believed it but in part. He prayed to be forgiven; he thanked the
all-wise One; but it was long since he had begun "to deem himself
the opponent, the antagonist of everything that is," and
antagonism is a frame of mind little conducive to peace and joy.
A few days before his death he wrote to Carlyle: "I tread the
common road into _the great darkness_, without any thought
of fear, and with very much of hope. Certainty, indeed, I have
none. ... Toward me it is more true than toward England, that no
man has been and done like you. Heaven bless you! If I can lend a
hand when THERE, that will not be wanting." To this same friend,
four days before his death, he addressed some stanzas which
Carlyle has not published, but says they were written as if in
starfire and immortal tears." His eyes were closed on this world
on the 18th of September, 1844. He sleeps in the burying-ground
of Bonchurch, and is embalmed in the memory of his friends.
His natural virtues were of the highest order; his life was
correct, his temper uncomplaining, his soul transparent, and his
imagination lively. Standing, as he did, midway between belief
and unbelief, he conciliated the esteem and friendship of
believers and unbelievers, if Archdeacon Hare and Mr. Maurice are
to be reckoned among the former. The archdeacon, indeed, goes far
in the excuses he makes for Sterling, saying, "Such men we honor,
although they fall; nay, _we honor them the more because they
fall;_" a sentiment so extravagant that the most liberal
Catholic will condemn it without hesitation.
Every life has its moral; and that of Sterling's is certainly no
exception to the rule. He is a type of educated England in the
present day--half-Christian, half-infidel. Nature and cultivation
had given him all that was requisite to make him a useful member
of society, and to cheer his dying hours with the retrospect of
an existence applied to the happiest and highest ends. But one
thing was wanting in him, a steady purpose and a clear view of
the means by which it was to be obtained. If he had been
fortunate enough to know, enjoy, and exemplify the Catholic
religion, it would have supplied him with a definite scope, and
have laid down a rule of faith and obedience by which to compass
his ends; it would have collected all his scattered forces, given
edge to his arguments, sober color to his imagination,
satisfaction to his yearnings, rest to his disquiet, comfort to
his sadness.
{823}
It would have enabled him to realize with all the certitude of
faith facts which by the light of nature he could not credit, and
truths which he could not comprehend. It would have taught him
with authority things which his teachers propounded in doubt,
asserted feebly, or distinctly denied. It would have saved him
from a wasted existence, from the shallow theology of Archdeacon
Hare and his "Guesses at Truth," from the puzzle-headed
metaphysics of Coleridge, the wild utterances of Edward Irving,
the Arian tendencies of Maurice and Dean Stanley, the
supercilious incredulity of Carlyle, the proud unbelief of
Francis Newman, and the efforts, intentional or unintentional, of
them all to bring about an unnatural and odious alliance between
infidelity and Christian faith. They have labored hard to
establish a school, and in England the results of their toil is
unhappily everywhere apparent. Unbelief is wearing a Christian
mask; and often has the language of Christ on its lips. Ministers
of religion scatter doubts in evangelical terms, and scoffers
mimic the tones and language of honest disciples. Atheists and
Deists do homage to the son of Mary, and speak respectfully of
saints, doctors, and popes. Protestant divines apologize for
sincere unbelievers, and quote with approval the writings of the
apostles of doubt. Conciliation and compromise are loudly called
for on both sides, and hatred of all law and dogma is extolled as
charitable and wise. The proposal of marriage between
Christianity and Infidelity is openly published; and the Catholic
Church alone solemnly and persistently forbids the banns.
--------------
Saint Columba.
Columba, gentlest of all names! Bequest
Of a strong Celtic mother to a child
Who, unto life's meridian, kept the wild,
Impassioned grandeur of his race; his guest
The patriot bard; while innocence oppressed
Flew, with the instinct of souls undefiled,
To his great heart, who, to the guileless mild.
Called heaven's swift curse upon the lifted crest
Of lawless power. And still the generous mind
Pores, kindling, o'er heroic legends quaint,
In which grave history dips her brush to paint
That nature fierce and tender; but combined
With grace celestial, till the man we find
Crowned with th' eternal glories of the saint.
----------
{824}
Gheel.
A Colony Of The Insane,
Living In Families And At Liberty.
The Belgian Kempen Land is a vast stretch of sandy plains in the
provinces of Anvers, Brabant, and Limburg. Its chief parish,
Gheel, has a population of some 12,000, about one fifteenth of
which are lunatics in family treatment, and many of them occupied
in the usual routine of domestic, field, and garden work. This
custom has prevailed there for a thousand years. In the seventh
century, a chapel was built and dedicated to Saint Martin, the
apostle of the Gauls. Some cells of pious hermits surrounded it
and formed the principal nucleus of Gheel. Here the young
daughter of a pagan king of Ireland sought a refuge from his
incestuous love, accompanied by Gerrebert, the priest who had
converted herself and her mother to Christianity. Her father,
discovering her traces, pursued her, caused Gerrebert to be put
to death, and his servants refusing to execute his sanguinary
orders against his daughter, he cut off her head with his own
hands, thus avenging, by the most horrible crime, the defeat of
his guilty passion. Certain lunatics who witnessed this terrible
martyrdom, and others whom piety led to the grave of the victims,
as the legend runs, were cured. Gratitude and faith attributed
the merit of these cures to the holy young virgin, henceforth
honored as the patroness of the insane. Attracted by hopes of a
miracle, other families brought their afflicted to the foot of
the memorial cross and double bier. The visitors, on their
departure, confided their patients to the charity of the
residents. This custom became an institution. Little by little, a
village was formed here, animated by work as well as prayer, and
which became, at last, an important burgh. A large and beautiful
church, built in honor of Saint Dymphna, replaced Saint Martin's
chapel, early in the twelfth century, and was consecrated on its
completion in 1340, by the Bishop of Cambrai. The popular
devotion there was approved by a brief of Pope Eugene IV., in
1400. A vicariate composed of nine priests and a director was
instituted in 1538, and in 1562 changed into a chapter consisting
of nine canons and a deacon.
From these times up to our own day, a current of pilgrimage has
been sustained by the malady and by faith.
This fountain of prayer in the desert, these pious cares
solicited and granted, have become a source of industry and
liberty for the insane, and of prosperity for the district. This
is readily explained. The barren soil of the Kempen renders it
difficult to live there, hospitality was more onerous there than
elsewhere, and economy as well as religious charity counselled
the host to have but one board with his guest. To keep him apart
would have been losing the time of those occupied in taking care
of him. Left at liberty, he would naturally accompany them to the
fields, and there, before the soil which solicited arms, another
step of progress was accomplished. So, without any constraint, by
the attractions of social labor and of gentle influences, many of
the insane became useful members of the family.
{825}
The first inspirations of religion, reenforced by considerations
of economy, came to be organized in a secular practice of humble
virtues by the habit of affectionate cares. Thus, in the rude
middle ages, the Gheel folk, without the light of science, but in
that of a religious faith made fruitful by the heart and
sustained by their interest, practised a treatment of insanity
based on the liberty of movement, on rural and domestic industry,
and on the sympathy of an adoptive family, far from all that
might recall a sinister past.
The arbitrary discipline founded on geometrical and military
ideas in modern times has not spared Gheel; yet, whatever abuses
ten centuries had introduced and habit protected there, as well
as its good services, were ascertained by a most thorough
inquest. The new regulations for Gheel in 1851-'52-'57 and '58
secure, as far as written laws can go, the well-being of the
insane.
The insane are admitted at Gheel without distinction as to
nation, religion, age, sex, or fortune. Every one is welcomed
with sincere sympathy, and receives the same hygienic and medical
care, though nothing prevents the rich from enjoying their
fortune, or whatever, in the way of luxuries, their relatives may
provide for them. One English gentleman, for instance, consumes
in festive entertainments the income of a large estate. Of late
years, the Belgian administration has excluded from Gheel certain
dangerous forms of lunacy, such as homicidal and incendiary
monomanias, and those who are constantly bent upon escaping from
any place to which they may have been taken, or whose affections
are of such a nature as to disturb public decency. It does not
appear, however, that this recent transfer of 250 patients had
been called for by any disasters. It was rather a concession to
administrative routine, and Mr. Parigot, the inspector at that
time, regrets that the colony should thus have lost a class of
patients the control of whom best attested its moral power. Both
the patients and their guardians felt aggrieved by this arbitrary
measure.
No distinctive dress is worn by the insane; their garments are
such as are worn by the country folk in general, so that nothing
calls public attention to them, nor reminds them of their
peculiar situation.
Liberty under all its forms is the good genius which has
inspired, protects, and preserves this colony: especially the
liberty to come and go, to sleep or get up, to work or to rest,
to read or write or talk at pleasure, to receive one's friends or
correspond with them without any restriction. The supreme science
of government consists in not contradicting the insane, but
humoring their innocent fantasies, or imposing nothing by force,
but obtaining all by persuasion. Unless some evident and
particular inconvenience prevents it, they enter public places,
smoke a pipe at the _café_, play a hand of cards, read the
papers, or drink a glass of beer with the neighbors. The
tavern-keepers are not allowed to sell wine or distilled liquors.
If liberty, equality, and fraternity are not _political_
terms there, they are the realities of common life. The lunatic
is a man, and is treated as such by the same right as all his
brothers in God.
You would never hear at Gheel such a complaint as this, by a poor
lunatic confined in an asylum, where, indeed, he was the subject
of intelligent and devoted cares:
{826}
"They call us _patients_, to control and to oppress us, but
they do not allow us the indulgence of sick folk! Often after a
restless night, I would like to sleep in the morning. But no: the
hour has come, the bell rings, we must rise whether we will or
not. I am not, then, a patient any longer!"
At Gheel, no bell strikes the limit between sleep and waking.
Pleasure, the example of activity, and appetite, are stimuli
sufficient to counteract sluggishness. Sleep is never disturbed,
unless by order of the physician on some particular occasion.
Often, says Dr. Parigot, I have asked on entering, "Where is
Mr.----?" The answer would be, "Doctor, our _heerke_ is
still abed; his breakfast is waiting him there by the fire;" and
this at ten or eleven o'clock.
It may be asked whether the frequency of accidents and of escapes
does not counterpoise the advantages of so much liberty.
No! accidents are neither common nor serious. Quarrels and spats
are easily appeased; they occur very seldom, which is due, in
part, to the tendency of the insane to keep apart rather than to
associate with each other. This tendency is not contravened at
Gheel, as at asylums, where the annoyance of forced association
exasperates susceptible characters and irritable nervous systems.
"I am really mad, then, for them to condemn me to live with these
people!" cried a monomaniac in despair. Enter almost any hall of
an asylum where the insane assemble to warm themselves: you will
be heart-struck by the sinister expression of this feeling in
persons most of whom are as sensible as yourself to manias which
are not their own, and whose punishment consists in finding
themselves everywhere and always with the insane. These men and
women are overwhelmed with _ennui_. The room in which they
pass the night does not belong to them, and this warmed gallery,
that yard, that garden, are for them but walled cages. You may
read upon their faces the aggravation thus occasioned, while the
chances of their cure diminish daily.
Now, turn to the lunatic at Gheel, who enjoys the free air, and
feels a property in his chamber, in his books, his tools, his
plants, his stones and various collections. He adorns his
domicile after his own fashion; his inscriptions or designs
appear upon the walls. He is busy in acting his dream; he roams
in the woods and fields; he fishes in the streams, or spreads
snares for birds, or labors at his will. Another writes all day
in the sand of the streets the story of his thoughts--
hieroglyphics to which he alone has the key. A third relieves his
inward agitation by external movement; all day innocently busy,
he returns tranquillized to his lodgings at night The rest are at
work with their hosts, or at sport with the children, their
friends and peers.
That melancholy which engenders the disgust of life, may often be
calmed by a change so complete in one's whole existence, while
the predisposition to it is not aggravated by the despair of
incarceration. Dispersion in families distinct and often
isolated, counteracts the danger of contagious imitation.
In the course of half a century, only two acts of personal
violence are on record.
The enjoyment of their personal liberty sufficiently explains why
so few try to escape from Gheel. Most of the patients have found
there a deliverance from previous constraint; yet, to provide
against all casualties, the administration, as soon as advised of
the disappearance of a patient from his guardian's premises, sets
in movement an effective police corps.
{827}
Before this was instituted, the spontaneous intervention of the
neighbors sufficed; for it was understood, for many leagues
round, that any individual whose demeanor awakened suspicions of
his sanity, should be conducted to Gheel as to his legal
residence. The restorer of a runaway was also entitled to mileage
for his trouble. When it is known that a certain lunatic is beset
with the idea of escaping, which may take possession of the
insane like any other, it is customary, after obtaining a permit
therefor from the physician in charge, to fasten two rings or
bracelets, covered with sheep-skin, upon the legs, with a covered
chain, about a foot in length, connecting them. By this means the
lunatic, without being confined, has his movements obstructed,
while attention is directed to him. How preferable this is to the
mortal _ennui_, to the sullen despair of confinement in an
asylum! What matters it to the patient that his limbs are free,
if before him is the barrier of bolts and bars--of massive doors,
and impassable walls!
The _morale_ of the insane cannot be otherwise than
favorably affected by association with persons who protect him
with solicitude, while they appeal to his good sense and good
will, admitting him on a footing of equality to their hearths,
their tables, and their work: such a welcome banishes from his
mind the idea of humiliation and oppression, which everywhere
else is connected with that of sequestration. Instead of being a
pariah shaken off by society, he now belongs to humanity; his
dignity as a man is safe, for it is respected in its chief
privilege--liberty.
In the name of this liberty, he is trusted--he is constituted, in
a measure, the arbiter of his own lot. If he do[es] not abuse it,
supervision of him is relaxed. If his freedom be sometimes
limited, the least remaining gleam of reason suffices to render
him conscious that the restrictions imposed are not hostile in
their spirit, but are simply precautions which he may disarm by a
rational conduct.
Such sentiments sustain or awaken within him the life of the
soul; they influence his manners and bearing. He does not lose
the habit of society, and if he one day return home, it may be
without shame or embarrassment; his absence will have been a
journey, and not a humiliating sequestration.
Translated from political into psychologic language, liberty is
spontaneity; and if we analyze it more profoundly, we find this
term applicable to those actions only which employ the limbs, the
senses, and the intellectual faculties as ministers of our inmost
affections of will. For all spontaneous action, the head, the
hands, and the heart are in union--the conflict between the
spirit and the flesh is reconciled.
This supreme harmony implies the unison of man with himself, with
his fellow-creatures, and with his spirit-fountain life. Express
it as you will, its conception is the basis of the Christian
therapeutics of insanity. All must be obtained of the lunatic by
gentleness, and not by intimidation or violence; nothing ought to
oppress the individuality of the patient. The mission of the
guardians is to render inoffensive, amiable, and useful, a person
imperfectly conscious of his acts. It is by one of the noblest
powers of the spirit that they say to him virtually, Be free, and
understand the sympathies that animate us. Alexander of Macedon
accepted the beverage of his physician Philip before mentioning
that Philip had been accused of intending to poison him.
{828}
Now the insane are, in the immense majority of cases, no more
guilty of ill intentions than the Acarnanian doctor, and our
Alexanders of Belgium are poor peasants.
These Gheelois have faith in their providential mission, faith in
the ancient miracles which have predestined their country to the
cure of insanity, faith in their own power. Esquirol one day
expressed to a peasant of this place his apprehensions about
paroxysms of mania. The countryman laughed at his fears, and
said: "You do not understand these folks; I am not strong, and
yet the most furious of them is nothing for me." This is the way
they all talk. The sentiment of an unlimited and privileged power
is insinuated from childhood into the soul of the Gheelois by
example and tradition. This power grows with his muscular force
and experience; it imposes upon the insane, who feels himself
feeble and disarmed before a master, and usually submits without
resistance. Any desired help can be had, moreover, at a moment's
warning, from the neighbors. The exigencies of family life with
the insane invite the inhabitants of Gheel to respect their
inoffensive fantasies, and to study in all its aspects the
difficult art of directing their erring wills, of redressing
their false ideas when they threaten mischief, of taking
advantage of a lingering sentiment of sociality or a last gleam
of reason, to secure themselves against violence and surprises.
On the other hand, as they can have recourse to material
constraint only in accidental cases, as they can reckon but
exceptionally on the intelligent obedience of patients, it is
especially by the evolution of sympathies, those quick rays of
the soul which usually survive the intellect, and are often
extinguished only with life, that the Gheelois have understood
the tactics of social government. That women should excel in this
diplomacy is not surprising. On them devolves the most delicate
and important part of a system based on managing by gentleness
the most whimsical characters. Simple, ignorant, laborious,
without the vanities of fashionable life, but kind by nature,
religious by education, and guided by her heart, the woman of
Gheel accomplishes marvels of devotion and sagacity. By her
cares, which no disgust repels, she is the visible Providence of
the poor madman. By her ingenious expedients, she averts stormy
crises, and never shows herself afraid. Without title or costume,
she is a true sister of charity. To maintain her power over her
fantastic subjects, she studies their intimate thoughts, observes
their least gestures, divines their secret projects, and learns
to read souls the most dissembling. To subdue the most savage,
the young girl does not shrink from the manoeuvres of an innocent
coquetry. At other times, it is the imperious magnetism of the
look, of the attitude, of the voice, that lays its spell upon the
spirit and dissipates fury. It is not rare to see maniacs of
herculean frame obeying little women bowed and emaciated by age,
and whose only arms are a few words spoken with authority. The
husbands and fathers are not backward in these arts of
management. Besides their innate turn for it, the peace of their
household and their interests lead them to it. All idleness is a
loss, and the boarder losing his time and making others lose
theirs, if he remained a non-value, would soon become a burden.
Compulsion to labor is out of the question. It is necessary to
humor the lunatic, to entice him by rendering the work
attractive. Is he restive?
{829}
They are patient. Is he awkward? They make fun of his blunders
without humiliating him; he will do better next time. As soon as
he succeeds a little, he is flattered and encouraged; he soon
comes to like the job. Gradually he is tamed and trained. Behold
him, then, an active and a useful member of the family, proud of
himself, a friend and child of the house, rising at the same hour
as his companions and sharing their toils. Fallen as he may be
from man's estate, does he not still afford greater capacities of
sociability than those of wild beasts? To succeed in the
education of the insane, the inhabitants of Gheel have displayed
a persevering and intelligent energy, the power of which is
enhanced by the natural sympathy of man for man. Much charity in
the heart, gentleness upon the lips, friendly actions,
_reasoning_ even, at an opportune moment, exert a sovereign
empire over characters whose susceptibility is exalted by
disease. Patience is the first of virtues necessary in this
community, and it has always risen to the height of the
aberrations it has had to meet. No eccentricity provokes either
surprise or anger. For twenty years Daniel Peter has been
boarding with a Gheelois. This maniac covers the walls of his
chamber with the most original caricatures; never does he mingle
with the members of the family; he likes only one of the
children, Joseph; but he loves him to the point of abdicating his
own personality. He nicknames all around him, persons and beasts,
even the matron, whom he calls the "tambour major." When she asks
him through the door whether he wishes to eat, he replies: Joseph
would like it; or else, Joseph will have none. The only way of
getting anything from him is to compare him with some tall
object, calling him a tree, a mast, a tower, etc. On Sunday only
he will eat no meat, and takes flight at sight of a woman or of a
horse. Notwithstanding all these whims, he is beloved by all the
family, and remains inoffensive, because he is well treated. He
returns to his lodgings regularly every evening after having
wandered in the woods and over the heath. From this exchange of
kind offices, which is the general tone, the most solid
attachments spring. "You must have seen the afflicted family of
_der Phleger_ around the sick-bed of _die Phlegling_,
you must have witnessed the touching scenes when the latter goes
forth cured from the establishment, in order to get a clear idea
of the means which constitute the basis of the treatment and the
proper employment of which assure the success of the colony.
These testimonies of gratitude and of mutual affection, these
tears of happiness and of regret, these promises to see each
other again, are the sincerest homage that can be rendered to the
solicitude of the guardians." [Footnote 229]
[Footnote 229: _Bulckeus_. Report of 1856, pp. 34, 33.]
[Transcriber's note: This line is blurred.]
Nothing better proves how deeply these feelings have penetrated,
not merely into individual souls, but into the blood and race,
than the conduct of the children of Gheel toward the insane.
Elsewhere generally, and even at Horenthals, in the neighborhood,
we have seen the unfortunate persecuted and derided. Childhood,
especially, is without pity for them. Nothing like this at Gheel.
There the _Zott_ is, even for children, an amusing
companion, without wickedness, often a comrade of their games,
sometimes a protector. It seems that between beings who have not
yet quite attained their reason, and those who have lost it, some
alliance is formed. Dr. Parigot relates his first visit as
inspector to a farm near Gheel.
{830}
"It was a cold, snowy spell in the winter. The family were
pressing round the hearth beneath the vast chimney-place, and the
best seat was occupied by a lunatic. The unexpected appearance of
a stranger on the threshold of this poor house, troubled the
quiet inhabitants a little. The frightened children took refuge,
with little cries, between the legs of the maniac. This poor
man's affection for the children was vividly depicted in his
countenance, as he protected them with a gesture. This affection
was, perhaps, the only tie that attached him to society, but this
tie of love protected himself, by deserving the regard of his
hosts." We have been gently touched by seeing in the streets of
Gheel an old man bearing two children in his arms, while two
others followed his steps. The intellectual focus was extinct, or
projected but a feeble and vacillating light, but the affectional
focus still revealed by its glow the moral grandeur of man even
in his saddest miseries.
A woman of Gheel was in company with a maniac, when suddenly he
was seized with a paroxysm of excitement. The danger was great,
her presence of mind was still greater. She took the young child
that she was bearing in her arms, and whom the madman loved,
placed it in his arms, and availed herself of this diversion to
slip out by the door; then, concealed behind the window, she
followed with eye and heart the movements of the lunatic.
Marvellous calculation! the child had at once and completely
calmed the madman, who, having caressed him and set him upon the
floor, was now playing with him. A few minutes afterward, the
mother could reenter, the crisis was passed. No one at Gheel
blamed this conduct in the mother, who had estimated justly the
fascination of infancy.
When the equality of age invites to friendship, this becomes very
lively between the children of the house and the insane. There is
one family which boards a young lunatic, who is also deaf and
dumb. She has become a cherished sister for the daughters of her
host. When they are at work together, enter and announce that you
come to take the afflicted child back to the hospital. Instantly
a cry of terror, followed by the precipitate flight of these
girls, carrying their friend along with them, will teach you how
lively is the alarm of their tenderness.
A woman of beautiful and noble countenance, and superior
education, had been found insane at Brussels, without any
information concerning her. From her own imperfect answers, it
seems she was a native of Mauritius, where her father had been a
man of note in the French revolution. Entrusted to a family of
farmers at Gheel, they welcomed her with a delicate deference for
her probable antecedents. During twenty years, they served a
little table apart for her, with more elegance than their own;
yet they received on her account only the pittance allowed for
paupers. One day when Mr. Parigot mentioned this, they answered
him, "It is enough, doctor; we love our little lady, and we wish
to keep her here. No one could pay us for what we are doing; but
we have no children, and this is our society."
A father on his death-bed had recommended to his daughter a poor
lunatic, who had witnessed her birth, and who had amused her when
little. When she married, she brought him in dower to her husband
by the terms of the contract. Heaven blessed her generosity. The
lunatic lived to be nearly a hundred years old. During this
period, their house had to be rebuilt; but the spouses made a
sacrifice of its symmetry and convenience, so as to leave
untouched the cell of this old man which had become endeared to
him by a long abode.
{831}
The relatives of patients are often too poor to offer presents.
One day Dr. Parigot was visiting a young epileptic. As he had
always found him well cared for, and knew that his friends came
to see him every year, he ventured to ask the mistress of the
house what she received on his account. She smiled and replied:
"Our Joseph's relations are poor like me, and make their journey
afoot. I keep them here a week, and they return afoot, but I give
them a rye loaf and bacon to eat on the road. These are our
presents." The exercise of these pious and delicate virtues has
formed in the heart of the Gheel folk a sentiment of corporate
honor and of mutual responsibility, which withstands individual
perversions as well as the conflicts of social life. The whole
community is interested in the fate of these unfortunates. Every
one there might affirm concerning the insane, the _humani nihil
a me alienum puto_.
The household that has no lunatic seems to lack something, and
looks out for a favorable occasion to supply this want. The
reciprocal supervision of the inhabitants prescribes moderation
and justice to all. If woman presides in the household, and man
out of doors, the eye of the community, watching over both,
protects the weak in the course of daily life, as in the
struggles which a paroxysm sometimes necessitates. Denounced by
the cries of the victim, any arbitrary violence would be promptly
reported to the physicians and to the administration. If official
defenders were absent, the public voice would suffice, and it
could not be silenced. Any suspicion of improper conduct is
readily cleared up by the interchange of visits in the
neighborhood, and thus a protection is established permanent,
universal, invisible, sanctioned by custom and superior to all
administrative patronage or written rule.
A population thus reared in the practice of sincere devotion to a
special humanitary office, by immemorial tradition, by interest,
by personal and communal honor, and by religious faith, may well
bear comparison with the most zealous servants of any public or
private asylum. The brothers or sisters of charity, who are but
casually guardians of a certain infirmity the more difficult of
treatment, because it attacks the soul as well as the body, can
hardly possess those hereditary faculties and the thousand
expedients which from infancy upward germ in the child and
develop in a family and locality, devoted to the treatment of
insanity. How much more unequal is the comparison with simple
mercenaries! Heaven forbid we should ignore the abnegation of
self, so often evinced in the most obscure services, or the
unprovided aptitudes which neither danger nor disgust discourage.
Yet it cannot be denied that the insane generally persist in
regarding all overseers as jailers and complacent tools of the
injustice of families or of society. At Gheel, on the contrary,
the most susceptible patients can see around them only hosts who
take in boarders, and among whom they often find friends and
companions. Before all disinterested judgment, what is elsewhere
the competition of business here assumes the character of a
social and medical mission, while a closer analysis discerns, in
this creation of a lively faith sustained at once by charity and
interest, a fortunate equilibrium of the springs of human action.
The twofold motive of honor and interest acts in effect like a
spring regulated by a counterpoise.
{832}
Is the guardian distinguished for his sagacity and fidelity in
the discharge of his assumed cares? He will be kept upon the list
and recommended to families by the administration. He will have
the opportunity of selection, and may exercise it so as either to
gratify his sympathies or to advance his interests.
In the sphere of a true rural life, are freely developed those
affinities which re-ally man with the beast and bird, and this
first degree in the scale of affections is far from being without
influence on the state of certain patients. Some are interested
in the cattle which they tend, in the horses, the dogs, or the
birds, of which they make companions. One lunatic at Gheel is
constantly thinking of birds; no one is more ingenious than he in
catching them. Once caged, he never leaves them, he takes them
from his cell into the family apartment, or, while they disport
in the sunshine, their vigilant master mounts guard to protect
them from their enemy the cat. Is it doubtful that these
child-like enjoyments dissipate many sorrows, or that they aid to
re-establish the harmony of the soul with the body? Deprive this
man of the society of his birds, indubitably his condition will
be aggravated. Whether as predisposing or exciting causes,
wounded pride and vanity and passional isolation amid the
pressure of crowds underlie many forms of insanity. In assembling
under his protection the group of inferior animals, every man may
innocently satisfy sentiments which are ruffled and disappointed
among his own species. Spiritual space is enlarged about him, and
the heart is amused by the play of passions similar to his own in
organisms so different as to render impossible the collisions of
rivalry.
To this first appeasement of internal agitation by all the voices
of nature, labor comes to add its powerful revulsion. Its
benefits are now so universally known and proclaimed that,
wherever space permits, it is becoming one of the bases of
treatment. At Bicêtre, the neighboring farm of Saint Anne is in
great part cultivated by a squad of lunatics chosen among those
who most readily accept the discipline of command and corporeal
exercise. Work is at Gheel the easy law of every day and every
dwelling, allowing for the antipathy which certain lunatics
evince toward every occupation, and for incapacity by certain
kinds of illness. But industry at Gheel has this precious
distinction, that there the insane works among persons of sane
mind, whose speech and actions bring him back to reason, whereas
elsewhere he is surrounded with his companions in misfortune,
whom he finds the same in the fields as at the asylum. Instead of
being sequestrated in fantastic and unnatural society, he
continues to live in the real bosom of a social family whose
children are reared by his side, he hears rational conversations
and witnesses amusing scenes. Does he desire to take part in
these? He is obliged to the act of intelligent reflection.
Occasions naturally supervene when the lunatic, butting against
inflexible reality, is led to recognize the bewilderment of his
ideas.
The family compassionates his real or imaginary troubles, and the
latter are not the least afflictive. The lunatic is very sensible
of such kindness; for among many of them, the memories of
childhood, of friendship, or of neighborhood, are preserved quite
vivacious amid the ruins of the intellect. The death of a parent
or friend will often draw warm tears.
{833}
The unfortunate is consoled by showing interest in him. When this
sympathetic indulgence can no longer be asked of the natural
family, where hope for it elsewhere than in the adoptive family?
Less discomposed by its tenderness, the latter more easily
obtains the obedience of the lunatic, who even through his
darkened reason, fails not to perceive that he has neither the
right nor the means of imposing his caprices on strangers.
One fact constantly occurs at Gheel upon the arrival of raving
maniacs. After a few days passed in their guardian's house they
can scarcely be recognized. Coming with the strait-jacket or in
bonds, they are appeased as soon, almost, as these are taken off.
Must this change be attributed to the new sphere that environs
them, to the regard that is extended to them, or to the new
current of impressions and ideas that traverses their own folly?
These influences, severally useful, are strengthened by their
association. Through them, what remains sound in the mind is
aided by good tendencies; what there is morbid, is restrained. At
Gheel is perpetually renewed the phenomenon which occasioned so
much surprise at Bicêtre, at Charenton, and in all the hospitals
of Europe, when intrepid humanity broke their chains and whips,
considered, until then, the only possible instruments for
controlling the insane. It now remains for science to confess
that every closed establishment is in itself a chain, the last
but the heaviest that remains to be suppressed.
The lunatic taken to an asylum is, from the first, assailed with
painful impressions, bunches of large keys, massive doors, bolts,
bars, cells, yards, walls, guardians, uniforms, regulations,
bells, all the appearances and all the realities of a prison. At
Gheel, welcomed with alacrity by the family to which his abode
secures a pension, he feels himself at his ease. This first
welcome exerts over the insane soul the most auspicious
influence; for one who comes from a hospital, it is a true
emancipation. By daily repetition, this contentment soon becomes
an energetic preference. When of late years certain councils of
the Belgium hospitals decided on withdrawing their insane from
Gheel, to transfer them to a rival establishment for the sake of
some trivial economy, it occasioned the most touching scenes.
Guardians and lunatics embraced each other weeping, and several
of the latter hid themselves to escape from this transfer. Force
had to be employed with others. Besides breaking in upon their
affections and their habits, they knew they were passing from
liberty to confinement! When questioned on this subject, their
feelings clearly appear. A foreign physician visiting Gheel with
me, one day asked a lunatic who had spent some time in one of the
lock-up establishments, which system he preferred. "You may
answer that for yourself," he replied reservedly; but a long and
silent look beaming with joy was the expressive interpretation of
these words. This attachment to Gheel and to the guardian's
family often survives the cure. Guardians have often been known
to keep gratuitously, wards restored to their right minds, but
who had lost their families or their relations with the world.
Not seldom is a friendly correspondence kept up all their lives,
while living far apart. Annual pilgrimages from Brussels to Gheel
renew ties formed during the malady.
{834}
There seems to be no possible doubt that life for the insane is
more benign at Gheel than in the immense majority of asylums.
Patients sent there in the initial period of insanity, frequently
experience a change for the better, and many recover their
reason. Some cures have been effected at Gheel, after two or
three years of abortive treatment elsewhere. Maniacs, much
agitated, in whom the spring of life preserves its energy, are
cured sooner than the quiet ones, who often become imbecile.
Monomaniacs, especially religious monomaniacs, are seldom cured.
They are more fortunate with intermittent forms of insanity, and
such are the patients preferred by the Gheelois, as most helpful
in their work. Cures are more frequent on the farms, where the
insane labor, than in the village, where they are less occupied.
It seems to be ascertained that the number of cures has
diminished with the falling off in devotion, and this result is
no surprise to science, which, without intervening in the
religious question, accounts faith among the most powerful
therapeutic agents. Among the patients classed as curable, the
proportion of cures has averaged between fifty and sixty-five per
cent. Unfortunately, about three fifths of the patients sent to
Gheel are desperate cases, on whom all the resources of art have
been vainly exhausted elsewhere; for Gheel makes no flourish of
trumpets, and only of late years has possessed even an infirmary,
or a corps of physicians. Its simple hygiene of liberty, and the
family life of poor peasants, is not calculated to exert the
_prestige_ of those sadly magnificent palaces in which the
insane are confined by thousands, and where pretentious science
so unwisely snubs nature. Certain medical administrators have
even pretended that Gheel was only fit for the incurable.
Formerly, they came in search of miracles; now, they seek a last
abode here. It should be remarked, moreover, that hospitals,
where the keeping of the insane is a burden, are inclined to
dismiss them as cured on the earliest signs of real improvement;
while at Gheel, where their keeping is a source of profit, and
where the patient is often more comfortable than at home, nothing
hastens his departure, which is authorized only after mature
examination by the physician of the section and the general
inspector. The chances are greater here than elsewhere, that the
patient's dismissal corresponds to a solid cure.
In default of complete restoration, the conditions of life at
Gheel determine in the insane a general amelioration which
constitutes the gentlest manner of being compatible with mental
derangement. The morbid state, reduced to its simplest
expression, excludes neither physical comfort nor a certain order
of moral enjoyments, some of which are delicate even to
refinement. The subversive tendencies are attenuated, if not
quite annulled. A young lady, confined for a year in a large
asylum, used to break up there everything that she could lay her
hands upon, and the severest restraints had to be forced on her.
At Gheel, free among the peasants, she breaks up only little bits
of wood. Unable to overcome entirely the fatal impulse that
besets her, still she understands that she is in a family which
deserves consideration, since, far from oppressing her, they
allow her to obey her instinctive needs of active movement. The
young lunatic does her hosts as little harm as she can, and this
trait admirably exhibits the influence of Gheel, which mitigates
when it cannot cure, and obtains, better than any other system,
the state of passive "innocence."
{835}
This innocence rises occasionally to a sympathetic and rational
benevolence. Among the old lunatics there are, generally,
compatriots or acquaintances of the new-comers. The former become
the interpreters of their companions in misfortune; they initiate
them into the kind of life led at Gheel; they advise them how to
manage, point out to them what the place presents of interest,
and thus assist in naturalizing them. If liberty is the first
principle of the colonial system, labor is the second. Although
every lunatic is free to abstain from it, and no physical
discipline or coercive measure is brought to bear on him, a few
sympathetic words and example frequently suffice to wean the
insane from idleness. From half to two thirds of the whole number
are usefully occupied. The household cares are shared by women,
by the aged and the infirm, along with the children and servants
of the family. Most of the artisans, such as tailors,
shoe-makers, cabinet-makers, blacksmiths, bakers, curriers, etc.,
find a place in the local industry. Some work on their own
account, and are patronized in proportion to their skill. There
used to be at Gheel an excellent cabinet-maker, very intelligent,
and who earned a good deal of money in the exercise of his trade.
A Dutchman, he had served in the French army, was made prisoner
in Russia, then incorporated among the Cossacks of the Don. In
1815, being in Belgium, he deserted, or rather resumed his
liberty and nationality, and married at Brussels, where he fell
into hallucinations which occasioned his transportation to Gheel.
He lived twenty-five years there, practising his art with
success, and talked very rationally about matters in general,
only he affirmed that the devil every night entered his body by
the heels, and lodged somewhere in it, which led him to conclude
all his discourses by asking for a probe to hunt the evil spirit.
Care is taken to place every lunatic in a family so situated in
village or country, as to employ his or her industrial capacities
to the best advantage. The furious maniacs are most in request by
the peasants, a preference easily explained. Fury attests the
energy of the organism; the internal force, physical or moral, is
disordered but abundant. In their periods of calm, madmen of this
class are vigorous laborers; whereas no profit can be made of an
idiot or a paralytic. On a sudden and violent paroxysm of acute
mania, the farmer's family, aided by the passengers and
neighbors, soon obtain control of it. Quieted again, the lunatic
resumes his work, and this work, which profits the farmer,
ameliorates by an energetic and continuous diversion the state of
the patient, rendering his paroxysms less frequent.
Although the importance of working is now very generally
understood, few asylums are provided with adequate grounds,
workshops, and implements for employing their patients to
advantage; hence this progress is still a rare exception, and
even when it exists, its benefit is much diminished by the
vexatious constraint of its discipline resembling penitentiary
labor. In most of the rich establishments life passes in
oppressive idleness, leaving the patient all day long to his
dreams, without procuring him that muscular fatigue so propitious
to sleep at night. It is enough to drive a sane man mad.
As for mental occupation with books, games, spectacles, and
social assemblies, they tend to excite instead of reducing the
circulation of the brain, and are often opposed to the desired
equilibrium of the organism.
{836}
In the Russian hospitals, the military organization of labor
becomes but a tribute of passive obedience to absolute authority,
and ceases to effect energetic revulsion from the bewilderment of
the mind. So needlework affords to women a kind of instinctive or
mechanical activity of the fingers, which leaves the imagination
vagabond. Such labors, prolonged for many hours, are so much the
more objectionable from their sedentary nature, which rather
favors than averts glandular obstructions and correlative
disturbance in the circulatory and nervous systems.
The mode of life of the small farmer, considered as a whole,
combines natural interests with varied occupations and movements
requiring skill and strength in moderate degree, observation and
attention. Above all, man feels himself here a direct coagent
with the elemental forces, a shareholder in the commonwealth of
the universe, alternately obeying and commanding, utilizing and
enjoying the play of solar and planetary forces. It is true that
all have not equally the intellectual consciousness of their
participation in this great drama, nor the intimate satisfaction
and dignity that accrue from it; yet none can be alien to its
penetrating virtues, they sustain the meanest hind and the most
oppressed slave; much more, the free, the voluntary, and amateur
collaborator. The aspects of nature wear the color of the spirit;
they are sanative in proportion as man becomes the mirror, the
guide, and the instrument of her powers. In the prisoner, at best
their suggestions cherish painful aspirations. For the free
laborer alone are they pregnant with infinite sweetness.
The arts, and especially music, contribute to the social life of
Gheel, and repeat for many a tormented spirit the experience of
David with Saul. [Footnote 230]
[Footnote 230: I Kings xvi. 23.]
A lunatic, surnamed Colbert the Great, a skilful violinist,
founded the harmony or choral society, and his name is still
honored in the memory of all the Gheelois. His portrait adorns
the hall where the society holds its meetings, and this homage
attests the cordial fraternity, devoid of prejudices and of false
shame, which characterizes the Gheel folk. In their concerts, at
patriotic or religious festivals, the parts are distributed to
the musicians according to the irrespective talents; if they play
or sing well, nothing more is required. To improve natural gifts,
there is a singing-school for the insane. Müller, a distinguished
German composer and chief of the harmony club, is the director
designated by the public voice, who solicits the honor of
forming, among the insane, pupils who shall assist him in his
concerts.
Several of the insane are members of the choir of Saint Dymphna.
Many of them piously mingle in the processions. They are often
seen in this church imploring on their knees the grace of heaven.
Only those whose illusion it is to believe themselves gods or
kings, do not kneel, but otherwise behave themselves with decency
and respect. Here, as elsewhere, individuals subject to
aberrations of reason, still undergo the influence of the
prevailing tone and manner of deportment, and give in their turn
good examples. They are generally much attached to the faith of
their childhood. In health or in sickness, and at the approach of
death, they are admitted to the sacraments of the church whenever
their condition is not such as to exclude moral conscience. These
acts raise the poor lunatic in his self-respect, and in the eyes
of the population they are a medicine of the soul.
{837}
Toward the close of the eighteenth century, when the rigors
previously enforced against the insane were relaxed, a king was
the first to experience the benefits of an opposite system.
George III. was treated by Willis on the conditions of personal
liberty, out-door amusements, and the family life. The sons of
Willis, faithful to their father's lessons, continued to receive
at Greatford, lunatics boarded in private families, but at prices
which limited this privilege to the wealthy. Gheel, without
splendid palaces, gardens, and parks, which delight visitors, but
make little impression on those who are used to them, accords to
the poorest the treatment of George III., and with the precious
addition of work.
In France, Pinel was the promoter and persevering apostle of the
reform first inaugurated at Bicêtre, then extended to the
Salpétrière and Charenton. Aiming to raise to the dignity of
patients those hapless victims who had previously been treated as
criminals or as wild beasts, beaten and chained, he realized half
his programme in making them simple prisoners, watched and cared
for with intelligence. His successes were propagated throughout
Europe, and all public or private asylums abandoned the system of
direct violence or constraint, to give, in the measure of their
resources in grounds and buildings, a larger part to liberty of
action and to labor. The so-called "_non-restraint_" system
of England merely substitutes for active cruelties dark cells
padded with mattresses. Some asylums endeavor to utilize the
influence of the director's family circle, but only at Gheel are
the common rights of man accorded to the insane. Benevolent
sentiments toward the insane have been cherished in Mohammedan
countries; regular and methodical labor with a view to economy is
common to many establishments; excursions and amusements are
organized by a few: but nowhere so effectively as at Gheel have
liberty, sympathy, and labor been combined in the common interest
of the insane and of their keepers. These, with the sedative
influence of a mild, moist climate on the temperament, and the
consolations of religion for the soul, have almost divested
insanity of its dangers, and authorize emancipation from those
chains of stone which elsewhere weigh no less than chains of iron
on the unhappy victims of fear and distrust.
This humble parish addresses to every conscience a lesson
eloquent in its simplicity of tender devotion toward our brothers
the most fallen, and whom the world disdains and repulses. It
shows how charity may precede and complete science.
---------
{838}
Life's Charity.
And the great sea closed over that wild struggle, and the wreck
went down with its precious freight of immortality!
There was a single cry that came from the white lips, one glance
from the tearless, appealing eyes.
"All ready!" sounded a rough voice from the long-boat.
"For my child!" she called out to me, above the awful din and
tumult. And I could only clench the rosary with its precious
crucifix in my bosom, and spring into the already crowded boat. I
missed and fell, and, grasping an oar, fought the angry sea for
life.
I vaguely recollect a fearful shriek, as the steamer turned and
settled; and when she sank, the strong current drew in the last
of the boats, the boat in which _she_ had taken refuge. I
closed my eyes, but in my ear rang the agony, the wild despair of
that cry, "My God! my God!" I suppose I fainted; for I only
remember opening my eyes on the deck of a small vessel, which was
scudding under bare poles before a perfect hurricane. Weeks
passed by, and in a quiet English village, on the soft, balmy
south coast, I lay trying to regain the strength which brain
fever had quite exhausted.
My kind English nurse told me that through it all I grasped the
rosary, and her heart was touched by my devotion to the crucifix.
This recalled that fearful autumn morning, when, amid the dimness
of the fog, the _Arctic_ went down to her burial.
Reverently I kissed the crucifix, and murmured my _Credo_;
from the very depths of my soul went upward, "I believe in God!"
Then, as I clasped the cross, I felt it move; but I went through
my prayers, and I suppose that the pressure of my hands caused
the spring to move, and a closely folded paper fell upon my
breast. The crucifix was large and hollow. I carefully unfolded
the delicate paper, and a shudder passed over me as the vision of
that pale woman, struggling amid the breakers, arose from
memory's gloaming. The very first words that met my eye were, "I
believe in God! and," she wrote, "I will follow his guidance. Far
from those that are dearest to me, I have buried my husband where
his fathers rest; and now, my child's voice calls me from my home
across the Atlantic. I dreamed last night of a fog, a dense mist,
that hung like a curtain; of a fearful crash, and a vision of
anguish that seems too real for dreaming; but my child's voice is
echoing in my heart, and may God speed my wanderings! A sorrow as
of coming woe oppresses me; but I believe in God! and his mercy
will save me.
"My little daughter, Marguerite Cecil, is with her guardian,
Henry Alan, No. 86 East ---- street, New York. May the
everlasting Arms forever enfold her!
Ruth Cecil."
Poor lamb! my heart whispered, the one idol, and so desolate!
Well, the spring found me on my journey to the busy metropolis;
and wending my way to East ---- street, I found the most elfish
little fairy that fate had ever set drifting on life's ocean all
alone. A bonnie wee thing was Madge Cecil; so frail that her
tenure here seemed too slight for holding; yet from the wonderful
gray eyes came flashes that gave promise of a splendid future.
{839}
Golden hair courted the sunbeams, and, flecked with light,
wrapped around the most graceful contour that twelve summers had
ever shone upon. She knew of her mother's death, for her deep
mourning dress contrasted almost painfully with the delicate
whiteness of her complexion. And when I drew her upon my knee and
put the rosary in her hand, she threw her arms around me, and
sobbed as though her heart would break. I really trembled as I
listened, for a storm of passionate agony was convulsing a frame
which had little to offer in combat. "Mamma! mamma!" she sobbed
out, and she clasped me closer. "Will God take me home to her? O
mamma! come back!"
My heart ached for the child, whose grief seemed agonizing her
very soul, so I tried to quiet her, and told her of the brighter
home where, with the holy Mother of God, her own mother would be
singing hallelujahs. I told her that this earth was only a brief
journeying-place which led to the sweet haven of eternal love,
the land where farewells could never bring a cloud, nor partings
cast a shadow. Then the large gray eyes looked trustingly up into
my face, and with her arms around me, I felt the love of my heart
go out toward her with a strength and purity I had never known
before.
Soon after this, her guardian placed her at Madame Cathaire's
large boarding-school, and "Uncle Hal," as she now called me, was
always her chosen confidant and friend.
Years passed, and I watched her beautiful girlhood unfold. She
had rare talents, a quick intellect, and intense appreciation of
the beautiful; indeed, a purer spirit seldom lived in this mortal
tenement. Yet, with her enthusiastic, impulsive nature, she
possessed a quiet strength of control that caused visions of the
old martyrs to rise; for I felt that she, too, could wrestle with
passion, and, with God's grace, subdue all sin.
And thus time sped on, and each passing season left its impress
only to mature and render more perfect the succeeding; and her
eighteenth birthday found her the realization of spiritual
loveliness. The exquisite golden curls of her childhood fell in
irregular waves from the low Grecian brow, and the sweet, earnest
eyes always recalled those of Guido's angel, bearing the branch
of lilies, in his beautiful picture of "The Annunciation." She
was living with her guardian, and her great wealth attracted many
in a city where gold is "the winning card."
There was a charming freshness and _naïveté_ in the young
girl, and at times almost a religious light gleamed from the
depths of her large gray eyes.
Her guardian's nephew, Henry Elsdon, had just returned from
Europe, and I watched him as he dallied, at first carelessly,
among the crowd that gathered around her.
I did not fancy the young man, and there was an indescribable
barrier which rose up always when I tried to like him. He was
what the world would call handsome and _distingué_, but the
droop of the lower lip, the heavy jaw, and narrow forehead truly
told of the fierce animal nature within. Madge was very lovely in
this first season, and it was plainly apparent that he entirely
failed to impress her; indeed, at times her coldness toward him
was marked.
On returning from vespers, one mild May evening, she asked me to
accompany her on her Sunday visits. Of course, I went, for who
could refuse her? Down the dark streets we wandered, till we
arrived at an old brick house that, a hundred years ago, may
possibly have been in its prime.
{840}
She tapped at the dingy door, and, like an angel of light, her
presence seemed to brighten the room. A sick woman lay stretched
on a miserable pallet, and a racking cough shook her weak frame;
but a smile of happiness illumined the pinched features, and her
voice was tender as it thanked Madge for her gentle deeds of
love.
A woman's kindliness is nevermore beautifully displayed than in a
sick chamber; and my heart did homage to the young girl, as she
knelt by the sick woman's bed, murmuring, in low, comforting
tones, the prayer:
"Visit, we beseech thee, O Lord! this habitation, and drive far
from it all the snares of the enemy. May thy holy angels dwell
herein, to preserve her in peace; and may thy holy benedictions
always remain with her, through Christ our Lord. Amen."
Her face was radiant, and her upturned eyes were holy with
inspiration. Just then a shadow darkened the doorway, and I
looked, to meet the eyes of one perfectly absorbed in the scene
before him. My startled movement recalled Madge, and a soft color
deepened in her cheeks as she seemed to feel the observation of
the stranger.
"O Miss Cecil! here is Mr. Grey, who has been as kind as
yourself. This is Miss Cecil, Mr. Grey." And then he advanced,
and the fading sunlight fell upon a splendid specimen of manhood.
Six feet of magnificently proportioned height, and a head which
Vandyke would have gloried in; steel-gray, flashing eyes, a brow
upon which intellect and will were marked, and a complexion which
the suns of Southern Europe had darkened into olive.
"Pardon me. Miss Cecil, but the likeness is perfect, and the name
so familiar. Was your mother Ruth Anderson?"
Tears streamed from her eyes as she half-whispered, "Yes!" She
could never speak calmly of her mother, for her love seemed only
to strengthen as years made the loss more keenly felt. In an
instant he was by her side, and, with the tender but perfectly
respectful manner--the manner so acceptable to a woman--he told
her how eagerly he had sought for this child of his old and
esteemed friend. He had gone abroad with her mother, and remained
in Europe till within a few months. He had read of the fearful
doom of the _Arctic_, and vainly tried to trace the child.
"I need not tell you, Madge, how very glad I am to see you, and,
before long, I shall hope to be a very good friend."
And they did meet very often. Madge spent the summer at Newport,
and Mr. Grey's cottage was near her guardian's lovely home. I
suppose there is truth in the old and familiar theory of elective
affinities; for the strength of his nature seemed to absorb her
gentle, loving trust, and her impulsive, passionate heart was
entirely swayed by his steady, strong affection; in truth, each
chord felt the echo from his. And so, in the autumn, I was not
surprised when she pointed to a magnificent _solitaire_
diamond on the forefinger of her left hand, and told me that she
had promised to be the wife of Newton Grey.
They had returned to New York, and Madge and Mr. Grey were
looking over a portfolio of engravings at the further end of the
library, while I sat smoking in front of the bright coal-fire,
dreaming day-dreams, as the smoke curled and floated away, when
suddenly the door opened and Henry Elsdon came in. I shall never
forget the look that, only for one single moment, darkened his
features; only for an instant his face looked thus, and then,
with a quick, soft step, he crossed the library, and
_suavely_ joined the circle
around the engravings.
{841}
I could see that Newton Grey would never stoop to suspect him;
but Madge recoiled from him, for there was not the slightest
affinity between such natures.
"Uncle Hal," she told me one morning, "I always feel that I ought
to cross myself when Henry Elsdon comes near me, that I may pray
to be saved from some impending evil."
And my lamb was right, for truly a wolf did prey near for her
destruction.
Business called me to the South, and I left New York to breathe
the balmier air of Charleston. It was a delicious winter, that
soft season in the sunny South. Violets in the gardens in
December, and the scarlet winter roses and sweet mignonette
brightening the lovely villa--like houses on the battery.
I was slowly descending the stone steps that led from the
beautiful cathedral, while the last echoes of the bishop's gentle
voice yet rang in my ears, when a letter was put into my hands by
my friend Colonel Everett. I did not open it then, but strolled
down Broad street, to the Mills House, and in my pleasant room I
sat down to enjoy Madge Cecil's confidence. Imagine my horror as
I read:
"Come to me, dear Uncle Hal, for God alone can strengthen me in
this fearful sorrow. I cannot understand, but yesterday Mr. Grey
left me after a short visit, and to-day they tell me that he is
dead. I hear low whisperings of a terrible sin, of which Henry
Elsdon is guilty. For my dead mother's sake, come and aid your
desolate Madge."
I left that evening, and on Saturday held my darling in my arms.
Then the whole story in its fearful detail was repeated. Henry
Elsdon had wished to marry my ward, but she had refused him, some
time before her engagement with Newton Grey. Elsdon's pride was
piqued, and he determined to be revenged. Then began a system of
deceit that was Machiavelian; for with subtle skill he won Grey's
friendship, till at last, in one unguarded moment, he dared to
speak lightly of Madge. In an instant Grey rose, his face white
with a terrible calm:
"I am in my own rooms, Mr. Elsdon, therefore you are safe; but
you must feel that each word that you have uttered shall be
retracted, else there can be but one settlement."
"And, by God! there shall be but one settlement!" And Elsdon's
face glared with hate.
And so in the code that teaches murder--cold, passionless, brutal
murder--they sought refuge; and Newton Grey fell, pierced through
the temples.
Sorrows seem truly convoyed on this ocean of life, this sea of
wild unrest; for in a few months Mr. Alan lost his fortune, and,
of course, my ward's wealth was also engulfed in the great
whirlpool of ruin.
A strange suspicion clouded my heart, and with an intuition of
the truth, I felt that I could single out the demon who had
spread destruction in this home.
But with the suavity of deceit, he subtly turned aside the tide
of censure, so justly his due, and the world even forgave him for
the duel; for strange travestied stories floated through the
city. Who gave them to the public? I felt, I knew that Henry
Elsdon had only added to the infamy which weighed upon his soul;
but as yet the avenger had not struck, the race of hell had not
been accomplished! ...
It was the exciting winter of '60 -- December, 1860! South
Carolina had torn herself from her sisters, and Washington was in
a ferment. Crowds congregated at the hotels to watch the opening
of a season fraught with destiny.
{842}
Men with reckless, evil passions increased the excitement; for
cognac burned and whiskey infuriated, and the whole mass of
humanity seemed consumed by the one madness, mutual hate!
It was the evening of the 27th of December. The telegraph had
spread the news of Anderson's evacuation of Fort Moultrie, and
the agitation was culminating in effort. There is a season when
enthusiasm pulses, till the wild madness intoxicates all feeling;
then some sudden crowding on of events drives the fierce current
into action, and the mighty mass heaves and surges with one will,
one heart, for the conflict; and so it was to night. I stood on
the corner of Pennsylvania avenue and Seventh street, watching
the changing faces which the gas-light flared upon, when a
woman's voice in wild terror startled me. "In the name of the
cross, forbear!" she cried. And I turned to see a face pale with
fear and horror. In an instant I was beside her; she held the
cross of her rosary toward the man who had dared, not only to
insult a woman, but one of God's ministering angels, those pure
spirits of comfort, the Sisters of Mercy.
I struck the brute from her, but not without recognizing the
features, even though inflamed and distorted by liquor. She
almost fainted in my arms, but I placed her in my sister's
carriage, just then passing, and ordered it to drive to the
address which she gave.
What there was in the tones of that woman's voice I could not
explain to myself; but a sad chord vibrated till the echoes waked
in my heart feelings that I thought were sleeping quietly in a
jealously guarded grave of the past. ...
Four years had gone by since that night, and the war that shook
this continent had closed; ended were the years that had brought
their holocaust, the proof of the calibre of the men who had died
on the field of honor.
Grant's triumphant legions garrisoned the Confederate capital,
and I was appointed surgeon in charge of ---- Hospital, where the
sick and wounded of both armies were tended by the Sisters of
Mercy.
The intense heat of those early summer days I can never forget,
and the poor fellows in blue and gray tossed from side to side on
the narrow cots in the fever wards. It was my night in ----
Hospital, for I was appointed to relieve Dr. ----, and I observed
a "sister" bending over a patient whose white face and faint
voice told me that his hours were numbered.
"Sister Mary," said the feeble tones, "will you bathe my temples?
they burn and throb as fiercely as my own heart. Sister, can a
vile wretch ask you to stand near when he is dying? Sister, you
who are pure and holy, tell me if God will pardon me?"
"He came to save sinners!" I heard the low voice whisper. And she
smoothed back the tangled masses of dark, waving hair, and
tenderly soothed the poor fevered brow on which the dews of death
were gathering. "Stay near me, sister. Let me hold your hand,
while I listen to your voice, that recalls one in the long ago. O
God! look down in mercy!"
And she whispered sweet words of comfort that calmed the unrest
of sin and shame.
"Sister, if I could give all the years that I have wasted, if I
would toil and struggle and pray for pardon, would Christ have
mercy upon one whose years are heavily weighted with sin?"
"Repent, and ye shall be saved."
{843}
"Ah God! I do repent, and if a thousand years of suffering could
atone for all, I would not shrink from a single pang. Sister,"
and he turned and held her hand closer, and gazed long and
anxiously into her half-averted face. "My God! can it be?" But
she turned further into the shadowy twilight, and her face was
almost hidden. "Sister, I must tell you, because there is
something in your tone and look, though I cannot see you well,
that brings her back to me; so be patient for a little while and
do not leave me yet. In the long ago I loved, and she whom I
worshipped gave me no return. I think that circumstances might
have moulded her differently, though my selfish passions taught
me then to care for little, save what contributed to my own
gratification. Well, I watched her love for another, and the
devil influenced me; he stole away my truth, my love, my honor! I
was mad with jealousy, I was wild with disappointed love, and I
swore to be revenged. Therefore the schemes I laid, the deceit I
practised; ay, I bided well my time. I stole the friendship of
her lover, and poured my poison into his ears; but his noble
nature shamed me, his trust could not be shaken; then--ah! how
well I remember the evening--I spoke of her as my heart never
believed; I lied, wickedly, maliciously lied, upon her! Then his
knightly spirit rose, and he fell by my hand! I had begun; the
poison was maddening; I could not stop, even though murder barred
my path; so I counselled her guardian as to investments, and in
one mad moment her fortune crashed with his.
"Still I tracked her on her mission of mercy to Washington; I
dogged her steps when she left the couch of the sick woman whose
death agonies she had soothed; I stood near the door of the
wretched hovel, listening to the sweet tones of her voice that is
haunting me to-night; and--I hardly knew what I was doing, I only
felt that there was yet something undone which might humble her,
might place her at my mercy; hell's fires raged in my heart--and,
may God forgive me, but I spoke words to her which no man should
utter and live. But she escaped me, and was torn from my grasp,
while her pallid face grew whiter still as she spoke in terror,
'In the name of the cross, forbear!'
"Since that evening, I have never seen her face; but, sister,
to-night all her saintly purity comes back to shame me, and I
feel that the flames of hell would be less fiery if I could hear
her say, 'I forgive you!'" There was a brief pause; the twilight
of June shadowed the whitewashed wards, and the young moon shed a
soft light over the starry heavens; but was it a message that
flashed from Our Lady's crown, that lit the pallet over which the
sister leaned? Ay, the face of Guido's angel, the angel of the
lilies, shone over the dying man, as the sweet voice whispered,
"Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you."
"Her voice!" he cried. And a sudden strength seemed to possess
him; for, seizing her hand, he pushed back the black bonnet, and
whispered, "Madge Cecil, dare I pray for your pardon?"
"And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass
against us. Amen." And she gave him her crucifix, which he
pressed to his lips.
"Then let me die in your faith; for, if its doctrines teach you
even to forgive me, then through the prayers of your church will
God grant mercy to my soul." He fainted in her arms, and she
summoned me.
"Dr. ----, take care of him till my return."
{844}
I had heard it all, but she failed to recognize me. Grief had
whitened my hair, and an iron-gray beard covered my face; and I
preferred that she should not know me yet Soon I saw her return
with Father Baker. My cordial had revived Elsdon, and in faint
voice he repeated his wish.
"Let me be received, father, into the communion of the Holy
Catholic Church, and pray God to have mercy on my soul."
The time was short, and no precious moment of it was to be lost.
The good priest proceeded at once to his work of preparing the
poor man for death. His penitence seemed sincere and profound,
and his desire for the sacraments of the church most earnest.
They were at once administered to him; and on his fervently
expressed wish that the holy viaticum might be permitted to him,
it was brought.
A snowy linen cloth was spread on the table by his bed, and two
candles placed beside the crucifix. Solemnly we gathered near,
for we felt that his life was fast fleeting. I have never seen
nor realized more of the agony of contrition than when he slowly
repeated after the priest, suffering at each word most intensely,
"Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me!" At last he
grew calmer. A quiet peace rested on his pale face, and after
receiving the most holy communion, he murmured faintly, "Jesus,
have mercy on me! Holy Mary, pray for me!" and folding the
crucifix to his heart, he closed his eyes and we thought he
slept. A deathlike stillness reigned, broken only by the solemn
tones of the priest's voice: "Into thy hands we commend his
spirit, which has been created and redeemed by thee!"
And in that pentecostal hour, when the storm of her life wailed
its wild requiem in her heart, a holy calm, as a message from
God, glorified her exquisite face, for the Comforter had sealed
her with the expiation--the working out of life's great charity--
"Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you and persecute you."
--------------
The Rights Of Catholic Women.
By A Lady.
[We took occasion, some months ago, to sketch a number of the
charitable works of Paris, in the hope of stirring the
emulation of some of our leisured, zealous, and wealthy
fellow-citizens to undertake something of the kind in this
densely crowded city. The correspondent whose communication is
given below, and whose contributions have often graced our
pages, has felt her soul stirring with the same impulse in
visiting Catholic Europe. Her earnest words came appropriately
after the letter we published last month respecting a Refuge or
Central Mission-House for vagabond children. There lies an open
field where hundreds may work without jostling each other; and
we hope this iron may be hammered while it is hot into a
practical shape, and not merely serve as a poker to a useless
fire of sentimental philanthropy. There is nothing like
reducing the abstract to the concrete, sentiment to work,
resolution to definite action.
{845}
We venture to suggest something else, also, to those of our
fair readers who may be awakened to a desire of claiming their
woman's rights by the appeal of their gifted countrywoman. It
is practical, and yet not so difficult, as sending checks for
one thousand dollars, or searching the streets for vagrant
children. A society exists in Paris for making and embroidering
vestments and other ornaments for the altars of poor churches
and missions. Why not inaugurate the same work among the ladies
of New York, for the benefit, first, of small country churches
and chapels in our own diocese, and secondarily of similar
churches elsewhere? We cannot rival Paris by a sudden _coup
de main_ or accomplish everything in a day. But it is
possible to make a beginning with one necessary work of charity
after another, and to bring them gradually to the colossal
dimensions which want and misery and vice have attained without
any effort.--Ed. C. W.]
In _The Atlantic Monthly_ of April and May, 1868, appeared a
generous and high-toned article, entitled "Our Roman Catholic
Brethren," in which the author, appreciating the fact that no one
can lose ground by treating with justice those who differ from
him in opinion, frankly recognized the noble struggles of our
priesthood and the success with which they have been crowned.
One assertion in this article we shall venture to comment upon,
making this the occasion for a few suggestions to the Catholic
women of the United States, whose right to share the labors of
Catholic men is inalienable and incontestable, being founded upon
the unvarying teaching of the church.
The author, in speaking of a missionary bishop whom he had known
and respected as an "absolute gentleman," an "exquisite human
being," in whom all the frailties springing from self-love had
been consumed, leaving the "whole man kind, serene, urbane, and
utterly sincere," concludes thus: "_A Catholic priest, indeed,
would be much to blame if he failed to attain a high degree of
serenity, moral refinement, and paternal dignity;_" because,
be it understood, he has neither family cares nor business
anxieties to harass him.
Most assuredly true, so far as concerns priests in a Catholic
country, where the ranks of the priesthood are full; perhaps true
in a purely missionary country, where the priest, in his
intervals of repose, communes with his only companions, God and
nature; absolutely untrue when applied to a parish priest in the
United States, drained of his spiritual riches all day, and often
half the night, and for relaxation thrown sometimes upon the
companionship of his inferiors. It is no uncommon thing to see a
noble priest, at the very centre and core of life, when powers
should be ripe, strength unbroken, hope and nerves unshaken,
break down, crushed under the weight of work which should have
been divided between several persons, leaving to each one work
enough to occupy a man of average capacity, time for study, and
time for the recuperation of his spiritual powers by prayer and
meditation.
Now, where is the remedy for this? Not in a sufficient number of
clergymen, because we cannot hope for such a blessing for many
years to come. Not in a diminution of labor, thank God, for the
domain of the church is constantly widening, and souls are
clamoring more and more eagerly for the privileges of religion.
{846}
The assistance must come from the laity, not working each one
after a fashion of his or her own, but in a systematic manner,
doing the work recommended by the parish priest in the way most
agreeable to him.
That the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul contains all the
elements necessary for providing Catholic men with missionary
work, we are well aware; therefore we address ourselves
exclusively to Catholic women.
Early in February of the present year, on a radiant Roman day,
the remains of Saint Ignatius, bishop and martyr, were brought in
triumph to the Colosseum from their resting-place in San
Clemente. There, where, 1758 years before, the cry had gone up
from 80,000 spectators, "Ignatius to the lions!" the Litany of
the Saints arose to heaven; there, where wild beasts had snarled
over their consecrated prey, canonized bones lay on a gorgeous
bier, surrounded by cardinals, bishops, priests, and religious,
gathering about them in veneration. One, at least, of those who
watched the scene from the crumbling galleries, asked herself
eagerly if God has ceased to call upon his children for
sacrifices, as he called upon the early Christians; and
conviction answered. No; that, though martyrdom has a mysterious
value in the eyes of the church, she tenderly loves those who
patiently endure the pangs of "that incurable malady which we
call life."
And the Christian passing through the catacombs of Rome to-day,
pausing in silent awe beside the tombs of martyred virgins,
mothers, children, and pontiffs, draws in with every breath the
same glorious assurance which gave them strength to suffer--the
assurance that God would have us serve him with every nerve and
fibre of our being. He claims from the nineteenth century, as he
claimed from the first, not, indeed, its blood, but its energies,
its faith, its charity. He summons every soul capable of the
sacrifice of self to a life in the catacombs, to a holy, interior
solitude, where his inspirations can be distinctly heard, where
the buzz and hum of the world are inaudible. And as, after the
celebration of the sacred mysteries, the early Christians were
dismissed, and sent back to the performance of their ordinary
avocations, invigorated and renewed; so God releases such souls
after communing with them, and sends them forth to work for him,
setting upon them three signs to distinguish them from other
laborers--peace, simplicity, and perseverance.
In the early ages the laity suffered martyrdom with the clergy.
In our own day, the laity should share the labor of the clergy.
We are not summoned to bear witness to God in one mighty
confession of faith sealed with our blood; but we are bound to
show our fidelity to him by lives of unremitting devotion, to
lighten the burdens weighing on the priesthood, to do our utmost
to leave them leisure for the direction of souls, and for those
works of supererogation which are the very heart and pulses of a
life consecrated to God.
There are four things which we do not wish to recommend to
Catholic women; namely, neglect of domestic duties, overexertion
on the part of invalids, indiscreet activity in recent converts,
the undertaking of difficult enterprises by those who are not
gifted with executive faculty.
Home is the training-school of souls, and a mother's chief duty
is to her husband and children. The physically weak serve God by
renunciation and sacrifice, hardest and noblest of all
apostleships. Converts, generally speaking, should show their
families, by tact, affection, fidelity to home duties, that
conversion has only knit them more closely to old friends and to
natural claims; and this is seldom consistent with much exterior
activity soon after conversion. It is very rarely advisable to
undertake any work of importance without the advice of a
judicious confessor; a just appreciation of one's personal
strength and weakness is too rare a gift to be relied upon as a
right.
{847}
It is our misfortune in the United States that the number of
communities is very small in proportion to the work to be done;
but though a clergyman would rather receive assistance from
religious than from any one else, he would gratefully accept the
aid of women of the world, provided they were possessed of
judgment, tact, and perseverance.
To take up a charitable enterprise from love of excitement and
lay it aside just as one's assistance had become valuable, would
not be a proceeding modelled on the actions of the early
Christians.
To make one's way into a public institution to patients or
prisoners in a manner at variance with the regulations of the
establishment, would not tend to advance the cause of religion.
To foster the whims of the poor and excite in them false wants,
would add to their sufferings, not lessen them.
All these mistakes may easily be made by well-meaning persons who
have not prudence. With fidelity, modesty, and common sense, it
is impossible to make serious blunders, and it is possible to do
a great deal of good without the sacrifice of much time or
comfort.
Those who have health and leisure can work for the church; those
who are too busy or too ill to undertake missionary labor can
pray for the church. All who have an hour to spend or an ave and
pater to recite, or an ache or a pain to offer to Almighty God,
can do their share of the blessed work.
Without questioning the fact that the highest of all vocations is
the call to a religious life--conceding the point that the work
done by women has been usually better done by religious than by
women of the world--we think there is a tendency to deny, to
that obligation resting upon us all to do the work God marked out
for us, the name of _vocation_, unless it leads us to a life
in the community or to marriage. We venture to predict that an
important share is to be taken in the work of the church in this
country by women who have neither a vocation to join a religious
order nor to marry.
There is a correspondence between the various vocations of
religious orders and those of persons living in the world. Let us
read over the golden record, and decide which path we are called
to follow. There are the working orders, Sisters of Charity, of
Mercy, of the Good Shepherd; the teaching orders, Ursulines,
Sisters of the Visitation, Ladies of the Sacred Heart, and that
sweetest of orders, the Sisters of Notre Dame, whose fame is
hidden behind humility and obedience; and the contemplative
orders, on whose prayers hang the fruit of thousands of energetic
enterprises.
Most of the prisons, work-houses, and hospitals in the United
States need the influence of judicious women. As such
institutions are almost exclusively filled with poor people, and
as more than half our poor people are Catholics, more than half
the inmates of asylums, penitentiaries, etc., are Catholics; it
is, then, a matter of justice that Catholic prisoners, patients,
and paupers should be under Catholic influences.
{848}
Obedience to discipline is a principle most strongly inculcated
by the church, and no consistent servant of the church will
infringe the smallest regulation in any institution to which he
has admission. When this truth is fully recognized, Catholic
ladies will be allowed to visit freely all the public
establishments in the Union. Let those who wish to do work
corresponding to that of the working orders use all available
opportunities for alleviating the sufferings and ameliorating the
condition of the lower classes.
There are hosts of children who must learn the catechism; not
after a parrot-like fashion, such as any ignorant person can
teach it to them, but in a vital manner, so that the truth shall
be set in their souls like a jewel, to be transmitted to future
generations as a precious heritage. Every well-disposed and
intelligent Catholic child can be sent forth from his course of
instruction in the Sunday-school with the fervent determination
to be a missionary in his own little sphere. Those who emulate
the labors of the teaching orders have not far to seek for their
work.
The Catholic literature of France, Germany, and Italy should be
in general circulation in America, through the medium of good
translations. Women are especially fitted to be translators.
Their impressionable and adaptive minds make it easy for them to
understand an author's thought and adopt his style. Let those who
would follow in the footsteps of the contemplatives of earlier
ages, whose leisure hours were given to writing for the benefit
of religion, study critically their mother tongue and one other
modern language, and thus unlock some of the treasures of foreign
literature to those less gifted than themselves.
But enough, and more than enough for the present. We have sought
to arouse a sense of the importance of the work to be done, not
to explain the best method of accomplishing it. We have tried to
show Catholic women what are their rights, leaving it to God to
awaken in them a noble ambition to claim and appropriate those
rights.
--------------
The Last Gasp Of The Anti-catholic Faction.
Protestantism and the Protestant denominations may be considered
under two aspects. Under one aspect, the former is an imperfect
Christianity, and the latter are societies professing each a
certain form of this Christianity. As such we respect them,
recognize the Christian and evangelical truths they retain, honor
the virtue and goodness which are found among their adherents,
and freely admit their great utility in many important
particulars. We have no desire to wage a fierce polemical war
upon them, but rather desire to discuss with them in a fraternal
spirit the differences between us, the causes which keep us in
separation, and the means of reconciliation and reunion.
Under the other aspect, the one is a denial of the first
principles of Christianity, and the others are aggregations under
the control of party-leaders whose principal object is the
destruction of the church of Christ with its dogmas and
discipline.
{849}
Although particular denominations do not avow a hostile intent
toward all dogma and discipline, each one professing to maintain
whatever it has selected as its constitutive principle out of the
entire Christian system, yet the general sum and result of their
combined efforts against the Catholic Church tends to the utter
demolition of Christianity. This active, anti-Catholic
Protestantism in our own day and country is principally confined
to a comparatively small fraction of nominal Protestants. It is a
wheel within a wheel, an _imperium in imperio_, a ring, a
faction, very impotent, but extremely turbulent. The deadly
quarrels of its component members with each other interfere
materially with their unity of action against their common enemy.
Now and then, however, a common sentiment seems to awaken in them
that they had better postpone their private disputes until they
have compassed by their united energies the fall of Babylon. Such
a phenomenon has appeared quite recently in the ecclesiastical
heavens. The newspapers of the principal sects have resounded
with a call for united efforts on the part of Episcopalians,
Presbyterians, Unitarians, etc., against the progress of the
Catholic Church in the United States. Dr. Bellows, who is as
restless as if he were pursued by the Eumenides, and who seems to
get into a more uncomfortable frame of mind every day as he
prosecutes his travels, sends over a loud call showing the
necessity of doing something to preserve that Protestantism which
it has been the business of his life to overwhelm with ridicule
and contempt. The liberal papers, false to their reiterated
protestations of hatred against orthodox Protestantism and
sympathy with Catholics, re-echo the sound, which is taken up by
one and another of the lowing presses in turn, until each one
_quid lachrymabile mugit_. Dear friends, what is the matter?
If you will permit the citation of a somewhat trite classical
passage, permit us to ask, _Tantaene animis coelestibus
irae?_ We have been much at a loss to divine the immediate
exciting cause of such a sudden aggravation of symptoms in our
domestic "sick man." We think, however, that we have at last
discovered that we are the innocent cause ourselves, through a
few little harmless tracts, which were intended as a poultice,
but have proved, we suppose on account of the extreme
irritability of the patient's skin, a violent blister. We made
the discovery by reading the following circular, which we publish
cheerfully, in order to promote as much as possible that free and
lively discussion which our excellent friends at the Bible House
desire:
(Private.)
American and Foreign Christian Union,
27 Bible House, New York,
June 17, 1868.
Mr. Editor:
Dear Sir: We are desirous of employing, in your journal, the
pen of one of your ablest contributors, in the fair and
thorough discussion of the recent publications and pretensions
of the Roman Catholic Church.
You have doubtless seen some of the popular tracts of the
"Catholic Publication Society." They have been circulated in
all parts of the country with great assiduity. They are very
ingenious and plausible, and very fallacious. It is matter of
common interest to all who love evangelical truth that these
fallacies should be promptly and effectively exposed.
{850}
We have a proposition to make which seems to us to be for the
mutual advantage both of your enterprise and of ours. If you
will send us the address of that one of your contributors or
collaborators whose papers on this subject will be most
acceptable to you and your readers, we will make proposals to
him for contributions to your journal, we supplying him with a
copy of the series of popular tracts of the "Catholic
Publication Society," and such other documents as he may need,
and paying for his literary labor at a generous rate of
compensation.
If you shall succeed in introducing us to writers on the Roman
Catholic controversy who are learned, accurate, and courteous,
and at the same time lively and effective in their popular
style, we shall hope to continue and renew an arrangement which
must be for the advantage of all the parties to it, and of the
great cause of Christian truth.
Yours respectfully,
J. Romeyn Berry,
H. C. Riley,
Leonard W. Bacon,
E. F. Hatfield,
Samuel I. Prime,
_Committee on Publications of the "American
and Foreign Christian Union_."
Naturally, we have been on the alert ever since receiving this
interesting circular, expecting a rare treat from the articles to
be furnished by the learned, courteous, lively, and well-paid
contributors to the press who must have jumped at once at this
handsome offer. We have not yet gathered in a very ample
collection of choice _morçeaux_ as the result of our study
of the anti-Catholic press. We have obtained, however, a few
gleanings which may be indications of an abundant harvest yet to
come. Here is one from _The Episcopalian_, which no reader
of that paper will expect to find either accurate, courteous, or
lively, but which, as communicating a piece of rare and recondite
information, may fitly prove a sample of the "learned" style:
"It has been suggested--and, we think, not without some
reason--that the origin of ritualism in the Protestant
Episcopal Church may be traced to the Roman Catholic Church
itself; in other words, that the Roman Church, with the view of
proselyting the Episcopal Church, has sent among us secret
emissaries, of the Jesuit stamp, who, while pretending to be
Episcopalians, are really Romanists, and whose mission it is to
introduce one Romish novelty after another, until the
congregations in which they are introduced are gradually but
surely drawn into the communion of the Romish Church.
"To those who have studied the far-seeing policy of the Roman
Church, and its secret workings for ages past, this suggestion
will not seem strange or far-fetched. That equally subtle means
for proselyting have been used by that church in times past no
one can doubt who has read its history; and what has been done
can be done--or, at least, tried--again.
"Freese.
"Trenton, N.J., June, 1868."
The following, from _The Brooklyn Union_, if not learned or
lively, is at least in a high degree "accurate and courteous,"
being a most respectful remonstrance against the audacity of
Catholics in presuming to be so numerous, and to lay the
corner-stone of a cathedral in open day on Sunday:
"He that Rules the City Rules the Country.--The Pope of Rome
well knows this axiom. The Jesuits know it. The politician
knows it. They all _act_ upon it. Cities are chosen as
their centres of organization. From these centres their power
radiates through every town and village and hamlet and district
of our land. In a government like our own, this is particularly
true. The pulsations of life and power of our larger cities,
both in religion and politics, indicate the condition, in these
respects, of our whole country. Hence the favored policy of the
Papal hierarchy of inducing its subjects, when emigrating to
the United States, to settle within the limits or easy access
of our cities. Statistics show that the foreign Papal
immigration, East, West, North, and South, settle chiefly
within or about our cities.
{851}
No one with his eyes open has failed to see this with respect
to New York, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and
Buffalo. The _foreign_ population of these cities
_rule_ them. They present a majority of thirty thousand in
New York. What may be their exact proportions in our other
populous cities, the writer has at present no means of
ascertaining. But from the number, the grandeur, and the
costliness of their cathedrals and educational institutions in
other cities--in such as Chicago and St. Louis--we should judge
that their number is greater in proportion to their population
than it is in New York. This statement has reference to the
Papists. For the _infidel_ proportion who come to our
shores from Europe, and who have been driven to infidelity by
the tyranny and wickedness of Papacy, have no sympathy with
that system in propagating its means of worship. All their
sympathies are with our free institutions. Their licentiousness
and disregard of the Christian Sabbath are the fruit of their
infidelity. Even for this the Papal Church is responsible
before God. But the Papacy, in its _spirit_ and in its
_policy_ and in its _designs_, is opposed to our
republican government. It is the sworn inveterate enemy to
every principle and policy which favors republicanism. No
bishop, no priest, and no member of the Papal Church ever has
been or ever can be a loyal subject of a free government. Every
pretence or profession or act which they avow to the contrary
is the necessary outgrowth of wilful deception, hypocrisy, and
falsehood. Among the _masses_ of her members an oath of
loyalty may be the result of ignorance; and it may be permitted
to remain of binding authority so long as it does not conflict
with their first and paramount obligations with their church.
But with the bishops, the priests, and the Jesuitical hordes of
their hierarchy, an oath of loyalty or of testimony is of no
value as a test of truthfulness. Nay, it is often taken as a
means of deception, to accomplish some concealed purpose. Their
fundamental doctrines of _mental reservation_ and
_universal subordination_ to Rome necessarily exclude from
their virtues that of true patriotism. That this hierarchy has
for some years past been collecting, arranging, and
concentrating the elements of her strength in and around the
cities of the United States, is evident to any one who has
watched its progress. Her power is abundantly manifest in the
influence which she has exerted in the legislation of our
cities and our states, in the appointments of many of our
highest offices of trust and power, in the disposition and
distribution of our public charities, and in the control of our
popular system of education; and that the time has come, in
their judgment, when she can, with safety to herself, openly
assert her power, can be seen in the popular tracts, now
numbering some thirty-one, of her religious press, in the
public discussions of her periodicals, in her
politico-religious organizations, as well as in her open and
defiant Sabbath parades, and other desecrations of that blessed
day. Let her have full scope to her power and freedom _as a
church, in a legitimate way_. Let her seek to build up her
cause as a system of religion, the same as Protestant churches
in our country. But let her not attempt to ride rough-shod upon
the rights of Protestants by her noisy parades, with drum and
fife and boisterous shouts in front of our churches upon the
Sabbath--by her insolent and brutal outrages upon unoffending
Protestants when peaceably pursuing their avocations. Let her
no longer refuse to listen to the respectful remonstrances of
American citizens against such encroachments. Public religious
services and the administration of the Lord's Supper in some of
our churches were almost entirely prevented by the noise and
confusion of the Papal parade on a late Sabbath. This nuisance
has been _repeated_ in New York and Brooklyn in opposition
to the respectful but earnest petition of Protestant laymen and
clergy. On these occasions, several of our largest streets were
piled up with city passenger-cars, that were forced to stop
running on account of the procession. And what was all this
confusion, all this violation of law and order, upon the
Christian Sabbath for? Why, simply that a single Papal
congregation might lay the corner-stone of the church of the
'Immaculate Conception.' Hundreds of quiet and orderly churches
must be interrupted in their worship, the rights of large
corporations must be trampled under foot, and the stillness of
the Sabbath be invaded by the drum and fife and shout of a
_drunken rabble_, for the sake of a single Papal
congregation! Such occasions are not without a purpose. They
afford the priesthood a fine opportunity of testing the
strength of numbers, of trying the patience of the Protestant
community, of gradually corrupting their respect for the
Christian Sabbath, and of intimidating politicians with a show
of power. Their design is a _political_ one. There is no
religion about it. Her power is broken upon the 'Seven Hills'
of Italy, and she is trying now to re-establish it in the
metropolis of America. But who dare array himself against her
avowed determination to subordinate all things to her purpose?
{852}
What politician, what party, or what partisan newspaper dare
oppose the _political_ system of Papal hierarchy? It
remains for the Protestant clergy of our evangelical
denominations to take up the cause of religious liberty. No one
will dare to speak out if they remain silent. The eyes of all
are toward them. They must take the lead in the conflict with
'the man of sin.' God has thrown the responsibility upon them.
They can, if they will, sway both the religious and political
destinies of our nation. Let no one talk about the danger or
the fanaticism of introducing politics into our pulpits. The
days of such cowardly conservatism are past. Let politicians as
well as Papists, at whose feet the former bow, be made to feel
that patriotism is a Christian virtue, and that its sacred fire
is kept alive and pure only in the breasts of those who swear
by an open Bible and a free conscience. If our Protestant
ministers will do their duty, the masses of our people will see
the danger which threatens us. They will unite their strength
in a successful issue with the powers of darkness, and our
politicians, seeing the strength of such a combination, will
withhold their sympathy and patronage from a system which, in
the garb of _religion_, aims its death-blow at the very
root of our civil liberty.
C."
The following is a specimen of the "lively and effective" style:
Catholicism.
A Reply To J. G. Parton's Article In The Atlantic Monthly.
This little treatise is respectfully presented to J. G. Parton
and all our Catholic brethren, by their brother and friend,
Charles W. Gilbert.
"And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying. _All power_
is given unto me in heaven and in earth."--Matthew xxviii. 18.
"This is the _stone_ which was set at naught of you
builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is
there _salvation_ in any other: for there is _none_
other name under heaven given among men, _whereby we must be
saved_."--Acts iv. 11, 12.
"It behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he
might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in things
pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the
people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he
is able to succor them that are tempted."--Hebrews ii. 17, 18.
Galesburg, June 22, 1868.
Mr. J. G. Parton: Dear Sir: I flatter myself you will excuse me
for the liberty I have taken in addressing you this letter. It
has been called for by reading a communication in _The
Atlantic Monthly_, in April last, respecting our Catholic
brethren.
I have neither time nor space to write half I want to, only to
mention a few points: And first, you say there is a difference
between Catholics and Protestants in the mode of praying; you
say a Protestant hides his face in his hands, but Catholics do
not, though they kneel, but the body is upright. Dear sir, do
you not know the reason? Our Catholic brethren worship images,
which God has forbidden. Turn to the second commandment: "Thou
shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of
anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth
beneath," etc. "Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor
serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third
and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy
unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for
the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in
vain. Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt
thou labor, and do all thy work," etc. Take your Bible and read
all the commandments.
Dear sir, can you find one of our Roman Catholic brethren that
keeps the commandments? Turn to the First Epistle general of
John, second chapter, fourth verse, "He that saith, I know him,
and keepeth not his commandments, is a _liar_, and the
truth is not in him."
You speak of their communion. Do they drink the _wine_ and
eat the bread, as Christ has commanded? No, no! A little wafer
is put on the tongue. Please turn to the seventeenth chapter of
Revelation, fourth verse.
The next topic is the Catholic Sabbath-school. Sir, what is a
Sabbath-school _without_ the _Bible_ to direct us how
to teach little children the way of life and salvation? Do you
not know that the priests do not allow the Bible to be read in
a Sabbath-school nor in a day-school? This is the reason they
will not send their children to the Protestant schools.
{853}
What said St. Paul to Timothy? "And that from a _child_
thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are _able_ to
make thee wise unto salvation through _faith_ which is in
Christ Jesus."--2 Timothy iii. 15, We read also, in the
sixteenth verse, "_All_ Scripture is given by inspiration
of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness."
What said Jesus? "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think
ye have _eternal life_: and they are they which testify of
me."--John v. 39.
You say the children in the Sabbath-school sing to the Virgin
Mary the following stanza, "O Mary! Mother," etc. Dear sir, who
is this Mother Mary? Let Christ answer. Turn to Matthew xii.
50: "For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in
heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." Read
also in Mark iii. 35; also Luke viii, 21.
You quote the prayer that the superintendent uttered, in Latin.
How _edifying_ that must have been to the children,
especially when he used the word _immaculate_ Host! Could
the children have understood that word, they would have
blushed.
You give us a glowing description of the different cathedrals,
and how they are occupied. Now, my dear sir, let me tell you,
the best prayer-meeting that I ever enjoyed was in a
_log-cabin_. Read St. John iv. 23, 24. Jesus told the
woman of Samaria that the hour had now come "when the
_true_ worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and
in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a
Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit
and in truth." Christ told the woman of Samaria she need not go
up into the mountains nor to Jerusalem to worship the Father,
but anywhere, in the log-cabin or in your house, if you worship
God in spirit.
The next topic is, you say: "Our Catholic brethren are very
candid, and are as truly and entirely convinced of the truth of
their religion as any Protestant."
I am now almost seventy-three years of age, and have labored
among our Catholic brethren more than forty years. I have seen
many of them _happily converted, born again_; as Christ
told Nicodemus, told him repeatedly, "Except a man be born
again, he could not enter heaven."--John iii. Yes, I have seen
them _put off_ the old man with all his deeds and put on
Christ; yes, his very _countenance_ was changed; yes, he
will not visit the Dutch gardens or saloons on the Sabbath.
Said a _converted_ Roman Catholic lady to me, the other
day: "I have _perfect peace_ now. When I belonged to the
Roman Catholic Church, I was in constant misery."
Said a converted Catholic man, aged sixty-six years: "I never
took any comfort before." I asked him if he was ready to die.
He said, "_Yes_." I asked him how he knew. Putting his
hand on his breast, he said, "_Spirit tell me so_." So
Christ says his Spirit shall enlighten every man that cometh
into the world.
In all my conversation with our Catholic brethren, I have never
found the first one that could say with St. Paul: "I long to be
absent from the body that I might be present with the Lord,
that I might be clothed upon with another body like unto his."
Our Catholic brethren are taught that there is a
_purgatory_. I wonder if St. Paul had to go there first. I
have often asked our Catholic brethren where the
_penitent_ thief went to, that was crucified with Christ,
when Christ said to him, "To-day shalt thou be with me in
paradise."
If there is a purgatory where we have to go to atone for our
sins, Christ must have suffered in vain, though he cried on the
cross, "It is finished."
I have seen Catholics die in despair. I had one in my employ as
a sailor on the North River. He caught a severe cold; it ran
him into a quick consumption. I asked him if he would like to
have me read the Bible to him. He said, No; he said the priest
had forbidden him to read the Bible or hear it read. As he was
failing very fast, I went in again and asked him if he wished
me to read to him in the Bible. He said, No, but wished I would
go and call the priest. I did so, and after the priest went
away, I went into his room and asked him if he was happy. He
answered, No, and cried bitterly, and said, "_I am going to
hell! I am going to hell!_" and died in a few minutes.
You next speak of young men that were studying for the
ministry; you say they study Latin, Greek, and theology. Dear
sir, what is theology? If I understand it, it is a Science of
God. How can they study theology without the Bible, the word of
God? They are not allowed the Bible, so a converted Roman
Catholic priest published to the world, at least he said that
there was not more than _one_ in twenty that ever saw a
Bible.
You say the Catholic Church is getting very _rich_, I do
not doubt it. Oh! how I pity the poor Catholic brethren. See
how they _toil_ and _work_ to support the priest and
the nunneries, and to _build_ meeting-houses to please the
eye and charm the weak minded. And what do they get _for all
this_? Let echo answer. Look at our poor-houses. Every
winter thousands have to go to our poor-houses to be taken care
of by our Protestant churches. Here in our city many would have
perished this last winter, had not our poor-master fed them.
{854}
You next give us a history of a wonderful miracle that was
performed in Washington in 1824. Dear sir, do you think any
Protestant with one eye, and that half-open, can be made to
believe _such nonsense_? If _you_ wish to see
miracles wrought in the nineteenth century, just give the
_Bible_ to our Catholic brethren, then you may see greater
_miracles performed_ than you speak of; for to see a man
that is _dead in sin_ changed to a _spiritual_ man,
made _alive_ in Christ, is a miracle.
Our Catholic brethren are taught that their church was the
_first church_. Let me inform you that there was no Roman
Catholic church on the earth for three hundred years after the
death of the apostles. Permit me to quote a few passages from
the word of God. 2 Thessalonians ii. 3, 4: "Let no man deceive
you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there
come a _falling away first_, and that man of sin be
revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth
himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so
that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself
that he is God." Could an angel from heaven portray the
character of the pope in any plainer language?
I Timothy iv. 1-5: "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in
the _latter_ times some shall depart from the faith,
giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with
a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain
_from meats_, which God hath created to be received with
thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For
every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it
be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word
of God and prayer."
Paul speaks of visiting the churches; that is to say, little
bands of Christians. We read in the Acts of the Apostles xv. 3:
"And being brought on our way by the church;" that is to say, a
few Christians. Read, also, xvi. 5: "Likewise _greet_ the
church that is in their house," etc.
You will now turn to Revelation xiii. 16-18: "And he causeth
all, both small and great, rich and poor, _free_ and
_bond_, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their
foreheads." Now, every true Catholic receives the sign of the
cross in his forehead every Ash-Wednesday; every priest, when
he is ordained for the ministry, receives the mark of the cross
in his right hand.
A converted Roman Catholic priest, going through one of the
streets in a Southern city, picked up the thirteenth chapter of
Revelation, and, reading it, he was convinced that he was one
of those that had received the mark in his right hand, and was
led by the _Spirit_ to see his error and was
_happily_ converted, and became a Baptist minister.
Give the Bible to all our Roman Catholic priests and brethren
in America, and in less than _five_ years there would not
be a Roman Catholic church in existence. Rev. Mr. Hyacinthe, a
Roman Catholic priest, in Paris, France, has come out in
_favor_ of reading the Bible. He is now preaching in the
Notre Dame cathedral to audiences of _three thousand_. He
presses upon the people, in the most eloquent words, the study
of the Bible.
The news from Italy is very interesting. Thousands of our
Catholic brethren are inquiring and receiving the Bible, that
they may learn the way to Christ. In less than five years there
cannot be found a Roman Catholic in all that vast kingdom,
except in Rome, where the Catholic religion has to be protected
by an army. That is a curious religion that has to be protected
by the SWORD. Shame! shame!
That great city is soon to be destroyed, according to God's
word. See Revelation xiv. 20: "And the wine-press was trodden
without the city, and blood came out of the wine-press, even
unto the horses' bridles, by the space of a thousand and six
hundred furlongs. "You are aware, I suppose, that the pope
claims two hundred miles square around Rome. The above number
of furlongs make just that number of miles. Let Bonaparte send
ALL his armies to Rome, and he could not _prevent this
prophecy from being_ fulfilled when the time comes.
Dear sir, you have a great deal to say about our Catholic
brethren exercising _greet_ faith. Paul says, "Faith
without works is dead." What are the works that God requires?
Let me tell you. It is not only to clothe the naked and feed
the hungry; but it is to go out into the _highways and
hedges_, and invite the sinner, the wayward--yes, the poor
drunkard--to become _reconciled_ to God; to put off the
_old_ man with all his deeds, and put on the new man which
is after Christ. Did you ever learn of one of our Catholic
brethren doing the like?
You speak of children being _confirmed_. What does that
mean? Why, made _Christians_. Dear sir, who can
_change_ the heart of a child or a man? No one but God.
What saith the Bible, speaking of those that were Christ's?
"Which were _born_, not of _blood_, nor of the will
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."--John i. 13.
{855}
You tell us that in this easy and pleasant way our Catholic
brethren join the church. Dear sir, does joining a church make
a man Christ-like? Christ says: "If ye have my spirit, ye are
mine; if ye have not my spirit, ye are none of mine."--Romans
viii. 9. Read the whole chapter; it contains the whole plan of
salvation.
Our Catholic brethren are taught that the Virgin Mary was
_born_ immaculate! What blasphemy! And also that the
church is _infallible_! When Christ asked Peter and the
disciples, "Whom say ye that I am?" Peter answered and said,
"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Upon this
acknowledgment or confession of Peter, that Christ was the son
of the living God, Christ said, "I will _build my
church_"--not upon Peter, as the pope claims.
You say our Catholic brethren are not ashamed to be found
praying. Please turn to the sixth chapter of Matthew, and read
the sixth verse, which is as follows: "But thou, when thou
prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy
door, pray to thy Father which is in _secret_; and thy
Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."
You say the superintendent of the Catholic Sabbath-school you
visited told you that he had visited many of the Protestant
Sabbath-schools and had copied after them. I wonder where he
found a Protestant Sabbath-school _without the Bible_!
You say that the Catholics expect to rule in this country, and
that all Protestant children will be in their Sabbath-schools.
Let me say, "Let God be true, but every man a liar."--Romans
iii. 4. St. Paul has prophesied that the time shall soon come
when the Sword of the Spirit SHALL destroy the _Man of
Sin_.
There are thousands of our Catholic brethren in America that
are sick of the Catholic religion, and will soon leave it. When
I was engaged in teaching a Sabbath-school of Catholic
children, a father and mother called on me and wanted to put
their children in my school. I said, "Your priest will not
allow you to do so." They said they did not care anything about
their priest; they had been brought up in _ignorance_;
they did not want their children brought up so.
You cannot tell us of a Sabbath-school in all Italy, or in any
other country where the Roman Catholics rule, except those that
have been established by Protestants.
You tell us about Roman Catholic benevolent societies. Where,
oh! where is there an asylum for the blind and deaf and dumb,
that they may learn to read the word of God, and get a
knowledge of our Saviour Christ Jesus, and learn the way to
heaven? You cannot show one in any Catholic country.
Permit me to give you another graphic picture from the Bible,
giving a picture of the priests' dresses. Please turn to
Revelation xvii. 4, 5; "And the woman was arrayed in purple and
scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and
pearls, having a _golden_ cup in her hand," etc.
Now, all this I have seen in the great cathedral in Montreal. I
have seen our Catholic priests and brethren _bowing down_
to graven images for several minutes.
Mr. J. G. Parton, dear sir, I sincerely pray that you will,
after reading this communication, repent, (not do penance,) and
turn to the Lord, and not be under the necessity of calling
upon the rocks and mountains to fall on you and hide you from
the face of the Lamb. (Revelation vi. 16.) Do read, also, verse
17: "For the great day of his _wrath_ is come; and who
shall be able to stand?" Do read this communication carefully,
and pray that it may be blessed to your salvation.
No more at present, and I remain your friend in Christ,
Charles W. Gilbert.
---------
{856}
New Publications.
The Vickers and Purcell Controversy.
Respectfully presented to all the lovers of truth.
By John B. Purcell, Archbishop of Cincinnati,
Printed for the benefit of Mt. St. Mary's
Seminary of the West. Benziger Brothers,
Printers to the Holy Apostolic See,
Cincinnati and New York. 1868.
The gentleman calling himself the Rev. Thomas Vickers, Minister
of the First Congregational Society of Cincinnati, is a living
contradiction in terms. According to the statement in the volume
before us, he believes in no personal God, declares "the Christ"
to be "a theological fiction," and the Bible "a crutch." What
there is "reverend" about Mr. Vickers, what sense there is in his
claiming the title of minister, or what appropriateness in his
professing to belong to a Congregational Society, we are at a
loss to divine. What greater absurdity of nomenclature can there
be, than calling a pantheistic lecturer against Christianity and
Theism by the name of a Congregational minister? Of what use is a
church, or a minister, on his principles, or, rather, denial of
principles? Nevertheless, in this very absurd and unnecessary
character of minister, Mr. Vickers appeared at the laying of the
corner-stone of a new temple of German infidelity, denominated,
with a ludicrous disregard of common sense, St. John's Church,
and made a speech, which occasioned the controversy contained in
the little volume under notice. In this speech, Mr. Vickers
welcomed and blessed the undertaking of the society of German
infidels calling themselves St. John's Church, in the name of the
Anglo-American portion of the population of Cincinnati. At the
same time, he gave utterance to the most contemptuous scorn of
everything which the professedly Christian part of that
population holds as sacred and divine in religion. This was, to
say the least of it, a piece of cool impertinence on the part of
the young gentleman in question. Mr. Vickers, we believe, passed
a few years in Germany, studying what he calls "science;" and he
appears to have returned with a strong impression on his own mind
that he is destined to enlighten the benighted believers in the
Christian revelation in Cincinnati with the rays of this German
luminary. He is not the first to engage in this experiment. It
has been tried before, and we recommend to the attention of the
illuminati of Cincinnati the following description of its result,
from the pen of Dr. Hedge, of Harvard University. It is extracted
from an article in the _Christian Examiner:_
"Some thirty years ago, a club was formed of young men, mostly
preachers of the Unitarian connection, with a sprinkling of
elect ladies--all fired with the hope of a new era in
philosophy and religion, which seemed to them about to dawn
upon the world. There was something in the air--a boding of
some great revolution--some new avatar of the Spirit, at whose
birth these expectants were called to assist
'Of old things, all are over old:
Of old things, none are good enough:
We'll show that we can help to frame
A world of other stuff.'
"For myself, though I hugely enjoyed the sessions, and shared
many of the ideas which ruled the conclave, and the ferment
they engendered, I had no belief in ecclesiastical revolutions
to be accomplished with set purpose; and I seemed to discern a
power and meaning in the old, which the more impassioned would
not allow. I had even then made up my mind, that the method of
revolution in theology, is not discussion, but development. My
historical conscience, then as since, balanced my neology, and
kept me ecclesiastically conservative, though intellectually
radical. There haunted me that verse in Goethe's bright song,
'The General Confession,' as applicable to ecclesiastical
incendiarism as it is to political:
'Came a man would fain renew me,
Made a botch and missed his shot.
Shoulder shrugging, prospects gloomy:
He was called a patriot.
'And I cursed the senseless drizzle,
Kept my proper goal in view:
Blockhead! when it burns, let sizzle;
When all's burned, then build anew.'
Others judged differently; they saw in every case of dissent,
and in every new dissentient, the harbinger of the New
Jerusalem. 'The present church rattles ominously,' they said;
'it must vanish presently, and we shall have a real one.' There
have been some vanishings since then.
{857}
Ah me! how much has vanished! Of that goodly company, what
heroes and heroines have vanished from the earth! Thrones have
toppled, dynasties have crumbled, institutions that seemed
fast-rooted in the everlasting hills have withered away. But
the church that was present then, and was judged moribund by
transcendental zeal, and rattled so ominously in transcendental
ears, is present still.
"It was finally resolved to start a journal that should
represent the ideas which had mainly influenced the association
already tending to dissolution. How to procure the requisite
funds was a question of some difficulty, seeing how hardly
philosophic and commercial speculation conspire. An appeal was
made. Would Mammon have the goodness to aid an enterprise whose
spirit rebuked his methods and imperilled his assets? The
prudent God disclaimed the imputed verdure; and the organ of
American Transcendentalism, with no pecuniary basis, committed
to the chance and gratuitous efforts and editing of friends, if
intellectually and spiritually prosperous, had no statistical
success. It struggled, through four years, with all the
difficulties of eleemosynary journalism; and then,
significantly enough, with a word concerning the 'Millennial
Church,' sighed its last breath, and gave up the ghost. I prize
the four volumes among the choicest treasures of my library.
They contain some of Emerson's, of Theodore Parker's, of
Margaret Fuller's, of Thoreau's best things; not to speak of
writers less absolute and less famous.
"Meanwhile the association, if so it could be termed, had
gradually dissolved. Some of the members turned papists--I
should say, sought refuge in the bosom of the Catholic Church.
A few of the preachers pursued their calling, and perhaps have
contributed somewhat to liberalize and enlarge the theology of
their day. Some have slipped their moorings on this bank and
shoal of time. One sank beneath the wave, whose queenly soul
had no peer among the women of this land. Of one
'A strange and distant mould
Wraps the mortal relics cold.'
Finally, a fragment of this strangely compounded body lodged in
a neighboring town, and became the nucleus of an agricultural
enterprise in which the harvest truly was _not_ plenteous,
and the competent laborers few; and of which, the root being
rottenness, the blossoms soon went up as dust."
Mr. Vickers may thank the Archbishop of Cincinnati for having
given his very boyish lucubrations a little momentary notoriety,
which they never could have acquired by their own merit. They are
crude, ill-mannered, replete with commonplace, effete, and
senseless vituperations of all that is venerable in Catholicity
and Christianity, and betray an ignorance of the subjects treated
of which makes them unworthy of any serious attention. The point
which the discussion chiefly turns upon is "freedom of thought."
If Mr. Vickers is a disciple of the German pantheistic school, as
we suppose him to be, he is not in a condition to maintain that
there is any such thing as thought or freedom. We intend to give
abundant proof of this assertion, in a series of articles, to be
published in our Magazine, on Pantheism, in which we shall show,
to the satisfaction of any person capable of metaphysical
reasoning, that pantheism destroys the possibility of thought, in
the true sense of the word, as the intellection of real,
objective truth. Pantheism destroys, also, all possibility of
freedom by reducing all phenomena to a fatal, invincible
necessity. A pantheist is bound to accept all the persecutions of
the middle ages, all the definitions of the church, and the
encyclical of the pope, as manifestations of God. Our godlike
friends are too much like the wife of the Connecticut corporal,
who replied to the query of her innocent offspring, "O ma! are we
all corporals now?" with the haughty rejoinder, "No, indeed! only
_your pa and I_." Mr. Vickers and the members of the
free-thinking _coterie_ are not the only participators in
the universal deity. If Mr. Vickers's brilliant exposition of the
doctrine of the immaculate conception was a divine inspiration,
Archbishop Purcell was equally moved by divine inspiration to the
paternal castigation which he administers to his young and
somewhat forward fellow-celestial. In fact, Mr. Vickers, the
archbishop, the book containing their controversy, _The
Catholic World_, ourselves, our readers, St. Thomas,
Torquemada, Luther, Heidelberg University, and the Jesuits, are
all one thing, or one nothing; a _Seyn_, or a _Werden_,
or a _Nichtseyn_; all bubbles on the fathomless ocean of
infinite--nonsense.
{858}
It is a wonder that Mr. Vickers lays so much to heart, and makes
such a serious business out of that which has no reality. A
nephew of the great German philosopher, Hegel, who was also a
favorite pupil of Feuerbach, and who is now a devout Catholic,
told us, some time ago, that he asked Feuerbach why philosophy
was making no progress, but seemed to be at a stand-still. The
latter replied, that they had already proved by philosophy the
nothingness of everything, and it was, therefore, useless to push
philosophy any further, adding, that it was time to go back to
common sense. Such is the end of that lawless, intellectual
activity which Mr. Vickers calls "free thought." It is like a
head of steam that bursts its boiler, and is then dispersed in
the circumambient atmosphere.
------
Memoirs and Letters of Jennie C. White--Del Bal.
By her mother, Rhoda E. White,
1 vol. royal 8vo, pp. 363. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1868.
We must presage our notice of this interesting book, by saying we
have a dislike to memoirs written by fond and partial friends.
Lives of the saints we love to read, but our digestion was early
impaired by the memoirs of good children (who all died young)
with which we were fed for Sunday food, and we have latterly been
in the bad habit of turning away from a book labelled, _Memoirs
of_, etc.
However, we read Jennie's life with interest; and it is a
beautiful story, giving to the reader a delightful insight into a
truly Catholic family, where the breath of piety permeates the
daily walk of every member, mingling with and heightening the
light-hearted pleasures peculiar to the seasons of childhood and
youth. The tale of her courtship and marriage is told with a
sweet and winning grace, which charms us by its naturalness.
Quite unlike the prevailing spirit and sentiment of "Young
America" is the history of the prompt obedience to the mandate of
parental authority, in giving up their engagement. The accepted
lover, a resident of Santiago, New Granada, had promised his aged
father not to forsake his own country, and Jennie's father could
not give his consent to the taking of his first-born to that
far-off foreign land. After a struggle, they parted with aching
hearts, released from their engagement; but the influence of the
true woman in the mother reunited that broken bond.
Contrary to the fate of many American girls who go to foreign
homes, Jennie's marriage was an exceedingly happy one. The secret
is very plain--they were both earnest Catholics. Oneness in
faith, and earnest-heartedness in that faith, are the best
securities for happiness in married life. The sight of this happy
young creature, leaving so fond a circle of friends, and such a
home as Jennie left behind in New York, to go to a comparatively
unknown land--a country distracted by revolutions, with churches
closed and priests exiled--gives us a glowing picture of the
self-sacrificing spirit of true love. Her journeys by land and by
sea, before she reached her destination, were perilous indeed;
and we could not but ask, Yankee-like, why such a refined and
cultivated and intelligent people as those among whom her lot was
cast should never have provided some more comfortable way of
reaching their country. She was the first American lady there,
and attracted much attention and admiration by her brave, active
spirit, as well as by her large Catholic heart. Her letters to
her home friends are lovely from their childlike simplicity and
truthfulness; giving us glimpses of many homesick heartaches,
even when she was decking herself for the dance. Sometimes there
appears a little excess in her efforts to be gay, when she
writes, "I danced every piece but one till five in the morning."
Mrs. Del Bal went to New Granada at a time when the so-called
"Liberals," under Mosquera, were in the ascendant, proclaiming a
pretended religious liberty, of which some of the first acts were
the disbanding of all religious communities, turning the sisters
upon the world, shutting up the churches, banishing the priests,
unless they took an oath whereby they would cease to be
Catholics; in fact, Mosquera made himself pope. Professing to
establish a government in which there should be no connection
between church and state, the government framed this article for
the twenty-third of their Constitution:
{859}
"In order to sustain the national sovereignty and to maintain
public peace and security, the national government, and in some
cases the state government, shall exercise the right of supreme
inspection over all religious worships, as the law shall
determine."
This is a law of liberty very like those the English Catholics
enjoyed under Queen Elizabeth.
Mrs. Del Bal exerted herself to give the press at the North the
true state of the case with regard to this matter, since the
public papers have loudly lauded Mosquera and his government. How
far she succeeded in influencing minds that swallow eagerly
anything called "liberal," we are not told. Our friend Jennie was
loyal to her heart's core, and never ceased to call herself and
her husband American citizens; and her thorough celebration of
the "glorious Fourth" was a complete success. American thrift and
industry carried her through what would have been impossible to a
New Granadian.
But it is Jennie's almost superhuman efforts to revive the faith
in the land of her adoption which excite our wonder and
admiration, even more than the tender breathings of her woman's
heart, separated for ever from the earliest loved. She had
everything to struggle against in her work; "deplorable ignorance
among the lower classes, and the falling away from faith and duty
in the educated;" and this in a land once hallowed by the daily
sacrifice. Well might she call the country "God forsaken," when
those who should have cared for the sheep became themselves
grievous wolves devouring God's heritage. The secret of the
country's desolation we may read in this sentence:
"It is a well-known fact to Protestant travellers and a wound
in the heart of the Catholic world, that the Catholic
priesthood in this part of the world and in the West India
Islands, scandalize the faithful. Why are they permitted to
remain in the church? is asked often by Protestant and
Catholic. Because they are sustained by a government which will
not acknowledge papal authority; and if the archbishop were to
remove them to-morrow, if need be, they would be reinstated by
the bayonet. Hence these scandals."
But we turn from this sad picture to our young friend. Working
with all the ardor of a soul given to God, filled with the love
of Christ, her prayers and labors brought forth abundant and
immediate fruits; but not till that day when the Great Master
shall make up his jewels will it be known how many were brought
back to faith and duty by her efforts. The missionary spirit
pervaded all her life, and we may believe that love for souls, in
part, led her to give her consent to so sad and final a parting
from her early home; for she laid her plans for these poor,
neglected people before she left her father's roof. She found
some pious, devoted women in Santiago, (where are they not
found?) and she gave them work to do. Everything prospered in her
hands: Sunday-schools, altar societies, associations of the
Sacred Heart; and at last, through her instrumentality, the laws
were repealed that closed the churches, the _Te Deum_ was
sung, the sanctuary lamp was relighted, and 'la nina Jennie' was
acknowledged, by the grateful people, as a public blessing God
sent.
It is extremely touching to mark how, amid the constant terror of
revolution, the wearing care of churches, hospitals,
Sunday-schools, altar societies, plantations, and housekeeping,
with a retinue of easy-going, lazy servants, she turns to
entertain a dear friend with tales of her beloved parents,
recalling the happy and united life at home, and then runs to
console these absent ones by telling them, in her letters, with
the artlessness of a child, that her husband must be good, since
she is so happy with him, away from all she loved before! Only
four years was she permitted to cheer the heart of her fond
husband--only four years to lead the life of a devoted missionary
in that desolate vineyard. The snapping of the chain by death
that bound that household; the departure of her noble father--we
may well believe-- coming upon a heart filled with care for the
souls about her, lying in worse than heathen darkness, hastened
her own death.
{860}
As we close the volume, we can not mourn for her nor for her dear
family; it is a blessed privilege to have such a friend in
heaven.
"Life is only bright when it proceedeth
Toward a truer, deeper life above:
Human love is sweetest when it leadeth
To a more divine and perfect love."
No, we mourn for Santiago, and pray our dear Lord to
compassionate a country so piteously torn by revolutions, and
abandoned by those who should be first to hear the cry that comes
over the land to all Catholics, "Send us priests who have an
apostolic spirit, good judgment, and tact!"
The publisher's portion of the work is well done. It is well
printed on fine paper, and the binding is in keeping with the
rest of the book. It is, in fact, the handsomest book Mr. Donahoe
ever published, and we are glad to see so great an improvement in
his book-making.
------
The Woman Blessed by all Generations; or,
Mary the Object of Veneration, Confidence, and
Imitation to all Christians.
By the Rev. Raphael Melia, D.D.
London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1868.
For sale at The Catholic Publication House, New York.
Dr. Melia is an Italian priest, residing in London; a man of
solid learning, great zeal for the conversion of Protestants, and
possessing a competent knowledge of the English language. His
work is a comprehensive treatise on the dignity and office of the
Blessed Virgin, and the reasons for the veneration and invocation
of Mary practised in the church; to which is added a devotional
treatise on the imitation of her virtues. The author goes
thoroughly into the arguments from Scripture, tradition, reason,
theology, and antiquities. His style is lively, popular, and
somewhat diffuse, so that his learning is brought to the level of
the understanding of ordinary readers, and his arguments made
plain by ample and minute explanations. The book is also
illustrated by _fac-similes_ from ancient works of art. It
is a treasury of knowledge on the charming and delightful subject
of which it treats, and both Catholics and Protestants who wish
to gain thorough, solid information respecting the Catholic
devotion to Mary, with ease and pleasure to themselves, will find
this book to be the very one they are in need of. The author is
entitled to the thanks of all English-speaking Catholics for this
labor of love, and we trust that his excellent work may be the
means of increasing and diffusing, both in England and America,
that solid and fervent devotion to the Blessed Mother of God
which is both the poetry and an integral part of the practical
piety of our religion.
------
We have just received from Messrs. Murphy & Co., Baltimore,
_The Acts and Decrees of the Second Plenary Council of
Baltimore_. _The Catholic World_, for August, contained
an elaborate article on this work, written from an advance copy
kindly furnished by Mr. Murphy. It is unnecessary to say anything
more with regard to its contents, except to reiterate what was
then said as to its external appearance. It is a handsome volume,
finely printed on good paper, and bound in various styles and in
the best manner known to the art of binding, and is a credit to
the publisher. It is for sale at the Catholic Publication House,
New York.
------------------------------
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