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Title: The Catholic World, Volume 23, April, 1876-September, 1876. - A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Catholic World, Volume 23, April, 1876-September, 1876. - A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science" ***
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
A
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
------
VOL. XXIII.
APRIL, 1876, TO SEPTEMBER, 1876.
------
NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE
9 Warren Street.
1876.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Abroad, How we are Misrepresented, 1
Allies’ Formation of Christendom, 689
American Revolution, Catholics in, 488
Are You My Wife? 22, 186, 316
Assisi, 742
Aude, The Valley of, 640
Brownson, Dr., 366
Catholicity in the United States, Next Phase of, 577
Catholic Church in the United States, The, 1776-1876, 434
Catholics in the American Revolution, 488
Catholic Sunday and Puritan Sabbath, The, 550
Charitas Pirkheimer, 170
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 537
Chillon, The Prisoner of, 857
Church and Liberty, The, 243
Daughter of the Puritans, A, 92
De Vere’s “Thomas à Becket,” 848
Devout Chapel of Notre Dame de Bétharram, The, 335
Dr. Brownson, 366
Easter in St. Peter’s, Rome, 1875, 255
Epigraphy, Sacred, 270
Eternal Years, The, 128, 258, 402, 565
Formation of Christendom, Allies’, 689
French Novel, A, 158
Frenchman’s View of It, A, 453
German Journalism, 289
Gladstone Controversy, Sequel of, 30
Hammond on the Nervous System, 388
Hobbies and their Riders, 413
Home-Rule Movement, Irish, 500, 623
How we are Misrepresented Abroad, 1
Hundred Years Ago, One, 802
Irish Home-Rule Movement, The, 500, 623
Italian Commerce in the Middle Ages, 79
Journey to the Land of Milliards, A, 773
Kiowas and Comanches, A Day among, 837
Labor in Europe and America, 59
Land of Milliards, A Journey to the, 773
Letters of a Young Irishwoman to her Sister, 464, 654, 687
Life and Works of Madame Barat, The, 592
Madame Barat, Life and Works of, 592
Miles Standish, Was He a Catholic? 668
Modern English Poetry, 213
More, Sir Thomas, 70, 224, 350, 517, 698, 817
Napoleon I. and Pius VII., 200
Next Phase of Catholicity in the United States, The, 577
Notre Dame de Bétharram, The Devout Chapel of, 335
Notre Dame de Pitié, 116
Novel, A French, 158
Philosophy, Thomistic, 327
Pirkheimer, Charitas, 170
Pius VII. and Napoleon I., 200
Plea for our Grandmothers, A, 421
Poet among the Poets, A, 14
Poetry, Modern English, 213
Poets, Some Forgotten Catholic, 302
Primeval Germans, 47
Prisoner of Chillon, The, 857
Protestant Bishop on Confession, A, 831
Prussia and the Church, 104
Religious Liberty in the United States, The Rise of, 721
Rise of Religious Liberty in the United States, 721
Root of Our Present Evils, The, 145
Sacred Epigraphy, 270
Scanderbeg, 234
Sequel of the Gladstone Controversy, A, 30
Sir Thomas More, 70, 224, 350, 517, 698, 817
Six Sunny Months, 606, 758
Some Forgotten Catholic Poets, 302
Some Odd Ideas, 710
Studio in Rome, A Quaint Old, 781
“Thomas à Becket,” De Vere’s, 848
Thomistic Philosophy, 327
Transcendental Movement in New England, The, 528
Typical Men of America, The, 479
Valley of the Aude, The, 640
Vittoria Colonna, 679
Was Miles Standish a Catholic? 668
Wild Rose of St. Regis, The, 379
Years, Eternal, The, 128, 258, 402, 565
POETRY.
Ascension, The, 377
Centenary of American Liberty, The, 433
Chorus from the “Hecuba,” 653
Consuelo, 816
Forty Hours’ Devotion, 223
Da Vinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks,” Lines on, 13
Lamartine, From, 424
Lines on Da Vinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks,” 13
Mysteries, 185
Sacerdos Alter Christus, 58
Sennuccio Mio, 233
Sunshine, 278
Vago Angelletto che Cantanas Vai? 7
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Achsah, 718
Acolyte, The, 286
All Around the Moon, 430
Alzog’s Universal Church History, 279
Are You My Wife? 426
Asperges Me, etc., 430
Authority and Anarchy, 288
Breviarium Romanum, 288
Brief Biographies, 142
British and American Literature, Student’s Hand-book of, 138
Board of Education, Report of, 431
Boston to Washington, 432
Burning Questions, 280
Cantata Catholica, 429
Catechism for Confession and First Communion, 280
Catholic Church and Christian State, 425
Daniel O’Connell, Popular Life of, 143
Eden of Labor, The, 139
Elmwood; or, the Withered Arm, 143
Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 432
Episodes of the Paris Commune in 1871, 431
Explanatio Psalmorum, 287
Faber’s Hymns, 282
Father Segneri’s Sentimenti, 142
Faith and Modern Thought, 718
Five Lectures on the City of Ancient Rome, 142
Flaminia, and other Stories, 431
Geographical Text-Books, Mitchell’s, 860
German Political Leaders, 716
Gertrude Mannering, 285
Glories of the Sacred Heart, The, 576
Haydon, Benjamin Robert, The Life, Letters, and
Table-Talk of, 860
Histoire de Madame Barat, 425
How to Write Letters, 287
Labor, the Eden of, 139
Labor and Capital in England and America, 139
Lectures on the City of Ancient Rome, 142
Life, Letters, and Table-Talk of Benjamin Robert
Haydon, The, 860
Life of Rev. Mother St. Joseph, The, 427
Life of Daniel O’Connell, 143
Little Book of the Holy Child Jesus, 288
Literature for Little Folks, 287
Meditations and Considerations, 719
Men and Manners in America One Hundred Years Ago, 860
Mitchell’s Geographical Text-Books, 860
Newman, Characteristics from the Writings of, 288
New Month of the Sacred Heart, 720
Note to Article on Thomistic Philosophy, 432
Notiones Theologicæ, 720
Outlines of the Religion and Philosophy of Swedenborg, 281
Ordo Divini Officii Recitandi, 141
Pius IX. and his Times, 288
Principia or Basis of Social Science, 428
Principes de la Sagesse, Les, 287
Publications Received, 288
Revolutionary Times, 720
Sancta Sophia, 859
Science and Religion, 720
Scholastic Almanac for 1876, The, 144
Segneri’s Sentimenti, 142
Sermons by Fathers of the Society of Jesus, 141
Story of a Vocation, The, 432
Spectator, The, 144
Spiritualism and Allied Causes, 713
Student’s Hand-book of British and American
Literature, The, 138
Universal Church History, Alzog’s, 279
Voyages dans l’Amérique Septentrionale, 432
Wyndham Family, The, 430
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIII., No. 133.—APRIL, 1876.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1876.
HOW WE ARE MISREPRESENTED ABROAD.
Following the example of older nations, the United States has been
accustomed to keep at foreign courts and capitals certain diplomatic
agents whose presence there seems to be considered necessary for the
protection of our national interests, as well as a pledge of mutual
friendship and comity. Under the more modest title of envoys or
ministers these gentlemen exercise the powers and enjoy the immunities
of ambassadors, and to their supposed wisdom, tact, and judgment are
entrusted all difficult negotiations and the settlement of doubtful
questions of international law.
In view of the increased facilities for communication between
independent governments afforded by railroads and telegraphs, the
general diffusion of accurate geographical and commercial knowledge,
and the almost total disuse of the secret diplomacy of former times,
it has been seriously considered whether this class of rather
expensive officials might not be dispensed with altogether. Many
persons, also, are inclined to believe that the public welfare would
suffer little, if at all, by such a measure, on the principle that bad
or incompetent representatives are worse than none. But if the custom,
as appears probable, is still to be adhered to, it is becoming more
and more apparent that the _personnel_ of our diplomatic corps must
speedily undergo a radical change for the better, if we would not
bring our country into lasting disrepute and contempt in the eyes of
all just and discerning men.
In Europe diplomacy is practically as much a profession as law or
medicine. Its students begin their allotted course at an early age in
the capacity of _attachés_ or secretaries of legation. As they gain in
experience they are moved from one court to another, in regular order
of promotion, until finally, after years of practical observation and
laborious study, they develop into accomplished diplomatists and ripe
statesmen, whose services are invaluable to their country, at home and
abroad. Not so in America; with us the post of minister resident or
envoy extraordinary, is usually the reward of some obscure partisan,
the solace of a disappointed Congressional aspirant, or the asylum in
which superannuated cabinet officers can find dignified obscurity.
Occasionally accomplished international lawyers like the late Mr.
Wheaton or Reverdy Johnson are selected, but these rare cases are in
sad contrast with the generality of persons chosen, every few years,
to represent in foreign countries the power, dignity, and intelligence
of the republic. They are almost invariably men of mediocre ability,
contracted views, and defective education; unaccustomed to any high
degree of social refinement, and sometimes ignorant of the very
language of the country to which they are accredited, while not
necessarily masters of their own. From a perusal of some volumes of
state documents[1] we are led to conclude that the principal duty of
our diplomats is to write long, prosy letters to the Secretary of
State, and to encumber the archives of his office with copious
extracts from foreign newspapers of no value or public interest
whatever. In this mass of correspondence we look in vain for the keen,
accurate criticism of men and manners, or the profound views of
statesmanship which characterized the despatches of the Venetian
ambassadors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the French
and English emissaries of a later period.
On the contrary, we find these letters exhibiting a remarkable
feebleness and crudity of mind, and, where matters relating to
religion or morals are discussed, a purblind prejudice unworthy of any
rational American, but especially reprehensible in an exalted official
of our government. This latter blemish is so prominent, and withal so
repeatedly displayed, as to be painfully suggestive of a desire on the
part of the writers to win, by unworthy means, the favor of the
appointing power at the federal capital. We also observe with regret
that they are accustomed to use, with the greatest deliberation and
upon the slightest occasion, the terms reactionist, Romanist,
ultramontane, and other nicknames—all of which are inaccurate and most
of them offensive—when describing the supporters of the Catholic
Church, who, in various parts of the Christian world, are battling for
the rights of conscience and the freedom of their religion; while
eulogistic adjectives are lavished on all parties and measures, no
matter how tyrannical or arbitrary, provided they are directed against
the church and her priesthood. Just here we may as well ask at the
start, Is there not occupation enough for our diplomatic service in
attending to the great commercial and other secular interests of the
republic, but that they must turn aside to devote their chief
attention to the cultivation and spread of anti-Catholic bigotry?
One of the most glaring examples of this indecent partisanship is to
be found in the records of our diplomatic relations with Mexico—our
nearest neighbor and the most populous of the Spanish-American
republics. Formerly the greatest care was exercised in filling this
important mission, only gentlemen of sound discretion and liberal
views being selected; but since the advent of Mr. Fish as Secretary of
State, this wise precaution has been neglected, and, as a consequence,
we have had at the Mexican capital, for several years, a deputy named
John W. Foster, whose total misapprehension of the duties of his
office is painfully apparent, even from his own reports. It will be
remembered that in 1859 the partisans of Juarez, assembled at Vera
Cruz, proclaimed war on the Catholic Church, abolished all religious
communities, confiscated their property, and expelled their members of
both sexes. They also declared marriage a civil contract, to be
entered into only before a magistrate, abolished religious oaths, and
attempted other “reforms” equally impertinent and detrimental to the
public good. During the short reign of Maximilian these attempts on
the liberty of the church were of course discontinued; but when Juarez
assumed absolute control of the government they were renewed, and on
the 25th of September, 1873, were declared by his successor, Lerdo de
Tejada, a part of the constitution. This effort to make religious
proscription the fundamental law of the republic seemed so judicious
and praiseworthy to Mr. Foster that he immediately transmitted to
Washington a full copy of Lerdo’s proclamation, with the remark:
“Their incorporation into the federal constitution may be regarded as
the crowning act of triumph of the liberal government in its long
contest with the conservative or church party.”
Knowing something of the antecedents of Mr. Foster, we are not
surprised at his sympathy with what may be called the illiberal or
anti-church party; but the reply of our Secretary of State is simply
inexplicable. On October 22 he writes:
“The Mexican government deserves congratulation upon the
adoption of the amendments of its constitution to which the
despatch relates. It may be regarded as a great step in
advance, especially for a republic in name. We have had
ample experience of the advantage of similar measures—an
experience, too, which has fully shown that, while they have
materially contributed to enlarge and secure general freedom
and prosperity, they have by no means tended to weaken the
just interests of religion or the due influence of clergymen
in the body politic.”
How a gentleman of Mr. Fish’s acknowledged intelligence could permit
himself to write such a document is incomprehensible. He knows well
that “we”—meaning the United States—have not had “ample experience,”
or any experience whatever, “of the advantage of similar measures.”
“We” have had our moments of fanaticism, our church-burnings and
convent-sackings, it is true; but neither the municipal law nor the
Constitution has presumed to control the spiritual affairs of the
church in this republic. Our seminaries, colleges, convents, and
schools are yet untouched by the civil magistrate; our priests can
administer the sacraments without the risk of police interference; and
our Sisters of Mercy and Charity can pursue their holy avocations and
not incur the risk of perpetual banishment. What has contributed to
enlarge and to secure to us general freedom and prosperity is not such
anti-Catholic legislation as that upon which Mr. Fish congratulates
the “republic in name,” but the very contrary.
It would seem, however, that some of those entrusted with the highest
offices of state regret this happy condition of things. Evidence crops
out everywhere to strengthen the suspicion that our government, not
finding interests at home of sufficient magnitude to occupy its
attention, is drifting more and more into sympathy with the conspiracy
now prevalent in Europe against the rights of the Catholic Church and
that birthright of every American citizen—freedom of conscience.
But, however unsustained by fact, the moral sympathy thus tendered by
the mouth-piece of our government to the Mexican president was highly
valuable to his party at that juncture. The laws against the clergy
and nuns were exceedingly unpopular with the great mass of the
Mexicans, and it was necessary that the endorsement of the powerful
and prosperous republic of the north should be secured in their favor.
If such measures had “materially contributed to enlarge and secure
general freedom and prosperity” in one country, as Mr. Fish solemnly
asserted, why should they not have the same salutary effect in
another? There is no reason for surprise, therefore, to find that when
the elated Mr. Foster transmitted Mr. Fish’s letter, with his own
felicitations, to Mr. Lafragua, the Mexican Minister of Foreign
Affairs, he was answered in the following complimentary phrase:
“The president of the republic has received with special
gratification the expression of the kind sentiments which
animate the people and government of the United States
respecting the people and government of Mexico, which
sentiments could not have been interpreted by a more
estimable person than your excellency. The president is
sincerely thankful, as well for the cordial congratulation
which his excellency the Secretary of State has had the
kindness to address to you on account of the proclamation of
the amendments to the federal constitution, as for the
ardent wishes which your excellency manifests for the
consolidation of the republican institutions and of peace,
and for the prosperity and material development of the
United Mexican States.”
It will thus be seen that by the wilfulness—or indiscretion, let us
call it—of Mr. Fish “the people and government of the United States”
are credited with a sympathy for, and approval of, what their
conscience, their spirit, and their whole history up to this time
repudiate—a legislation of tyranny and religious proscription. Mr.
Fish—and no man better—knows that such sympathy has no foundation in
the hearts of the American people or in the real policy of its
government. He knows that the people abhor the sentiment expressed in
the “amendments to the federal constitution” of Mexico. What are we to
think, then, of a statesman who, actuated by whatever motive, shows
himself so ready to play fast and loose with the solemn trusts
confided to him? Is the vast power that he must exercise safe in the
hands of one who is ready to veer with every wind that blows,
especially when it blows against Rome? Is this the true expression of
the policy of which we have lately heard so much—“Let the church and
the state be for ever separate”? Our American feelings rise with
indignation against so grave a misrepresentation of the principles and
policy of our government, especially by one so familiar with them as
Mr. Fish. There is no excuse for this.
Mr. Fish’s _faux pas_ was too precious to the anti-Catholic faction
not to receive the widest publicity. “This correspondence,” writes Mr.
Foster to his principal, “was yesterday read in the national Congress
by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, by direction of the president of
the republic, and after its reading the president of Congress, in the
name of that body, expressed the gratification with which the assembly
had received the intelligence, and by a vote of Congress the
correspondence was entered upon its journal. The Minister of Foreign
Affairs has also caused its publication in the official newspaper, and
it has appeared in all the periodicals of this capital.”
A year had scarcely passed away, during which every effort had been
made thus to mislead and pervert public opinion, when De Tejada’s
government found itself strong enough to pass additional “laws of
reform” infringing still farther on the rights of conscience. On the
15th of December, 1874, the Sisters of Charity, the last remnant of
the Catholic orders in Mexico, were also rudely expelled from their
institutions and ordered to quit for ever the scenes of their pious
and untiring labors. And in this connection, a curious comment on Mr.
Fish’s congratulatory despatch was offered by the people of the city
of San Francisco. The Sisters expelled by virtue of the constitution
which met with such marked approval from Mr. Fish, were received with
open arms and welcomed by our fellow-citizens in California. Surely,
this was giving the lie direct to Mr. Fish by his own countrymen,
whose conscience naturally revolted from a system of government which,
as its chief claim to the sympathy and fellowship of foreign peoples,
set up its power and willingness to banish from its jurisdiction all
that was purest and holiest. Yet Mexico is as far from “general
freedom and prosperity” as ever, and Messrs. Fish and Foster, the
instigators of this last outrage on humanity, continue to be high and
trusted officials of our freedom-loving republic.
Still, the faction that controls Mexican politics was not content with
constitutional and statutory “reforms.” As long as the heart of the
country remained Catholic its hold on power was feeble and uncertain.
It therefore aimed at nothing less than a general conversion of the
people, at a new Reformation, and selected what it considered the most
fitting instruments for that purpose. These were itinerant Protestant
missionaries of all sects, kindly furnished to order by the Boston
American Board of Missions and the Pacific Theological Seminary of
California, who soon overspread the promised land and began their
labors of conversion. The states of Mexico, Vera Cruz, Guerrero,
Puebla, Jalisco, Hidalgo, Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosi were
especially favored by their presence, where, from their method of
proceeding, their foul abuse of the religion of the populace, and the
rank blasphemy that characterized their preaching, it was plain that
they considered they had fallen among barbarians and idolaters. Going
from place to place, and surrounded by armed guards, they not only
fulminated the heresy of Protestantism, but scattered broadcast
printed travesties of the Commandments and of the prayers and ritual
of the church, some copies of which they had the hardihood to nail to
the cathedrals and other places of Catholic worship. To make matters
still more offensive, they frequently interspersed their harangues
with laudations of the “liberal” party who patronized them, and direct
attacks on all who opposed its iniquitous policy.
One of those zealots, a Rev. Mr. Stephens, after a nine months’
journey through several towns, found his way to Ahualulco, where,
relying on the countenance of the government officials, he commenced a
series of bitter assaults on Catholicity. A popular tumult was the
result, during which the unfortunate man was killed, March 2, 1874.
When news of this cruel, though not unprovoked, murder reached Mr.
Foster, he waited on the Mexican minister, who informed him that “the
principal assassins and two priests had been arrested, and that a
judge had been despatched to the district with an extra corps of
clerks to ensure a speedy investigation and trial.” This promise was
faithfully and promptly kept, as we find by a despatch dated April 15,
in which the minister says:
“Up to the present date seven of the guilty parties have
been tried and condemned to death, from which sentence they
have appealed to the supreme court. Twelve or fifteen more
persons charged with complicity in the crime are under
arrest awaiting trial, including the _cura_ of the parish of
Ahualulco.”
Yet this summary vengeance, nor even the indignity offered to the
venerable _cura_, who had had no participation whatever in the
disturbance, did not satisfy the insatiable soul of Mr. Foster. From
his subsequent letter to Lafragua, and several despatches to our
government, we infer that the condign punishment of the priest,
innocent or guilty, was to him the most desirable of objects. To
inaugurate the new Reformation by the execution of a Catholic
clergyman appears to have been considered by him as a master-stroke of
policy. But even the Lerdistas were not prepared for so desperate a
step, and Foster was doomed to find his hopes blighted. Alluding to a
conversation with Minister Lafragua in September, he writes to Mr.
Fish, bemoaning his hard fate:
“I thanked him for communicating the intelligence in
relation to the trials of the assassins of Rev. Mr.
Stephens, the receipt of which I had anxiously awaited, but
expressed my disappointment in finding no mention of the
proceedings had in the trial of the _cura_ of Ahualulco, to
whom the published accounts attributed the responsibility of
the assassination.…”
This information, and the fact that the appeal of the seven condemned
persons had not been determined, drew forth one of Mr. Fish’s
unaccountable diplomatic missives. “You may farther inform him
orally,” says our Secretary, alluding to Lafragua, “but
confidentially, if need be, that this must necessarily become an
international affair, unless it shall be satisfactorily disposed of
and without unreasonable delay.” Now, why should the information be
given _orally_ and _confidentially_ if there was not some desire, some
trick, to avoid responsibility for a doubtful act tending to
intimidate a friendly power? and wherefore should the killing of the
man Stephens be made an international affair—_i.e._, a just cause of
war—when so many American citizens had been already murdered in Mexico
with impunity? Foster had repeatedly complained that during the short
time he had been in charge of the legation thirteen “murders of the
most horrid character and revolting to our common civilization” had
been committed on his countrymen, for which there had not been a
single punishment; yet we hear of no intimation of making them
international affairs. Were the lives of these persons, presumably
following legitimate callings, collectively of less value than that of
a mendacious preacher of a gospel of violence?
Emboldened by the words of Mr. Fish, Foster again returned to the
attack in a note to Lafragua, in which he directly, and on his own
responsibility, charges the _cura_ with having been the instigator of
the crime. The first intimation that the _cura_ had had any
participation in exciting the mob against Stephens was contained in a
letter from a brother preacher named Watkins, who was stationed at
Guadalajara, more than sixty miles from the scene of the disturbance.
On this suspicious and slender foundation Foster had been in the habit
of building up a mass of insinuations and charges against the priest,
referring to “general” and “printed” reports as his authority. When
after a searching investigation the _cura_ was honorably discharged,
and the minister again complained to Lafragua, that official replied
rather tartly in the following unequivocal terms:
“In relation to the acquittal of those who were charged with being
instigators of the crime, it is the result of a judicial act, which
has taken place after the due process had been completed for the
investigation of the truth, which is not always in accord with the
prejudices of the public.”
If the minister had added: “and of Mr. Foster and the Board of
Missions,” the sentence would have been more complete. Having failed
to accomplish his grand design—the chastisement of the _cura_—the
ultimate fate of the convicted laymen became a matter of little
importance to our assiduous representative.
Another opportunity soon presented itself for Mr. Foster’s official
interference. On the night of January 26, 1875, a riot occurred in
Acapulco, in which five persons were killed and eleven wounded on both
sides. Of the former, one was claimed to be an American. It appears
that a Rev. M. N. Hutchinson, supported by the United States consul,
J. A. Sutter, and a few native officials, had commenced his
evangelical labors in that city by personally insulting the parish
priest, Father J. P. Nava, and by openly abusing everything considered
holy and venerable by Catholics. This method of preaching Christ’s
Gospel so exasperated the populace that an attack was made on the
building used as a Protestant church, and a street fight, with fatal
results, followed. Hutchinson, the cause of the fray, escaped and
found refuge on board a ship; while Sutter, who seems to have been as
cowardly as he was vicious, threatened to abandon the consulate and
follow his example. As in the case at Ahualulco, the “liberal”
authorities at once arrested the _cura_, but so indignant were the
citizens, and even some of the federal employees, at the act that he
was at once set at liberty.
Here was a rare chance for Mr. Foster to display his reformatory
energy, and on this occasion he had a most efficient associate in the
gallant consul. That truthful gentleman writes to his chief, January
27, three days after the riot:
“All the Indians are under arms, and threaten to attack the
town if the parish priest—who, in my opinion, is the prime
mover of these heinous crimes—should be arrested. So he is
still at large, and laughing, probably, at the impotence of
the authorities.… Everybody in town is afraid of the
Indians, who, incited by a fanatical priest, would
perpetrate the most atrocious crimes.”
All this Mr. Foster believed, or appeared to believe; for we find him
embodying it in his official communications to Lafragua, with some
additional remarks of his own to give the calumny greater point and
force. Supported by the American minister, Sutter now looms up as the
defender of Protestant rights in general. Addressing personages of no
less distinction than the governor of the state and the district
judge, he requests them to “promptly take the necessary measures
within your power to procure the speedy punishment, according to the
law, of the instigators and perpetrators of the atrocious massacre of
Protestants,” etc. There is no limitation here, it will be observed,
to American citizens; the peremptory consul, “in obedience to
instructions received yesterday from the Hon. John W. Foster, envoy
extraordinary, etc.,” had assumed a protectorate over the entire
evangelical body of Acapulco, and felt himself at liberty to insult
the executive and judiciary of the state of Guerrero.
The people of Acapulco, however, differed materially in opinion from
the consul. Not only did they not fear the Indians or regard their
priest as an abettor of riot and murder, but, on the contrary, five or
six hundred of them waited on Governor Alvarez, and, in the name of
the rest, assured him that the disturbance was wholly caused by
Hutchinson and his handful of Protestants, requesting him at the same
time to remove the disturbers from their city, as he had the power to
do under the laws of the state. Even the Minister of Foreign
Affairs—though, like so many of his party, deadly opposed to the
church—could not help but ascribe the riot to something like its
proper cause. Annoyed, doubtless, by the impertinence of Sutter and
the importunities of Foster, he writes to the latter in a vein of
delicate irony:
“The consul in Acapulco cannot be ignorant of the fact that
Protestant worship was a new propaganda among a people who,
unfortunately, have not been able to attain to that degree
of civilization to enable them to accept without aversion
religious tenets which they disown, and it is well known
that the religious sentiment is one of the most sensitive,
and that, when attacked, it is all the more irritable.”
The logical position of the Mexican minister is unassailable. But what
a humiliating predicament for our government to be placed in by her
diplomatists abroad! Such is the natural result of selecting the kind
of men for important posts, or indeed for any posts at all, complained
of at the beginning of the article. It is clear that this Mr. Foster
has missed his vocation. He would be more at home in a Protestant
board of missions, or as a “worker” in “revivals,” than standing
before a people as the representative of the truth, worth, and genius
of a great nation.
Mr. Foster was not satisfied with the explanation. He had lost one
priest, and he was not going to let another slip through his
fingers without a struggle. He reminds Lafragua of Mr. Fish’s
“congratulations,” and appeals to his gratitude. “While it is very
natural that I,” he writes, “as the representative of a government
which has officially congratulated that of Mexico on the
constitutional triumph and recognition of the principles of religious
liberty, should watch with deep interest the practical enforcement of
these principles, I have made the outbreaks of fanatical mobs the
subject of diplomatic intervention only when American citizens have
been assassinated.” But the plea was in vain; even the government of
Lerdo de Tejada dared not molest the _cura_ of Acapulco, who, strong
in his innocence and in the affection of his flock, continued to
exercise the duties of his sacred office, regardless alike of native
“reformers” and officious diplomats. Up to the latest dates Mr. Foster
had not yet caught a _cura_, and the people of Mexico seem as far as
ever from the enjoyment of the blessings of a new Reformation, so
happily and characteristically begun.
The Central American States include Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras,
Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, each of which holds an undivided fifth
interest in the official attention of Mr. George Williamson, our
worthy minister peripatetic. When not involved in domestic
brawls—which seldom happens—these miniature commonwealths have a habit
of varying the monotony of peaceful life by a descent on one of their
neighbors, and even a civil and a foreign war have been known to rage
at the same time and place. Having such a vivacious people to look
after, the attention of our representative might reasonably be
considered fully occupied; yet we learn that he has ample leisure to
devote himself to theological and educational speculations, and
particularly to the subject of marriage. On this important social
relation he not only becomes eloquent, though occasionally obscure, in
his despatches, but is evidently looked upon as an authority by the
“liberal” party on the Isthmus. Having been asked his opinion by
President Barrios of Guatemala, who contemplated extending civil
marriage to his people, “I replied,” he says, “it would in all
probability soon come; … that in our country we considered the civil
law supreme, and would neither furnish a hierarchy of Romanists nor
Protestants, to assert its sanction was necessary to give validity to
a contract which the law pronounced good.” It may be objected that
this passage is not well constructed; so, in justice not only to the
liberal views, but to the erudition of Mr. Williamson, we quote the
following descriptive extract from a despatch on the condition of the
Central American population:
“Intelligence is more generally diffused; people are slowly
learning republican habits and adopting republican ideas; a
monarchical hierarchy that fostered superstitions, that only
allowed education in a certain direction, and which
‘gathered gear’ unto itself ‘by every wile,’ has been
dethroned; agriculture now has the aid of the numerous
laborers who were employed in the erection of large edifices
for monks and nuns and religious exercises.”
A subsequent communication on the state of public education furnishes
a rather strange commentary on the above:
“The present attempt at organizing a public-school system
is, in my judgment, one of the most laudable acts of the
present government, for which it should be entitled to
credit, whether there be success or failure. My opinion is
that there are too many obstacles to be overcome for the
plan to be successful, and that the government is
undertaking a grave experiment which is likely to create
great dissatisfaction, and may result in revolution. But
having driven out most of the priests and nuns, who were
heretofore the instructors of the people, it seemed
necessary the government should try to supply their place.”
The same latitude of opinion and ill-concealed hostility to the
Catholic Church, the same desire to take advantage of every trifling
circumstance to misrepresent and malign the motives of her supporters,
pervade the correspondence of our other representatives in South
America, almost without exception. Thus Mr. Thomas Russell has no
scruple in lauding the usurping government of Venezuela, which, in
1870, first imprisoned and then banished perpetually the Archbishop of
Caracas and Venezuela, suppressed the seminaries, confiscated the
property of the monasteries, and expelled the nuns. Still less has Mr.
Rumsey Wing in assuring the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, in
writing about an alleged desecration of a grave in Quito, that the
news “of those outrages on the bodies of Protestants” “would create an
intense feeling not only in my own country but throughout Europe”;
while, having nothing else to send, we suppose, the same officious
gentleman forwards to Washington copies of two decrees of Congress,
one granting a tithe of the church revenues to his Holiness the Pope,
and the other placing Ecuador under the protection of the Sacred
Heart, “to show the intense Catholicism prevailing in this country.”
Then Mr. C. A. Logan, some time of Chili, appears to have interested
himself very much in local politics, and it is not difficult to
discover upon which side his sympathy rests. In a despatch to
Secretary Fish, November 2, 1874, he has the hardihood to charge the
Archbishop of Santiago with bribing congressmen, pending the passage
of a bill for the partial repeal of a penal law against the clergy. He
writes:
“The day arrived for the vote, and a large crowd gathered
about the building, awaiting the result with the most
breathless anxiety; among these was the archbishop himself,
in full clerical robes. Much to the chagrin of the liberals,
a two-third vote was gained by the church party under the
spur and lash of the clericals, and, as it is freely
asserted, by the liberal use of money. The senate is
composed of only twenty members, which is not a large body
to handle, if they take kindly to handling.”
Mr. Francis Thomas, of Lima, goes even farther than his _confrère_,
and deliberately asserts the complicity of the Catholics, as a body,
in the recent attempt to assassinate President Pardo.
“The conspirators,” he says, “had calculated upon the
co-operation of all that class of the population of this
country who have become hostile to the president of Peru on
account of his proceedings, in which high dignitaries of the
Catholic Church were concerned. The congress of Peru at its
last session passed a law forbidding members of the order of
Jesuits to reside within the jurisdiction of Peru. In
violation of this law, members of that order who had been
expelled from other Spanish republics took possession of a
convent in the interior of Peru, and took measures to
organize their society. President Pardo, in conformity to
the law, issued a proclamation requiring them to leave the
country, which has caused some degree of excitement.”
This fact, and the attempts of the government to introduce irreligious
books and periodicals into the schools, were sufficient, in the
opinion of our impartial minister, to provoke the Catholics of Peru to
the foulest crimes.
The Emperor of Brazil, in his open war on the church, also finds an
advocate and eulogist in Mr. Richard Cutts Shannon, the American
_chargé_ at his court, who employs his vicarious pen in justifying the
arrest, trial, and condemnation of the Bishop of Olinda to four years’
imprisonment with hard labor. But he is surpassed by minister James R.
Partridge, who, in alluding to the determined intention of the
government to prosecute to the bitter end the various vicars who were
named to take the place of those successively cast into prison,
emphatically declares: “From present appearances, the ministerial
party are going on and are determined to carry it through. It is to be
hoped that their courage may not fail, neither by reason of the long
list of those who are thus declared ready to become martyrs, nor by
any political move of the ecclesiastical party.”
Such, in brief, are the views of the men sent to represent this
country on American soil. If we turn to Europe—though we may
acknowledge a higher order of ability in our diplomatic agents
there—we discover prejudice as strong and partisanship equally
conspicuous. Referring to the German Empire, we are pained to find so
profound a student of the past as Mr. Bancroft our late minister at
Berlin, so easily deceived in contemporary history. Nothing,
certainly, can be more untrue than the following statement of the
position of affairs in Prussia in 1873:
“The effect of the correspondence [between the Pope and
Emperor William] has been only to increase the popularity
and European reputation of the emperor, and to depress the
influence of the clerical party, thus confirming the
accounts, which I have always given you, that the
ultramontane political influence can never become vitally
dangerous to this empire. The Catholic clergy are obviously
beginning to regret having commenced with the state a
contest in which it is not possible for them to gain the
advantage. The intelligent Catholics themselves for the most
part support the government, and so have received from the
ultramontanes the nickname of state Catholics.”
There is not a single sentence in the above which is not a
misapprehension of facts. How far Mr. Bancroft’s easy assertions and
confident predictions, made scarcely two years ago, have been
justified by the event is a matter that happily needs no inquiry,
while comment on our part would be almost cruel. Mr. Bancroft,
however, was not content with supplying information to the State
Department on matters exclusively pertaining to his mission. His wide
range of vision took in all Europe, past and present. Of the old
Helvetian republic he writes:
“Switzerland shows no sign of receding from its
comprehensive measures against the ultramontane usurpations;
and the spirit and courage of these republicans have
something of the same effect on the population of Germany
that was exercised by their forefathers in the time of the
Reformation.”
And again:
“How widely the movement is extending in Europe is seen by
what is passing in England, where choice has been made of a
ministry disinclined to further concessions to the demands
of the Catholic hierarchy, and where the archbishops of the
Anglican Church are proposing measures to drive all
Romanizing tendencies out of the forms of public worship in
the Establishment. Here in Germany, where the question takes
the form of a conflict between the authority of the state at
home within its own precincts, and the influence of an alien
ecclesiastical power, it is certain that the party of the
state is consolidating its strength; and I see nothing,
either in the history of the country, or in the present
state of public opinion, or the development of public
legislation, that can raise a doubt as to the persistency of
the German government in the course upon which it has
entered.”
What the “comprehensive measures” in Switzerland “against the
ultramontane usurpations” mean readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD already
know. They are simply a rather aggravated form of the Falck laws—a
form so aggravated that it is only within the past year M. Loyson
himself warned the world that the “comprehensive measures against
ultramontane usurpations,” which Mr. Bancroft finds such reasons to
commend, were aimed, through Catholicity, at all Christianity. And yet
a high official of our free government, a man of universal reputation
and great authority in the world of letters, finds in this elaborate
system of proscription and intolerance food for congratulation. One
would suppose from the spirit so plainly animating Mr. Bancroft that
he is a member of the O. A. U., and that he was chosen rather to
represent that delectable society in Berlin than the American
Government. It is to be presumed, from his own despatches, that he
would have our government follow the tyrannical attempt of Prussia and
Switzerland to “stamp out” freedom of conscience. Mr. Bancroft’s
diplomatic experience, under the influence of the court of Prussia,
seems destined to reverse his principles and maxims as an American
historian. He has, we fear, remained too long abroad for the good of
his native truth, character, and sense of right. It is to be hoped
that this baneful influence of foreign courts does not pursue him on
his return to his own country and people.
Mr. John Jay, who formerly acted as our envoy at Vienna, though not so
pronounced or diffusive in his despatches, is not far behind Mr.
Bancroft in expressing his entire concurrence with the restrictive
policy recently adopted by the government of Austria towards the
church; while Mr. George P. Marsh, our representative in Italy, is so
great an admirer of Garibaldi that he is never tired of chanting his
praises in grandiloquent prose. Those familiar with the life of that
notorious bandit will be surprised to learn from so high an authority
as the American minister that “he has never through life encouraged
any appeal to popular passion or any resistance to governments, except
by legal measures or in the way of organized and orderly attempts at
revolution; and, from the moment of his arrival at Rome, he exerted
himself to the utmost to restrain every manifestation of excitement.”
In marked contrast to the unfair and ungenerous spirit displayed in
the despatches of those ministers are the letters from France, Spain,
and England. The stirring political events which occupy the entire
attention of the two former countries leave no room, perhaps, for the
discussion of penal laws and judicial decrees against Catholicity;
while the latter, having carried out Protestantism to its logical
conclusion, and found it a sham, is more inclined to profit by the
blunders and crimes of its neighbors, so as to push its commercial
interests, than to imitate them and begin anew the _rôle_ of
persecutor for conscience’ sake.
In explanation of the erroneous views so frequently put forth by so
many of our diplomatic officials, we are assured that most of those
sent to Mexico and Central and South America have been members of
secret societies, and, having been accustomed to affiliate with the
lodges of those Freemason-ridden countries, have had whatever little
sense of equity they originally possessed perverted by the sophisms of
their new associates. Possibly; but let us consider how much harm may
be done by following such a short-sighted course. All the independent
countries south of us on this continent are largely Catholic, and,
with the exception of Brazil, claim to be republican. They are bound
to us by strong ties, political as well as commercial, and are
naturally inclined to look upon the United States as their exemplar
and guide, and, if need be, their protector. When they shall have
shaken off the incubus of military dictation that now weighs upon
them, and, restoring to the church its rights—as will eventually be
done—have entered on a new career of freedom and material prosperity,
how will they be disposed to feel towards a power which they have
known only through its agents, and those the advocates and supporters
of everything that is illiberal in politics and degrading in polemics?
In Europe the influence of incapable and unworthy representatives is
likely to be even more deleterious to our national character. The
affections of the people of the Old World are strongly inclined toward
the free institutions of the New. But if we continue to permit our
delegated authority to be used only in favor and encouragement of such
enemies of human liberty as the usurper at the Eternal City, the
tyrant at Berlin, and the communists of Geneva, the popular sympathy
born of our protestations of liberality will soon fade away, to give
place to feelings of mistrust, if not of positive aversion.
In calling public attention to the incapacity and perversity of the
majority of our diplomatists—men who do not hesitate to put into their
correspondence with foreign governments, and their private home
despatches, sentiments they dare not utter publicly in the forum or
through the press—we by no means desire to restrict proper expressions
of opinion or limit the just criticisms of the agents of the
Department of State. We only insist that these shall not be indulged
in at the expense of a very large and respectable portion of this
community. Neither do we require that they shall take sides with
Catholics, as such, anywhere, no matter how harsh or unjust may be
their grievances. This country is not Catholic, it is true, neither is
it Protestant; and, indeed, it is questionable if, in any strict
sense, it can be called Christian. But it is a country civilly and
religiously free, by custom, statute, and Constitution, and we have a
right to demand that whoever undertakes to act for it, as part and
parcel of the machinery of our government, among foreigners, shall
represent it as it is, in spirit as well as in fact—the opponent of
all proscription for conscience’ sake, the enemy of tyranny whether
exercised by the mob or the state. Is it not the true policy of our
government to send abroad as representatives of our interests men who,
while they are not hostile to the prevailing religious beliefs of the
country to which they are accredited, are, at the same time, true and
stanch Americans? If such men cannot be found, let us, in the name of
common sense, have none at all. Some minor interests may perhaps
suffer by the omission, but the honor and reputation of the republic
will remain unsullied and unimpaired.
[1] _Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United
States_, etc., for 1874-5.
LINES ON LEONARDO DA VINCI’S “VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS.”
Maternal lady with the virgin grace,
Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure,
And thou a virgin pure.
Lady most perfect, when thy sinless face
Men look upon, they wish to be
A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee.
CHARLES LAMB.
A POET AMONG THE POETS.
It is of the last importance that English criticism should clearly
discern what rule for its course, in order to avail itself of the
field now opening to it, and to produce fruit for the future, it ought
to take. The rule may be summed up in one word—disinterestedness.
Mr. James Russell Lowell[2] has applied Mr. Matthew Arnold’s rule with
rare fidelity in his essays, just published, on Dante, Spenser,
Wordsworth, Milton, and Keats. His estimate of the two greatest of
modern poets, especially the paper on Dante, is calculated to attract
general attention, and to arouse, we apprehend, some acrid sentiment
in a certain class of literary butterflies who are accustomed to sip
or decline according to the theological character of the garden. It
requires considerable courage to place Dante above all his rivals and
salute him as
“The loftiest of poets!”
in an hour when poetry has lost the qualities that made Dante lofty
and Milton grand, and when the epithet “Catholic,” which Dante loved
and Milton hated, has become again a reproach. Lowell’s consideration
of both is characterized by disinterestedness as to time, religion,
politics, and literature; and the sincere student who casts aside his
prejudices, like his hat, when he approaches the temples that enshrine
so much of divinity as God deposited in the souls of the Florentine
and the Puritan, will find it difficult to dissent from the judgment
of Lowell upon their individuality, their inspiration, or their art.
Lowell is peculiarly adapted to the form of literature, semi-critical,
semi-creative, in which he has recently distinguished himself. We
believe his essay on Dante to be the most successfully-accomplished
task which he has yet undertaken; and the cultivated American public
should thank one who has amused and diverted it as well as he has done
for the solid instruction which this volume conveys in a style at once
scholarly, fresh, and refined. Lowell’s mental temperament is
admirably adapted for the mirroring of poets’ minds. Himself a genuine
poet, without ambition above his capacity, his agile fancy discerns
the quicker and appreciates more intensely the imagination of epic
souls; while his critical faculty, naturally acute, has the additional
advantage of a keen sense of humor, which enables him to discover more
readily the incongruous, and is, therefore, an invaluable assistant in
literary discrimination.
It is the trade of criticism to expose blemishes; it is genius in
criticism to appreciate the subject. The journeyman critic of the last
two centuries has been so busy making authors miserable without
felicitating mankind that when we read through an essay like Lowell’s
on Dante, on Wordsworth, or on Spenser, we cheerfully recognize a man
where experience has taught us to look only for an ingenious carper or
spiteful ferret. However, critics are no worse than they used to be.
Swift, who had excellent opportunity of forming an opinion, both in
his own practice and in the observation of that of others, has left
this dramatic picture, the truthfulness of which there is no reason
yet to question: “The malignant deity Criticism dwelt on the top of a
snowy mountain in Nova Zembla; Momus found her extended in her den
upon the spoils of numberless volumes half devoured. At her right hand
sat Ignorance, her father and husband, blind with age; at her left,
Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the scraps of paper herself had
torn. There was Opinion, her sister, light of foot, hoodwinked, and
headstrong, yet giddy and perpetually turning. About her played her
children, Noise and Impudence, Dulness and Vanity, Positiveness,
Pedantry, and Ill-Manners.” Such is reckless and conscienceless
criticism even to this day; and we turn from it, in grateful delight,
to the reverential commentary which Lowell has produced upon one of
the saddest of all human creatures—the great Catholic poet of the
middle ages.
Dante, little understood by those who have the largest title to his
legacies, is, after all, the universal poet—the poet of the soul.
Homer chants the blood-red glories of war, and is the poet of a
period; Virgil charms by the grace of his lines, and is the poet of an
episode; Milton awes with the mighty sweeps of his rhetoric, and is
the poet of the grandiose; Shakspeare astounds with his knowledge of
human nature and enchains with his wit, and is the poet of the
passions; Dante, when read aright, is found to be the poet of the
Soul. The line that divides him from Shakspeare lies between the
subjective and the objective—Shakspeare’s themes are men and women;
Dante’s sole subject is Man—man within himself, as he is related to
God, to religion, to eternity. As Lowell felicitously writes it,
“_Arma virumque cano_; that is the motto of classic song. Dante says,
_Subjectum est homo_, not _vir_—my theme is man, not a man.”
Why, then, do we not read him more and value him as he deserves? For
two reasons: first, the difficulty of adequate translation; next, the
mysterious richness of his thought, whose pearls are not strung across
the door of the lines to warn us, as later poetry so candidly does,
that within there is nothing but barrenness. The proper understanding
of Dante has been a growth, beginning in Italy as soon as he was dead,
extending gradually over Europe, into England, and now westward,
gaining in clearness and glory as time recedes and space enlarges.
Within a century after the poet’s death lectures on his works were
delivered in the churches, and, as soon as the invention of printing
enabled, numerous editions were edited and circulated. The first
translation was into Spanish; then into French; next into German; and
a copy of a Latin translation of the _Divine Comedy_ by a bishop was
made at the request of two English bishops in the early part of the
fifteenth century, and was sent to England. Spenser and Milton were
familiar with the poet’s works, but the first complete English
translation did not appear until 1802. Of the English translations
since then, the most familiar are Cary’s and Longfellow’s; and to this
catalogue Mr. Lowell adds: “A translation of the _Inferno_ into
quatrains by T. W. Parsons ranks with the best for spirit,
truthfulness, and elegance”—praise which will be cordially endorsed by
those who have profited by Mr. Parsons’ labor.
We propose to discuss Dante the man and Mr. Lowell’s estimate of him,
as exhibited in his writings, and shall touch upon the latter only as
they may be necessary to the clearer revelation of their author’s
character. For Dante, like Milton, was not of common mould; in
whatever aspect we view him he proves extraordinary to a degree which
frequently becomes incomprehensible. It is natural to wish to throw
the two under the same light, although the result of the experiment is
only to magnify their points of difference and diminish those of
comparison. The sum of the results appears to be that only in the
accidents of life are they comparable; in the essentials of character,
with a single exception—that of intense faith—they were radically
unlike. Widely apart as their names appear—Dante dying in 1321 and
Milton entering life in 1608—men were engaged during the lives of
both in civil revolution, and each had his own theory of government
and exercised the functions of political power. Both were men of
sorrow, both were unappreciated in their day and generation, and the
light and joy which each experienced emanated from within and supplied
the fire of their genius. The noblest work of each was written in the
gloomiest period of his life. Here the possibility of parallel ends.
There is a close relation—a much closer one than may at first be
suspected—between Dante and the instant condition of American society
and politics. Nearly six hundred years have passed away, and we have
to go back to Dante to learn personal virtue in political life, as
well as religion in social affairs. Lowell has escaped the poison of
the time. He perceives the essence as well as the necessity of virtue,
and fully realizes its absence in our own state.
“Very hateful to his fervid heart and sincere mind would
have been the modern theory which deals with sin as
involuntary error, and by shifting off the fault to the
shoulders of Atavism or those of Society—personified for
purposes of excuse, but escaping into impersonality again
from the grasp of retribution—weakens that sense of personal
responsibility which is the root of self-respect and the
safeguard of character. Dante, indeed, saw clearly enough
that the divine justice did at length overtake society in
the ruin of states caused by the corruption of private, and
thence of civic, morals; but a personality so intense as his
could not be satisfied with such a tardy and generalized
penalty as this. ‘It is Thou,’ he says sternly, ‘who hast
done this thing, and Thou, not Society, shalt be damned for
it; nay, damned all the worse for this paltry subterfuge.
This is not my judgment, but that of the universal Nature,
from before the beginning of the world.’… He believed in the
righteous use of anger, and that baseness was its legitimate
quarry. He did not think the Tweeds and Fisks, the political
wire-pullers and convention-packers, of his day merely
amusing, and he certainly did think it the duty of an
upright and thoroughly-trained citizen to speak out severely
and unmistakably. He believed firmly, almost fiercely, in a
divine order of the universe, a conception whereof had been
vouchsafed him, and that whatever or whoever hindered or
jostled it, whether wilfully or blindly it mattered not, was
to be got out of the way at all hazards; because obedience
to God’s law, and not making things generally comfortable,
was the highest duty of man, as it was also his only way to
true felicity.… It would be of little consequence to show in
which of two equally selfish and short-sighted parties a man
enrolled himself six hundred years ago; but it is worth
something to know that a man of ambitious temper and violent
passions, aspiring to office in a city of factions, could
rise to a level of principle so far above them all. Dante’s
opinions have life in them still, because they were drawn
from living sources of reflection and experience, because
they were reasoned out from the astronomic laws of history
and ethics, and were not weather-guesses snatched in a
glance at the doubtful political sky of the hour.”
In this Dante strikingly differed from Milton, who was a revengeful
and intensely-bigoted fanatic of his own faction, and he admitted to
his companionship no man, high or low, who presumed to differ from
him. Dante was a politician by principle, placing his country first,
and setting a high value on himself as her servant. Milton was a
politician by bigotry, placing himself first, and setting a high value
on his country because he was her servant. But the manliness of Dante
in demanding that the severe precepts of religion should be inflexibly
applied to political administration in an age whose corruption was
only less shocking than that of our own, is the particular lesson
which this vigorous extract from Lowell conveys. If society in this
era should esteem political wire-pullers, convention-packers, and
politicians who deem patriotism the science of personal exigencies, as
Dante esteemed and treated them, should we be any the worse off? Dante
looked upon a thief as a thief, and the knave who conspired to defraud
the government as fit only to “begone among the other dogs.” Would
there not be a healthier tone in our political affairs if these
classes of criminals were not met, as is usually the case, by justice
daintily gloved and the bandage removed from her eyes, lest she should
make a mistake as to persons?
The inspiration of Dante was strictly religious. So was Milton’s; but
with this distinction: that Dante’s religiousness was real and
beneficent, while Milton’s was unreal and malignant—as Lowell says,
Milton’s “God was a Calvinistic Zeus.”
A brief and succinct analysis of the _Divine Comedy_ will be found
serviceable by those who have not analyzed it for themselves, and at
the same time will make manifest the dependence of Dante’s inspiration
upon Catholic doctrine:
“The poem consists of three parts—Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.
Each part is divided into thirty-three cantos, in allusion to the
years of the Saviour’s life; for although the Hell contains
thirty-four, the first canto is merely introductory. In the form
of the verse (triple rhyme) we may find an emblem of the Trinity,
and in the three divisions of the threefold state of man, sin,
grace, and beatitude.… Lapse through sin, mediation, and
redemption—these are the subjects of the three parts of the poem;
or, otherwise stated, intellectual conviction of the result of
sin, typified in Virgil; … moral conversion after repentance, by
divine grace, typified in Beatrice; reconciliation with God, and
actual, blinding vision of him—‘The pure in heart shall see
God.’… The poem is also, in a very intimate sense, an apotheosis
of woman.… Nothing is more wonderful than the power of absorption
and assimilation in this man, who could take up into himself the
world that then was, and reproduce it with such cosmopolitan
truth, to human nature and to his own individuality as to reduce
all contemporary history to a mere comment on his vision. We
protest, therefore, against the parochial criticism which would
degrade Dante to a mere partisan; which sees in him a Luther
before his time, and would clap the _bonnet rouge_ upon his
heavenly muse.”
Dante proved himself a reformer of the most aggressive kind. The
difference between him and Luther was that Dante endeavored to reform
men by means of the church; Luther endeavored to destroy the church
rather than reform himself. Evils existed within the church, as a part
of society, during the periods of both. Dante helped to correct them
as a conservative; Luther chose, as a radical, to tear the edifice
down. Unlike the temple of Philistia, the church stood, and the Samson
of the sixteenth century fell beneath the ruins of a single column.
No fact in the history of poetry is more striking than the necessity
of religion as a source of inspiration. The _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_
acquire their epic quality from the religion of Greece; gods stalk
about, and Minerva’s shield resounds in the clangor with that of
Achilles. The _Æneid_ would be beautiful without the association of
mythology; but it is mythology which enhances its grace into grandeur.
The Vedas are an expression of the religious aspirations of the
Hindoos. The verse of Boccaccio is pleasing only in proportion as
religion cleansed his pen. Petrarch’s sonnets would never have been
written had not Laura taught him the distinction between pure love, as
the church knows it, and the passions which carried Byron into
hysterics. The Italian epic of the sixteenth century, _Jerusalem
Delivered_, which is held by Hallam to be equal in grace to the
_Æneid_, had the First Crusade for its theme. Would it have been
possible for Milton to have written any poem equal to _Paradise Lost_
out of other than Scriptural materials? Aside from the literary
characteristics and dramatic strength of the plays of Shakspeare, does
not their chief value lie in their correct morality—the morality which
is found nowhere outside Catholic teaching? This is not the place to
discuss the modern decline of poetry. Matthew Arnold’s theory—it is a
general favorite—is that history and boldly-outlined epochs make
poetry; and Lowell says, in his essay on Milton, “It is a high
inspiration to be the neighbor of great events.” But the last two
centuries have been crowded with history; boldly-outlined epochs have
lifted their awful summits in England, in France, in Italy, in the
United States, in Spain. Where are the great poets among the
verse-makers who have been neighbors of these great events, and might
have caught high inspiration from them? Since the Reformation the
moral world has been growing iconoclastic, and there is no poetry in
iconoclasm.
Next to religion, woman has been the great inspiration of poets; but
the modern idea of marriage has shattered the sanctuary walls which
Christianity erected around it; the sacredness of home is invaded, the
oneness of love destroyed—there is no poetry in divorce.
Is not the decline of poetry a very curious, if not a fatal, reply to
the hypothesis of evolution, carried logically into the moral and
intellectual world?
Mr. Lowell completes his essay by a minute examination of Dante’s
thought and style, as exhibited in the _Divine Comedy_; and we can
find space only for the closing period:
“At the Round Table of King Arthur there was left always one
seat empty for him who should accomplish the adventure of
the Holy Grail. It was called the perilous seat, because of
the dangers he would encounter who would win it. In the
company of the epic poets there was a place left for whoever
should embody the Christian idea of a triumphant life,
outwardly all defeat, inwardly victorious; who should make
us partakers in that cup of sorrow in which all are
communicants with Christ. He who should do this would
achieve indeed the perilous seat; for he must combine poesy
with doctrine in such cunning wise that the one lose not its
beauty nor the other its severity—and Dante has done it. As
he takes possession of it we seem to hear the cry he himself
heard when Virgil rejoined the company of great singers:
‘All honor to the loftiest of poets!’”
Mr. Lowell’s Dante is a man divinely inspired and overshadowed by
divinity to the grave itself—a character austere, devoid of humor,
unflinchingly faithful to his conceptions of right whether moral or
political, self-respecting, and believing in his own commission from
God; a mind logical, systematic, and illuminated by Heaven,
consciously developing its marvellous genius in the midst of
contumely; a heart consumed first by human love for Beatrice, and by
it purged and refined out of personality into the love of God and the
proper relative appreciation of all creatures; a sublime human soul,
in brief, transformed from the individual into the universal, and
teaching all men, as it was taught in sorrow and in love, to seek
eternity as the sole object worthy of human effort; and teaching in a
lofty splendor of phrase and successions of exquisite imagery which
continue to astonish posterity and will for ever adorn general
literature.
The essay on Milton is devoted rather to Mr. David Masson than to the
poet. There is nothing to indicate that the critic is in love with
either the poems or the personality of the sublime Puritan who
officiated in the capacity of Latin secretary to Oliver Cromwell, and
who devoted himself to epic verse after his services ceased to be
available for the oppression of his fellow-men. Still less is he
enamored of Mr. David Masson as a biographer of Milton, and the jovial
though thoroughly effective manner in which he demonstrates the Scotch
professor’s unfitness for this office adds to his volume a flavor of
pungency which brings back happy recollections of the “Table for
Critics.” Masson is very voluminous and exasperatingly given to remote
and often irrelevant detail; and Macaulay, in extinguishing some of
the literary pretenders of his time, was never more dextrous than
Lowell in this grotesque joust at the Edinburgh professor’s faults,
nor half so witty. Referring to the length of the biography—there are
eight volumes octavo of the _Life_ and _Works_—Lowell says with
perfect gravity: “We envy the secular leisures of Methuselah, and are
thankful that _his_ biography, at least (if written in the same
longeval proportion), is irrecoverably lost to us. What a subject that
would have been for a person of Mr. Masson’s spacious predilections!”
And he goes on to say: “It is plain, from the preface to the second
volume, that Mr. Masson himself has an uneasy consciousness that
something is wrong, and that Milton ought to be more than a mere
incident of his own biography.” Masson, on the other hand, is of
opinion “that, whatever may be thought by a hasty person looking in on
the subject from the outside,” no one can study Milton without being
obliged to study also the history of England, Scotland, and Ireland;
whereupon Lowell retorts that, even for a hasty person, eleven years
is “rather long to have his button held by a biographer ere he begins
his next sentence.”
Masson’s rambling history of the seventeenth century “is interrupted
now and then,” says Lowell, “by an unexpected apparition of Milton,
who, like Paul Pry, just pops in and hopes he does not intrude, to
tell us what _he_ has been doing in the meanwhile.” Blinded by the
dust of old papers which Masson ransacks, to discover that they have
no relation to his hero, the critic compares the ponderous biography
to Allston’s picture of Elijah in the wilderness, “where a good deal
of research at last enables us to guess at the prophet absconded like
a conundrum in the landscape, where the very ravens could scarce have
found him out.” This characterization of Edinburgh by Harvard will
certainly inspire suggestion, if it does not awaken hope; but Lowell’s
right to criticise the sedate and prolix gentleman who occupies in the
Scottish metropolis the chair which he himself fills at Cambridge does
not rest, as we have already seen in the essay on Dante, on Susarion’s
faculty of turning the serious and dull into actual comedy.
Like all who have recently written of Milton—with the exception of
Masson—Lowell looks upon him as a being “set apart.” To idealize the
author of _Paradise Lost_ is quite as natural as to idealize Dante,
notwithstanding their relative distances from us; but in the former
case, with Lowell, it is the idealization of admiring awe; in the
latter, of tender and exquisitely appreciative love. He does not
appear to hold Milton in any degree of the personal affection which he
feels for the inspired Florentine, but is constrained to insist that
Masson is disrespectful toward his subject, and that “Milton is the
last man in the world to be slapped on the back with impunity.”
When Lowell writes of Milton’s literary style, although he does it
sparingly, every stroke is a master’s. His estimate of Milton as a man
is calm, judicial, and courageous. “He stands out,” he says, “in
marked and solitary individuality, apart from the great movement of
the civil war, apart from the supine acquiescence of the Restoration,
a self-opinionated, unforgiving, and unforgetting man.” It is the
habit of hurried teachers of our day, who have to teach so many more
things than they know, to exalt Milton
“High on a throne of royal state,”
and swing before him the incense of a senseless and absurd homage. In
our school-days most of us were led to look upon the sightless poet as
a being more than man, if a little less than God. Virtues, as he
understood them, he certainly possessed; but many more virtuous than
he suffered ignominy and death for presuming to exercise the very
liberty which he grandly claimed for himself, but which, we find on
examining his prose, he was dilatory in awarding to others, even in
the abstract. These prose writings are at once curious and monstrous,
and exhibit the real Milton in a true and natural light, even as
_Samson Agonistes_, _Lycidas_, and _Paradise Lost_ manifest his superb
and supreme characteristics as a poet. In prose he wrote as he
thought; in verse he wrote as he could. He was always the rhetorician,
making an art of what men of less genius can display only as the
artificial; but while his poetry is the complete manifestation of his
art, his prose, always written with an obvious and acknowledged
personal purpose, manifests himself. His prose works are already
scarce; the day is not distant when nothing will remain of them but
their ashes, for the types will plead release from perpetuating the
hard, angular, stony reality of a man whom taste, if not instinct,
yearns to withdraw from our painful knowledge of what he was, and veil
him in a radiant mistiness of what we wish he might have been. Nothing
better illustrates the idealism with which the pencil of youth paints
Milton than Macaulay’s essay, written while he was still a boy, but
included with the mature expressions of his manhood. Nothing could
more completely pulverize this roseate estimate than Milton’s own
works in the days when he wrote for time and not for immortality. No
matter what the theme, his prose is always ponderous and polysyllabic,
abounding in magnificent metaphor, violent epithets, arrogant
dogmatism, and personal abuse of those who differed from him, of which
no trace, happily, remains in our day. The higher the man, the coarser
the missile which he hurled at him with a giant’s force. In his reply
to Salmasius he addresses that eminent scholar as “a vain, flashy
man,” and, in the progress of his argument, reminds him that he is
also a knave, a pragmatical coxcomb, a bribed beggar, a whipped dog,
an impotent slave, a renegade, a sacrilegious wretch, a mongrel cur,
an obscure scoundrel, a fearful liar, and a mass of corruption.
He seems to have lacked both consistency and clearness of conviction.
He was apparently incapable of loving woman; he scarcely respected
her; and, in his social theory, awarded the sex a place somewhat below
that which it occupied under the patriarchs, and considerably lower
than that described by Homer as peculiar to the heroic age of Greece.
He obtained coy and pretty Mary Powell from her father in
consideration of so many pounds of the coin of the realm, at a time
when a mortgage had become embarrassing and a daughter was the only
available means of extinguishing it. When that volatile young woman,
shivering in the shadows of a Puritan despot, found courage enough to
leave his roof, Milton was undoubtedly more impressed by her audacity
than grieved by her absence. It was his pride that was hurt; and
notwithstanding that he had previously advocated social views of the
straitest and most conservative kind, he then published his essay on
divorce, which, in amazing egotism, in wealth of classical and
Scriptural allusion, in looseness of morals, and in equality of social
privileges as between man and woman, is as veritable a curiosity as
antiquarians have yet rescued from the monumental mysteries of old
Assyria. In politics and religion he was as unsound and wavering as in
his laws for society. An aristocrat of the most despotic type, he
enthroned learning, and yet permitted his daughters to acquire only
the alphabets, that he might use their senses as his slaves. He
despised them as human beings, and they, in turn, hated and deceived
him, and almost his last words on earth were terrible denunciations of
those whom God intended to illumine his home, soothe his life, and
deliver his whitened head, already aureoled, to
“Dear, beauteous Death.”
For many years—the very best of his life—he lent himself to the
political schemes of Oliver Cromwell, and the violence and coarseness
of his pamphlets made him one of the most conspicuous figures of a
long series of civil storms; yet Lowell is constrained to admit that
“neither in politics, theology, nor social ethics did Milton leave any
distinguishable trace on the thought of his time or in the history of
opinion.” He considered his ideas and inclinations correct and above
appeal, simply because they were John Milton’s. The harshest word
which Lowell says of his prose style is his comparison of a man of
Milton’s personal character, which was without taint, to Martin
Luther, whose writings were a true reflection of their author. Lowell
is very gentle in saying of so noted a plagiarist as Milton: “A true
Attic bee, he made boot on every lip where there was a trace of truly
classic honey.” He did indeed, not in prose only, but in his verse.
But we easily forgive him. There are thieves whom stolen garments more
become than their owners.
[2] _Among my Books._ Second Series.
ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS
VI.,” ETC.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE EPISODE EXPLAINED.
The night closed in—night, that is so cruel, yet so merciful;
intensifying every pain in the long dark watch, or lulling it in
blessed sleep.
There was very little sleep for Raymond that night, and none at all
for his two nurses. They sat by his bed while the slow hours dragged
on, watching his feverish restlessness, that was occasionally soothed
by broken snatches of rest, thanks to a potion that was administered
at intervals. Franceline’s anxiety gradually returned as she sat there
observing every sound and symptom. She could not but see that there
was something far more serious in this sudden attack than an ordinary
fainting fit. Raymond was so troubled and excited in his sleep that
she almost wished him to awake; and then again she longed for
unconsciousness to soothe his feverish terrors. He clutched her hand;
he could not bear her to move from him. At last the dawn came, and
like a bright-winged angel scattered the darkness and scared away the
ghostly phantoms of the night, and Raymond fell into a slumber long
and deep enough to be refreshing.
Some days passed without bringing any change; but he was no worse,
which, the doctor said, meant that he was better. His condition,
however, continued extremely critical.
It was wonderful both to Angélique and to herself how Franceline bore
up under the strain; for both her mental and physical powers were
severely taxed. She had hardly closed her eyes since her father had
fallen ill; and she took scarcely any food. But anxiety, so long as it
does not utterly break us down, buoys us up.
The few neighbors who were intimate were kind and sympathizing. Lady
Anwyll had driven over and made anxious inquiries, and would gladly be
of use in any way, if she could. Miss Bulpit also came to offer her
services in any way they could be available. Miss Merrywig called
every day. So far Franceline had seen none of them; she was always
with her father when they called, and Angélique would not disturb her
for visitors.
Father Henwick came constantly to inquire, but did not always ask to
see the young girl. Franceline wondered why her father had not before
this expressed a wish to see him; it seemed so natural that such a
wish should have manifested itself the moment Raymond was able to
receive any one. She dared not take the initiative and suggest it, but
she could not help feeling that it would be an immense relief to the
sufferer if he could disburden his mind of the weight that was upon
it, and speak to Father Henwick as to a tried and affectionate friend,
if even he did not as yet seek spiritual help and guidance from him.
It had long since been borne in on Franceline that the horrible
suspicion which had so mysteriously fallen on Raymond was in some way
or other connected with his sudden illness; she brooded over the
thought until it became a fixed idea and haunted her day and night.
How was it that he did not instinctively turn for comfort to the
Source where he was sure to find it? Father Henwick himself must feel
pained and surprised at not having been summoned to the sick-room
before this. Franceline was thinking over it all one morning, sitting
near Raymond’s bedside, when Angélique put in her head and announced
in a loud whisper that M. le Curé, as she dubbed Father Henwick, was
down-stairs, and would be glad if she could speak to him a moment.
Franceline rose softly, and was leaving the room, when her father, who
was not dozing, as she fancied, said:
“Why does he not come up and see me? I should be glad to see him; it
would do me good.”
Father Henwick came up without delay, and Franceline soon made a
pretext for leaving him alone with the invalid. It was with a beating
heart that she closed the door on them and went down-stairs to wait
till she was recalled. She could hear only the full, clear tones of
Father Henwick’s voice at first; after a while these grew lower, and
then she heard the murmur of Raymond’s voice; then there seemed to
follow a silence. She was too agitated to pray in words, but her heart
prayed silently with intense fervor. The conference lasted a full
half-hour, and then Father Henwick’s cheerful voice sounded on the
stairs.
“How do you think he looks, father?” she said, meeting him at the
study door with another question in her eyes that Father Henwick
thought he understood.
“Much better than I expected!” he answered promptly and with a
heartiness of conviction that was music to her ears; “and you will
find that from this out he will improve steadily, and rapidly, I hope,
too.”
A stifled “Thank God!” was Franceline’s answer.
“And now how about you?” said the priest, with something of the old
blunt grumble that was so much more reassuring than the tenderness
called forth by pity. “I heard a very bad account of you this
morning—no sleep, and no food, and no air; you mean to fret yourself
into an illness before your father is up and able to attend on you, do
you? That would be one way of showing your dutiful affection for him.
Humph! Are those the eyes for a young lady to have in her head on a
fine sunny morning like this? Did you go to bed at all last night?”
“Yes, but I could not sleep; I was too anxious, too unhappy.”
“Too unbelieving, too mistrustful. Go up-stairs this minute, you child
of little faith, and lie down and lay your head upon the pillow of
divine Providence, and be asleep in five minutes!”
He left her with this peremptory injunction, and Franceline, with a
lightened heart, went up-stairs determined to obey it. It was as yet,
of course, a matter of pure conjecture what had passed between the
priest and her father; but when, an hour later, after obediently
taking that refreshing sleep on the pillow of divine Providence which
had been commanded her, she came into Raymond’s room, there was a
marked change in his whole demeanor. He had not passed the interval in
the listless apathy that had now become habitual to him. He had made
Angélique bring over a little celestial globe and set it on the bed
for him, and had amused himself with it awhile; and then he had taken
up the book Franceline had left on the chair beside him when she stole
out of the room. It was _The Imitation of Christ_. He was reading it
when she entered, and there was an expression on his features that
made her happier than she had been for a long time. He looked more
peaceful, more life-like than she had seen him for weeks even before
he had fallen ill.
“You are feeling better, petit père?” she said, kissing him, and
taking the dear face between her hands to look into it more closely.
“Yes, my clair de lune, much better,” he replied, with a smile that
had all its wonted sweetness and something of the old brightness. “I
think I shall be able to get down-stairs in a day or two.”
“I see you have been at your old tricks again,” she said, shaking her
finger at him and pointing to the globe; “you know you are forbidden
to do anything that gives you the least fatigue.”
“It was not a fatigue, my little one—it amused me; but I will not do
it again, if you don’t wish it.”
Franceline hugged his head to her cheek, and said she would let him do
anything so long as it amused him.
“I was thinking of you last night, petit père,” she said, making the
globe revolve slowly on its axis; “the sky was so beautiful at twelve
o’clock when I happened to look out of my window that I longed for you
to see it.”
“Ha! Then probably it will be the same to-night,” said Raymond. “I
will keep my curtain drawn, so that I may see it, if it is.”
“Yes; and let the moon keep you awake whether you will or not! I
should like to hear what Angélique would say to that proposal! No; but
I will tell you what we’ll do: I will be on the watch to-night, and if
the stars are like last night I will steal in and see if you are
awake, and if you are I will draw the curtain so that you may see them
from your bed. We shall be like two _savants_ making our
‘observations’ in the night-time, shall we not? And—who knows?—we may
discover a new star!”
Raymond pinched her cheek and laughed gently. His hopes in this
respect were limited by facts—or rather negatives—that Franceline did
not stop to inquire into; she had not gone deeply into the science of
astronomy.
“There is no saying what I might not discover with those bright eyes
of thine for a telescope,” said M. de la Bourbonais.
Angélique rejoiced in her own fashion at the decided turn for the
better that her master had suddenly taken. She saw that he spoke a
good deal during the evening, and ate with a nearer approach to
appetite than he had yet shown; so she settled him for the night, and
went to bed with a lighter heart than for many past nights, and soon
slept soundly.
Franceline did not follow her example. It was not anxiety that kept
her awake, but happiness; she could not bring herself to part with it
so quickly, and lose it for a time in unconsciousness. There was a
presence, too, in the ecstatic silence of the night, that answered to
this sense of joy and appealed to her for responsive watch. Joys are
more intense when we dwell on them in the night-time, because they are
more separate, farther lifted from the jarring discord of our daily
lives, where pain cries around us in so many multiform tongues. It is
as if the world grew wider in spiritual space, and that senses and
fibres, too delicate to vibrate in the glare of daylight, woke up in
the solemn hush when the world of man is out of sight and God comes
nearer to us.
Franceline stood at the window and gazed at the beautiful scene that
spread itself before her. The moon was at her full; the landscape,
diluted in the moonlight, floated in mystic, illimitable space, still
and hushed as if the world were holding its breath to hear the stars
tingling in the sapphire dome; every tree and blade of grass were
listening to the silence; the river sped stealthily along like a
silver snake between its banks where the gray poplars stood looking
down, frighted by the vibration of their own shadows, dyeing
themselves black in the water.
“If he were awake, how he would enjoy this!” murmured Franceline to
herself; and then, unable to resist the temptation, she stole softly
through Angélique’s room and across the landing into Raymond’s. The
doors were all open, partly to admit more air, partly that they might
hear the least tinkle of his little hand-bell, if he sounded it.
“Is that my Franceline?” asked a voice from the bed. The night light
threw her shadow on the floor, and Raymond, who was not asleep, saw
it.
“Yes, petit père,” she answered in a whisper; “the sky is so lovely I
thought I must come and see if you were awake. Shall I draw the
curtain?”
“Yes.”
She did so, and then crept back and knelt down beside him. Raymond
laid his cheek against her head, and clasped her hand in his, and they
remained for some moments gazing at the beauty of the heavens in
silence. Then he said, making long pauses, as if he were thinking
aloud rather than speaking to her:
“How wonderful is the splendor of God as he reveals it to us in his
works!… Who can measure his power, his glory?… Think what it means,
the creation of one of those stars! And there are myriads and myriads
of them spangling millions of miles of blue sky! There are no steppes,
no barren spots, there where the stars cannot grow. They are not like
flowers, those stars of our world; they never perish or fade—they only
draw behind the light for a while; always harmonious, moving in their
appointed places like the notes of a divine symphony; they make no
discord. The great stars are not scornful of the little ones; the
little stars are not jealous of the great; each is content to be as it
is and where it is, and to stay where the great Star-Maker has fixed
it.… My clair de lune, let us try and be content like the stars.”
Franceline raised his hand to her lips, and murmured the strophe of
her favorite hymn of S. Francis: “Praised be my Lord for our sister
the moon, and for the stars, which he has set clear and lovely in the
heavens.…”
The next morning Father Henwick came and was once more closeted with
Raymond. Nothing had been said about it, but, when the door-bell
sounded, M. de la Bourbonais glanced quickly at the clock, and
exclaimed in a tone of surprise: “Already half-past twelve! I did not
think it was so late. Thou wilt show him up at once, my child, and
then leave us alone for a little.”
No further explanation was necessary. Franceline kissed him in
silence, placed a chair close by his pillow, and then, in a happy
flutter, went down to meet Father Henwick.
Two days after this there was great joy at The Lilies. The little
cottage was decked out as for a bridal. Franceline had stayed up late
to have it all finished for the early morning; she would do everything
with her own hands. The stairs were wreathed with garlands of green
leaves and ferns; every vase and cup she could find was filled with
the sweet spring flowers—cowslips, primroses, anemones, and wild
violets—and placed in the tiny entrance and on the landing opposite
Raymond’s room. The room itself was transformed into a chapel. At the
foot of the bed stood a small table covered with Franceline’s snowiest
muslin, joyously sacrificed for the occasion. Lights were burning on
either side of a large crucifix; there were lights and flowers on the
mantelpiece, where she had placed her statue of the Madonna and other
precious ornaments; the thin curtains were drawn and filled the little
room with a soft golden twilight. Franceline was kneeling beside the
bed, reciting some litany aloud, which Raymond answered from a book in
timid, reverential under-tones.
But now a sudden hush falls upon the faintly-broken silence. There is
a sound of footsteps without; a dear and awful Presence is
approaching. No need to ring; the door stands open to its widest, and
Angélique, kneeling on the threshold, adores and welcomes the divine
Guest; a little bell goes tinkling up amidst the flowers, and ceases
as it enters the illuminated room.…
* * * * *
The sudden improvement in Raymond’s state was not followed by a
proportionately rapid progress. He still continued extremely weak, and
was not able to come down-stairs until several days later. Dr. Blink
was puzzled; he had been very sanguine when the rally took place, and
now he hardly knew what to think. He was convinced from the first that
the attack had been in a great measure caused by some mental shock;
but that seemed at one moment to have righted itself, and he thought
his patient was safe. This was apparently a mistake. The pressure may
have been unexpectedly lightened, but it was clearly not removed; and
until this was done medicine could do very little.
“There is something on his mind,” said the doctor to Mr. Langrove one
morning, on coming out from his daily visit; “there is some trouble
weighing on him, and he will not recover until something is done
toward removing it.”
The vicar understood perfectly the drift of this remark. It was an
appeal from the medical man to the friend of the patient for help or
light. Mr. Langrove could give neither. He observed that the count had
been seriously anxious about Franceline’s health; but Dr. Blink shook
his head. He knew how to discriminate between the effect of heartache
and a pressure on the mind. In this case the mind was oppressed by
some secret burden, or he was very much mistaken; it might be some
painful apprehension in the future, or something distressing in the
past; but whatever the cause was, past or future, the present effect
was unmistakable, and, unless some friend who had the full confidence
of the patient could afford some relief, the worst might still be
apprehended. Mr. Langrove answered by some irrelevant expression of
sympathy and regret, but volunteered no opinion of his own. He went
home and sat down and wrote to Sir Simon Harness. This was all he
could think of. If Sir Simon could not help, he believed no one else
could.
It so happened that the baronet was just now absent in the South of
Italy, in dutiful attendance on Lady Rebecca; and as he had been
called off suddenly, and left no orders about his letters being sent
after him, those directed to his bankers lay there unopened. There was
another besides Mr. Langrove’s lying there, which, if it had reached
him, would have rejoiced the baronet’s heart and provoked a quick
response.
The fears which Raymond’s tardy progress raised in the mind of his
medical man were not shared by Franceline. Hope still triumphed over
alarm, and she felt confident that, since the great weight on her
father’s mind had been removed, his complete recovery must ultimately
follow. This certainty made the delay easy to bear. It was wonderful
how her own strength bore up. She had quite lost her cough—a fact
which confirmed the doctor’s previous opinion that the nerves had more
to do with this symptom than the lungs—she kept well, and was
altogether in better health than for some months previously. Her
spirits raised to elation after that happy morning’s episode,
continued excellent—at times as joyous as a child’s.
The moment M. de la Bourbonais was able to get down-stairs Angélique
insisted on Franceline going every day for a walk while the sun was
shining. One morning, when he had come down and was comfortably
established on the sofa in his study, propped up so that he could see
out of the window, Franceline said she was going to gather him a
bouquet. She smoothed and changed the cushions, put another shawl over
his feet, moved the sofa a little bit nearer the window, and then back
again a little bit nearer the fire, until, finding there was
absolutely nothing more to fuss over, except to kiss him for the tenth
time with “Au revoir, petit père!” as if they were separating for a
journey, she sallied forth for her constitutional.
The weather was mild and beautiful; spring was intoning the first bars
of its idyl, striking bright emerald notes from the tips of the trees,
and drawing low, pink whispers from the blackthorn in the hedges; the
birds were beginning to tune their lutes and make ready for the great
concert that was at hand. Franceline’s heart bounded in unison with
the pulse of joy and universal awakening; she began to warble a duet
with the skylark as she went along, stopping every now and then to
make a nosegay of the pink and white anemones and violets and
torch-like king-cups that grew in wild luxuriance in the woods and
fields. Dullerton was famous for its wild flowers. Half an hour passed
quickly while thus engaged, and then she turned homewards. The doves
were on the watch for her, “sunning their milk-white bosoms on the
thatch,” as she came in sight, and swelling the sweet harmony of earth
and sky with a tender, well-contented coo. But hark! Could that be the
cuckoo that was already calling from the woods? She paused with her
hand on the latch to listen. No: it was only the voice of the sunshine
echoing through her own happy heart. She pushed open the gate and
walked quickly on; but again her step was arrested. Some one was
coming round by the park entrance. It was no doubt Mr. Langrove; no
one else came that way—no one but Sir Simon Harness, and there he
stood. Franceline had nearly uttered a cry, when a quick sign from the
baronet checked it and made her walk leisurely on without doing
anything to attract attention. She cast a furtive glance towards the
casement, to see if by chance her father had changed his place and
come to sit by the window; but he was still on the sofa where she had
left him.
Sir Simon opened his arms and clasped her with a warmth of emotion
that did not surprise Franceline.
“You heard that he was ill! You are come to see him!” she exclaimed.
“I have only heard it this minute from my people at the house. Why did
you not write to me, child? Ah! he would not let you, I suppose? My
poor Raymond! And now how is he? Can I see him? _Will_ he see me?”
“Why should he not see you, dear Sir Simon?” said Franceline, raising
her large, soft glance to him, full of wondering reproach.
“Of course, of course,” said the baronet; “but is he strong enough to
see me? They tell me he has been terribly shaken by this illness. It
might cause him a shock if he saw me too suddenly.” “Shall I tell him
that you are expected down to-day? That would break it to him,”
suggested Franceline. “Or you might write a line and send it in first
to say you were here; would that do?”
Before Sir Simon could decide for either alternative, fate, in the
shape of Angélique, decided for him. She had seen Franceline enter the
garden, and wondered why she loitered outside instead of coming in; so
she came out to see, and, on beholding Sir Simon, threw up her arms
with a shout of astonishment.
Franceline cried out “Hush!” and shook her hand at the old woman, but
it was too late; Raymond had seen and heard her from his sofa.
“Go in at once,” said Sir Simon, much excited—“go and tell him I am
come to kiss his feet; to ask his forgiveness on my knees. Tell him _I
know everything_.” And he pushed her gently from him. Franceline did
not stop to ask what the strange message could mean, but ran in,
thinking only how best she could deliver it so as to avoid too sudden
a shock to her father.
Raymond was sitting up on the sofa, his face slightly flushed.
“What is the matter? Who is there?” he cried.
“Dear father, nothing is the matter; only something you will be glad
to hear,…” she began.
“Ha! it is Simon! What has he come for? What does he want?”
“He wants to embrace you; and, father, he bade me say that he knows
everything, and has come to ask you to forgive him and let him kiss
your feet. He is waiting; may he come in?”
But Raymond did not answer; he was murmuring some words to himself,
with hands lifted reverently as in prayer, while a smile of unearthly
joy diffused itself on his whole countenance. The emotion was too much
for him; he fell back exhausted on his pillow.
Franceline thought he had fainted and screamed out for help. Sir Simon
was beside her in an instant.
“Raymond! my friend, my brother, can you ever forgive me?” he cried,
kneeling beside M. de la Bourbonais and taking his hand in both his.
“You know the truth, then? You got his letter?”
“Whose letter? I got no letter; but I found the ring. Look at it!”
He drew an enamelled snuff-box from his pocket, opened it, and held up
the diamond, that flashed in the sun like a little star.
“Thank Heaven! I shall now be justified before all men!” exclaimed M.
de la Bourbonais with trembling emotion. “This is more than I dared to
hope. My God! I give thee thanks for this great mercy.”
No one spoke for a moment. Franceline had signed to Angélique to leave
the room, but remained herself, a silent spectator of the strange
scene.
“Who had it? How was it found?” said M. de la Bourbonais, taking the
ring and examining it with an expression of mistrust, as if it were
some uncanny thing that he half expected to see melt in his fingers.
“It has been in my possession, locked up at the Court, all this time!”
replied Sir Simon. “You may remember I used this snuff-box that night,
and sent it round the table. Someone dropped the ring into it
unawares; it was not opened afterwards, and it never entered into my
stupid brain to think of looking into it. I went away in a great hurry
next morning, and threw the snuff-box into a safe in my room where I
keep papers and the loose jewelry I have in use. I came down this
afternoon to get a deed out of the safe, saw the snuff-box, and by the
merest chance opened it and found the ring.”
“Mon Dieu!” murmured Raymond, after hearing this simple explanation of
the mistake that had very nearly cost him his life.
“Bourbonais, can you ever forgive me?” said Sir Simon.
Raymond opened his arms without speaking. Sir Simon flung himself with
a sob upon his breast, and the two clung together and wept.
Franceline felt as if even she had no right to be present; that she
was intruding in a sacred place where some mystery, not intended for
her eyes, was being unfolded. She was moving softly toward the door
when her father called her back.
“Come hither, my child; come and embrace me. I can have no happiness
that thou dost not share.”
“Franceline,” said Sir Simon, rising from his knees and taking her
hand with an expression of humility that was very touching in the
grand, white-haired gentleman, “I have been guilty of a great act of
disloyalty towards your father. I cannot tell you what it was; perhaps
he will. Meantime, he has forgiven me for the sake of our long
friendship, and because his soul is too noble, too generous, to bear
malice, even against an unfaithful friend. Will you do as he has done,
and say you forgive me too?”
His voice was full of trembling, his eyes were still moist. Franceline
did as he had done to her father: she flung her arms round his neck
and wept.
TO BE CONTINUED.
A SEQUEL OF THE GLADSTONE CONTROVERSY.
III.
The keen relish which we all have for other people’s sins is
proverbial. As those who think with us are right, so are they virtuous
who have only our own vices. Prodigality, which, to the miser’s
thinking, is the worst of sins, is, in the eyes of the spendthrift,
merely an evidence of a generous nature. Men who wish to be thought
gentlemen have a weakness for what are called gentlemanly vices; but
from the coarser though less depraved wickedness of the vulgar they
turn with loathing. This bias of our common nature is not confined in
its action to individuals; it affects classes, nations, races. The
rich are shocked by the vices of the poor, and the poor, in turn, no
less by those of the rich; masters hate the sins of servants, and are
repaid in their own coin.
When the free-born Briton sings, “England, with all thy faults, I love
thee still,” he means that faults, if only they be English, are after
all not so bad. Wrapt up in the precious bundle of our self-love are
all our pet sins and weaknesses. The universal hatred which existed
between the nations of antiquity must be attributed in great part to
the fact that their vices were unlike, and therefore repellant. The
national contempt for foreigners is, in Christian times, strong in
proportion to the barbarism of the people by whom it is felt; but in
Greece and Rome such civilization as was then possible seemed to have
no power over this prejudice. Not to be a Greek was to have been
created for vile uses, and not to be a Roman was to be nobody. The
French, as seen by the English, are giddy and lack dignity; the
English appear to French eyes, sulky and wanting in good nature; the
Turk thinks both struck with madness, because they walk about and
stretch their legs when they might sit still; and though he is at
their mercy, yet he cannot persuade himself that they are anything but
Christian dogs. The negro is quite sure the first man must have been
black, and in this he is in accord with Mr. Darwin. The North American
Indian will vanish from the earth through the golden portals of the
western world still believing that he is the superior of the “pale
face.” The power of national prejudice is almost incredible. “Our
country, right or wrong” is, we believe, an American phrase; but it
expresses a sentiment which is almost universally held to be right and
proper. In international disputes men nearly always take sides with
their own country, without stopping to inquire into the merits of the
quarrel, which, indeed, the strong feeling that at once masters them
would prevent them from being able to do. They act instinctively like
children who always think that in difficulties with neighbors their
own parents are in the right. We Americans are certainly not paragons
of virtue, and in this centennial year it is probably wise to discuss
almost anything rather than our morals; yet we cannot but think that
M. Louis Veuillot was somewhat under the influence of national
prejudice when he wrote that, if we were sunk in the bottom of the
ocean, civilization would have lost nothing. Our form of government,
it is true, does not lead us to look for salvation, either in church
or state, from a king by divine right; still, he might just as well
have let us alone, especially as he is at no loss for quarrels at
home. Nor can we think that the Germans who have raised such a storm
of indignation over the crime in Bremerhaven, committed, as it is
supposed, by an American, would have held the whole German people and
their civilization responsible for the offence had they known its
author to be native there and to the manner born.
As no passion takes hold of the human heart with such sovereign power
as that of religion, it follows that no bias of judgment is more fatal
to truth than religious prejudice; and now let us gently descend again
to M. Emile de Laveleye and his pamphlet:
“It is agreed on all sides,” he says (p. 25), “that the
power of nations depends on their morality. Everywhere is
found the maxim, which is almost become an axiom of
political science, that where morals are corrupted the state
is lost. Now, it appears to be an established fact that the
moral level is higher among Protestant than among Catholic
populations. Religious writers confess this themselves, and
explain it by the fact that the former remain more faithful
to their religion than the latter, which explanation I
believe to be the true one.”
Here is fairness surely. The soft impeachment could not have been made
in a more moderate or subdued tone. Catholics are notoriously more
immoral than Protestants; but the subject is a painful one, and M. de
Laveleye does not wish to emphasize the unpleasant truth by giving
proof—which, indeed, would be superfluous, since Catholics themselves,
we are assured, admit the fact and are concerned only about its
explanation; and, strange to say, they have found the key to the
mystery in the greater fidelity of Protestants to their religion: so
M. de Laveleye and the Catholics shake hands and the dispute is at an
end.
The position of Protestants with regard to this question is peculiar.
The very life of their religion is intimately associated with a fixed
belief in the preternatural wickedness of popes, priests, nuns, and
Catholics generally. The sole justification of Protestantism was found
in the abominable corruptions of Rome, and its only defence is that it
is a purer worship, capable of creating a higher morality. The history
of the Reformation, as written by Protestants, traces its origin to an
awful and heaven-inspired indignation at the sight of papal iniquity,
which resulted in a divine Protest against sin. It is this feeling,
indeed, which is the living human magnetism in the words of Luther,
Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox. They all felt that in so far as they
protested against open and patent evil they were right, and therefore
strong. Leo X., with God’s eternal truth, but encircled by all the
Graces and Muses, was at a disadvantage with those strong and
plain-spoken men. In fact, the eternal ally of human error is human
truth. It is because men who are right do wrong that men who are wrong
seem right; and if men in general were fit to be priests of God, there
would be on earth no power to oppose the Catholic Church. St. Paul had
protested, St. John Chrysostom had protested, St. Peter Damian had
protested, St. Bernard had protested, St. Catherine of Sienna had
protested, and yet there was no Protestantism. To protest was well and
is well, but to seek to found a religion upon a protest is madness;
and this is Protestantism. With Protestants purity of dogma is out of
the question; and nothing, therefore, remains to them but purity of
morals. To this they must cling like drowning men to straws.
Protestantism, if considered from a doctrinal point of view, is
nihilism. Gather up the hundred sects which, taken collectively, are
called Protestantism, and we will find every positive religious dogma
excluded; not even the personal existence of God remains. Mr. Matthew
Arnold is a true Bible-Protestant, who has a little sect of his own,
and all that he holds is that there is “a Power in us, not ourselves,
which makes for righteousness”; and this he has discovered to be the
sum and substance of all Scripture teaching. Doctrinal Protestantism
is like the wrong side of a piece of tapestry with its fag-ends
hanging in patches, twisted and jumbled; and yet they are the very
substance out of which has been wrought a work of divine beauty. The
dogmatic weakness of Protestantism throws its whole energy upon the
moral side of religion. Its utter falseness, when we accept the fact
that Christ has established a divine system of faith, is so manifest
that no impartial thinker would hesitate to give his full assent to
the sentiment of Rousseau: “Show me that in religious matters I must
accept authority, and I shall become a Catholic at once.” Supposing
the Christian religion to be what it is commonly held to be by both
Catholics and Protestants, it necessarily follows that the Catholic
Church is the only logical as it is the only historical Christianity.
This, we believe, is the almost universally-received opinion of
non-Christian writers in our own day, in which, for the first time
since the Reformation, a considerable number of learned men who are
neither Catholic nor Protestant have been able to view this subject
dispassionately. We do not mean to say that these writers prefer the
church to the sects; on the contrary, they are partial to these
because in their workings they perceive, as they think, the
breaking-up and dissolution of the whole Christian system.
Protestantism is valuable in their eyes as a stage in what Herbert
Spencer calls “the universal religious thaw” which is going on around
us. If there has been no divine revelation, then whatever tends to
weaken the claim of the church to be the depository of such revelation
is good, especially as her claim is the only one which rests upon a
valid historical basis. And it is because a very large number of men
more than half suspect there never has been a revelation that
Protestantism meets with so much favor from the unbelieving and pagan
world, as serving the purpose of an easy stepping-stone from the
strong and pronounced supernaturalism of the church to the
nature-worship of Darwin and Spencer or the German _Culturists_.
Macaulay was struck and puzzled by what his keen eye could not fail to
perceive to be so universal a phenomenon as to have the force of a law
of history.
“It is surely remarkable,” says this brilliant writer, “that
neither the moral revolution of the eighteenth century nor
the moral counter-revolution of the nineteenth should have
in any perceptible degree added to the domain of
Protestantism. During the former period whatever was lost to
Catholicism was lost also to Christianity; during the latter
whatever was regained by Christianity in Catholic countries
was regained also by Catholicism. We should naturally have
expected that many minds, on the way from superstition to
infidelity, or on the way back from infidelity to
superstition, would have stopped at an intermediate point.
Between the doctrines taught in the schools of the Jesuits,
and those which were maintained at the little supper-parties
of the Baron Holbach, there is a vast interval in which the
human mind, it should seem, might find for itself some
resting-place more satisfactory than either of the two
extremes; and at the time of the Reformation millions found
such a resting-place. Whole nations then renounced popery
without ceasing to believe in a First Cause, in a future
life, or in the divine authority of Christianity. In the
last century, on the contrary, when a Catholic renounced his
belief in the Real Presence, it was a thousand to one that
he renounced his belief in the Gospel too; and when the
reaction took place, with belief in the Gospel came back
belief in the Real Presence. We by no means venture to
deduce from these phenomena any general law; but we think it
a most remarkable fact that no Christian nation which did
not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end
of the sixteenth century should ever have adopted them.
Catholic communities have since that time become infidel and
become Catholic again, but none has become Protestant.”
There could not be a more satisfactory proof of the transitional
and accidental nature of Protestantism. Like all human revolutions,
it grew out of antecedent circumstances; and these were primarily
political and social and only incidentally religious. The faith in the
divine authority of the Christian religion was at that time absolute,
and not at all affected by the tendency to scepticism observable among
a few of the Humanists. The political power of the pope, however,
together with his peculiar temporal relations to the German Empire,
had gradually created throughout Germany a very strong national
prejudice against his authority, which, upon the slightest
provocation, was ready to break out into downright hatred of the
Papacy. The worldly lives and ways of some of the popes had been as
fuel for the conflagration which was to burst forth. Men,
unconsciously it may be, grew accustomed to look upon the Christian
religion and the Papacy as distinct and separable; and the temper of
the public mind, while remaining reverential toward Christ and his
religion, was embittered against his vicar. When, from amidst the
social abuses and political antagonisms of Germany, Luther, in the
name of Christ, denounced the pope, his voice struck precisely the
note for which the public ear was listening, and, as Macaulay says,
whole nations renounced allegiance to the pope without giving up
faith in God and his Christ. This was done in the excitement of
revolutionary enthusiasm, when passion and madness made deliberation
impossible, and when a thoughtful and analytical study of the
constitution of the church was out of the question. The Reformers
imagined that they could abolish the pope and yet save Christianity,
just as in France, two centuries and a half later, it was thought
possible to abolish God and yet save the principle of authority,
without which society cannot exist. And, indeed, it is as reasonable
to suppose that this world, with its universal evidence of design and
adaption of means to ends, could have come into existence without the
action of a supreme and intelligent Being, as to think that the
system of religious truths taught by Christ can have either unity
or authority amongst men without a living centre and visible
representative of both. Protestants, by rejecting the primacy of the
pope, were forced to accept as fundamental to their faith a principle
of so purgative and drastic a nature that, in the general process of
sloughing of religious thought which it brings on, it is itself
finally carried away into the vacuum of nihilism.
This became evident as soon as the attempt was made to agree upon
articles of belief. New heresies sprang up day after day, and
complete chaos would have ensued from the beginning had not the
different states taken hold of one or other of the sects and
“established” it, thus, by the aid of the temporal power, giving
to it a kind of consistency, but at the same time depriving it of
vitality. Thus what Macaulay regarded as so remarkable—that no
Christian nation which did not adopt the principles of the
Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century should ever
have adopted them—and he might as well have made the proposition
universal, since there was no reason why he should limit it to
Christian nations, since it is well known that in nothing has
Protestantism given more striking proof of its impotence than in
its utter failure to convert the heathen,—this, we say, far from
surprising us, seems so natural that we cannot understand how an
observant mind should think it strange.
Protestantism was, in the main, the product of the peculiar
political and social condition of Europe during the last period
of the middle ages, and to expect Catholic nations, or indeed
individual Catholics of any intellectual or moral character, to
become Protestant in our day argues a total want of power to
grasp this subject. As well might one hope to see the pterodactyls
and ichthyosauri of a past geologic era swimming in our rivers.
Catholics there are, indeed, now, as in the eighteenth century, who
become sceptics, who abandon all belief in Christianity, but none who
become Protestants; for we cannot consider such persons as Achilli or
Edith O’Gorman as instances of conversion of any kind. A very limited
acquaintance with Catholics and Catholic thought will suffice to
convince any reflecting mind that for us there is no alternative but
to accept the doctrine of the church or to renounce faith in Christ.
Was there ever fairer field for heresy to flourish in than that which
opened up before Old Catholicism at its birth? But it was still-born.
To this day its sponsors have not dared define its relation to the
pope; and until this is done it remains without character. At any
rate, it does not claim to be Protestant.
Turning to view the present condition of Protestantism, we are
struck by the contrast. The very word “Protestant” is without
meaning when applied to two-thirds of the non-Catholics of
Germany, England, and the United States. Their mental state is
one of disbelief in, or indifference to, all forms of positive
religion; and if occasionally they are roused to some feeling
against the church, it is through an association of ideas,
traditional with them, which places her in antagonism with their
political theories and national prejudices. Among earnest and
reflecting Protestants who are united with one or other of the
sects, there are two opposite currents of religious thought of a
strongly-marked and well-defined character. Those who are borne
on the one are being carried farther and farther away from the
historic teachings of Christ, and are busied in trying to dress
out in Biblical phraseology some of the various cosmic or
pantheistic philosophies of the day. They very generally assume
that religion has nothing to do with theology, nor, consequently,
with doctrines and dogmas. As its home is the heart, its realm is
the world of sentiment; and so it matters not what we believe,
provided only we feel good. Opposed to this current, which is
bearing with it all the distinctive landmarks of the Christian
religion, is another which is carrying men back to the church. In
fact, all great minds among Protestants who have been strongly
impressed by the objective character of Christian truth have been
drawn towards the Catholic Church. Who can have failed to
perceive, for instance—to mention only the three greatest who
have occupied themselves with religious questions—how Leibnitz,
Bacon, and Bishop Butler, in their intellectual apprehension of
the Christian system, were, in spite of themselves, attracted to
the church? Or who that is acquainted with the English Catholic
literature of our own day is ignorant of the divine illumination
which many of the most intellectual and reverent natures from the
sects of Protestantism have found in the teachings of the one
Catholic Church? In this way, by a process of supernatural or
natural selection, the fragments of Protestantism are being
assimilated to the church or are disappearing in the sea of
unbelief in which even now they are seen only as barren islands
in the wild waste of waters.
These considerations must be borne in mind by whoever would take
a comprehensive view of the question which we propose now to
discuss. In the first place, by reflecting upon them we shall
find no difficulty in accounting for the marked difference in
tone and character between Catholic and Protestant controversy,
by which no attentive observer can have failed to be struck.
Taking for granted the existence of God and the divinity of
Christ, as admitted by the earlier Protestant sects, the logical
position of the church is unassailable, which, as we have already
stated, is generally conceded by impartial non-Christian
thinkers.
As a consequence, Catholic controversialists, assured of the
absolute coherence of their whole system with the fundamental
dogma of the divine mission of Christ, have been chiefly
concerned with showing the logical viciousness of the essential
principles of Protestantism. They have, indeed, not omitted to
remark upon the moral unfitness of such men as Henry VIII.,
Luther, Knox, and Zwingli to be the divinely-chosen agents of a
reformation in the religion of Christ; but such observations have
been incidental to the main course of the argument, and this is
alike true of our more learned discussions and of our popular
controversies.
Catholic writers—allowing for individual exceptions—have not felt
that, to show the falsity of Protestantism, it was necessary to
denounce Protestants or to stamp upon them any mark of infamy.
They have treated them as men who were wrong, not as men who were
wicked. Protestant controversy, on the other hand, presents for
our consideration characteristics of a very different nature. In
the consciousness of their inability to settle upon a fixed
creed, which has been shown by history, and from the necessarily
feeble manner in which articles of faith could be held by them,
on account of the disagreement and conflict of opinion among
themselves, Protestant writers were forced to treat their
religion, not as a doctrine, but as a tendency; and for this
reason, together with the natural hatred which men entertain for
a church or government against which they have rebelled, they
were led to draw contrasts between the results of Protestantism
and Catholicity; so that it became customary to attribute all the
enlightenment, morality, progress, and liberty of the world to
Protestantism, and to represent Catholics as cruel, ignorant,
corrupt, and in every way depraved. Luther, as we should
naturally expect, led the way in this style of controversy.
“The Papists,” he said, “are for the most part mere gross
blockheads.… The pope and his crew are mere worshippers of idols
and servants of the devil.… Pope, cardinals, bishops, not a soul
of them has read the Bible; ‘tis a book unknown to them. They are
a pack of guzzling, stuffing wretches, rich, wallowing in wealth
and laziness.… Seeing the pope is Antichrist, I believe him to be
a devil incarnate.… The pope is the last blaze in the lamp which
will go out and ere long be extinguished—the last instrument of
the devil, that thunders and lightens with sword and bull;… but
the Spirit of God’s mouth has seized upon that shameless
strumpet.… Antichrist is the Pope and the Turk together.… The
pope is not God’s image, but his ape.… Popedom is founded on mere
lies and fables.… A friar is evil every way; the preaching friars
are proud buzzards; all who serve the pope are damned; the
Papists are devoid of shame and Christianity.”[3]
This is the style of Protestant controversy which, except in
form, still lingers in this nineteenth century. Protestant
devotion, it may be said without sarcasm or exaggeration,
consists essentially in a holy horror of popery. Were it possible
to eliminate the Catholic Church from human society, Protestantism
would at once fatally assume an attitude towards the world wholly
different from that in which it now stands. At present, when attacked
by evolutionistic pantheism—which means all the sophistries of the
day—it takes refuge behind the historic fortress of Christianity, the
Catholic Church, and, when encountered by the church, it makes an
alliance with cosmism or anything else. Were the Catholic Church not
in existence, it would be forced at once to build a fortress of its
own; for the Bible is only a breastwork, which must be in charge of a
commander-in-chief if we hope to hold it for the sovereign Lord. From
the beginning, then, Protestants branded Catholics with a mark of
infamy; they were idolaters, worse than pagans, for the most part
gross blockheads, who fall an easy prey to the designing arts of
priests and monks, who are only knaves and rogues, whose chief aim is
to carry out the fiendish purposes of the pope, the arch-enemy,
Antichrist, the devil in the flesh; and thus the church becomes the
Woman of Babylon, flaming in scarlet, and alluring the nations to
debauch.
No evidence, therefore, is needed to show that Catholics are
immoral, depraved, thoroughly corrupt. To doubt it would be to
question the truth of Protestantism and to believe that something
good might come out of Nazareth. In good sooth, do not the
Catholics, as M. de Laveleye says, admit the fact themselves?
We often hear persons express surprise that intelligent and
honest Protestants should still, after such sad experience, be so
eager to believe the “awful disclosures” of “escaped nuns,”
and to patronize that kind of lecture—of which, thank God!
Protestants have the monopoly—delivered to men or women only, in
which the abominations of the confessional are revealed and the
general preternatural wickedness of priests, monks, and nuns is
made fully manifest. This, to us, we must say, has never seemed
strange. The doctrine of total depravity is an article of
Protestant faith, and, when applied to Catholics, to none other
have Protestants ever clung with such unwavering firmness and
perfect unanimity. When disagreeing about everything else, they
have never failed to find a point of union in this. Even after
having lived and dealt with Catholics who are kind-hearted, pure,
and fair-minded, in the true Protestant there still lurks a vague
kind of suspicion that there must be some mysterious and secret
diabolism in them which eludes his observation; that after all
they may be only “as mild-mannered men as ever scuttled ship or
cut a throat”; and after his reason has been fully convinced that
the Catholic Church is the only historical Christianity, he is
still able to remain a strong Protestant by falling back upon the
undoubted total depravity of Papists. Dr. Newman, in his
_Apologia_, the most careful and instructive self-analysis which
has been written in this century, or probably in any other,
declares that after he had become thoroughly persuaded of the
truth of the Catholic Church his former belief that the pope was
Antichrist still remained like a stain upon his imagination; and
yet he had never been an ultra-Protestant. Many a Protestant has
ceased to believe in Christ, without giving up his faith in the
pope as Antichrist. It is not surprising, in view of all this,
that Protestants should have habitually held the church
responsible for the evil deeds of Catholics.
When quite recently the excited Germans charged the dynamite plot
of Thomassen upon our American civilization, we replied, with
perfect justice, that such crimes are anomalies, the guilt of
which ought not to be laid upon any nation, and all reasonable
men admitted the evident good sense of our answer; but Protestants
the world over have been unanimous in seeking to hold up the church to
the execration of mankind as responsible for the St. Bartholomew
massacre. Is Protestantism answerable for Cromwell’s massacres at
Drogheda and Wexford? Religious fanaticism, no doubt, had much to do
in urging him to butcher idolaters and slaves of Satan; but we should
blush for shame were we capable of thinking for a moment that such
inhumanities are either produced or approved by the real spirit of the
Protestant religion.
We know of nothing in the Catholic Church which in any way
corresponds with Protestant anti-popery literature; indeed, we
doubt whether in the whole history of literature anything so
disgraceful and disreputable as this can be found, unless,
possibly, it be that which is professedly obscene, but which has
nowhere ever had a recognized existence; and we question whether
even this is as discreditable to human nature as the “awful
disclosures” and “lectures to men or women only” of Protestants.
In discussing the comparative morality of Catholic and Protestant
nations it would be more satisfactory, even though it should not
be more conclusive, to consider their respective virtues rather
than their vices. There would seem to be neither good sense nor
logic in taking the individuals and classes that are least
brought under religious influences of any kind, in order to use
their depravity as an argument for or against the church or
Protestantism. In the apostolic body one out of twelve was a
thief and traitor, yet neither Catholics nor Protestants are in
the habit of concluding from this that they must all have been
rogues and hypocrites. The amount of crime, one would think, is
but a poor test of the amount of virtue. As the greatest sinners
have made the greatest saints, so in the church depravity may
co-exist with the most heroic virtue, though, of course, not in
the same individual. Our divine Saviour plainly declares that in
his church the good shall be mingled with the bad; that the
cockle shall grow with the wheat till the harvest time; that some
shall call him Lord and Master, and yet do not the will of his
Father; that even, with regard to those who sit in the chair of
Moses—and, let us add, of Peter—though their authority must ever
be acknowledged, yet are not their lives always to be imitated,
nor approved of even. It is manifestly contrary to the teaching
of Christ to make the note of sanctity in his church consist in
the individual holiness of each and every member. He is no
Puritan, though he is the all-holy God. A puristic religion is
essentially narrow, self-conscious, and unsympathetic; it draws a
line here on earth between the elect and the reprobate; its
disciples eat not with sinners, nor enter into their abodes, nor
hold out to them the pleading hands of large-hearted charity.
Such a faith does not grow upon men; it does not win and convert
them to God.
If, instead of comparing the crimes, we should consider the
respective virtues of Catholic and Protestant nations, we should
at once be struck by the difference in their standards of
morality. The most practical way of determining the real standard
of morality of any religion is to study the character of its
saints. There we find religious ideals made tangible and fully
discernible. Here at once we perceive that there is an essential
difference between the Catholic and the Protestant standard of
morality. The lives of our saints, even when understood by
Protestants, generally repel them. They are, in their eyes,
useless lives, idle lives, superstitious lives, unnatural and
inhuman. We take the words of Christ, “If thou wouldst be
perfect, go sell what thou hast, give it to the poor, and come
and follow me,” in their full and complete literal meaning. The
highest life is to leave father and mother, to have nor wife nor
children, nor temporal goods except what barely suffices, and to
cleave to Christ only with all one’s soul in poverty, chastity,
and obedience. Now, this life of prayer in poverty, chastity, and
obedience is an offence to Protestants. They do not believe in
perfect chastity, they hold religious obedience to be a slavery,
and poverty, in their eyes, is ridiculous. Inasmuch as the monks
tilled the earth, transcribed books, and taught school, they
receive a partial recognition from the Protestant world; but
inasmuch as they were bound by religious vows they excite
disgust. We should say, then, that the distinctive trait of
Catholic morality is ascetic, while the Protestant is utilitarian.
The one primarily regards the world that is to be, the other that
which already is. The one inclines us to look upon this as a worthless
world to lose or win; the other is shrewd and calculating—this is the
best we have any practical experience of; it is the part of wisdom to
make the most of it. The one seems to be more certain of the future
life, the other of the present. It is needless to prolong the
contrast, and we shall simply confess that we have always been
inclined to the opinion of those who hold that Protestantism, in its
aims and direct tendencies, is more favorable to what is called
material progress than Catholicism. In fact, one cannot realize the
personal survival of the soul through eternity, and at the same time
be supremely interested in stocks or the price of cotton.
Not that the church discourages efforts which have as their
object the material interests of mankind; but, in her view, our
duties to God are of the first importance, and to these all
others are subordinate. What doth it profit? she is always
asking, whereas Protestantism is busy trying to show us how very
profitable and pleasant the Reformation has made this world—and
virtuous, too, since honesty is the best policy and enlightened
self-interest the standard of morals. It is the old story—God and
the world, the supernatural and the natural, progress from above
and progress from below.
But we feel that it is time we should give our readers proof that
we have no desire to avoid direct issue with M. de Laveleye. We
flatly deny, then, his assertion that the Catholic nations are
more immoral than the Protestant; and when he further affirms
that Catholic writers themselves—for his words can have no other
meaning—admit this, he lies under a mistake for which there can
be no possible excuse. In the statement of facts, however, which
we propose now to give, we make no use whatever of the testimony
of Catholics, but rely exclusively upon the authority of
Protestants and of statistics; and that our readers may have the
benefit of observations extending over considerable time as well
as space, we will not confine ourselves to the most recent
writers or statistics on the subject under discussion. Laing, a
Scotch Presbyterian and a most conscientious and observant
traveller, who wrote some thirty-five years ago, says of the
French: “They are, I believe, a more honest people than the
British.… It is a fine distinction of the French national
character and social economy that practical morality is more
generally taught through manners among and by the people
themselves than in any country in Europe.”[4] Alison, the
historian, writing about the same time, but referring to the
early part of this century, says that the proportion of crime to
the inhabitants was _twelve times_ greater in Prussia than in
France.[5] To this may be added the testimony of John Stuart
Mill, in his _Autobiography_, published since his death, who
passed a considerable portion of his life in France. Referring to
his sojourn there when quite a young man, he says:
“Having so little experience of English life, and the few
people I knew being mostly such as had public objects of a
large and personally disinterested kind at heart, I was
ignorant of the low moral tone of what in England is called
society: the habit of, not indeed professing, but taking for
granted in every mode of implication that conduct is of
course always directed towards low and petty objects; the
absence of high feelings, which manifests itself by sneering
depreciation of all demonstrations of them, and by general
abstinence (except among a few of the stricter religionists)
from professing any high principles of action at all, except
in those preordained cases in which such profession is put
on as part of the costume and formalities of the occasion. I
could not then know or estimate the difference between this
manner of existence and that of a people like the French,
whose faults, if equally real, are at all events different;
among whom sentiments which, by comparison at least, may be
called elevated are the current coin of human intercourse,
both in books and in private life, and, though often
evaporating in profession, are yet kept alive in the nation
at large by constant exercise and stimulated by sympathy, so
as to form a living and active part of the existence of a
great number of persons, and to be recognized and understood
by all. Neither could I then appreciate the general culture
of the understanding, which results from the habitual
exercise of the feelings, and is thus carried down into the
most uneducated classes of several countries on the
Continent, in a degree not equalled in England among the
so-called educated, except where an unusual tenderness of
conscience leads to a habitual exercise of the intellect on
questions of right and wrong.”[6]
This is strong testimony when we consider that it comes from an
Englishman. In speaking of the elder Austin the same writer says: “He
had a strong distaste for the general meanness of English life, the
absence of enlarged thoughts and unselfish desires, the low objects on
which the faculties of all classes of the English are intent.”[7]
Mill’s opinion of the French is confirmed by Lecky, who writes: “No
other nation has so habitual and vivid a sympathy for great struggles
for freedom beyond its border. No other literature exhibits so
expansive and œcumenical a genius, or expounds so skilfully or
appreciates so generously foreign ideas. In no other land would a
disinterested war for the support of a suffering nationality find so
large an amount of support.”[8]
Much has been said and written of the licentiousness of the French,
which may, in part at least, be due to the fact that they, more than
any other people, have known how to make vice attractive by taking
from it something of the repulsive coarseness which naturally belongs
to it, but must also be ascribed to the feeling that they are
Catholic, and therefore sensual. But let us examine the facts on this
subject. We again bring Laing forward as a witness.
“Of all the virtues,” he says, “that which the domestic
family education of both the sexes most obviously
influences—that which marks more clearly than any other the
moral condition of a society, the home state of moral and
religious principles, the efficiency of those principles in
it, and the amount of that moral restraint upon passions and
impulses which it is the object of education and knowledge
to attain—is undoubtedly female chastity. Will any
traveller, will any Prussian, say that this index-virtue of
the moral condition of a people is not lower in Prussia than
in almost any part of Europe?”[9]
Acts which in other countries would affect the respectability and
happiness of a whole family for generations are in Prussia looked upon
as mere youthful indiscretions. But let us take the statistics of
illegitimacy, which is a method of discussing the question made
popular among Protestants by the Rev. Hobart Seymour in his _Evenings
with the Romanists_.
The number of illegitimate births in France for every hundred was, in
1858, 7.8; in the same year in Protestant Saxony it was 16; in
Protestant Prussia, 9.3; in Würtemberg (Prot.), 16.1; in Iceland
(Prot.) (1838-47), 14; in Denmark (1855), 11.5; Scotland (1871), 10.1;
Hanover (1855), 9.9; Sweden (1855), 9.5; Norway (1855), 9.3.
Catholic France, then, judged by this test, stands higher than any
Protestant country of which we have statistical reports, except
England and Wales, where the percentage was, in 1859, 6.5; but England
and Wales are below other Catholic countries, and notably far below
Ireland. The rate of illegitimacy in the kingdom of Sardinia (1828-37)
was 2.1; in Ireland (1865-66), 3.8; in Spain (1859), 5.6; in Tuscany,
6; in Catholic Prussia, 6.1.
In Scotland there are, in proportion to population, more than three
times as many illegitimate births as in Ireland; and in England and
Wales there are more than twice as many, and in Protestant Prussia the
percentage is a third greater than in Catholic Prussia.[10]
If chastity, to use Laing’s expression, is the index-virtue, the
question as to the comparative morality of Protestant and Catholic
nations may be considered at an end. Lecky’s words on the Irish people
have often been quoted, to his own regret we believe.
“Had the Irish peasants been less chaste,” he says, “they
would have been more prosperous. Had that fearful famine
which in the present century desolated the land fallen upon
a people who thought more of accumulating subsistence than
of avoiding sin, multitudes might now be living who perished
by literal starvation on the dreary hills of Limerick or
Skibbereen.”[11]
There is not in all Europe a more thoroughly Protestant country than
Sweden. For three hundred years its people have been wholly withdrawn
from Catholic influences. During all this time Protestantism, upheld
by the state, undisturbed by dissent, with the education of the people
in the hands of the clergy, and a population almost entirely rural,
has had the fairest possible opportunity to show what it is capable of
doing to elevate the moral character of a nation. What is the result?
In 1838 Laing visited Sweden and made a careful study of the moral and
social condition of the people; and he declares that they are at the
very bottom of the scale of European morality. In 1836 one person out
of every 112—women, infants, sick, all included—had been accused of
crime, and one out of every 134 convicted and punished. In 1838 there
were born in Stockholm 2,714 children, of whom 1,577 were legitimate
and 1,137 illegitimate, leaving a balance of only 440 chaste mothers
out of 2,714.
Drunkenness, too, was more common there than in any other country of
Europe or of the world. Nearly 40,000,000 gallons of liquor were
consumed in 1850 by a population of only 3,000,000, which gives
thirteen gallons of intoxicating drink to every man, woman, and child
in the kingdom.
If these things could be said of any Catholic nation, the whole
Protestant world would stand aghast, nor need other proof of the
absolutely diabolical nature of popery. Compare this agricultural and
pastoral population with the Catholic Swiss mountaineers—who to this
day claim to have descended from a Swedish stock, and whose climate is
not greatly different from that of Sweden—and we find that the
Catholic Swiss are as moral and sober as the Protestant Swedes are
corrupt and besotted. Or compare them with the Tyrolese, than whom
there is no more Catholic and liberty-loving people on earth.
“Honesty may be regarded as a leading feature in the
character of the Tyrolese,” says Alison.… “In no part of the
world are the domestic or conjugal duties more strictly or
faithfully observed, and in none do the parish priests
exercise a stricter or more conscientious control over their
flocks.… Perhaps the most remarkable feature in the
character of the Tyrolese is their uniform piety—a feeling
which is nowhere so universally diffused as among their
sequestered valleys.… On Sunday the _whole people_ flock to
church in their neatest and gayest attire; and so great is
the number who thus frequent these places of worship that it
is not unfrequent to see the peasants kneeling on the turf
in the church-yard where Mass is performed, from being
unable to find a place within its walls. Regularly in the
evening prayers are read in every family; and the traveller
who passes through the villages at the hour of twilight
often sees through their latticed windows the young and the
old kneeling together round their humble fire, or is warned
of his approach to human habitation by hearing their evening
hymns stealing through the silence and solitude of the
forest.… In one great virtue the peasants in this country
(in common, it must be owned, with most Catholic states) are
particularly worthy of imitation. The virtue of _charity_,
which is too much overlooked in many Protestant kingdoms, is
there practised to the greatest degree and by all classes of
people.”[12]
With true Protestant condescension Alison adds: “Debased as their
religion is by the absurdities and errors of the Catholic form of
worship, and mixed up as it is with innumerable legends and visionary
tales, it yet preserves enough of the pure spirit of its divine origin
to influence in a great measure the conduct of their private lives.”
Among rural populations more than elsewhere the divine power of the
Christian religion is made manifest. To the poor, the frugal, and the
single-hearted those heavenly truths which have changed the world, but
which were first listened to and received by fishermen and shepherds,
appeal with a force and directness which the mere worldling and
comfort-lover cannot even realize. In the presence of nature so silent
and awful, yet so vocal, everything inclines the heart of man to
hearken to the voice of God. Mountains and rivers; the long,
withdrawing vales and deep-sounding cataracts; winter’s snows, and
spring, over whose heaving bosom the unseen hand weaves the tapestry
that mortal fingers never made; summer’s warm breath, and autumn, when
the strong year first feels the chill of death, and “tears from the
depth of some divine despair rise in the heart and gather to the
eyes”—all speak of the higher world which they foreshadow and
symbolize. But in the hurry and noise of the city, with its extremes
of wealth and poverty, of indulgence and want, of pride and
degradation, the pleading voice of religion is not heard at all, or is
heard only as a call from the shore is heard by men who are madly
hurrying down some rapid stream. It is evident, therefore, that the
easiest and surest way of getting at the relative moral influence of
the Catholic and Protestant religions is to study their action upon
rural populations. We have already established on the best authority
the incalculable moral elevation of the Catholic rural populations of
Switzerland and the Tyrol over the Protestants of the same class in
Sweden. Let us now turn to Great Britain.
Kay, after having given a table of criminal statistics for England and
Wales for the years 1841 and 1847, makes the following remarks upon
the facts there presented:
“This table well deserves study. It shows that the
proportional amount of crime to population calculated in two
years, 1841 and 1847, was greater in both years in almost
all the _agricultural_ counties of England than it was in
the _manufacturing_ and mining districts.… With what
terrible significance do these statistics plead the cause of
the poor of our rural districts! Notwithstanding that a town
life necessarily presents so many more opportunities for,
and temptations to, vice than a rural life; notwithstanding
that the associations of the latter are naturally so much
purer and so much more moral than those of the former;
notwithstanding the wonderfully crowded state of the great
manufacturing cities of Lancashire; notwithstanding the
constant influx of Irish, sailors, vagrants, beggars, and
starving natives of agricultural districts of England and
Wales; and notwithstanding the miserable state of most of
the primary schools of those districts and the great
ignorance of the majority of the inhabitants, still, in the
face of all these and other equally significant facts, the
criminality of the _manufacturing_ districts of Lancashire
is LESS in proportion to the population than that of most of
the rural districts of England and Wales!”[13]
In Scotland illegitimacy is more common in the country than in the
towns and cities. In 1870 the rate of illegitimacy for the whole
country was 9.4 per cent., or 1 in every 10.6; whereas in the rural
districts alone it was 10.5, or 1 in every 9.5. In 1871 it was for the
whole country 10.1, or 1 in every 9.8, and in the rural districts
11.2, or 1 in every 8.9.[14] In England also the rate of illegitimacy
is much larger in the rural districts than in the cities, whereas in
Catholic France it is just the reverse. In the country districts of
England we have the following rate:
Nottingham, 8.9
York, North Riding, 8.9
Salop, 9.8
Westmoreland, 9.7
Norfolk, 10.7
Cumberland, 11.4
In France:
Rural districts, 4.2
La Vendée, 2.2
Brittany—Côte d’Or, 1.2
Thus in the most Catholic rural districts of France there are only one
or two illegitimate births in every hundred.
This is also true of Prussia, whose most strongly Catholic provinces
are Westphalia and the Rhineland. In Westphalia there are only three
and a half illegitimate births in every hundred, and in the Rhineland
only three and a third; but in thoroughly Protestant Pomerania and
Brandenburg there are ten and twelve illegitimate births in the
hundred.[15] In Ireland, again, we find the same state of things. The
rate of illegitimate births for all Ireland is 3.8 per cent.; but the
lowest proportion is in Connaught, nineteen-twentieths of whose people
are Catholics, and the greatest is in Ulster, half of whose population
is Protestant. “The sum of the whole matter,” says the _Scotsman_
(June, 1869), a leading organ of Presbyterian Scotland, “is that
semi-Presbyterian and semi-Scotch Ulster is fully three times more
immoral than wholly popish and wholly Irish Connaught—which
corresponds with wonderful accuracy to the more general fact that
Scotland as a whole is three times more immoral than Ireland as a
whole.” There is no reason why further proof should be given of what
is a manifest truth: that rural populations—let us say, rather, the
people—in proportion as they are Catholic, are also chaste; and
consequently that the Catholic Church, as every man who is competent
to judge must know, is the mother of purity, which is the soul of
Christian life, and without which we cannot draw near to the heart of
the Saviour and supreme Lover of men. Protestants, however, will be at
no loss for arguments. Should the worst come to the worst,
illegitimacy, like the gallows, may be declared an evidence of
civilization, and then it needs must follow, as the night the day,
that it is more common in Protestant than in Catholic countries.
Let us now turn to the vice of intemperance. “I am sure,” says Hill,
“that I am within the truth when I state, as the result of minute and
extensive inquiry, that, in four cases out of five, when an offence is
committed intoxicating drink has been one of the causes.”[16]
In an attempt, then, to form an estimate of the relative morality of
nations, we should not omit to consider the vice of drunkenness, which
is the cause of half the crime and misery in the world. Were it in our
power to obtain accurate statistics on this subject, as on that of
illegitimacy, the superior sobriety of the Catholic nations would be
shown even more strikingly than their superior chastity. The
Spaniards, it is universally acknowledged, are the soberest people in
Europe, as the Swedes are the most intemperate. Their respective
geographical positions suggest at once what is often assigned as a
sufficient explanation of this fact—the great difference of climate.
It was long supposed that the southern nations were more sensual than
the northern, because it was thought a warm climate must necessarily
develop a greater violence of passion. We know now, however, that this
is not the case. Though climate has an undoubted influence on
morality, its action is yet so modified or controlled among Christian
and civilized nations that generalizations founded upon its supposed
effects are unreliable. The Swedes and the Scotch are intemperate, the
Spaniards and the Italians are sober. The former are Protestant, the
latter Catholic; it is therefore at once evident that religion has
nothing to do with this matter, which can only be accounted for by the
difference of climate. These are the tactics of our opponents: those
virtues in which the Catholic nations excel must be attributed to
natural causes; but when some of them are found to lack the enterprise
and industrial spirit of the English or the Americans, it would be
altogether unreasonable to ascribe this to anything else than their
religion.
Scotch statistics show a greater amount of intemperance in summer than
in winter, which would seem to indicate that a high temperature does
not tend to destroy the passion for intoxicating drink. But we do not
propose to enter into a discussion of causes, which, however, we are
perfectly willing to take up at the proper time. Our controversy with
M. de Laveleye turns upon facts.
We have already cited the testimony of Laing to show that the Swedes,
after they had been under the exclusive influence of Protestantism for
three hundred years, were the most drunken people in Europe. Laing was
in Venice on the occasion of a festival, when the whole population had
turned out for pleasure, and he did not see a single case of
intoxication; not a single instance, even among the boys, of rudeness;
and yet all were singing, talking, and enjoying themselves. He gives
the following account of a popular merry-making which he saw at
Florence:
“It happened that the 9th of May was kept here as a great
holiday by the lower class, as May-day with us, and they
assembled in a kind of park about a mile from the city,
where booths, tents, and carts, with wine and eatables for
sale, were in crowds and clusters, as at our village wakes
and race-courses. The multitude from town and country round
could not be less than twenty thousand people, grouped in
small parties, dancing, singing, talking, dining on the
grass, and enjoying themselves. _I did not see a single
instance of inebriety, ill-temper, or unruly, boisterous
conduct_; yet the people were gay and joyous.”[17]
Robert Dale Owen, writing from Naples, said: “I have not seen a man
even partially intoxicated since I have been in the city, of 420,000
inhabitants, and they say one may live here for four years without
seeing one.”
Let us now turn to Protestant lands. St. Cuthbert’s parish, Edinburgh,
had in 1861 a population somewhat exceeding 90,000 souls. Of these,
1,953 were “drunk and incapable,” 3,935 were “drunk and discharged”;
making in all 5,888, or nearly 1 in 15.
In Salford jail (England), in 1870, the proportion of commitments for
drunkenness was, as compared with commitments for all offences, 37 per
cent.[18]
We have it upon the authority of the English government that in 1874
no fewer than 285,730 Britons were proceeded against for being drunk
and disorderly, or drunk and not disorderly; and, of course, to this
must be added the probably greater number who escaped arrest. Mr.
Granville, one of the secretaries of the Church of England Society in
the Diocese of Durham, estimates that there is an aggregate of 700,000
habitual drunkards in England. “It is a melancholy but undeniable
fact,” says the _Alliance News_,” that, notwithstanding vast agencies
of improvement, intemperance, crime, pauperism, insanity, and
brutality are more rampant than ever; and, if we except pauperism,
these evils have more than doubled in the last forty years.” We have
not been able to get the statistics of drunkenness for Ireland, and
can therefore institute no comparison between England and that country
with regard to intemperance;[19] but we have before us the criminal
statistics of both countries for 1854, the population of England and
Wales in that year being about three times as great as that of
Ireland. The following table of convictions will enable us to form an
estimate of the comparative honesty of the two nations:
Robbery by persons armed, England and Wales, 210
Robbery by persons armed, Ireland, 2
Larceny from the person, England and Wales, 1,570
Larceny from the person, Ireland, 389
Larceny by servants,[20] England and Wales, 2,140
Larceny by servants, Ireland, 44
Larceny, simple, England and Wales, 12,562
Larceny, simple, Ireland, 3,329
Frauds and attempts to defraud, England and Wales, 676
Frauds and attempts to defraud, Ireland, 62
Forgery, England and Wales, 149
Forgery, Ireland, 4
Uttering and having in possession counterfeit coin,
England and Wales, 674
Uttering and having in possession counterfeit coin,
Ireland, 4
On the other hand, the following crimes are proportionately more
numerous in Ireland:
Convictions for manslaughter in 1854:
England and Wales, 96
Ireland, 50
Burglary, England and Wales, 384
“ Ireland, 240
We cannot think, however, that these returns are reliable, for the
_Statistical Journal_ of 1867 gives the following criminal tables for
England in 1865:
Wilful murder cases tried, 60
Manslaughter, 316
Concealment of birth, 143
---
Total, 519
And in Ireland from 1865 to 1871, a period of six years, only 21
persons were sentenced to death, of whom 13 were executed.
It is greatly to be regretted that criminal statistics give us no
information upon the religious character of the persons accused or
convicted of offences against the law. Many persons have been baptized
in infancy, and are called Catholics, though they have never been
brought under the influence of the church. In the absence of official
statistics, Dr. Descuret, who, in his capacity of legal physician in
Paris, had abundant opportunity to obtain data relative to this
subject, made, about thirty years ago, a careful study of the
religious views and sentiments of French criminals. The conclusion
which he reached was that, in every hundred persons accused of crime,
fifty are indifferentists in religion, forty are infidels, and the
remaining ten sincere believers. In a hundred suicides he found only
four persons of known piety, three of whom were women subject to
melancholia, and the other had been for some time mentally
deranged.[21]
[3] _The Table-Talk of Martin Luther_, pp. 200, 206, 213,
_et passim_.
[4] _Notes of a Traveller_, pp. 79, 80.
[5] _History of Europe_, vol. iii. chap. xxvii. 10, 11.
[6] _Autobiography_, pp. 58, 59.
[7] _Ibid._ p. 177.
[8] _History of European Morals_, p. 160.
[9] _Notes of a Traveller_, p. 172.
[10] For the full discussion of the statistics of this
subject see THE CATHOLIC WORLD, vol. ix. pp. 52 and 845.
[11] _European Morals_, p. 153.
[12] Alison’s _Miscellaneous Essays_, p. 119.
[13] Kay’s _Social Condition of the People_, vol. ii. p.
392.
[14] See _London Statistical Journal_, 1870, 1871.
[15] _Historische Politische Blätter_, 1867.
[16] _Crime: its Amount, Causes, and Remedies._ By Frederick
Hill, Barrister-at-law, late Inspector of Prisons.
London, p. 65.
[17] _Notes of a Traveller_ pp. 418-19.
[18] See _London Statistical Journal_, 1871.
[19] In 1871, 14,501,983 gallons of spirits were distilled
in Scotland. What proportion of this was consumed at
home we do not know. For the same year the number of
gallons entered for home consumption in Ireland was
5,212,746. The population of Scotland is nearly three
millions and a half, and that of Ireland about five
millions and a half.
[20] England and Wales, with not quite three times the
population of Ireland, had fifty times as many cases of
dishonesty among servants, which clearly accounts for
those newspaper advertisements in which English
housekeepers are careful to state that “no Irish need
apply.”
[21] _La Médecine des Passions_, p. 116.
PRIMEVAL GERMANS.
_Urdeutsch_ (which we have translated _Primeval Germans_) is a
historical novel, the scene of which is laid in the Black Forest
towards the second half of the fourth century. The author, Conrad von
Bolanden,[22] says in his preface that he intends it to be the first
of a series of three illustrating the action of Christianity on the
German people: the state in which it found them, that to which it
brought them, and that to which he says they are likely to be reduced
by modern infidelity. The story—which is mainly put together from
facts of the biography of St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, and from
descriptions of ancient German life drawn from Roman and German
historians—is interesting as the record of a time utterly gone by, and
of a state of barbarism incident to the childhood of nations. Very
nearly the same characteristics appear in the earliest chapters of the
history of all uncivilized tribes, and a special likeness can be
traced between the Teutons of the ninth century and the American
Indians of the sixteenth and seventeenth. Sprung from widely different
races, and experiencing the effects of Christianity in a very
different manner, there is yet a striking likeness in some of the
manners and customs, the industries, the opinions, and the few moral
axioms of both peoples with which Christian missionaries have made us
familiar. The plot of the story is slight, and has the advantage of
not being confused and complicated, as is the case in many modern
novels. St. Martin, yet a deacon, is travelling to Strassburg with his
servant Eustace (one of the best characters in the book), and stumbles
upon a sleeping barbarian, whom he awakens from a bad nightmare by the
strains of his harp or lyre. He then asks of the gigantic German what
is his errand, and the Buffalo (such names were common among the
Teutons) tells him that he is on his return from the famous grove of
Helygenforst, where he had been sent by Bissula, the only daughter of
the last king of the Suevi, to consult an oracle on the issue of a
blood-feud between the two noble families of the Walen and the
Billing. She and her youngest brother Hermanric are the only
representatives left of the former family, her father and her eleven
brothers having all fallen victims to the enmity of the Billing. St.
Martin remonstrates with the German (a freedman of the Suevi), and
tells him that the true God abhors blood-feuds, and, availing himself
of the German belief in one Supreme God, the All-Father, whose reign
is to be made manifest after the end of the world and the destruction
of the gods Odin, Thor, Freya, Loki, etc., tells Buffalo that he is
the messenger of the All-Father, and will save the last of the Walen
from their danger and dilemma. The German, by his word and his hand
(as was also the custom later in the vowing of feudal _homage_),
constitutes himself the Muntwaldo, or protector, of the deacon, and
they set off to the land of the Suevi. Eustace, formerly a soldier
under Martin when the latter was a centurion, strongly objects to this
arrangement, and grimly reiterates his certainty that nothing will
ever transform the hopelessly barbaric Germans. On their way the party
are attacked by four Chatti, a tribe opposed to the Suevi, and Martin
forbids Buffalo to fight in his behalf, saying that he will willingly
go with the strangers, but in six days will not fail to visit the
Suevi. Buffalo goes on his way, and the two Romans are taken to the
village of Duke Fraomar, the leader of the Chatti.
Here follows an interesting description of the dress and domestic
arrangements of the early German tribes. The duke is not an hereditary
chieftain, but a leader chosen by the tribe for his valor and
strength, who has collected round himself a personal following or
guard, a sort of freebooter’s company—the original, perhaps, of the
roving bands of “Free Companions” who played such a conspicuous part
in the wars of the middle ages. The dress of the freemen of the tribe
consisted mostly of skins and furs, with the head of the animal,
whether buffalo, stag, wolf, or bear, drawn like a hood over the head,
and the front paws tied under the chin or crossed on the breast. The
women wore long, rather tight-fitting garments of coarse linen, with
short sleeves and bands of gaudy colors sewed round the hem; the feet
were bare. Both men and women wore long hair; it was a sign of free or
noble birth, and was plentifully greased with butter, as were also, on
some occasions, the bodies of the warriors. The children and the
slaves were for the most part naked or only provided with leathern
aprons. The house had but one apartment, which served all purposes:
the fire was in the middle, while to one side were bundles of straw
and skins, the primitive beds, and to the other a slightly-raised
platform, the primitive table and chairs. The men sat or lay on this
and ate off their shields, or sometimes off wooden platters. The women
served them at meals and filled the drinking-horns with beer and mead.
Besides these horns, human skulls—those of enemies slain in
battle—were used as goblets, and these, together with the skulls of
sacred horses and the horns of stags, adorned the walls of the
dwelling. There was also generally a wooden chest, clumsily fashioned,
containing the clothes of the family. The women, children, and slaves
ate round the hearth after their lords, and while these were gambling
with dice. The passion of gambling seems to have been an inveterate
one, and a man would often stake his all, including wife, children,
and slaves—sometimes even himself. If he lost, he was reduced to the
condition of a slave. The walls of the house were black and glistening
with the smoke of the mighty and continuous fires, and there is no
mention of even a hole in the roof as an outlet. St. Martin and his
servant are introduced into this wild interior just after the Duke
Fraomar has been winning house, lands, slaves, cattle, and even his
wife, from a freeman of the “hundred.” The strangers are made welcome
and become the guests of the duke, which implies that henceforth their
persons are sacred, as nothing was more shameful in the eyes of the
Germans than to break their word or infringe the rights of
hospitality. Eustace, however, looks ruefully on the evidences of
good-will tendered him in the shape of a kind of oat-broth, seasoned
with the primitive German preparation of salt, which (Pliny is
responsible for the statement) consisted of charcoal made of oak or
hazel, impregnated when hot with the water of salt springs; the black
morsels giving the same odor to the broth with which they were mixed.
Duke Fraomar, who has a promise from Odin’s oracle to help him in a
foray against the neighboring Suevi, provided he does not attack them
before the “ninth full moon,” is rather uneasy at having these
strangers, who are under the protection of his enemies, brought to
him, in case anything untoward should happen to them, and the Suevi
fall upon him to avenge them, before the charmed time. The next day
one of the freemen takes the saint and his servant round the
settlement; and the author here introduces an account of the old
German division of property in a “hundred,” or community of one
hundred freemen, each possessing the same quantity of ground, and each
obliged to render military service to the head of the tribe. The
agricultural economy was by no means contemptible. Ploughed land and
land overgrown with bushes alternated in lots, and each was cultivated
during six years, then allowed to lie fallow six more. Manuring was
unknown, chiefly because the animal manure was used as a safe and warm
covering to the earth caves where the grain was stored in winter, and
where not seldom the owner and his family also took refuge from the
cold. Each freeman had his stables, his slave-huts, and his brewery,
the latter being generally a cave in a rock furnished with one or two
mighty caldrons. At the end of this inspection of the “hundred” (such
a division exists still in England, though far enough in spirit from
the ideal of the free Teutons) the strangers come upon a terrible
scene of cruelty and superstition.
The “journey to Walhalla” was the poetical title given to the
immolation of aged and wealthy persons of both sexes, who, instead of
being allowed to die a natural death, were, according to the ancient
custom, first killed and then burned with their possessions, with an
accompaniment of religious ceremonies. A pile of wood was raised, and
the victims, stupefied with beer, laid thereon, with one or two slaves
who were to wait upon them in the halls of Odin; for the Germans
believed that no one who died a natural death went to Walhalla, but
endured torments and shame in hell. Men and women, therefore,
willingly allowed themselves to be killed, and often committed suicide
as another means of reaching Walhalla. On this occasion two old men
and a woman were to be immolated. A ludicrous dispute occurs here
between one of the men and his son, who grudges him _two_ slaves as
his servants in Odin’s hall, whereupon the father announces his
determination to live rather than go to the other world with so paltry
a following. This settles the question, and the son gives up the
second slave. A great deal of drinking and a sacred chant by the
priest of Odin precede the butchery, and the victims are each killed
by one blow of “Thor’s hammer,” wielded by a freeman deputed to this
office by the heathen priest. The worst part follows. Just as the pile
has been set on fire an infant is thrown on, the child of the woman
whom the duke won the night before at dice. The indifference of the
mother at the order for this barbarous execution seems to us rather
overdrawn. Human nature is human nature the world over; and if there
is one feeling more obstinately ineradicable than any other, it is the
feeling of a mother for her child—or, say, in the very lowest possible
scale of civilization, of a female for her young. Even though
infanticide is common among most heathen nations, and was certainly
not unknown among the early Germans, it is rather an exaggeration on
the part of the author to represent the mother herself in this case as
utterly and absolutely indifferent to the child’s fate. While their
guide is busy drinking among the spectators of this scene, Martin and
Eustace penetrate the sacred grove, round which is drawn a cord, which
no German would have passed with unbound hands. Unknowing of this
custom, the strangers enter the wood and gaze on the human skulls and
skeletons, the bloody skins and the sacred horse-skulls, hung on the
branches of the trees. The priest soon discovers their presence in the
holy grove, and threatens to kill them on the spot, but is restrained
by the duke’s messenger, their guide. He afterwards goes to the duke
and demands that the law shall be carried out, which, for such a
sacrilege, decrees that the profaner of the holy grove should lose his
right hand and his left foot. Fraomar, thinking of his plan for
attacking the Suevi at the ninth moon, and not before, hesitates to
consent to the priest’s demand and seeks to protect his guests.
Meanwhile, the story goes on to follow Buffalo to the house of the
Walen princess Bissula, who, though a heathen, has been in Gaul and
had some intercourse with the Romans and a German Christian sovereign
family called the Tribboki. Her dress and dwelling are described as
much embellished by Roman arts and many degrees removed from the
ancient German simplicity. But, though outwardly less a German, she is
at heart an uncompromising adherent of the old customs of her fathers,
particularly of the blood-feud. She lives for the sole purpose of
avenging the death of her father and brothers; and, indeed, her stern
determination is the only circumstance of the book which can be called
a “plot.” Withimer, the son of the king of the Tribboki, is her lover
and her suitor, and comes to her house to offer himself as her
husband. He is a Christian and hopes to convert her also, but the
terrible blood-feud stands between them. She loves him as passionately
as he loves her, but refuses to marry him unless he will swear to take
upon himself the duty of revenge against her enemies, the Billing.
This, as a Christian, he cannot do, and hence ensues a hard struggle
between his love and his conscience, in which the “baptized heathen,”
as the author calls him, very nearly breaks down and forswears the
faith. Bissula, on her side, is still more determined, and once even
attempts suicide by throwing herself in the way of a wild beast while
out hunting, saying, as she does so, that she can more easily give up
her life than her love, but that her honor is yet dearer to her than
her love. Various devices are resorted to by Katuwald, the young chief
of the Billing, the hostile family, to end the blood-feud by marrying
Bissula, with whom he is in love; and the author now introduces the
“Thing,” or assembly of the people, the primeval parliament. This took
place in a circle surrounded by trees, on which the freemen hung their
shields and helmets. A rock, sacred as a kind of tribunal, stood in
the centre, and round this stone benches were ranged, on which sat the
representatives of the several hundreds. The oracle which Buffalo had
been sent to consult had returned the answer, “Let the Thing judge the
cause,” the priest who represented the deity having been bribed by the
Billing prince to send this answer. Bissula, with her lover, appears
at the assembly; but before their coming a lesser court of justice is
held for the adjustment of local claims, which gives us an opportunity
of reviewing some curious customs of the ancient Germans.
For instance, the value of human life in the case of a slave is shown
in two “cases” which come up for arbitration. A slave—but the son of a
free father, and a freeman himself by birth—secretly marries a
freewoman, and, on her father’s discovering the connection, the choice
is given her of killing her husband with her own hand or of being
herself degraded to slavery. A sword and a distaff were offered her;
if she chose the former, she was free, but was forced to plunge it in
the man’s breast; if the latter, she became a slave. There were two
other possible means of settling the question: the father had the
right to kill her, and the owner of the slave might give him his
freedom. In the case in point this last was the happy solution of the
problem. Another difficulty arose in the case of damages claimed by a
freeman whose neighbor’s tame stag, trained for hunting purposes, had
broken into his fields, killed a dozen head of cattle and two slaves,
in return for which he himself had shot the stag. The latter was
declared by law to be of a greater value than the two slaves, and a
fixed rate of compensation was adjudged, which completely satisfied
both parties. From a heathen point of view, considering that both men
and stags were “chattels,” it cannot be wondered at that the latter
were thought most valuable; for the market was over-stocked with
slaves, who might be had any day during a foray, while “domestic”
stags were very hard to train, and required to be taught some years
before they could be of any use to their owners.
When Bissula makes her appearance, the gathering of the people
resolves itself into a “Thing,” and she and her enemies, the five sons
of the noble Billing Brenno, take their place by the rock. Hermanric’s
absence causes some wonder and annoyance, but Marcomir, the umpire,
nevertheless begins the session. Katuwald boldly proposes to end the
feud by marrying Bissula, who openly and contemptuously refuses his
suit, whereupon a great tumult arises and Hermanric rides into the
circle, a bloody head dangling at his saddle-bow. He recounts his
exploit—how he, though not yet invested with a man’s weapons (as the
rule was to entrust neither sword nor spear to a youth under
nineteen), forced the aged Brenno, who had stayed at home, to fight
him in single combat, the Billing armed with sword and shield, and
himself only with a club. The trembling slave who follows him
corroborates his story, and Katuwald, already sore from Bissula’s
proud refusal of his love, looks upon the youth with a significant and
angry eye, and at last leaves the council, having publicly asked to be
told the law of compensation for carrying off another man’s wife or
betrothed. Affairs stand thus with the Suevi, while the story returns
to Martin in the hands of the Chatti.
An assembly of the freemen of this tribe is held to discuss the
question raised by the priest, as to Martin’s punishment for invading
the sacred grove. This takes place the same day that Buffalo goes in
quest of his friend, and he arrives in time to be present at the
gathering. Duke Fraomar is anxious to save the strangers—not for their
own sakes, but for fear of precipitating the attack on the Suevi
before the propitious time appointed by the oracle. At last Martin
proposes an ordeal such as, since the days of Elijah, has often been
resorted to to decide rival claims to truth. A few chosen
representatives are to accompany him and the priest to the shrine of
the heathen gods in the forest, and the Christian and the priest are
both to call upon their gods to show themselves. Here follows a
description of the shrine—a building of wood beneath a gigantic
oak-tree. Within are kept “Thor’s hammer” and “Tyr’s sword,” and the
car of the goddess Hertha, the Cybele of Teutonic mythology, or simply
the Earth-mother. Into this car she was at times supposed to descend,
when a yoke of cows was harnessed to it, and it was covered with a
white cloth, and thus drawn solemnly through the “hundred.” After
these processions, the car and cloth were washed by slaves in a pond,
into which the latter were afterwards thrown and drowned. The statue
or figure of the goddess was erected in a huge crack of the sacred
tree, and her grim, enormous head, with staring eyes and yawning
mouth, black with clotted blood, crowned a clumsily-carved block,
without either arms or legs.[23] Horse-skulls and white horse-skins
(the priest was also clad in such skins), human skulls and skeletons,
dogs’ heads and skins of wild beasts, hung from the branches of the
sacred tree, which might have sheltered a regiment. Near the sacred
car stood a stone altar encrusted with blood. The priest carefully
placed the Christian stranger within easy reach of his arm, and
distributed the others, the duke, the Sueve Buffalo, and the wise men
of the hundred, where they could not see his movements. After his
prayer, he was preparing to swing the hammer so as to reach the
saint’s head, when Buffalo, suspecting foul play, stole quietly
forward and called to Martin to shift his position. Martin simply bade
his companions, who, like himself, had their hands securely bound,
rise up and lift their hands free from the cords. The fastenings fell
off and the heathens stood in awe, waiting for his words. This, says
the author, is word for word from St. Martin’s biographer, Sulpicius
Severus. Then came a crashing noise, and the lightning fell on the
priest, killing him instantly, while the mighty tree was rent in
pieces and fell to the earth, carrying in its fall the idol, temple,
altar, and car, which disappeared under its burning branches. With awe
and terror Fraomar and the Chatti besought the stranger, as a terrible
magician, to leave them and not work them any more mischief. The saint
sorrowfully complies, grieving that the true God had not yet conquered
their hearts, though his might had been shown in such a way, and goes
his way with Buffalo to the Suevian settlement. Here he takes up his
abode in a cave, in front of which is a spring called Odin’s Spring,
and in which the Germans bathe their new-born children and give them
names. Meanwhile, Withimer, the Christian, struggles with his love,
and Bissula, the proud, beautiful heathen princess, still refuses to
marry him unless he will undertake the duty of avenging her murdered
father and brothers. St. Martin reasons with both, and at last
prevails with the former to give up his love for the sake of his
conscience; but having painted the evils of ingratitude to God and of
eternal damnation in vain, he at last conquers the youth by reminding
him that, as a German, it would be an indelible disgrace to him to
forswear himself by breaking his baptismal vows. Bissula mourns his
sudden departure, which she attributes to a messenger having recalled
him during her absence, and turns her attention to preserving her last
remaining brother from the hatred of the Billing. This she does by
resorting to the charms of the Abruna woman Velleda, a priestess said
to be hundreds of years old, and to possess marvellous powers, as
Circe of old, to change men into stones, trees, and animals. She is,
however, not a witch, but the enemy of witches; and here follows a
terrible account of the cruelties and absurdities to which the belief
in witches led in those times, and, indeed, in all times.
Châteaubriand’s[24] beautiful Gallic Velleda is a very different
character from this hideous old hag of the Black Forest. Though not a
witch, she has, in Bolanden’s book, all the conventional “properties”
of one in the shape of a talking raven and two snakes entwined round
her neck and arms. She promises Katuwald to give Bissula a love-drink,
to turn her heart from Withimer to himself; and by a charm, consisting
of a piece of skin inscribed with mystic characters, she promises to
Hermanric invulnerability against “sword and spear.”
St. Martin, in the meanwhile, has managed to gather an audience of
children, whom he instructs in the truths of Christianity and teaches
to behave according to Christian morality, not forgetting also to
induce them to clothe and wash themselves regularly every day. Some of
the parents also join his catechumens, but the greater part still look
upon him as an impious contemner of the gods and a powerful magician
The priest of this “hundred” once tries to entrap him at the head of a
crowd of infuriated Germans, but the saint mildly and logically drives
him into contradictions which are evident even to his unlearned
hearers. On this occasion the two accounts of the creation, the
Biblical and the Teutonic, are set side by side. The defeated priest
retires, but only to plot further mischief; and the scene changes to a
German wedding, which forms a very interesting chapter. Girls of an
age and willing to be married usually wore several little bells in
their girdle, and it was allowed to any freeman to carry them off,
provided he afterwards loyally paid the stipulated price—two fat oxen,
a caparisoned horse, two slaves, a sword, a spear, and a shield—to the
bride’s father. The bridegroom’s dress was that usually worn by
freemen on state occasions, and of course the full complement of
weapons was indispensable. Falk, the bridegroom, is represented as
wearing a magnificent bear-skin, with the head drawn over his own as a
hood. The bride, besides her linen tunic or undergarment; wore also a
cloak of Roman manufacture and of gaudy colors. The whole kindred of
the bridegroom accompanied him with horns, pipes, and a kind of
cymbals to his father-in-law’s house, and the oxen, etc., were led by
the slaves. The father performed the ceremony, and Falk swore by
“sword and spear” to hold his wife in all honor and truth. The father
put a ring on the bride’s finger and bade her remember that, although
her husband would be allowed by ancient custom to take other wives if
he pleased, she herself would nevertheless be bound to the most
unswerving fidelity; and, giving her two yoked oxen as a wedding
present, told her that as these two drew one car, so husband and wife
were bound to share and carry together the burdens of life.[25] The
shrill music of the horns and clashing together of weapons accompanied
the approving hurrahs of the two families, and Falk now led his wife
home. From the door of his house hung a naked sword—the “marriage
sword”—a warning of the doom that follows the least infidelity; and on
going in the bridegroom led the bride three times round the hearth,
saying: “Here shalt thou stay and watch as housemistress in chastity,
prudence, and industry.” A free-woman of the husband’s kindred then
brought a bowl of water and washed the bride’s feet, after which the
bride’s father dipped a linden-branch in the same water and sprinkled
the bed, the domestic utensils, and the relations of the bridegroom. A
wooden platter full of honey was then handed to him, and, as he
anointed the bride’s mouth with honey, he said these words: “Let thy
mouth always speak sweet words to thy husband, but no bitter ones.”
After this ceremony the bride’s head was wrapped in a cloth, and she
was led to the closed door of the dwelling, and in succession to those
of the stables, the grain-store, and the slave-huts, each of which she
struck with her right foot, while the women showered handfuls of
wheat, oats, barley, and beans on her head, during which rite the
father said to her: “As long as thou governest thy house with
industry, so long shalt thou not lack the fruits of the earth.” Falk
now took the cloth off his wife’s head and kissed her, and all the
family followed with their congratulations.
The expected presence of Bissula at the banquet had led to a departure
from the ordinary German usage, and a table had been prepared for such
as would sit at it during the bridal feast. The king’s daughter, when
she came, brought a much-valued present, one which German housewives
of the present day rate as highly as their gigantic ancestresses of
the days of old—a store of home-spun linen. After the banquet, a wild
dance was performed in honor of the young couple. Tacitus gives an
account of it: The young men assembled in a crooked double line, half
of them holding naked swords and the other half spears, held forward,
crossing each other. Four or five youths, entirely naked, now began a
skilful dance, threading their way with incredible quickness between
the shining weapons. The Scotch sword-dance is thought sufficiently
clever nowadays, but what is it compared to the real danger, and the
opportunity of showing dexterity as well as courage, which this
ancient German custom offered? This game was accompanied by the shrill
blast of horns and pipes and the hoarse shouting of the excited
spectators. Another drinking bout followed this exploit, when, as the
day began to fade, the priestess Velleda made her appearance. And now
a natural phenomenon was added to the strange scene—a partial eclipse
of the moon, which the Germans explained as the struggle between the
moon and the giant wolf Managarm, a half-divine creature, who feeds on
the bodies of the dead and now and then hunts and pursues the heavenly
bodies. As the shadow grew less and the moon’s light broke forth
again, the guests clamored and clashed their arms together, crying
out, “The moon wins! the moon wins!” as if encouraging human
combatants. During this confusion Katuwald, the Billing chief,
emboldened by the love-potion which Velleda has given Bissula to
drink, attempts to carry her off; but the maiden, strong as the women
of giant growth of old Germany ever were, wrestles with him and
overcomes him, bearing him in her arms into the midst of the assembled
guests. Most of the authorities quoted by Bolanden go to confirm the
facts of the extraordinary strength of the women of that time, their
stature of six and often seven feet, and of the custom prevalent among
the Germans of teaching young girls to wrestle and throw the spear
like the men.
The next scene of primitive life in the Black Forest is the doom of
the adulteress, a wretched, guilty woman being driven naked through
the “hundred,” pursued by all the free-women, each armed with long
whips and small knives. This was the common punishment decreed for
such offences. A human sacrifice to the gods of Walhalla is also
portrayed in vivid colors: the Chatti immolate a slave and two oxen as
a propitiatory offering before their foray against the Suevi; and one
more example of German manners and customs is afforded by the funeral
of Hermanric, Bissula’s brother, whom the Billing Katuwald has slain
with an arrow. This is gorgeously described: the car, drawn by six
horses, contained the corpse and was adorned with endless plate,
jewels, rare stuffs, and articles of Roman workmanship of great value;
the horses’ heads were wreathed in oak and ash garlands; three fully
caparisoned horses and eight gorgeously-arrayed slaves, the special
servants and companions of the deceased, followed the car and were
destined to be struck dead and burned with their master. Marcomir, the
umpire, pronounced a funeral oration, and the priest’s deputy had
lifted the sacred hammer to kill the first slave, when a strange
whirlwind began to shake the forest around the funeral pile. Trees
were uprooted, the wind tore and howled through the branches, thunder
and lightning added their terrors, and the Suevi stood rooted to the
ground in awe and amazement. St. Martin is seen in the distance
advancing towards them at a miraculously quick pace, and as he comes
nearer the storm-cloud is just seen passing away, while the sun breaks
forth again. The cry of “The sorcerer!” is raised, but Buffalo cries
out, “He is no sorcerer, but a holy man,” and, breathless, they all
watch the saint.
Here the author again draws on Sulpicius Severus for a signal
miracle—nothing short of a raising from the dead. St. Martin commands
the dead Hermanric to arise and live; the youth starts up and clings
to the saint’s mantle, while the bystanders are dumb with fear and
awe. He comes forth, and, mounting one of his horses, seats his
deliverer on another and rides away with him, bidding his sister
believe in the almighty and only God of the Christians, and telling
his slaves that as they were to have followed him into Walhalla, so he
expects them the next day at the saint’s abode, to follow him in the
new way of life he has at last discovered. The end is easy to see:
Bissula becomes a Christian, renounces her hatred against the Billing,
and receives baptism with hundreds of her relations and slaves, to all
the latter of whom she and her brother give their freedom and certain
necessary possessions—in fact, almost portioning out their estate
between them. Bissula then marries Withimer, and they spend their
lives in trying to spread the light of the Gospel among their
fellow-countrymen, while Hermanric follows St. Martin and becomes a
monk in one of the first Frankish monasteries.
Among the most natural characters in the book are Eustace and Buffalo,
who delight the reader with their various shrewd sayings and their
dog-like fidelity to St. Martin. One or two curious facts have an
incidental place in the story; for instance, the derivation of the
modern German word for grandson—_Enkel_—vouched for by Simrock, and
which is a survival of the old custom of reckoning the two nearest
degrees of relationship by the two joints of the leg; the knee
signifying the _son_, and the ankle the _grandson_.
A very good point is also made in Withimer’s spiritual probation, his
penance in the cave with St. Martin, and his meekly submitting, after
a terrible struggle with his own pride and passions, to receive a
scourging from the saint, and to cut off his golden, flowing hair, the
outward badge of his sovereignty. His victory over himself and his
true humility are very beautiful. In the baptism scene it is
interesting to be reminded of the old formula of the questions
addressed to the catechumens, of which the following are specimens:
“_Forsachis [renouncest] tu diabolæ? … End ec [and I] for sacho allum
diaboles workum [works] en wordum [words] Thunaer ende woten ende
[and] allein them unholdum [unclean] the ira genotes [companions]
sint.… Gelobis tu [believest thou] in got alamehtigan [Almighty]
Fadaer [Father]?_”
We meant to have spoken more at length of the mythology of the
Teutonic races, but have no space for the subject. The authorities
Bolanden has followed are Tacitus, Grimm, and Arnkiel. Concerning
history, manners, and customs he quotes Julius Cæsar, Tacitus,
Procopius, Strabo, Pliny, Schmidt, Simrock, Wirth, Heber, Cantù,
Ozanam, and Arnkiel. For the traditions of St. Martin’s life Sulpicius
Severus, his deacon, friend, and biographer, is the authority. We
should like to give an example of the poetry of the ancient Germans;
but as the _Nibelungenlied_ is accessible to every scholar and widely
known even to the ordinary reading public, no specimen of inferior
war-hymns would be worth drawing attention to. We will conclude by a
beautiful description of the simplicity and humble appearance of a
holy bishop of the fourth century, Justinus of Strassburg, and who, as
well as St. Martin, had a high opinion of the grand “raw material,”
ready to the hand of Christian workers, in the brave, truthful, loyal,
hospitable, even if cruel and uncivilized, Germans of the “forest
primeval.” Bolanden says: “The simplicity of the bishop reminded one
of the apostolic age. He bore no outward sign of his high rank, and
his only garments were two tunics of white wool, one long with long
sleeves, and another, sleeveless and short, over it, while over all
hung a cloak of Roman make. His feet were shod with sandals. His black
beard hung low over his breast, while a ring of whitening hair
encircled his bald head. His features were thin, as if with fasting
and mortification, his glance calm, and his demeanor humble; while his
hands, used to toil, were extraordinarily strong, for he followed the
example of St. Paul, who refused to be a burden upon any one.… For
precisely the most pious and holy of the bishops of the Frankish
country gave themselves to manual labor, to give a good example to the
Franks, who shrank from work as from a shameful occupation,… and this,
too, by no means to the prejudice of the vineyard of the Lord. On the
contrary, those self-denying men, indifferent to life, seeking no
earthly honors or distinctions, thinking only of the service of God,
were the pillars of the church and the most fruitful signs of her
progress. Neither did they acknowledge the golden fetters of kings,
which hinder the working of Christ’s messengers. They were free in
their sacred ministry, and God’s protection accompanied them in their
hallowed work.”
Bolanden’s book has, of course, an _arrière-pensée_, which is so
evident through the story that it rather spoils the mere literary
value of the book, as “a purpose” more or less cramps any literary
production. But, as a clever contemporary says, “In the hot
theological controversies of the present day it is hard to treat any
subject, even remotely connected with ecclesiastical history, without
betraying a ‘tendency.’” Bolanden is outspoken enough as to his, which
has for object the present Prussian laws against religious freedom.
But we think we may safely say that the first book of the series will
be the most original and interesting, illustrating as it does a period
so little known and not yet become, like the middle ages, the
hackneyed theme of every novelist, from first to fifth rate, of every
civilized and literary European nationality.
[22] Conrad von Bolanden, a brief sketch of whose life has
already appeared in these pages, requires no
introduction to the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, who
will know him best as the author of _The
Progressionists_, _Angela_, _The Trowel or the Cross_,
etc.
[23] This reminds one of the Aztec war-god Quatzacoatl.
[24] _Les Martyrs_, Châteaubriand.
[25] Tacitus, _Germania_.
SACERDOS ALTER CHRISTUS.[26]
The priest, “another Christ” is he,
And plights the church his marriage-vows;
Thenceforth in every soul to see
A daughter, sister, spouse.
Then let him wear the triple cord
Of father’s, brother’s, husband’s care;
In this partaking with his Lord
What angels cannot share.
O sweet new love! O strong new wine!
O taste of Pentecostal fire!
Inebriate me, draught divine,
With Calvary’s desire!
“I thirst!” He cried. The dregs were drained:
But still “I thirst!” his dying cry.
While one ungarnered soul remained,
The cup too soon was dry.
And shall not _I_ be crucified?
What though the fiends, when all is done,
Make darkness round me, and deride
That not a soul is won?
God reaps from very loss a gain,
And darkness here is light above.
Nor ever did and died in vain
Who did and died for love.
1871
[26] St. Bernard.
LABOR IN EUROPE AND AMERICA.[27]
There was a time, not far distant, when men thought they had found in
the United States of America the sovereignty of labor. It was the
boast of its people that there were no American paupers. The working
classes looked with something like contempt upon the condition of
their fellow-laborers in Europe. Here was the land where every man’s
independence rested in his own hands and his willingness to labor. No
day should come when an honest day’s work would not earn, not bread
alone, but a home—an American home. This was the time when the
followers of Boone were disclosing to wondering eyes the virgin
richness of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys; when, later, adventurous
spirits led the way over the Rocky Mountains to a new western empire;
when, close succeeding, California opened its Aladdin’s caves, not to
the lash of kings or tyrants over toiling slaves, but to the picks and
pans of free labor. Yes, here at last was found what the poets and
philosophers of Greece and Rome had only dreamed of—the ideal
commonwealth, a golden age. Thus had a free republic, established in
the richest and grandest territory the sun shone on, conquered at last
the problem of ages, and labor stood the peer of capital—nay, aspired
to be its master. It was claimed not only that a particular form of
government had achieved those economic results, but that it was
capable of maintaining them indefinitely. Politics bade defiance to
political economy.
Is this state of things true of to-day? In part, yes, it may be
answered. Looking at the comparative independence and comfort of the
great masses of the working classes of this country, noting that
intelligent zeal for personal liberty which pervades them, much reason
for congratulation still remains. But the pressure of those social
conditions affecting labor in other countries is beginning to be
seriously felt. The reserve forces of capital are coming up. The
“salad days” of the nation are over. It has grown to manhood, and,
growing thus, has met the harsh experiences inseparable from national
as from individual life. It begins to feel the burdens of maturity,
and to be harassed by its anxieties. Labor has met war, its wild
fever, its deadly collapse; labor has met debt, the second and
costlier price of war, sucking out the life-blood after the wounds of
battle have been stanched; and, lastly, labor has met capital, which,
like one of those genii described in the Arabian tales, rises
portentous to its full strength and stature out of the smoke of war
and the shadow of debt. These two forces, labor and capital—which, to
borrow an image from the ancient myths, Ἀνάγκη or _Necessitas_ seems
to have linked together in iron bonds—mutually hostile yet inseparable
co-laborers in the work of human progress, are preparing to try their
strength in the New World as they have done in the Old. The first
murmurs of that contest which it was deemed republican institutions
could for ever avert are plainly heard. Daily observation shows that
the laws governing the accumulation of wealth elsewhere—increase
stimulating increase in a geometrical ratio—are not suspended here.
“The rich are growing richer, the poor poorer.” Any of the great daily
newspapers need only to be looked at from week to week and month to
month to find the growing record of strikes, the agitation of labor,
the increase of pauperism. The glory of the country, its greatest
source of prosperity, has had in it an element of weakness. That rich
and wide domain, which invited immigration, postponed, but has not
been able eventually to stay, the aggregation of surplus
labor—especially on the two seaboards—which everywhere becomes the
bond-slave of capital, and fights its battles against free labor. In a
word, politics, the barriers of merely political _pronunciamientos_,
have yielded in the United States, as elsewhere, to those primal laws
of supply and demand which govern the wages of labor. We are
assimilating to the economic conditions of Europe. A revolution has
taken place during the course of the last quarter of a century in the
industrial features of this country. The flux and reflux both of labor
and capital between America and Europe are instant and inevitable.
Henceforward the contest between them will be fought out on the old
conditions, little or not at all affected by political or—what is the
same thing—sentimental considerations. Here, then, is a problem for
the statesmen of this age widely differing from that which engaged the
attention of the fathers of the Constitution, yet like it in this:
that the successful solution of each aims at the amelioration of the
condition of mankind. One was political; the other is, and will be,
social, and may be regarded as a sequel to, and complement of, the
first.
Must we sink into the old ruts along which labor has slowly and
painfully dragged its burdens for ages in Europe? Is there no help for
this Sisyphus? Must the stone roll down the hill again, after having
mounted so near the top? Or is it possible that the light which the
founders of this republic set up as a beacon for the political
regeneration of mankind one hundred years ago may be rekindled in the
same land in a succeeding age to lead the way to the regeneration of
labor? It is a task for the highest, the most Christian, the most
Catholic statesmanship. The church, faithful to its great _rôle_ of
emancipator or manumitter, which it took up, in advance of the age, in
the darkest eclipse of the declension of the Roman Empire, and has
never since abandoned, will be found again in the van of this
movement. Labor and capital, which, left to themselves, would rend
each other, may find in its arbitrament a truce—peace—harmonious
working.
Is the hope that this republic shall be the first to utter to Europe
and the world some grand maxims in social economy, as one hundred
years ago it did in politics, chimerical? By its realization we shall
be able to avert from this country the atheistic commune which is
threatening to ravage Europe, or to meet it and defeat it should it
come.
Wise action must be the result of good information. Such a work,
therefore, as this of Dr. Young’s on _Labor in Europe and America_ is
a valuable auxiliary to those who like to know what they have to deal
with before moving in any matter. It is a bulky volume of over eight
hundred pages octavo of closely-printed matter; but it is not so
appalling as it looks, the number of countries surveyed and the
diversity of the conditions of labor presented making it interesting
even to the general reader. Dr. Young’s position as chief of the
United States Bureau of Statistics has given him exceptional
advantages and facilities for obtaining information in the preparation
of such a work, and it is fair to say that he appears to have availed
himself of them with great industry and ability. It is, in fact, the
work of a specialist who is devoted to his subject, and is therefore
_primâ facie_ worthy of attentive consideration. Nor does it fail in
great part to make good its pretensions. Yet it has all the faults of
the current works of the infant science of statistics. It jams
everything into columns of tabular statements, and seeks to draw
infallible averages and wide-sweeping deductions from them which
cannot be always sustained on closer scrutiny. Observation is
everywhere too limited, the conditions of society and of individual
existence and labor too minutely diversified and shifting, to be toted
up like a sum in addition by a calculating machine. Were we to listen
to the statisticians, however, we would displace the Pope and put them
in his chair. They would feel quite at ease there, and the
infallibility they shake their heads at in Pio Nono would fit them to
a charm. Like the jailer in _Monte Christo_, they would blot out all
individuality and number every one and everything 1, 2, 3. But man is
too stubbornly self-willed ever to be made the term of an equation.
How different, how inferior, such a work as this, for instance, of Dr.
Young’s—comprehensive and well digested as it truly is—to any one of
his great namesake’s in the last century, Arthur Young, who, more
justly than M. Adolphe Quetelet, deserves the title of the “father of
modern statistics.” One is like the Turkey carpet that Macaulay speaks
of in his criticism on Montgomery, which contains indeed all the
colors that are to be found in a masterpiece of painting, but is fit
only for its own uses; the other is a picture instinct with life. The
old method of personal, detailed, and necessarily limited observation,
while it excelled in picturesqueness, gave at the same time solid,
accurate, special information which the hasty generalizations of the
present day too often miss. The latter confuse the mind by their
immense array of figures.
Again, Dr. Young has given, we think, a disproportionate share of
attention to Europe, Asia, and even Africa—occupying in all over seven
hundred pages with his account of labor in those countries, while he
handles the subject in the United States and Canada in just one
hundred pages. His explanation is that his work is intended chiefly
for circulation in the United States, but this explanation is
unsatisfactory. His long introductory history of labor from the
remotest times, compiled, as it plainly is, from the works of European
scholars within everybody’s reach, and his view, chiefly at second
hand, from the reports of American consuls, of the state of labor in
Europe, are manifestly inferior, both in interest and authority, to
the copious original works of the statisticians of particular foreign
countries; while his history of American labor and presentation of its
existing conditions, which ought to have given its real value to his
work, are extremely meagre and superficial. His own tour through the
manufacturing centres of England and the Continent appears from his
statements to have been of too flying a nature to yield any very
authoritative results. But we wish it to be distinctly understood that
while the plan of Dr. Young’s work, and, in some respects, its
execution, appear to us defective, we are by no means disposed to
undervalue the great utility of what he has accomplished in thus
presenting to the American reader in compact form a survey of the
history of labor down to our own times. It is only from a study of the
subject in its widest aspects that an intelligent comprehension of the
factors of the problems before us in America can be arrived at.
Dr. Young begins by a review of the origin of slavery and gradual
development of wage labor, following its thread through the rise and
decline of the ancient empires of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The
conquest and carrying off of alien races for the uses of manual labor,
while their conquerors followed the profession of arms, was the most
fruitful source of slavery in ancient times. This species of slavery
is still found in Africa. It was long ago extinguished in Europe. It
was crippled in America by the suppression of the slave trade, and has
finally disappeared in the United States by the emancipation of the
negro race. On the other hand, we have never had in this country the
predial slavery which is bound to the soil and digs the ground it
originally sprang from, of which the last great example is vanishing
from Russia under the benignant edicts of Alexander II. But there is
no doubt that that form would have developed itself in the United
States from negro slavery if the distinction of color could have been
annihilated. It was already tending in that direction when the war
intervened.
We must pass over Dr. Young’s account of labor under the feudal
system, but we cannot help noting the prejudice he seems to share with
the vulgar against the monks. To read his pages, one would necessarily
be led to infer that the clergy were among the worst oppressors of the
poor; that they ground their unhappy serfs, and were the allies of the
nobles and military commanders in keeping down the working classes.
That all this _farrago_ of calumny is directly the reverse of the
truth is now so universally admitted by students of those ages that it
is needless to enter into the question, nor would our space permit us
to do so. It will suffice to quote Hallam, who, while opposed to the
principles upon which monasteries are founded, calls those of the
middle ages “green spots in the wilderness where the feeble and the
persecuted could find refuge.”[28] And again, speaking of the
devastation of immense tracts by war, he says: “We owe the
agricultural restoration of the great part of Europe to the
monks.”[29] It is singular that such testimony is omitted by Dr.
Young. It would be still more singular if it had escaped his
observation. His admissions are as ridiculous as his omissions. In a
foot-note of a single line, which is lost in the midst of two chapters
on the subject, he says: “It is admitted that the abbots were most
indulgent landlords.” This is as if a writer on the woollen
manufacture of the present day should devote a hundred pages to the
knitting-needles of the old women in our country towns, and inform his
readers in a one-line footnote: “Steam machinery was also used in this
age in the manufacture of woollens.” The monastery was as
distinctively the economic feature of the civilization of the middle
ages as the steam-engine is of our times. Each played the same part in
its development. It is just as easy to be blind to one as to the
other.
Passing over the period included between Elizabeth and George III.,
and the early days of what Dr. Young aptly terms the “era of
machinery,” we come down to the consideration of the organization and
prices of labor, the rates of wages and cost of subsistence, and the
habits of the working classes in England at the present day. These are
fruitful themes, and are treated of in detail. We will endeavor to
present a few items of comparison, from the statistics given in
connection with them, with those afforded later in the case of the
United States.
What we have said about the change that has taken place in the
conditions of labor in the United States is shown by Dr. Young’s
account of the trades-unions of the United Kingdom. Instead of, as
formerly, maintaining their position on a totally different and higher
plane than European workmen, American mechanics now take the law, in
many cases, from English organizations. For instance, the “Amalgamated
Society of Engineers,” a union including machinists, millwrights,
smiths, and pattern-makers, and numbering at the close of 1874 about
45,000 members, had 30 branches in the United States at the end of
1873, with an aggregate membership of 1,405. These branches were
spread over every manufacturing city of the first or second class in
the Union. Five branches were established in Canada. Some idea of the
power of such a society, apart from its mere roll of membership, may
be gathered from its annual statements of the account of its
accumulated fund. Its balance on hand at the close of 1873 amounted to
£200,923 1s. 6¾d. Its expenditure during the same year amounted to
£67,199 17s., 5½d., including such items as telegrams, banking
expenses, delegations, grants to other trades, parliamentary
committees, gas-stokers defence fund—disclosing, in fact, all the
incidents of a powerful and active organization.
The “Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners” has 265 branches,
14 of which are in the United States. The membership, however, appears
to be small in this country, numbering only 445 men. The governmental
organization of societies of this class is very elaborate and
centralizing in character. Monthly reports are received from all the
branches, including those in the United States. For instance, the
monthly reports of the Amalgamated Carpenters’ Society for January,
1875, from the United States, represent the state of trade as “bad,”
“dull,” or “slack,” with the exception of San Francisco, where it is
reported “good,” and Newark as “improving.” Although no data are here
given, it is not to be doubted that this system of reports will be, or
has already been, extended to such organizations as the “Miners’
National Association,” numbering 140,000, and the National
Agricultural Laborers’ Union, numbering 60,000, thus seriously
affecting the immigration not only of skilled but of agricultural
labor. In fact, we are already aware that personal reports have been
made by Joseph Arch and others, some of them not favorable. The
formidable character of the trades-unions of Great Britain is seen by
the mere statement of their aggregate membership, which Dr. Young
estimates, with all deductions, at 800,000 in January, 1875.
The question of strikes in England is too large a one to be entered
into here. Dr. Young gives a brief history of the great Preston strike
of 1836, of the Nottingham, the Staffordshire Colliery, the Pottery,
and the Yorkshire strikes, all of which proved unsuccessful after
terrible suffering on the part of the workmen and great loss on both
sides had been endured. A short account is also given of the
unsuccessful “Amalgamated Engineers’” strike of 1851-52, and the
protracted engineers’ strike on the Tyne, 1871-72, for the nine hours’
system, which resulted in a compromise. Experience has demonstrated of
strikes, 1st, that they are usually unsuccessful; 2d, that they lessen
the employer’s ability to maintain even the wages paid before the
strike, by giving an advantage to his competitor in other countries
which he cannot always recover; 3d, that where they are fought out to
the end they cause suffering and develop disease in the weak, and in
women and children, which no wages can pay for or cure; 4th, that they
deteriorate the character of the men engaged in them by promoting a
feeling of lawlessness and desire for stimulation even among the best
disposed; 5th, that, even if successful, there is a greater dead loss
in money spent than is recouped by the advance gained in wages. These
conclusions are now beginning to be so well understood in
England—where, from more perfect organization, strikes are larger and
cost more to both parties than in the United States—that the chairman
of the Trades-Union Congress of the United Kingdom, held at Liverpool
in January, 1875, in his opening address referred to strikes as a mode
of settling differences with employers which ought to be avoided by
all practicable means, and resorted to only in the most extreme
cases—an opinion afterwards embodied in a resolution which was adopted
by the Congress. The principle of arbitration has already been tried
successfully in several important instances.
Dr. Young illustrates the rates of wages in the United Kingdom by
tables. He accompanies the tables with the explanation that “in a very
large number of occupations the hands are paid by the piece or by
weight, and the actual rate of wages would not indicate the sum an
operative would take home with him at the end of the week as the price
of his labor. The sums stated in all these tables are therefore the
average sums earned per week, whether the labor be paid by the day or
the piece.” The same explanation holds good for the United States. Of
these tabular statements our space will only permit us to give two or
three, to which we shall subjoin the rates of wages in the United
States in the same occupations by way of comparison. The British pound
sterling is computed at $4 84, and the shilling at 24 cents.
WAGES IN COTTON-MILLS.
The reduction in the hours of labor and the increase in the rates of
wages in English cotton-mills are shown in the following table:
_Statement showing the average weekly earnings of operatives in
cotton-mills during the years 1839, 1849, 1859, and 1873._
-----------------------+--------------------+-------------+-------------
| | WORK OF | WORK OF
| | 69 HOURS. | 60 HOURS.
OCCUPATION. | SEX. +------+------+------+------
| | 1839.| 1849.| 1859.| 1873.
-----------------------+--------------------+------+------+------+------
Steam-engine tenders, | |$5 76 |$5 72 |$7 20 |$7 68
Warehousemen, | | 4 32 | 4 80 | 5 28 | 6 24
Carding: | | | | |
Stretchers, |Women and girls, | 1 68 | 1 80 | 1 92 | 2 88
Strippers, |Young men, | 2 64 | 2 88 | 3 36 | 4 56
Overlookers, | | 6 00 | 6 72 | 6 72 | 7 68
Spinning: | | | | |
Winders on | | 3 84 | 4 32 | 4 80 | 6 00
self-acting mules, | | | | |
Piecers, |Women and young men,| 1 94 | 2 16 | 2 40 | 3 84
Overlookers, | | 4 80 | 5 28 | 6 24 | 7 20
Reeling: | | | | |
Throttle-rulers, |Women, | 2 16 | 2 28 | 2 28 | 3 00
Warpers, | | 5 28 | 5 28 | 5 52 | 6 24
Sizers, | | 5 52 | 5 52 | 6 00 | 7 20
Doubling: | | | | |
Doublers, |Women, | 1 68 | 1 80 | 2 16 | 3 00
Overlookers, | | 5 76 | 6 00 | 6 72 | 7 68
-----------------------+--------------------+------+------+------+------
“Other branches show the same ratio of advance.” The following
statement was furnished to Dr. Young by the proprietors of the
cotton-mills of Messrs. Shaw, Jardin & Co., of Manchester, operating
250,000 spindles, and producing yarns from No. 60 to 220, sewing
cottons, lace yarn, crape yarn, and two-fold warp yarns:
_Average wages (per week of 59 hours) of persons employed in 1872._
OCCUPATION. WAGES.
Carding:
Overseer, $10 89
Second hand, 7 26
Drawing-frame tenders, 2 66
Speeder-tenders, 3 14
Grinders, 5 32
Strippers, 5 32
Spinning:
Overseer, 14 52
Mule-spinners, $13 31 to 15 73
Mule-backside piecers, 2 42 to 3 87
Repair-shop, engine-room, etc.:
Foreman or overseer, 14 52
Wood and iron workers, 7 74
Engineer, 9 68
Laborers, 5 32
These tables will be found on pp. 330-31. Now let us compare the wages
there given with those paid to the same class of operatives in the
United States. On pages 750-51, Dr. Young gives a table showing the
average weekly wages paid in American cotton-mills in various States
in 1869 and 1874. We select Rhode Island, for the reason that the rate
of wages there appears to be a good average, being lower than is paid
in Massachusetts and higher than in New York.
_Wages in cotton-mills (weekly average)._
---------------------------------+-----------------
| RHODE ISLAND.
OCCUPATION. +--------+--------
| 1869. | 1874.
---------------------------------+--------+--------
Carding: | |
Overseer, | $17 00 | $17 00
Picker-tenders, | 7 80 | 7 72
Railway-tenders, | 3 50 |[B]4 47
Drawing-frame tenders, | 5 00 |[C]5 40
Speeder-tenders, | 6 12 |[C]7 48
Picker-boy, | 6 25 |[A]4 03
Grinders, | 9 08 | 9 10
Strippers, | 7 26 | 7 50
Spinning: | |
Overseer, | 15 60 | 17 69
Mule-spinners, | 9 50 | 10 16
Mule-backside piecers, | 2 85 |[A]2 52
Frame-spinners, | 5 00 |[B]3 70
Dressing: | |
Overseer, | 13 75 | 14 80
Second hand, | 9 00 | 11 83
Spoolers, | 5 00 |[C]4 32
Warpers, | 5 75 |[C]6 98
Drawers and twisters, | 5 00 |
Dressers, | 11 25 | 13 11
Weaving: | |
Overseer, | 18 33 | 18 00
Weavers, | 8 00 |[C]7 91
Drawing-in hands, | 7 50 |[C]7 25
Repair-shop, engine-room, etc.: | |
Foreman, | 18 00 | 15 79
Wood-workers, | 15 00 | 13 58
Iron-workers, | 13 16 | 13 68
Engineer, | 18 00 | 13 71
Laborers, | 9 33 | 8 59
Overseer in cloth-room, | 15 00 | 12 42
---------------------------------+--------+--------
[A] Boys.
[B] Females.
[C] Part females.
It will appear, therefore, from an examination of the tables that the
average weekly wages in Rhode Island cotton-mills (which fairly
represent those of the rest of the country) are in most cases from a
third to nearly double those paid in Manchester. But it will also be
observed that, whereas English wages appear to have increased steadily
in every grade, the American rates show a decided tendency downwards.
The highest skilled American labor holds its own with difficulty, but
in the lower grades cheaper labor has been extensively employed since
1869. Dr. Young’s explanation must also be borne in mind in reading
these tables—viz., that the labor is frequently piece-work. In some
instances the English operatives also employ their own helpers.
But do these figures really represent the present rate of wages?
Doubtless the average given is a fair one. But any one whose attention
was directed to the strike at the Lonsdale Mills, R. I., January,
1875, must have noticed that wages are in reality much lower than here
given. Into the merits of that controversy we do not enter—we wish
merely to arrive at the figures. The company would appear to have done
everything they could for the comfort and improvement of the condition
of their hands, and the reduction complained of probably could not be
avoided in the then depressed state of the market. The special
correspondent of the New York _Herald_ of that date gives the
statement of the superintendent, who said that the weavers before the
reduction were receiving fifty cents per cut (wide goods), and with
the reduction of 10 per cent. the price paid would be forty-five cents
per cut; or, in other words, they would earn about $1 a day. Taking
the statements of the operatives, it was claimed that many of the men
were making only ninety-six cents a day before the strike, and the
women sixty-five cents. Those figures, therefore, in the case of one
of the largest companies, represent labor as already reduced below
English rates. This strike also afforded an illustration of the
statement, made in the beginning of this article, of the instant ebb
and flow of labor, as well as capital, which now characterizes
industry in the United States. The operatives were about half English
and half Irish (the overseers alone being American), and the first
movement of those who had enough money to do so was to return to
England or Ireland.
Notwithstanding the readiness of operatives to strike the moment the
opportunity offers—a readiness perfectly well known and appreciated by
their employers—and notwithstanding also, it may be said, the
determination of employers to regulate wages by the laws of trade, it
is nevertheless one of the most noble and encouraging features of the
industrial pursuits of this age that the employers in many
instances—and those generally the chief—show that they intend that
their minds shall not be diverted from the purpose of improving the
condition of their workmen, both mentally and materially. It is well
that the mild voice of Christian charity should still be able to make
itself heard in the midst of this whir of iron machinery.
In the condition of no kind of labor does the United States compare
more favorably with England and the Continent of Europe than in
agriculture. Here the respective wages paid hardly admit of
comparison. But it is not to be lost sight of that, wretched as the
condition of the English agricultural laborer may appear to us, his
way of viewing things is not ours. The rough, arduous, irregular,
exposed labor of the Western backwoodsman, or even farmer, appears to
him more terrible than the dull, stated servitude, with its beer in
the present and its work-house in the future, that shock our free
thought. The report of the delegates of the Agricultural Union was
decidedly unfavorable in the case of Canada, where the conditions of
labor do not essentially vary from those of the Northwestern States.
This question of agricultural labor is, however, too vast a one to be
treated of here. Dr. Young’s reports are very valuable, but take,
perhaps, the American view of the question too much for granted.[30]
WAGES OF MECHANICS AND SKILLED ARTISANS IN GREAT BRITAIN.
This branch of his subject is copiously treated by Dr. Young in
connection with his tour through the chief manufacturing cities of the
United Kingdom in 1872. From the numerous tables presented we select
one under the head of “Skilled trades in London, weekly wages in 1871”
(page 242) as being the most comprehensive.
The average _daily_ wages of persons employed in the same trades in
the United States in 1874 was from $2 25 for shoemakers to $3 33 for
bricklayers or masons (pp. 745-747); or, in other words, from 50 per
cent. to 100 per cent. more than in England.
_Statement showing the established rates of wages obtained by members
of the various trades societies of the metropolis, in summer and
winter, compiled under the supervision of Alsager Hay Hill, LL.B._
----------------------+----------+--------------------
| NUMBER | RATE OF WAGES.
TRADES. | OF |----------+---------
| MEMBERS. | _Sum’r_ | _Winter_
----------------------+----------+----------+---------
Bakers, | -- | $3 87 | $5 08
Basket-makers, | -- | 3 63 | 4 84
Boat-builders, | -- | 8 47 | 7 26
Bookbinders, | 702 | 7 26 | 7 26
Brass-cock finishers, | -- | 8 47 | 8 47
Brass-finishers, | -- | 8 47 | 8 47
Bricklayers, | 2,386 | 16[D] | 16[D]
Brush-makers, | 400 | [E] | [E]
Cabinet-makers, | 500 | 7 26 | 7 26
Cabinet-makers, deal, | 450 | 7 99 | 7 99
Carpenters, | 4,740 | 9 14 | 9 14
Carvers and gilders, | 50 | 4 84 | 4 84
Coach-builders, | 25 | 9 68 | 9 68
Coach-makers, | 320 | 9 68 | 9 68
Coach-smiths, | 200 | 4 84 | 12 58
Coach-trimmers and | | |
makers, | -- | 6 05 | 6 05
Compositors, | 3,550 | 4 84 | 8 47
Cork-cutters, | 100 | 7 26 | 7 26
Cordwainers, | 3,678 | [F] | [F]
Curriers, | 1,900 | 8 47 | 8 47
Engineers, | 33,539 | {16[D] | 16[D]
| | {18[D] | 16[D]
Farriers, | 220 | 9 68 | 12 10
French polishers, | 30 | 7 26 | 7 26
Hammermen, | 80 | 5 81 | 5 81
Iron-founders and | | |
moulders, | 7,372 | 9 20 | 9 20
Letterpress printers, | -- | 7 26 | 7 26
Painters, house, | -- | 14[D] | 14[D]
Pianoforte makers, | 400 | 16[D] | 16[D]
Plasterers, | -- | 14[D] | 14[D]
Plumbers, | -- | 18[D] | 18[D]
Pressmen, printers, | 60 | 7 26 | 7 26
Skinners, | 225 | 7 26 | 7 26
Steam-engine makers, | 100 | {16[D] | 16[D]
| | {18[D] | 18[D]
Stone-masons, | 17,193 | 9 14 | 7 82
----------------------+----------+----------+---------
[D] Per hour.
[E] Piece-work.
[F] Uncertain.
PURCHASING POWER OF WAGES.
But we cannot stop at the mere figures in dollars and cents. In this
connection we must consider what those wages will buy in each
country—what is their purchasing power:
“If a workman in Birmingham” says Dr. Young, “receive for
fifty-four hours’ labor 30s., or about $8 33 in United
States currency, and another, of the same occupation, in
Philadelphia earn $12 50, it would be inaccurate to say that
the earnings of the latter were 50 per cent. more than those
of the former. The question is not what is the United States
equivalent of the thirty British shillings, but what is the
purchasing power of the wages of the one workman in England
and of the other in the United States? In other words, how
much food, clothing, and shelter will the earnings of the
one purchase as compared with the other?”
For the solution of this question Dr. Young enters into an
elaborate analysis of the price of provisions, clothing,
house-rent, etc., in each country. In this we are unable to
follow him. But taking the amount paid for board by single men
and women employed in mechanical labor in the great cities of
both countries, the average price paid by men in Great Britain
ranges from $2 50 to $3 50 per week; in the United States, from
$4 50 to $5 50. For women, in manufacturing cities in England,
from $1 50 to $2 50 per week; in the United States, from $2 50 to
$3 50. In the great American manufacturing centre, Philadelphia,
the average price of mechanics’ board is, for men, $5 per week;
for women, $3. But this does not mean a single room for each; in
most cases two, in some three, four, and even five, sleep in the
same chamber. British workmen probably eat as much meat as
American workmen, but they have not the same variety of dishes.
House-rent is cheaper in most English cities even than in
Philadelphia, where great and commendable efforts have always
been made to provide good and cheap houses for working-men.
Clothing Dr. Young estimates at less than half the price in
England for the laboring classes compared with the United States;
partly from cheaper rates, and partly from the inferior kind
British workmen consent to wear—fustian or corduroy being the
most common material.
We would wish to follow Dr. Young, if it were possible, into a
comparison of the rates of wages and cost of living in the great iron
and steel works on the Tyne, at Essen, Prussia, and in Philadelphia,
but our space is already exceeded. The highest wages earned at the
works of Fried. Krupp, Essen, which Dr. Young personally visited in
1872, were $1 80 for 11 hours’ piece-work. At the same establishment
dinner (meat and vegetables and coffee) and lodging are supplied to
unmarried men at $1 18 per week. Bread is an extra charge. Large
bakeries are attached to the works.
In the comparison of the general rates of wages and cost of living in
Great Britain and the United States, so many and so great diversities
exist in both countries that it is a hazardous matter to draw general
conclusions. Stated broadly, it would appear that the rate of wages in
Great Britain since 1865 has shown a steady tendency to advance, with
some fluctuations, while the cost of living is nearly stationary; in
the United States, within the same period of ten years, wages have
remained stationary or shown a tendency to decline, allowing for the
fluctuations caused by a depreciated currency, while the cost of
living has increased. The commercial depression existing since 1873
has affected labor in both countries, but more sensibly in the United
States. The great falling off in immigration since 1873 is a
remarkable and sensitive test of the depreciation of the labor market
in the United States and the simultaneous rise of wages in Europe.
From the recent report of the New York Emigration Commissioners it
appears that there were landed at Castle Garden during 1875 84,560
immigrants, against 140,041 for 1874 and 294,581 for 1873. The falling
off has been equally divided among all nationalities. Nor does this
tell the whole story; for the steamship companies show a very large
return of laborers to Europe during the past year. It is not intended
to convey the impression by these figures that European emigration has
finally stayed its course towards these shores, but it is evident that
it has received a serious temporary check. It is not the purpose of
this paper to investigate what the remedy for this state of things may
be. But it may be stated as the conviction of the writer that a mere
return to specie payments, though beneficial, will not do all for the
country that its advocates claim. Something more will be required—that
is, economy, curtailment of expenses, national and individual—before
we can reach bottom. Like youth sometimes, we have temporarily
outgrown our strength. We have no vast deposits of wealth, the
hoardings of centuries, to fall back upon like some European
countries. We have always lived right up to our income, and have not
yet adjusted ourselves to our sudden plunge into national debt. Hope
has all along buoyed us up to over-production and consequent
over-expenditure. The supply of labor must equalize itself to the
necessary, not speculative, work to be done before it can be
established on a sound basis. Fresh enterprises, promoting renewed
inflation and over-production, will lead to another collapse. In the
effort to recuperate, and before a new start can be made on a safe
road of prosperity (which it is not doubted will be opened again),
those who are already poor will suffer the most, as always has been
and will be the case. The American working classes will have
eventually to abandon most of those habits of personal expense which
now seem to them a matter of course, but which European working-men
would regard as extravagant, and to approach nearer to the old-country
standard of living.
We are not able to follow Dr. Young in his researches into the rate of
wages and cost of subsistence in the various countries of continental
Europe which he visited. None of them approach so near the American
standard as Great Britain. In most of them labor is poorly paid and
the working classes live meanly according to our notions, yet
contrive, withal, to enjoy a degree of comfort, and even happiness,
which to us seems hard to understand under the circumstances.
[27] _Labor in Europe and America: A Special Report on the Rates
of Wages, the Cost of Subsistence, and the Condition of the
Working Classes in Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany,
the other Countries of Europe, and in the United States and
British America._ By Edward Young, Ph.D., Chief of the
United States Bureau of Statistics. 1875.
[28] Hallam’s _Middle Ages_, ch. ix. part i.
[29] _Id._ ch. ix. part ii.
[30] $1 a day for laborers was offered by public advertisement in
February of this year, by the superintendent of the
Centennial grounds, and men were glad to take it. How
strange the spectacle in free America—how fruitless and
disheartening the struggle it portends—when legislation is
invoked at Albany, in the great State of New York, to keep
up a fictitious price of labor!
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._ FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
VI.
There was a castle in Yorkshire whose tall, majestic towers commanded
a view of the country for miles around, rising far above the sombre
depths of the ancient forest-trees that covered the hills on which the
castle was seated.
A silence like the grave reigned within and around this princely
habitation. Merry young pages no longer bounded over balustrades and
the walks winding from the drawbridge. The Gothic arches no more
re-echoed with the noisy clamor of the hounds nor the loud cheering of
the young hunters. Rank weeds covered the lofty ramparts and clusters
of wild flowers swung between their solitary battlements, as though
nature had struggled to conceal the eternal mourning which they seemed
for ever condemned to wear.
A traveller approached the castle and examined with great attention
the arches bearing the arms of the earls of Northumberland. He held by
the bridle a beautiful horse, covered with sweat and dust, whose
drooping head and trembling limbs attested his extreme fatigue.
“This is certainly the place!” he exclaimed, still looking around him.
“I recognize the crouching lion of Northumberland!” He knocked loudly
and waited a long time.
At length the door opened and an old man appeared before him. “What do
you want?” he demanded brusquely of the traveller. “If you ask
hospitality, you will not be refused; but if you ask to see my master,
the Earl of Northumberland, you cannot see him.”
“It is he whom I wish to see,” replied the stranger.
The old domestic contracted his white eyebrows. “That cannot be. Since
the death of his father he sees nobody.”
“The old Count of Northumberland dead!” replied Sir Walsh (for it was
he).
“Alas! yes, for an entire year. We buried him at Alnwick,” answered
the old servant, wiping away a tear.
“Go to your master,” replied Sir Walsh,” and tell him that some one
asks to see him on the part of the king. I will wait for you here.”
“On the part of the king!” replied the old servant. “On the part of
the king! That will make a difference, I think, and I do not want you
to stay here. Follow me.”
After fastening the horse to one of the iron rings which were fixed in
the wall of the inner court, he led Sir Walsh into the castle. They
crossed long courts, then entered magnificent galleries, where they
saw arranged, between the Gothic arches which separated the vast and
deeply-embrasured windows, the richest armorial trophies of all ages.
Lances, longbows, and javelins filled up the interstices. Shields and
bucklers, borne in battle by the ancestors of the noble earl, were
eating away with rust, and the festoons of spider-webs which hung from
the huge antlers of stag and deer bore witness to the neglect and
indifference of the master of the castle.
Sir Walsh, as he passed along, regarded all these things with an
admiration mingled with astonishment. He could not understand the
state of abandonment in which he found a habitation that he had always
heard described as being one of the most magnificent in all England.
The delicately-sculptured wainscoting, the costly paintings, the rich
gilding of the rafters and ceilings, were renowned among artists and
considered as models which they labored to imitate.
“How singular all this is!” he said to himself. “How can Lord Percy,
whom I have known at court, so brilliant and accomplished, content
himself in a place like this, magnificent without doubt, but
abandoned, desolate, especially since the death of his father? And why
has he not returned to court, where his tastes and habits naturally
call him?”
While absorbed in these reflections Sir Walsh, preceded by his aged
conductor, entered a large octagonal saloon, gilded all over and
pierced with crosslets on every side, through which poured floods of
brilliantly-colored light, reflected from the stained glass with which
they were ornamented.
The view extended very far, and a large river, like a broad belt of
silver, wound through the beautiful fields, interspersed with clumps
of trees that increased still more the beauty of the landscape.
Walsh paused, enraptured with the prospect that met his gaze, and his
conductor made a sign to him to remain there until he had informed his
master of his arrival.
The old domestic noiselessly entered Lord Percy’s chamber, and paused
near the door in order to observe him; then an expression of profound
sadness stole over his features and he advanced still more slowly.
Seated in the embrasure of a large window, and always dressed in the
deepest mourning, Lord Percy scarcely ever left his room. Surrounded
by a great number of books and papers, he appeared to be absorbed in
reading, and the messenger was quite near before he was aware of his
presence.
“My lord!” he said in a very low and gentle voice, “there is a
stranger here who wishes to speak to you.”
“You know very well that I receive nobody, Henry,” said the Earl of
Northumberland without turning his head. “Have you asked him his
business?”
“Most assuredly,” replied Henry with a lofty and important air. “I
know it, too. He comes here on the part of the king—of the king
himself,” he repeated.
“On the part of the king!” cried Northumberland, turning pale. “Of the
king! What does _he_ want with me? Have I not done enough for him? Is
he not satisfied with having destroyed all my hopes, all my happiness,
all my future? Of what consequence to him now is my existence?”
And, overwhelmed with the weight of his afflictions, he folded his
arms on his breast and forgot to give his servant an answer.
“My dear son,” murmured the old man softly, after a moment of silent
attention, “are you going now to torment yourself again, and may be,
after all, without any cause?” For he dreaded beyond expression
anything that might arouse or excite what he termed his master’s
“manias.”
“No, my old foster-father, do not be alarmed!” replied Northumberland,
who knew very well what was passing in his mind. “Go, and bring in
this stranger.”
He then arose, in a state of agitation he was unable to control.
Henry soon returned, bringing Sir Walsh.
On entering, the latter was prepared to give Northumberland a joyful
surprise and fold him in his arms; but on being suddenly ushered into
his presence he recoiled in astonishment. Could this be the gay and
brilliant young man he had known, always cheerful, always affable,
whose handsome face and charming manner attracted all around him?
Dressed in the deepest mourning, which by contrast increased the
pallor of his face, his expression anxious and haggard, a painful
constraint was observable in all his movements.
“You do not recognize me, Lord Percy,” said Sir Walsh at last. “There
was a time when you called me your friend, and I was proud to bear the
title!”
“Oh! no, my dear Walsh,” replied Northumberland, “I could not have
forgotten you. Rather say you no longer recognize me; for time has
passed like a dream. Since you saw me last I have been transformed
into another person. But tell me, why does the name of him who sends
you come to invade my solitude? What have I done to him to bring him
here again to disturb my ashes? For am I not already dead? Does this
castle not strike you as being strangely like a tomb, to which no one
any more finds entrance?”
“But I think,” said Sir Walsh, astonished at this outburst and forcing
a smile, “that some young girl, descended from her palace of clouds to
the midst of your abode, draws around her crowds of your astonished
vassals. They admire her snowy robes and crown of stars.”
“No,” replied Northumberland gloomily; “no, never! No female inhabits
this place. She who ought to have ruled here will never come, and she
who did rule would not remain!”
“What do you mean by that riddle?” inquired Walsh. “What! is the
Countess of Northumberland no longer here?”
“No, she is no longer here,” replied Lord Percy. And he passed his
hand over his eyes, unable to conceal the emotion all these questions
excited; for, in spite of himself, the sight of an old friend had
agitated him to the depths of his soul. Man was not made for solitude;
he is a social being; he has need of his fellow-men to love them, or
even to complain of and to them; and for many long, weary months no
human being had knocked at his door or come to offer a word of
consolation.
Walsh regarded him with increasing solicitude; at length, unable to
restrain his feelings, he threw his arms around his neck.
“My dear Percy,” he exclaimed, “what has happened to you? You seem
overwhelmed with sorrow. I felt so happy in anticipation of surprising
you by this visit, and again seeing you at the head of all the young
nobles of the north, loved as you were among us, the life of the chase
and of all those sports in which you excelled! Alas! my friend, what
misfortune has befallen you? Tell me; for I swear I will never more
leave you.”
“What misfortune has befallen me, do you ask, my dear old friend?”
replied Northumberland, deeply moved. “Yes, you are ignorant of all.
And what does it matter? It was irreparable. But tell me the cause
that brought you to me. Why has the king sent you hither?”
“For nothing that need give you the least uneasiness,” replied
Walsh—“a commission readily executed, and in which you must assist me.
We will return to this later. Tell me first of yourself—of yourself
alone, my friend—and of your father.”
“My father? He died in my arms more than a year ago without suffering.
I have done what he wished,” continued Northumberland, his eyes
filling with tears. “I have nothing with which to reproach myself on
that account. I have obeyed him. Yes,” he added, fixing his eyes on
the floor, “that is the only thought that ever comes to console me.”
“I do not understand you!” replied Walsh. “Speak more explicitly;
explain what you mean.”
“Well, know, then,” replied Northumberland in an altered voice, and
making a violent effort to control himself—“know that for a long time
I loved Anne Boleyn—yes, Anne Boleyn! We were betrothed. The day, the
hour, for our marriage were fixed, when the king tore her from me for
ever! In his jealous hatred he commanded Cardinal Wolsey, to whose
household I belonged, to summon me before him, and forbid me in his
name dreaming, for an instant, of marrying her; but on my refusing to
obey he appealed to my father, who ordered me to marry immediately a
daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, under penalty of visiting upon me
all the weight of his indignation if I hesitated for one moment. In
vain I tried to resist; my father was furious and threatened me with
his curse. I at length submitted, and you have all assisted at the
festivities of my marriage, and, seeing my new bride, have pierced my
heart with your congratulations and assurances of my future happiness.
I then left the court. I brought her here; and that young wife, justly
wounded by my melancholy, absurd and ridiculous in her eyes, wearied
of the retired life I compelled her to lead, left me very soon after
my father’s death and returned to her family. And—shall I acknowledge
it?—sensible of the wrong I have done her, I am quite reconciled to
being forgotten and finding myself abandoned and alone. I have
dismissed successively all my pages and valets, retaining only the
oldest servants belonging to my house. Henry, my old foster-father,
takes entire charge and control of everything. Misfortune and sorrow
have made me prematurely old; I need the companionship of the aged,
and not of youth. I love to hear around me the slow and faltering step
of a man ready to sink into the grave; he seems to hasten the hour for
me. His soul, cold and subdued, soothes and refreshes mine. He never
laughs; never comes to tell me of a thousand chimerical projects, a
thousand vain hopes, recalling those in which I have indulged in days
past. His presence alone would be sufficient to expel them! And yet,
notwithstanding all this, the sorrow that slumbers in my soul is often
suddenly aroused, more wild and insupportable than ever. Wearied by
long vigils and sleepless nights, I sometimes imagine I see Queen
Catherine enter my chamber; the reflection of her gold-embroidered
robes sheds a dazzling light around her. Her ladies follow. I hear the
rustling of their heavy trains; I hear them laugh and converse
together about the tournament of the day before. Then all becomes
dark! Anne Boleyn turns her eyes away from me; she is envious of the
queen; pride, ambition, stifle in her heart every sentiment of
affection. Then my agony is renewed. I weep, I sigh, and the shadows
vanish into nothingness.
“What happiness can any one expect to find in the honors of a usurped
rank? Ah! my friend, I have seen, and felt, and suffered everything.
Our faults are the sole cause of all our afflictions. Therefore, far
from feeling incensed at the injustice of men, I no more recognize an
enemy among them. My heart goes out with deepest pity toward the
suffering ones of earth, and I would gladly be able to console them
all.”
Saying this, Northumberland paused, overcome by emotion.
“Ah!” at length replied Walsh, who had listened with rapt attention,
“how limited are our judgments! Had I been asked the name of the
happiest mortal living, I should have given yours without a moment’s
hesitation.”
“I know it, and have been told it a hundred times,” replied
Northumberland earnestly. “Many men have had their marriage relations
dissolved, their fortunes changed, and have still borne up
courageously under their misfortunes; but with me it cannot be thus.
If Anne Boleyn had married another lord of the court—well, I might
have been reconciled. I should at least have been spared the outrage
of her dishonor; for her dishonor is mine! I had so taken her heart
into my own, united my life so entirely with hers, in order not to
suffer the slightest stain to touch it, that there is no torture equal
to that which I now endure. Every moment I feel, I suffer; I hear the
whisperings of this infamous and widespread report which her foolish
vanity alone prevents her from discovering around her.”
“Dear Percy,” replied Walsh, “you cannot imagine how much you
exaggerate all this! The solitude in which you live has excited you to
such a degree that you almost imagine she bears the name of Countess
of Northumberland.”
“Yes!” he exclaimed excitedly, “she bears it in my heart; and there,
at least, no one can dispute her right!”
“And poor Lady Shrewsbury?” replied Walsh.
“Lady Shrewsbury,” cried Northumberland, “is the victim, like myself,
of compulsion! Never have I regarded her as my wife. If the king had
demanded my head, I should not have been bound to obey; but a father’s
curse is a weight that cannot be supported! My obstinacy would have
brought upon his tottering old age the bitterness of poverty and want.
No, no; that is my only excuse, and Lady Shrewsbury herself would have
forgiven me had she known my sorrow.”
“My dear Percy,” interrupted Walsh anxiously, “I am deeply grieved to
find you in this condition; your heart misleads you, and I perceive
the commission with which I am charged will be anything but agreeable.
However, what can I do? Here,” he added, unfolding a letter and a roll
of written parchment, from which hung the king’s seals, “take and
read.” He preferred giving him the order to read rather than have the
unpleasant task of verbally announcing what he now foresaw would cause
him such extreme grief. Northumberland had no sooner glanced over it
than the parchment fell from his hands.
“Who? I?” he cried. “I go to arrest the archbishop at the very moment
when all the nobility of these parts are assembled to assist at the
ceremony of his installation! I, formerly of his household, who have
spent all the happiest years of my youth with him—charge _me_ with
such a commission? The king wishes, then, to have me regarded with
horror and detestation by all the inhabitants of this country! Know,
my friend,” continued Percy, fixing his flashing eyes upon Walsh,
“that since Wolsey came here he has made himself universally loved and
cherished. He is no longer the vain, imperious man whom you knew;
adversity has entirely changed him. He occupies himself only in doing
good, reconciling family differences, and relieving the distressed.
And this gorgeous entry, which causes the king so much uneasiness, he
was to have made on foot with the utmost possible simplicity.
“For a long time Wolsey hesitated, entirely for fear of seeing his
enemies array themselves against him; but his clergy seemed so wounded
at conduct contrary to the usage of all his predecessors that he at
length consented. But see how they deceive the king, and endeavor to
excite him against those who least of all merit his displeasure!”
“What shall I say to you, my dear Northumberland?” replied Walsh.
“When the king issues an order, how can its execution be avoided? All
that you say is true beyond doubt, but neither you nor I can do
anything; it only remains for us to try and accomplish this
disagreeable commission with as little noise as possible.”
“Ah!” replied Northumberland, “why has he imposed such a commission on
me? See if even the slightest pleasure of my life is not instantly
extinguished. I was rejoicing at seeing you, and immediately I am made
to pay for it.”
He continued for a long time talking in this manner, when, Walsh
having expressed a desire to go through the castle, Northumberland
consented. They found everything in a state of extreme disorder. In
many places no care was taken even to open the house to admit the
light of day. As old Henry successively opened to them each new hall
of the immense castle, the dust, collected in heaps like piles of
down, arose and flew away to collect again further on in the apartment
upon some more valuable piece of furniture.
Walsh could not avoid expressing to the earl his surprise at seeing
him so neglect the magnificent abode of his ancestors. “It is wrong,”
replied Percy, “but I prize nothing any more. Of what consequence is
it to me whether the roof that shelters me is handsome or plain? When
our hearts are crushed by sorrow, we become oblivious to all outward
surroundings.”
* * * * *
When night came on, his host retired and left him to that repose of
which, after the fatigue of his journey, he stood so much in need.
Northumberland ordered old Henry to retire and leave him alone as
usual; but Henry had decided otherwise, and continued for a long time
to come and go and pass the chamber slowly under various pretexts, as
his solicitude on account of his master was more and more increased on
remarking that his habitual sadness had been redoubled since the
advent of his visitor.
“Accursed stranger!” he said to himself, “bird of ill-omen, what has
brought him here? That famished maw of his would have been very well
able to carry him far from the moats of our castle! It is the king who
sends him here; but is not our son king of these parts?” And thus
muttering to himself, old Henry walked on. Not being able to determine
on leaving his master, he stopped and peered through the door in order
to observe Lord Percy. The latter sat leaning on the table before him,
his eyes closed, his head resting on his hands, and seemingly
oblivious to everything around him.
“There he sits still, to take a cold with this trouble!” continued
Henry. “However, I must go and leave him.” And the old domestic, still
turning his palsied head to look back, passed slowly under the heavy
tapestry screen, that fell rustling behind him.
“He is gone,” said Northumberland to himself—“gone, perhaps, for ever;
for who knows how long Henry has yet to live? What happiness to think
we must die! When weary with suffering, the soul reposes with a bitter
joy upon the brink of that tomb which alone can deliver her from her
woes! How the certainty of seeing them end sweetens the sorrows we
endure! Here where I stand” (he arose to his feet), “beside this
hearth, each one of my sires has taken his place, and each has
successively passed away. Their armor hangs here empty; their names
alone remain inscribed upon them. Why have not I the courage, then, to
endure this time of trial they call ‘life,’ which I have wished to
consider the end, but which is only a road leading to the end—a road
perilous, rough, and wearing? The shortest is the one I consider the
best; and he who travels over it most rapidly, has he not found true
happiness?
“Have you not sometimes seen, in the midst of a violent storm, a poor
bird wildly struggling with winds and waves? You behold it for a
moment in the whirlpool, and suddenly it disappears. Just so I have
passed through the midst of the world; I had hoped to shine there,
because I was dazzled with it. To-day it becomes necessary to forget
it. O my soul! I wish thee, I command thee, to forget.”
At this moment a slight noise was heard. Northumberland started.
“What do you want, Henry?” he asked, seeing the old man standing like
a shadow at the end of the apartment.
“Nothing!” he replied impatiently.
“But truly,” said Lord Percy, “why have you returned?”
“To see if you were asleep,” brusquely answered the old servant,
approaching him. “It was scarcely worth the trouble,” he continued,
elevating his voice, “of harboring so carefully this new-comer, if he
must pay his reckoning in this way.”
“Ah!” replied Northumberland, regarding his old foster-father with a
suppliant expression.” Tell me, Henry, have you never known what it
was to grieve for one whom you loved?”
“Ay, in sooth,” replied Henry, “unfortunately I have known it; but we
are not able to live, like you, in idleness, and have hardly time to
be unhappy. When I lost my poor Alice, your foster-mother, what
anguish did I not feel in the depths of my soul! Well, if I had
stopped to think of her, I should have heard immediately my name
resounding through all the turrets of the castle: ‘Henry! my lord—my
lord goes hunting; hurry! make haste! my lord gives a ball this
evening to all the ladies of the country.’ And away I had to go, to
come, to run; otherwise my lord your father would fly into a passion.
How would you find time to weep if somebody was always calling after
you? Besides, I—poor Henry—if they had seen me sitting, like you, all
the day in silence, with tears in my eyes and my arms folded, they
would have laughed at me, and the pages would have called me a fool.”
“That is true; you are right,” replied Northumberland in an abstracted
manner. “You say, then they gave balls here?”
“And superb ones, too!” replied Henry, who liked, above all things, to
talk about the old times. “In those days you were not here; they
educated you with Monseigneur the Cardinal, our good archbishop at
present.”
On hearing these words Northumberland became violently agitated, and
his old servant, perceiving his countenance change and his features
contract, stopped suddenly in great alarm.
“You are ill, my lord?” he exclaimed.
“No, no,” replied Northumberland; “be calm. Leave me, Henry; I want to
be alone. Go to your bed—I command you.”
Henry, forced to leave his master, as he went reproached himself for
having spoken of the _fêtes_ the Countess of Northumberland had given
in the castle; he imagined it was the recollection of his mother that
had so affected Lord Percy.
“The archbishop! the archbishop!” repeated Northumberland. “Oh! let me
banish the name, in mercy—for a few hours, at least! He said, I
believe, that they gave balls here! What did he say? Yes, that must be
it: my mother loved them. Yes,” he continued, looking round at the
large and magnificent panels of his chamber, “here they hung garlands
and baskets of flowers; a thousand lamps reflected their brilliant
colors; delicious music floated on the perfumed air; crowds of people
of every age, sex, and rank eagerly gathered here. Time has very soon
reduced them to an equality; the sound of their footsteps is heard no
more; their voices are mute; they have all passed away. I alone still
exist.”
The entire night was spent in these reflections, and when day began to
dawn the heavy tramp of horses was heard in the courtyard, and soon,
in the cold fog of morning, there issued from the castle gate a troop
of armed men wearing long cloth cloaks and caps. It was the earl’s
retainers, whom he had assembled during the night from all the
surrounding country. He rode in the midst of them in profound silence;
even Sir Walsh, reading in his countenance the melancholy dejection
under which he labored, had simply pressed his hand without daring to
address him a word.
As to the followers of Northumberland, they were astonished at this
sudden departure; they were completely ignorant of whither their
master was carrying them, having learned nothing from old Henry
himself, to whom Lord Percy had deemed it inexpedient to reveal the
destination, and still less the object, of this expedition. The old
man felt singularly anxious on the subject, as he was every day
becoming more and more accustomed to regard himself as the guardian
and adviser of him whom he called his son. Therefore, after having
closed the gate of the castle upon the travellers, he went sadly and
took his station on the highest tower, to see in what direction his
master was going.
A few moments only he followed them with his eyes; for, the valley
once crossed, their route conducted them into the depths of the
forest, and the cavalcade was soon lost to view.
TO BE CONTINUED.
VAGO ANGELLETTO CHE CANTANAS VAI.
FROM PETRARCH.
Sweet bird, that, singing under altered skies,
Art mourning for thy season of delight—
For lo! the cheerful months forsake thee quite,
And all thy sunshine into shadow dies—
O thou who art acquainted with unrest!
Could thy poor wit my kindred mood divine,
How wouldst thou fold thy wings upon my breast,
And blend thy melancholy plaint with mine!
I know not if with thine my songs would rhyme,
For haply she thou mournest is not dead:
Less kind are death and heaven unto me;
But the chill twilight, and the sullen time,
And thinking of the sweet years and the sad,
Move me, wild warbler, to discourse with thee.
ITALIAN COMMERCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
“Your mind is tossing on the ocean;
There, where your argosies with portly sail,
Like signiors and rich burghers of the flood,
Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,
Do overpeer the petty traffickers,
That curt’sy to them, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings.”
—_Merchant of Venice_, act i. sc. i.
Thucydides, in the introduction to his history, remarks that one of
the principal causes that raised some of the Greek cities to such a
high degree of prosperity and power was their engagement in mercantile
pursuits. All the great peoples of antiquity by whom the shores of the
Mediterranean were occupied—Phœnicians, Carthaginians, Etruscans,
Ionians of Asia Minor—rose to wealth and importance by the same means.
The Romans alone despised it.
After the subversion of the Western Empire and the last inroads of the
barbarians, the natives of Italy were the first to emerge from the
ruins of the ancient world. Except religion, they found no worthier or
more potent element of civilization than commerce, which procures, to
use the words of a celebrated writer, what is of far greater value
than mere money—“the reciprocation of the peculiar advantages of
different countries”; and throughout the middle ages, until the
passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope and the discovery of
America, Italy was the most forward nation in Christendom for wealth,
refinement of manners, and intellectual culture.
Italian commerce reached its greatest development between the
thirteenth and fifteenth centuries—that is, between the ages when
Marco Polo travelled to Tartary, China, and the Indies and Christopher
Columbus discovered America. In these two men, representatives of
Venice and Genoa, are embodied the geniuses of trade and navigation;
and as though Florence, seated between the rival cities and engaged
rather in reaping the fruits than in sowing the seeds of enterprise,
were destined to unite in herself the glory of both Italian shores,
one of her citizens—Americus Vespucius—gives his name to the New
World. This commerce began slowly but progressed rapidly, and attained
its noblest proportions during the fourteenth century, when for a
hundred years it spread over every sea and land then known in the
eager search after riches, bringing back to its votaries whatever
luxury Europe, Asia, and Africa produced or man’s invention had
evolved out of the necessities of his nature. Next, it gradually fell
away and almost disappeared in the sixteenth century, leaving behind
it only the cold consolation that there was no reason why it alone
should be excepted from the common doom of human affairs, which, when
they have enjoyed a certain measure of success, must surely decline
and fall.
When the Goths, Longobards, and Carlovingians had conquered Italy,
although most of the arts and sciences were lost or hidden in
cloisters, neither trade nor commerce was quite neglected; but,
despite the dangers from pirates, the ignorance of the sea, and the
exactions of the lawless on land, the Adriatic and Mediterranean were
timidly attempted by the inhabitants of the coast, while in the
interior of the country an interchange of commodities was carried on
between neighboring districts at places set apart for the purpose.
These places were generally the large square or principal street of a
town, or under the walls of a monastery, and the interchange took
place on certain days appointed by public authority.
The assemblies of the people were usually held on the Saturday, and
were at first called markets; but afterwards the rarer and more
important ones, which were held annually and for several consecutive
days, were termed fairs, from the Latin word _feria_, because they
always took place on the feast of some saint. Many rights and
privileges were granted at an early period to the merchants who
exhibited wares at these yearly gatherings; for without such
inducements few cared to undertake a journey with a part, or perhaps
the whole, of their earthly substance about them, along roads and
across ferries beset by robber-nobles, who levied toll from passers-by
and sometimes seized goods and persons for their own use.
The Venetians began earlier to sail on distant seas, and maintained
themselves longer on the water, than did the natives of any other
parts of Italy. Cassiodorus represents them in the sixth century as
occupied solely in salt-works, from which they derived their only
profit; but in course of time they issued from their lagoons to become
the most industrious and venturesome traffickers in the world. At the
beginning of the ninth century they had already introduced into Italy
some of the delicacies of the East, but drew odium on themselves for
conniving with pirates and men-stealers to capture people and sell
them into slavery in distant quarters of Europe and Asia. On the
opposite shore of Italy the inhabitants of Amalfi showed themselves
the most successful navigators during the early middle ages, trading
with Sicily and Tarentum, and even with Egypt, Syria, and
Constantinople. Their city is described by the poet-historian William
of Apulia, in the eleventh century, as the great mart for Eastern
goods, and the enterprise of its sailors as extending to all the ports
of the Mediterranean. Flavio Gioja, a citizen of Amalfi, if he did not
invent the mariner’s compass, as is somewhere asserted, certainly
improved it about the year 1302, either by its mode of suspension or
by the attachment of the card to the needle itself. This discovery
gave such an impulse to navigation that what had been for ages hardly
more than a skilful art became at once a science, and vessels no
longer crept along the shore or slipped from island to island, but
attempted “the vasty deep” and crossed over the ocean to the New
World.
Another rich emporium at an early period, on the same side of Italy,
was Pisa. The city was four or five miles from the sea, but had a port
formed by a natural bay to the southward of the old mouth of the Arno
at a place called Calambrone. The Pisans at first traded principally
with Sicily and Africa. They fitted out expeditions against the
Saracens,[31] seized several islands in the Mediterranean, and with
both land-troops and seamen took an important part in the first
Crusade, being careful, before returning from the East, to establish
factories at Antioch and Constantinople. They also sent fleets to
humble the Mohammedan cities of Northern Africa. Through commercial
jealousy and political reasons they became involved in bitter wars
with the Genoese for the possession of Corsica, and with the
Amalfitans, who had sided against the emperor. The Pisans, as
auxiliaries of the Emperor Lothaire, sent a strong squadron to Amalfi,
which was held by the Normans, and, after a rigorous blockade, took it
by storm in 1137. It was on this occasion that a copy of the long-lost
Pandects of Justinian was found, which is said to be the original from
which all subsequent copies in Italy were made, thus reviving the
study of Roman law. It was taken from its captors by the Florentines
in 1411, and is now preserved in the Laurentian Library at Florence.
The monk Donizo, in his metrical life of the Countess Matilda, being
annoyed that the mother of the countess should have been buried in
Pisa, describes the city somewhat contemptuously as a flourishing
emporium whose port was filled with large ships and frequented by many
different races of people, even by swarthy Moors.
To the north of Pisa rose her haughty rival, Genoa, surnamed the
Superb from her pride and magnificent natural position. After four
sanguinary wars with the Pisans, the Genoese swept their fleets from
the sea, destroyed their port, and ruined their foreign commerce. The
city never recovered from that blow, and the population, which once
exceeded 100,000, has fallen to a fifth of that number.
The Genoese had at first been the allies of the Pisans, and united
with them to drive the Saracens out of several important islands. They
also ravaged the coast of Northern Africa in the eleventh century,
and, taking part in the first Crusade, obtained settlements on the
shore of Palestine, particularly at Acre. Owing to their secure
position at home and their foothold in the East and the islands of the
West, their city became one of the two great maritime powers of Italy
and the only noteworthy rival of Venice. The power of the Genoese and
Venetians was immensely increased by the Crusades, and at one time so
feared were they in the Levant that they were able to draw pensions
and exact tribute from the pusillanimous emperor at Constantinople.
The Venetians were especially favored by Alexius Comnenus, through
whom they acquired convenient establishments along the Bosphorus and
at Durazzo in Albania. Their doge was honored with the pompous title
of _Protosebaste_. In the meanwhile intestine disturbances and wars
with neighboring republics had reduced several of those cities which
had lately been most flourishing, and none could compete successfully
in the fourteenth century with Venice and Genoa, to which the foreign
trade of Italy was left, and to whose marts the produce of the Levant
and the countries bordering on the lower Mediterranean was brought,
and either there or at the great cities of the interior exchanged for
domestic manufactures and the industries of Central and Northern
Europe. The carrying trade was almost exclusively their own, but the
home or inland business was shared by many other cities—principally by
Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Lucca, and Milan. At that period the
Atlantic ocean and northern coasts of Europe were but rarely navigated
by Italian merchants. The Venetians alone despatched annually a large
fleet, which—taking its name, the Flanders fleet, from its
destination—carried on an enterprising and lucrative traffic with the
Low Countries, and, in connection with the Hanseatic League or
directly, spread over England, Scotland, and the nations lying on the
North Sea and the Baltic, the spices, gums, silks, pearls, diamonds,
and numerous other articles of oriental origin which they had procured
from the Levant and further Indies. The Genoese furnished the same
things to the French, Spaniards, and Moors of Andalusia; but Portugal
was served by their rivals.
A maritime power had risen before this time which disputed with the
Genoese and Venetians the ascendency on the Mediterranean. This was
Barcelona, whose sailors were among the best on the sea, and whose
merchants were largely engaged in commerce. Many bold encounters took
place between the Catalans and Italians, through jealousies of trade,
but the former finally succumbed.
The products of the more distant East reached Italy in Genoese and
Venetian ships, through Armenian merchants at Trebizond, and through
Arabs by way of Alexandria and Damascus. Those of the north, so
necessary for a seafaring people, were brought from the mouth of the
Don, the merchandise being floated down that great river in boats from
the interior. The Mongols were the masters of all the region
thereabouts; but the insinuating Italians, aware of the interest of
this branch of commerce, played upon their barbarous pride with so
much dexterity that they succeeded in making treaties with them by
which they were allowed to occupy certain trading posts where the
goods ordered might accumulate and their own wares be exchanged for
the productions of Russia, Tartary, and Persia. The wily Genoese had
bought from a Tartar prince, at the beginning of the fourteenth
century, a small piece of land on the south-eastern shore of the
Crimea on which to build a factory. Only a few rude cabins were raised
at first, for stores and the dwellings of their agents; but the
traffic soon brought together a large population, sumptuous palaces
were erected, a strong and lofty wall was built around, and Kaffa[32]
became one of the most opulent colonies of the republic, with a
population at one time of 80,000.
The rival Venetians had _their_ great deposit at the city of Azov, on
the banks of the Don, twenty miles from its mouth. They were not the
proprietors, and, although they received numerous favors from the
Tartar governor, they were obliged to share them with the Genoese,
Florentines, and others, who also did a flourishing business. The
amount of goods collected there was so immense and the value so
considerable, that when, as sometimes happened, a destructive fire
broke out or the place was plundered, the loss was felt as a shock to
commerce throughout the whole of Europe.
All along the coast of the Black Sea the Italians plied a profitable
trade, and many merchants were settled at Trebizond, from which
vantage-ground they had an important communication open with Armenia,
whose people, being united by religion to the Latins, granted them
very valuable commercial privileges. The Venetians were favored above
the rest. They had churches, magazines, and inns, coined money, and in
all matters in dispute were tried by judges chosen among their
countrymen, or rather their own fellow-citizens. They could introduce
their goods without paying duty, freely traverse the kingdom, and
monopolize the exportation of camel’s hair, which was an important
article of traffic. The Genoese were no less enterprising than their
rivals, and restored in the port of Trebizond a mole that had been
built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Large quantities of India goods,
and especially spiceries, were stored by Italian merchants in the
warehouses of Trebizond, Damascus, and Alexandria. There were several
overland routes by which this merchandise was transported, but none of
them was safe, on account of the frequent revolutions in the countries
through which they ran. Some of the caravans that brought the
commodities of India and China passed through Balkh, the _Baetria_ of
the ancients and at one time the commercial centre of eastern Asia,
then up to Bokhara, whence they descended the Oxus for a distance,
touched at Khiva, and, traversing the Caspian Sea, ascended the river
Kour (the _Cyrus_ of Strabo, xi. p. 509) for seventy miles to its
junction with the Aras (the _Araxes_ of Herodotus, iv. 40), from which
they crossed by a journey of four or five days into the historical
Phasis at Sharapan and down to the Euxine. Another beaten track
entered Syria by the Tigris and the Euphrates, and diverged towards
the several ports of Palestine and Asia Minor. It passed through
Bagdad, which was a great commercial emporium during the middle ages
and an entrepôt for the commodities of eastern and western Asia. A
memorial of those days when Frank merchants, mingling with Persians,
Arabs, Turks, Hindoos, Koords, and Armenians, ransacked her splendid
bazaars, remains in our language in the word _Baldachin_, because
canopies made of costly stuff interwoven with gold thread were
manufactured in this city, which was known to the Italians as
Baldacca, and in the adjective form Baldacchino. Much trade was also
done by way of the Red Sea, Cairo, and Alexandria.
In all the ports of the Euxine and Mediterranean the Italians had
shops and warehouses, and every rich company kept a number of factors,
who despatched goods as they got orders and maintained the interests
of their principals. An officer called a consul, who was appointed by
the government at home, resided in each of these foreign sea-ports, to
defend the rights of his countrymen, and decide differences among
themselves, or between them and strangers. Consuls were recognized as
official personages by the sovereign in whose territory they resided,
and were honored as public magistrates by their own people, from whom
they received certain fees for their support, according to the quality
and amount of business they were called upon to perform.
The maritime republics of Italy were very fortunate in having
transported the Crusaders to the Holy Land in their ships, for by this
they acquired many rich establishments in the Levant, and it was not
long before the dissolute and degraded Greeks, who would neither take
counsel in peace nor could defend themselves in war, became subject to
the imperious will of the Italians.
The Venetians obtained in 1204 the fertile island of Candia, which
became the centre of their extensive Egyptian and Asiatic trade. They
also had a quarter in Constantinople, which they surrounded by a wall,
the gates of which were guarded by their own soldiers, and a distinct
anchorage for their own vessels in the Golden Horn. A senate and
bailiff representing the doge held authority in this settlement, and
exercised jurisdiction over the minor establishments of the republic
in Roumelia.
The Genoese were still more powerful at the capital, and the Emperor
Michael Palæologus, who was indebted to them for his return to the
throne, had given them the beautiful suburbs of Pera and Galata, on an
elevated plateau, which they made still more secure, under the elder
Andronicus, by a moat and triple row of walls. To these places they
transferred their stores and stock; nor was it long before the
churches, palaces, warehouses, and public buildings of Pera vied in
magnificence with those of the metropolis itself. The island of Chios,
where gum-mastic was collected and the finest wine produced, was
another of their colonies. These were all ruled by a _podestà_
annually sent from Genoa. The Genoese and Venetians had also factories
in Barbary, through which they drove a brisk trade with the interior
of Africa. To them more than to any others was it due that for three
hundred years the commerce of Italy was famous from the Straits of
Gibraltar to the remotest gulf in the Euxine.
The maritime strength of the Italian republics, especially of Genoa
and Venice, corresponded to their vast commercial interests and the
number of colonies they were expected to enlarge and defend. Thus, the
Pisans in 1114 sent an armament, consisting of 300 vessels of various
sizes, carrying 35,000 men and 900 horses, to the conquest of the
Balearic Islands, which had become a nest of Moorish pirates. A great
part of these troops were mercenaries procured from all parts of the
world, and contingents drawn from their possessions in Sardinia. In
1293 the Genoese fitted out in a single month, against the Venetians,
200 galleys, each of which bore from 220 to 300 combatants recruited
within the continental limits of the republic; and in the vast arsenal
of Venice during the fourteenth century 800 men were continually at
work, and 200 galleys, not to count the smaller craft, were kept ready
in port for any emergency that might arise. Such formidable fleets
were manned either by voluntary enlistments or impressment; the hope
of heavy plunder, according to the barbarous war-system of those days,
which the church strove against but could not wholly change, appealing
to young men to serve as sailors or soldiers. The furious rivalry
between Genoa and Venice began to show itself soon after the taking of
Constantinople by the Franks in 1244, each desiring to reap alone the
profits of the Levant trade. After many bloody encounters a peace was
patched up in 1298, by which the latter was excluded for thirteen
years from the Black Sea, along whose shores the former had colonies,
forts, and factories, and was forbidden to send armed vessels to
Syria. Terms so propitious raised the pride and influence of Genoa to
the utmost; and feared by all, and claiming to be mistress of the
seas, she upheld the honor of her flag with extravagant solicitude. In
1332 she wasted the coast of Catalonia with a force of 200 galleys,
and inflicted great injury on the commerce of Barcelona; and two years
later, having captured twelve ships of the enemy, heavily freighted
with merchandise, in the waters of Sicily, Cyprus, and Sardinia, with
an example of ferocious cruelty which only the “accursed greed of
gold” and a determination to exclude the Catalans from any share in
Eastern commerce could prompt, six hundred prisoners were hanged at a
single execution. She was resolved to command the seas, and
consequently the trade of the world; but her rival, although crippled,
was not prostrate, and the fourth war broke out between them in 1372
for possession of the classical island of Tenedos, so valuable as a
naval station and renowned for its wheat and excellent red wine. The
Genoese actually got into the lagoons of Venice, vowing to reduce her
to the stagnant level of the waters, and approached so near to the
city that their admiral could shout to the affrighted people on the
quays, _Delenda est Carthago_! but by a singular freak of fortune they
were themselves totally defeated, and glad to accept the mediation of
Amadeus VI., Duke of Savoy. It was agreed that neither party should
have the island in dispute, but that the duke should hold it at their
common expense for two years and then dismantle the fortress.
During this war, called the War of Chioggia, which lasted until 1381,
an unusually large number of corsairs roved the seas; but the Italians
had long practised piracy, and whole communities were corsairs by
profession, just as on land _condottieri_ could be hired to sack
cities and castles and desolate whole provinces. The little town of
Monaco was notorious during the middle ages for its pirates, as it
still is for its ravenous land-sharks. There were two sorts of
corsairs. Some were private individuals who went to sea through lust
of gain, or because driven from their homes during the fights of
faction, and seized whatever they could. These robberies and
depredations marked piracy in its original form. Nevertheless during
the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries many otherwise
honorable characters, who were often unjustly despoiled of their
patrimony and driven as outcasts from their native cities, took to
this occupation not entirely from inclination, but impelled by the
brutality of their countrymen. We may recall as an extenuating
circumstance what that grave judge, Lord Stowell, observed (2 Dods.
374) of the buccaneers, whose spirit at one time approached to that of
chivalry in point of adventure, and whose manner of life was thought
to reflect no disgrace upon distinguished Englishmen who engaged in
it.
Other corsairs were patriotic citizens who armed their ships to injure
the enemy during lawful hostilities; and although there was abuse in
the system, they were not pirates, but privateersmen. Foreign nations
used to buy ships from the Italians to increase their own armaments,
or engage them to harass their opponents. It is curious, considering
how completely maritime supremacy has deserted the Mediterranean for
northern seas, to know that the poet Chaucer was sent by King Edward
III. in November, 1372, as envoy to the republic of Genoa to hire
vessels for his navy; and Tytler says (_Hist. of Scotland_, vol. ii.
p. 261) that in the same century many of the privateers employed by
the Scots against England appear to have been vessels of larger
dimensions and more formidable equipment than those of England,
probably from their being foreign built, and furnished by the Genoese
or the Venetians, for the purposes both of trade and piracy.
It was now that the word _Jane_ came into the language—Chaucer and
Spenser use it—for a small coin so-called from Janua (Genoa). It is
termed in the old English statutes a _galley half-pence_.
The Florentines had originally no seaboard, and were obliged to
charter ships wherever they could. In 1362, having taken into the
service of the republic Pierin Grimaldi of Genoa, with two galleys,
and hired two more vessels, their little fleet took the island of
Giglio from the Pisans, and the following year, having broken into the
port of Pisa itself, they took away the chains that protected it and
hung them as trophies on the porphyry columns of their Baptistery.
The foreign commerce for which the maritime cities of Italy, and
particularly Genoa and Venice, so savagely disputed, to the scandal of
the Christian name among the infidels, as the old English traveller
Sir John de Mandeville shows, was certainly very considerable, and a
source of almost fabulous profit to those engaged in it who were
fortunate in their ventures. Commerce was the foundation of Italy’s
prosperity, which was greater than that of any other European country
from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. The Italian merchants got
cottons, silken goods, brocades, Cashmere shawls, spices, rhubarb and
other medicines, amber, indigo, pearls, and diamonds from India and
Central Asia. From Persia there came silks, carpets, skins, and
manufactured articles used by the great for clothing or for the
comfort of their homes. Tartary and Russia furnished hemp, canvas,
ship-timber, tar, wax, caviare, raw-hides, and peltries. From the
ports of Syria and Asia Minor, and particularly from Smyrna, were
shipped to Italy hare-skins, leather, camel’s hair, valonia, cotton
stuffs, damasks, dried fruits, beeswax, drugs and electuaries, arms,
armor, and cutlery; and many articles of Asiatic luxury and
magnificence found their way thence through Italian merchants to the
courts and castles of England, Scotland, France, Germany, and other
northern nations. Greece sent fine wines, raisins, currants,
filbert-nuts, silk, and alum. A large quantity of grain was brought
into Italy from Egypt and the Barbary States; but the supply to the
colonies in the Levant came mostly from the Black Sea. Wool, wax,
sheep-skins, and morocco came from the Moorish provinces of Africa.
These were the principal imports, and were exchanged for the products
and manufactures of Italy and the countries to the north, for which
the Italians acted as agents. The Genoese exported immense quantities
of woven fabrics from the looms of Lombardy and Florence, fine linens
from Bologna, and cloths of a coarser make from France, for which a
ready market was found in the East and among the Italians settled in
the Archipelago and Levant. The oils of Provence and the Riviera of
Genoa, soaps, saffron, and coral, were also largely exported.
Quicksilver was a valuable article in the hands of the Venetians, who
got it from Istria and sold it in Spain and the Levant; they also
extracted a great amount of salt from Istria and Dalmatia, which was
sold at a good profit in Lombardy and other parts of Italy. Sardinia,
Sicily, and Naples also did a large foreign business; the last city
importing cargoes of delicate Greek and Oriental wines, such as the
famous Cyprian, Malmsey, and Muscatel, much of which was sent to
different parts of Italy, and into England and the Netherlands. Spain,
Portugal, and Flanders were supplied with the products of the Indies
and Levant principally by Genoese and Venetian merchants. The latter
especially had many privileges and fiscal exemptions in Flanders, and
in returning from the North loaded their ships in Portugal with tin,
silver bars, wines, and raisins; while the former had the greater part
of the trade with the Moors of Africa and southern Spain, from whom,
in return for spiceries and other Eastern products, they got gold,
cordovans, and merino wool, which were sold to advantage in France and
Italy.
The Italians were the best cloth-weavers in Europe in the fourteenth
century, although the Flemings were not contemptible rivals. The
manufacture of cloth was industriously carried on in many of their
cities; in those of Tuscany particularly, the finest kind of work
being done in Lucca. When this city was taken by Uguccione della
Faggiuola, in 1314, the factories and goods were destroyed, and many
citizens emigrated to other parts of Italy, and even into France,
Germany, and England. Yet long before this Italian operatives had
introduced, or at least improved, the art in the northern countries.
Crapes, taffetas, velvets, silks, camelots, and serges were
extensively made in Italy, the richest quality being sold at Florence,
where the home industries seemed to centre, and only the most skilled
artisans were employed. The art of weaving wool was practised by
thousands of citizens, and, nominally at least, by some of the noblest
families of the city and _contado_ (commune), since there was a law
that no one could aspire to public office unless he were a member of
one of the trades-corporations of the republic. The citizens of
Florence were classed from 1266 into twelve companies of trades or
professions, seven of which were called _arti maggiori_, viz., 1.
lawyers and attorneys; 2. dealers in foreign stuffs; 3. bankers and
money-changers; 4. woollen manufacturers and drapers; 5. physicians
and apothecaries; 6. silk manufacturers and mercers; 7. furriers. The
lower trades were called _arti minori_. The records of these
corporations are now preserved in a part of the Uffizi palace devoted
to the public archives of Florence. They range from A.D. 1300 to the
end of the eighteenth century. Around the hall, which was fitted up a
few years ago to receive them, are the portraits of some of the
distinguished men who belonged to these guilds: Dante, Cosimo de’
Medici, Francesco Guicciardini, and others. Balmes gives an
interesting account, after Capmany, in his _European Civilization_, p.
476, of “the trades-unions and other associations which, established
under the influence of the Catholic religion, commonly placed
themselves under the patronage of some saint, and had pious
foundations for the celebration of their feasts, and for assisting
each other in their necessities.” Although his long note refers
principally to the industrial organization of the city of Barcelona,
it is acknowledged that Catalonia borrowed many of its customs and
usages in this matter from the towns of Italy.
Before the middle of the fourteenth century there were over two
hundred drapers’ shops in Florence, in which from seventy to eighty
thousand pieces of cloth were made every year, to the value of
1,200,000 gold florins, and employing more than thirty thousand
people. The historian John Villani says that the trade had been still
more flourishing, when there were three hundred shops open and one
hundred thousand pieces were made yearly, but that they were of a
coarser quality and consequently did not bring as much money into the
city, although more people got work. The art of dyeing cloths and
other stuffs was cultivated by the Italians during the middle ages
with considerable success. Alum, which is much used for this purpose,
was eagerly sought after, and the Genoese obtained from Michael
Palæologus, on payment of an annual sum, the exclusive right of
extracting it from a certain mine in the Morea that had previously
been worked by Arabs, Catalans, and others. The lessees began
operations with a force of fifty men, and soon built a castle to
protect themselves, and finally a town, which was destroyed by the
Turks in 1455. The Florentines were so expert in dyeing wool that the
material was sent to them for the purpose from other parts of Italy,
and even from Germany and the Netherlands. It was only in 1858 that an
immense wooden building for stretching and drying cloth in the sun,
called _Il tiratoio della lana_, which had been used for over five
hundred years, was torn down as too liable to catch fire.
The cloths of France and other northern countries found a sale in
Florence, not so much for home use as for exportation through the
Genoese and Venetians. An exception, however, must be made for a rich
article called _say_, manufactured in Ireland, and esteemed so
beautiful as to be worn by the ladies of that refined city.[33] John
Villani, already mentioned, says that there was a quarter of Florence
called Calimala, containing twenty stores of the coarser cloths of the
North, of which thirty thousand pieces, of the value of three hundred
thousand gold florins, were yearly imported.
Florence in the middle ages had a territory extending only a few miles
round its walls; but the industry and speculative spirit of its
citizens wonderfully enriched them, and, since “all things obey money”
(Ecclesiastes x. 19), they soon became the predominant power, and
finally the masters in Tuscany. They were money-changers,
moneylenders, jewellers, and goldsmiths for the whole of Europe and no
little part of the East. The elements of a business education were
given to its youth in numerous schools, attended by some twelve
hundred boys, who were taught arithmetic and book-keeping. A great
deal of money circulated within the city itself, and a large amount
was necessary, particularly before the introduction of bills of
exchange, to accommodate merchants in their visits to other countries.
The public mint coined annually during the fourteenth century from
three hundred and fifty thousand to four hundred thousand gold
florins, and about twenty thousand pounds weight of coppers, called
_danari da quattro_, or half-farthings; and eighty private banks
assisted the circulation. The beautiful golden florins were first
coined in the year 1252, bearing on one side the impression of St.
John Baptist, the patron, and on the other that of a lily, the device
of the city. This was considered the finest coin in the world, and so
much admired that many princes and governments began to imitate it
while preserving its original name, and consequently perpetuating the
monetary renown of Florence. It was current in Europe, Asia, and
Africa. The workmanship of the Florentines was so superior that they
were often called upon to conduct or superintend the coinage in
foreign countries. During the reign of King David II., in the first
half of the thirteenth century, he appointed a Florentine one of the
two keepers of the exchange for all Scotland, and masters of the mint;
and under King Robert III. (1390-1424) gold was minted for that
kingdom by Bonaccio of Florence.[34] In 1278 the Exchange at London
was under the direction of some Lucca merchants; and it seems to be
directly from the Italian that we get our English word cash, derived
from _cassa_, the chest in which Italian merchants kept their money.
We may have some idea of what a money-centre Florence was in that age
from the fact that the notorious French adventurer, the Duke of
Athens, who was elected Lord of Florence in 1342, contrived in the
course of only ten months to draw four hundred thousand golden florins
out of the city. The Florentines, who had the reputation of being the
smartest people in Italy, were extremely fond of banking in all its
branches. While the middle and lower orders of society were mostly
engaged in mechanical occupations, the higher classes handled the
money, and would appear to have taken lessons of the Jews. The great
feudal nobles of the north, with more land than gold, would often
ask their chaplains to reprove them with some holy text of
Scripture—Ecclesiasticus X. 10 being a favorite one—when interest was
demanded or mortgages were forfeited. They were not by any means the
only Italians who publicly courted the queen _Regina Pecunia_; the
ancient name in England for a banker, which was _Lombard_, and the
street in London called Lombard Street, preserving the memory of the
Milanese and others out of Lombardy who took up their first residence
there before the year 1274, and were great moneychangers and usurers.
The stupendous fortunes of the Chigi, who gave Pope Alexander VII. to
the church and are now Roman princes, and before them of the Medici
family, which became royal, were amassed chiefly in the banking
business; but it is a popular error that the well-known sign of the
pawnbrokers’ three gilt balls is derived from the armorial bearings of
the latter, which their agents in England and other countries placed
over the doors of their loan-shops. The arms of the Medici were _or_,
six torteaux _gules_ except the one in chief, which was _azure_
charged with three fleurs-de-lis _or_. Whether these roundlets had any
allusion, as has been suggested, to doctors’ pills and the
professional origin whence the family name is supposed to be derived,
we cannot determine; but the gold pieces called bezants because coined
at Constantinople—Byzantium—and so common at an early period in Italy
that the saying _Aver buoni Bisanzi_ was a proverbial expression
of one who had plenty of money, seem to have been early the
distinguishing sign of money-lenders and changers, and are the true
origin of the pawnbrokers’ balls.
The shrewdness of the Italians in money matters did not always save
them from disastrous failures and bankruptcies caused by wars, breach
of faith in persons too high to be reached, loss of goods and bullion
by fire, piracy, shipwreck, and other accidents. The first great
failure of this kind was that of a mercantile company in 1296, which
had existed for one hundred and twenty years, and became insolvent for
400,000 gold florins, due to citizens and strangers. It was felt
throughout the republic of Florence like the loss of a battle. Even
worse was the failure of the Bardi and Peruzzi in 1347. They were both
merchants and bankers, and stood at the head of their class in Italy.
Loans to the kings of England and Sicily brought them down. The first
owed them 900,000 and the second 450,000 gold florins. These were
unavailable assets when the 550,000 florins they owed their
fellow-citizens and others began to be called for, and therefore they
broke. This downfall carried with it a large number of smaller houses,
and among them that of Corsini, of the since princely family of that
name, which gave St. Andrew and Pope Clement XII. to the church. The
celebrated historian John Villani was a great loser by this failure,
and was even imprisoned in the _Stinche_ in consequence of it as an
insolvent. The law punished fraudulent failures very severely; but if
it could be proved that the failures resulted from unavoidable
accidents, the debtors were allowed to go free, after surrendering all
they possessed to their creditors. For the convenience of customers,
the bank-offices used to be on the ground-floor of the houses—sometimes
palaces—the masters living above. The rate of discount on exchange was
from one and one-half to two per cent., and four per cent. on sums
advanced. Jacques Savary, in his _Parfait Négociant_, says that the
invention of bills of exchange is due to French Jews who were driven
out of France by Philip the Fair in 1316, and took refuge in Lombardy.
By means of such bills they were able to get the value of the property
they had left in the hands of friends. They were imitated by certain
Ghibellines who, being exiled, went to Amsterdam and saved some of
their goods left in Italy. In negotiating these bills and effecting
the sale of goods, persons called _sensali_ (brokers) were employed.
No duties were levied on exports, but imported goods had to be stored
in government buildings called _dogane_—_i.e._, custom-houses, or,
perhaps more accurately, bonded warehouses—from which, although they
might be hypothecated, they could be withdrawn only after payment of a
certain sum. There was a chamber of commerce called _Mercanzia_ at
Florence, and all the other commercial cities had their merchants’
exchange for the transaction of business, the sordid use to which they
were put being often disguised by the beauties of architecture,
painting, and sculpture. Thus, the _Sala del Cambio_ at Perugia was
decorated with frescoes by the celebrated Pietro Perugino, assisted by
his immortal pupil Raphael of Urbino.
In all seaports there were certain judges, elected by and from among
the merchants, who composed a tribunal called _Consolato di Mare_.
They settled disputes between traders and ship-owners, gave assistance
in distress, and watched over the interests of commerce. The origin of
such boards of trade was very ancient among the Italians, for as early
as the year 1129 one was established at Messina. It is said that the
Pisans were the first to make laws regulating navigation, and that
their code was approved in 1075 by Pope Gregory VII.[35] There was no
appeal from the decisions of these admiralty courts, and in cases of
fraud or other misdemeanor the guilty party was punished by public
authority.
Sericulture began in Italy in the fourteenth century, and was
practised with success, especially in Lombardy. The statutes of Modena
obliged the peasants to plant a large number of mulberry-trees, in
order to promote it.
The wide extent of Italian commerce and the industrial prosperity of
Italy, which was a consequence of it, greatly enriched her higher
classes and led to the most extravagant luxury during the latter part
of the middle ages. Nations now reckoned highly civilized, and where
the comforts of life are within the reach of all, were then badly
clothed and poorly fed. The effeminacy of the wealthier Italians
during the fourteenth century, when commerce was most extended, caused
them to despise, amidst the delicacies of the East and the fruits of
their own intelligence, the rude simplicity of their more northern
neighbors. Even the lower classes among them felt a desire for greater
convenience and refinement. Dante, Boccaccio, the chroniclers, and
other writers of this period portray or lament the ever-increasing
luxury of the age, and we can gather from them an accurate idea of the
style of living and magnificence of the patricians in their
provisions, furniture, and dress during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. Nuptial entertainments and civic festivals were the
occasions of most display; and Chaucer, who had partaken of such,
writes probably as much from recollection as after Petrarch, whom he
has imitated, when he describes the preparations for Griselda’s
wedding to the young Marquis of Saluce.
The women were particularly dainty, and many sumptuary laws were
enacted to restrain the excess of refinement in houses, furniture, and
apparel. A very fine sort of thin, transparent linen, made in Cyprus,
was much worn by the female sex. It resembled, but was not quite so
indecent as the _Coa vestis_ of the ancients. They also carried much
jewelry, and were clothed in garments worked in silver and gold stuff.
Their minds naturally ran on money:
“_Julia._ What thinkest thou of the rich Mercutio?
_Lucetta._ Well of his wealth; but of himself, so, so.”
—_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act i. sc. 2.
The habits and head-dress of the men were often bespangled with
precious stones, and their whole attire answered to their haughty
bearing, which bespoke successful foreign ventures and a splendid
style maintained at home. In innumerable ways they exemplified Dr.
Johnson’s observation: “With what munificence a great merchant will
spend his money, both from his having it at command and from his
enlarged views by calculation of a good effect upon the whole.” Few of
them would have dared to say with _Bassanio_:
“Gentle lady,
When I did first impart my love to you,
I freely told you all the wealth I had
Ran in my veins; I was a gentleman.”
—_Merchant of Venice_, act iii. sc. 2.
When Shakspere uses the expression “royal merchant” in the play from
which we have just quoted, it is, as Warburton remarks, no ranting
epithet; for several Italian merchant families obtained principalities
in the Archipelago and elsewhere, which their descendants enjoyed for
many generations, and others of their class made sovereign alliances.
For instance, James, King of Cyprus, married Catherine Cornaro,
daughter of a Venetian merchant, who gave her a dowry of 100,000
golden ducats.[36]
[31] The Cathedral of Pisa, one of the most remarkable
monuments of the middle ages, owes its origin to such
an expedition; for it was built with part of the rich
booty taken from the Saracens at Palermo in the year
1063.
[32] This city was taken from the Genoese by the Turks in
1474, but the Christians were not all driven out. The
late Father Theiner has published an interesting letter
from the Papal Nuncio in Poland in 1579, in which he
mentions having met some Kaffa people at Wilna and
tells of their strange manner of obtaining a priest,
reminding one a little of Michas and the Levite in
Judges xvii.
[33] McPherson’s _Annals of Commerce_, vol. i. p. 562.
[34] Innes, _Scotland in the Middle Ages_, p. 309.
[35] Muratori, _Ant. Ital._, tom. ii. p. 54.
[36] The ducat was the great money of Venice, as the florin
was of Florence, and bears in its name a proof of the
more aristocratic government of the former city. The
first gold ducats were coined by the Doge John Dandolo
in 1280, and are inscribed I0. DANDVL. DVX.
A DAUGHTER OF THE PURITANS.
Rose Standish Howson—that was her name, and very proud she was of it.
Back of the _Mayflower_, she knew little about her ancestors; but
certain it was that in that well-filled vessel one of her forefathers
had come to America, and, marrying a distant connection of the
veritable Standish family, had handed this name down to all succeeding
generations. Rose boasted, so far as it is proper for a well-bred New
England girl to boast, that, however it might have been outside of her
own country, here at least her lineage was most democratically noble;
she belonged—and could prove it, too, out of a little book compiled by
her grandfather—thoroughly to the old Puritan race. In all her books
the name was written in full—Rose Standish Howson; and it was her
unfailing source of regret that her only brother had not been called
Miles. John Howson laughed good-naturedly at his sister’s foible, but
was really quite as proud as she, though in a more passive way.
Their home was not in Boston. Let this important fact receive our
prompt attention. But, since it could not be there, it was in the next
best place—an old academic town; in which New England State matters
little to our story. There for thirty years Rose Howson’s father had
been the academy’s honored principal. His wife had died young, leaving
only this son and daughter. John fitted for Harvard at the academy;
Rose went steadily through grammar-school and high-school in her
native place, then went to Boston with hopes of at least a two years’
added course of study there. It resolved itself into one brilliant
winter and spring of hard work and exhausting pleasure, symphony
concerts, Shakspere clubs, Parker Fraternity lectures, abstruse
reading, and keenly exciting conversation; one merry June, one gay
class-day, one delightful commencement, when Dr. Howson came to
Cambridge to meet old pupils and friends, and see his son bear off the
highest honors; then they went home for vacation, and before it was
over Dr. Howson sickened and died.
The whole town was in a fervor of excitement; there was a funeral, to
which people came from far and near; resolutions were passed, and in
the flush of enthusiasm John Howson, young as he was and just out of
college, was elected on trial to fill his father’s place. So the
brother and sister still lived on in their old home, but into it they
infused a new manner of living. Fresh from the intellectual arena,
they sought to shape society about them into some likeness to that
they loved so well, and they found their old friends and playmates
more than ready to meet them half-way. A book club was started, into
which the current literature of the day was crowded, and from which,
it was placidly affirmed, all “trash” was excluded; but Mill was
there, and Darwin, and a strange mixture of German philosophy, which
the young men, but more especially the young women, read, or fancied
they read, and about which they talked much, after a fashion revealing
more ideas than thought. There were “musicals” too, and a Shakspere
club, and German and French conversations and readings, and the second
winter after Dr. Howson’s death there were dramatic entertainments and
concerts; and it came to pass that almost every afternoon and evening
of Rose’s life was filled with some sort of intellectual work or
pleasure. She was a capital housekeeper, and so her early mornings
were occupied with household cares; but, later, she was always ready
for a walk or talk, and her reading was done in snatches by day and by
long hours of steady work late at night.
About religion “experimentally” she knew little. The old
meeting-house, which the Puritan settlers had built, was still
standing, but it had been enlarged and made over, though not
beautified. There Rose had been accustomed to go Sunday after Sunday
as a matter of course, and sometimes to the Friday evening
prayer-meeting; but she was not “a Christian.” Once there had been a
revival, when she tried to be converted, but she had failed. Then in
Boston she had been taken to hear preachers who were not “orthodox” at
all; she had almost feared them at first, because of strange names she
had heard applied to them—they had German tendencies, rationalistic
tendencies, were free-thinkers. But when she came under the spell of
their presence and their eloquence she was fascinated. They appealed
to what she thought the highest faculties of her nature—her intellect,
her love for the beautiful, her reason. She missed it when she came
home and she did more than miss it: she began to doubt. Was old Mr.
Gray wiser than the cultured men she had been hearing? He claimed that
they were wrong; how did he know that? How could she tell that he was
not mistaken? In this one small town, originally occupied by orthodox
Congregationalists only, there were now Orthodox Unitarians,
Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, and Universalists. A Roman
Catholic priest was serving there too, in a dingy hall in a back
street, but “society” rarely noticed him or his work; he and his alike
were out of its pale, anomalies, hardly worth mentioning except with
pitying wonder or idle jest and scorn. What made Mr. Gray superior to
any or all of these in his power of discerning truth?
And while Rose queried thus on Sunday mornings, sitting wearily in her
accustomed place at the right of the pulpit, sometimes trying to find
out how to be good, but oftener losing herself in memories of the
feasts of reason she had known for so brief and bright a while, some
one came to town who was to influence her life greatly. Looking up
suddenly from one of these reveries, she found herself still in the
meeting-house, but opposite her was a new face, a lady’s, thin and
pale, with searching eyes fixed upon hers, and after service the lady
came straight to her pew and held out her hand.
“I am sure you are Miss Howson,” she said. “Your friend Grace Roland
has told me much of you. I am Ellen Lawton.”
Rose’s heart leaped up. In those happy Boston days she had often heard
Ellen Lawton spoken of as one of the most elegant and cultured women
of her time, and she had read her writings with delight, but she had
hardly hoped to meet her. It took her breath away with joy when she
learned that Miss Lawton had come to live for a while in this quiet
country place.
It was a season of keen delight. Rose had thought she knew what it was
to revel in intellectual pleasure, but it was something new to meet
one so superior to herself, yet so loving; always ready to listen to
her ideas, to help her unfold them, and yet so calm and tranquil. Miss
Lawton was an invalid, and, after that first Sunday, Rose never saw
her at church again. Once, when Rose stopped on her way thither to
leave her some flowers, Miss Lawton said that she was going to sit in
the sunshine; would not Rose stay with her? And when Rose demurred,
Miss Lawton said gently, “Shall we not please God as well in the
beauty of his sunshine as in that bare and cheerless house where you
know you do not like to go?”
This was the beginning of Rose’s first knowledge of Ellen Lawton’s
so-called religious life; they sat and talked all that morning about
it. With a sweet smile upon her calm face, the invalid said quietly
that she believed there might be a God; she was not sure, of course;
but if there was one, he was kind and good, and loved to see her
happy. She made life as bright and beautiful as she possibly could
always; it was given her to enjoy. Books and music and art and flowers
were parts of her religion; beyond this world she did not look; what
came after death she knew not and cared not; if there was a God, he
was good and would be good to her; if there was not, the thought of
annihilation did not distress her. Rose watched her closely after
this; she never heard an impatient word or saw a hasty movement; the
life was an exposition of what a great many people would call “the
beautiful,” and Rose found in it more and more satisfaction for her
extreme intellectual cravings.
One morning a servant ran in with blanched face to tell her that Miss
Lawton was dead. Rose had known that heart-disease was the fatal
malady which was surely sapping at her friend’s life, yet this blow
fell upon her with an awful suddenness. She went to the house, where
they left her to do as she would, for she was the nearest friend Miss
Lawton had there; she went up to the silent room, and shut herself in
alone with the silent dead. Ellen Lawton lay as they had found her;
she must have risen in the morning and dressed with her usual dainty
care; then, perhaps feeling some acute pang of the pain to which she
was subject, she had sunk upon the couch by the window. Her face was,
as in life, calm and noble; about her lay her books that she had
loved, her rare pictures looked down upon her, her flowers scented the
room; outside the sun shone brightly on the grand hills she had been
used to watch, finding in them food for heart and soul both, she said.
None of these moved her now at all.
Rose went close to her and looked at her, and looked, and looked, as
if she would waken her by the very fixedness of her gaze. What was
this _thing_ lying there, this beautiful clay, this voiceless,
motionless, tenantless body? Yesterday it spoke to her, kissed her,
loved her; what had changed it, gone out of it? The spirit? The soul?
Where was that soul then?
She knelt down trembling, and put her hand where the heart had beat
not five short hours ago. There was no movement now; and the silence
in the room grew terrible. Where was that which yesterday she spoke
with? Nowhere? Then to-morrow she herself might be nowhere and
nothing.
Suddenly there came to her a memory which she had striven for years to
banish. A stranger had preached at the time of that unforgotten
revival; he had painted vividly and unsparingly the torments of the
lost. Often in the night Rose had wakened from a dream of it, and
found herself cold with horror, and cried out, “I never will believe
it.” Now like a painting she seemed to see it all again, and through
her mind rang the words with which the sermon had ended, “Doubt on as
you will, O unbeliever, O careless soul, O faithless Christian! Laugh
on as you will, forget as you will. But suppose that you wake up after
death and find this true! _What then?_”
John Howson, hearing the news at school, hurried home at noon to
comfort Rose, but she was gone. He found her in that room of death,
rocking to and fro upon her knees, her hands held out over the dead,
while she was whispering in hoarse tones: “Ellen, is it true? Tell me
it is not true.” And no one answered.
John lifted her tenderly, and she clung to him like a little child.
“Take me home!” she cried, quivering all over. She could not walk; he
had to carry her, and all the way she clung to him as if the very
touch of something that lived and loved was comfort. “O John! I am so
glad you are alive,” she sobbed. “Dear John, do not die, do not die!”
He could hardly bear to leave her for afternoon school, and when he
came home she was crouching by his arm-chair, while Abby, their old
servant, sat looking at her with pitying horror. “You’d best do what
you can for her, Master John,” she said, “or she’ll kill herself going
on in this way.”
“No, no! not kill myself,” Rose answered hysterically. “It is awful to
live, but it is worse to die.”
John sat down near her, and she took his hand and held it tightly. “I
want to _feel_ that you are here, and warm and well,” she said. “O
John! tell me what is true.”
“What is true?” he repeated. “Why, I am, I hope; and you, dear child.”
“Oh! no,” she exclaimed, as if his tender lightness were unbearable.
“Is God true? Is there a God? What comes after death?”
He answered her honestly; he had even less faith than she, but his
doubts did not trouble him. He lived a life as upright and fair as his
neighbors; whether there was a God or not, what difference did it
make, so long as he behaved himself? This was John Howson’s creed, if
such a title could be applied to it.
How strong and kind he looked, how honorable he always was! Why should
Rose worry, if he did not? Either there was no God, and what they did
made no difference—they could live as they liked and get all the
pleasure possible—or, if there was a God, he was too good to be ever
angry with them. It was a consoling belief; she would take the comfort
of it. But alone at night the horror returned. Suppose there was a God
who demanded something—she knew not what—from his creatures; she could
only express it by the vague term, “to be Christians.” She held her
head between her hands and tried to think what that meant. Yes, she
must be converted, and be sorry for all her sins, and join the church.
How were people converted, and what church should she join? Perhaps
she had better say a prayer. “O God!” she began, then paused. Her
brain was reeling with the doubt whether there was any God at all; and
even if there were, what was the use of prayer?
The next morning she went to Mr. Gray. With nerves unstrung by intense
feeling, she had little thought left for ordinary greetings or for
ceremony. The old man was jarred and hurt by what he thought her
rudeness, never dreaming that he was dealing with a soul which was
fast losing all care for earthly joys or pains, or for any earthly
thing at all, in the one absorbing fear of eternal things. For forty
years he had labored in this place in a calm routine, hearing
something but comprehending little of the doubts through which the
world without was passing. It filled him with horror to hear Rose
talk; he had never imagined what thoughts had been working in the mind
of his old friend’s child.
“What must one do to be a Christian?” she had asked abruptly.
He had not expected such a question, and looked surprised, but he
answered simply enough: “You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, my
child, and come to him in repentance.”
“And where is he?” Rose cried, “and who is he, and what does he want
of me?”
Mr. Gray stared at her in amazement and sorrow. “My dear,” he said,
“who is he? He is God, and he is everywhere, and he wants your heart.”
“How do you know that?” Rose exclaimed. “Tell me how you know it.
The old man laid his hand upon his Bible. “Where should I know it but
here?” he asked.
“But other people think differently,” Rose said. “I have read it
myself, and I don’t find what you preach. The Baptists read the Bible,
and so do the Methodists, and so do the Episcopalians, and you cannot
agree to be one. How do you know the Bible is true?”
It was of no avail to tell her of internal evidence, or of spiritual
conviction, or of visible effects. Quickly enough it became clear that
Rose Howson had no faith left in the Lord Jesus Christ as God. She did
believe as an historical fact that he had lived once upon earth, and
was man, and possibly something more than man; that was all. To
everything Mr. Gray said she returned the answer, “_How do you know
it?_ Is not the Baptist minister a Christian?—and yet you differ. Is
not the Unitarian minister a scholar, and does not he pray to
God?—and yet you say he is mistaken.” And when Mr. Gray reminded her
of her father, and asked how he would have felt to hear her speak
thus, she cried out that she was a woman grown, and it was her own
soul she was talking of, and her father could not save that; fathers
made very little difference when it was heaven and hell you were
thinking about.
“All Christians agree on the vital points,” Mr. Gray said; “at least,
all evangelical Protestants.”
“And what about the unevangelical Protestants and the poor Catholics?
and who decides what are the vital points? and why cannot you and the
Baptists commune together, then?” The eager questions were poured
forth, overwhelming the listener.
Mr. Gray shook his head sadly. “I do not think you are in a fit state
to speak of such matters, Rose,” he said. “The Lord Jesus Christ died
for you. Pray to him that he will himself teach you.”
Rose stood up. “Good-by, Mr. Gray,” she said gently. “I am afraid I
have troubled you. Perhaps you will say a prayer for me sometimes.”
“I will indeed, my child,” he answered her, with a very troubled look
upon his face; “but you must pray too.”
“Pray?” she repeated to herself mechanically as she went out of the
room. “I wonder how they do it, and what they mean by it, and what
good it ever does? Pray? Oh! if I only could.”
After this Rose was never seen inside the old meeting-house again.
Everybody learned that she was in some religious difficulty; most
persons never mentioned the subject to her; some told her not to
worry, but to trust; others that it made no manner of difference what
she believed, so long as she was sincere. To the one she answered that
the only belief she was sincere in was that she did not know what to
believe; to the other she made no reply. But to John once she answered
wearily: “If you sat here studying, and I told you the house was on
fire, and you could smell it burning, would you keep still at your
books, and trust and not worry, because other people said it was not
your house?”
On one occasion she took up a Protestant Episcopal _Book of Common
Prayer_ which she found in her father’s library, and, turning its
pages, came to the Apostles’ Creed. It comforted her to read it; she
thought it must be a blessed thing to be brought up always with that
impressed upon one, and never to know anything else. She had some
Protestant Episcopal friends; they seemed very content. But, still
idly turning the leaves, she came to the Thirty-Nine Articles, and her
eye lighted on the words, “As the Church of _Jerusalem_, _Alexandria_,
and _Antioch_, have erred; so also the Church of _Rome_ hath erred,
not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters
of Faith.” So then even they could not be sure and settled in their
belief, she said to herself; for if Rome and Jerusalem and Antioch had
erred, why not the Protestant Episcopal Church of America? It was the
closing drop of bitterness. John found her that noon in as terrible a
state as on the day of Ellen Lawton’s death.
“Rose,” he said gravely, “for some time, as you know, I have doubted
the existence of a God; but I will tell you now that my doubts on that
point are settled. Wherever and whatever he may be, there surely is
one; for I am convinced that no one could suffer as you do without
some reality to cause it.”
The unexpected words brought a ray of comfort; she lifted her poor
pale face to his with a look of pitiful longing. “Then, John,” she
said, “don’t you think he must know how dreadful the suffering is, and
that he will tell me some day where to find him?”
The tears—a man’s rare tears—sprang to John Howson’s eyes. “I surely
think he will, Rose,” he answered; and he stooped and kissed her with
great compassion. His love was the only comfort Rose had now, and at
times she found no comfort even in that.
Fanny Mason came to see her in the afternoon. People did not come to
the house as freely as they used to come; Rose showed too plainly that
she did not care to see them. But Fanny had been an intimate family
friend always; the affection between the two girls was more like that
of relatives than of friends. Fanny was not at all intellectual, had
never known a shadow of doubt; she ran in to chat and gossip, not
waiting for replies, and brought a sense of refreshment, or at least
of change, to Rose’s burdened mind.
“To-morrow is Ascension Day,” she said. “The Episcopalians are going
to have service and trim their church beautifully—white lilacs and
wistaria and lilies of the valley and bunches of forget-me-not. It
will be lovely; wouldn’t you like to see it?”
“I am tired and sick of prettiness and pettiness,” Rose said.
“Rose Howson! What next? You used to say that the beautiful satisfied
you entirely.”
“I thought it did,” Rose answered sadly. “But where is it? All at once
it failed me. Now I see a death’s-head behind all.”
“Rose! Not really?”
Rose almost smiled at Fanny’s scared face. “No, Fanny; not literally,
at least. Once, though, I did really see it in the very centre of
loveliness, and I cannot forget.”
“I wish you could forget,” Fanny said pityingly. “I wish we could be
little girls once more, Rose.”
“No, no!” Rose answered, shuddering. “Not to live all these years over
again. But, O Fanny! if I only could forget for ever so short a
while!”
The strained, wild passion of her look and manner frightened Fanny;
she tried to return to her former chatty lightness. “I’ll tell you
what you had better do,” she said, “since you are tired of the
beautiful. The Catholics are going to keep Ascension Day too. What a
queer set they are! Do you know that they call this the month of Mary,
and in their hall her image is dressed in lace and flowers, with
candles burning around it all day long? It is not so pretty there, I
assure you. Suppose you try that.” Then laughing as if she had
suggested the most absurd of absurdities, Fanny went away.
The dark cloud of depression which had come upon Rose that morning,
and had lifted slightly at John’s words, shadowed her now more densely
than ever. She looked about the room which John’s taste and hers had
made so fair. How everything palled upon her! What good was it to try
to make life as beautiful as possible, if even in life she ceased to
care for the beautiful? The strong, the true, the lasting, was what
she needed now.
It seemed to her that there was no hope anywhere. She fled out into
the open air, and walked fast to escape her haunting thoughts; but
there was no escape from self. Passing the hall where the Catholics
had services, she saw an old woman climbing the steps, remembered
Fanny’s words, and followed her. “Since the beautiful fails me,” she
thought with a bitter smile, “I will look at what is not beautiful.”
It was a very dingy hall, and uninviting. On the side walls were poor
wood-cuts representing the scenes of the Passion. On a plain white
wood altar a lamp was burning. Near by hung a colored print of the
Saviour, but as Rose had never seen him portrayed before—with his
Heart exposed upon his breast, and great blood-drops falling from it.
Rose shrank from the sight; it displeased her. Close by the altar-rail
was a highly-colored and gaudily-decorated statue of the Blessed
Virgin, with flowers distastefully arranged about it. The old woman
had fallen on her knees before it, and was praying. Rose wondered at
her.
But she was strangely conscious of a peculiar quiet in the place; it
soothed her. She sat down on one of the benches, and took up a book
lying there. _The Key of Heaven_ it was called; a very soiled and worn
book it was; she hardly liked to touch it. It opened at the Apostles’
Creed. “He ascended into heaven,” she read.
Who was “he”? Jesus Christ—God! So Catholics believed as well as Mr.
Gray; in this they were agreed. But, oh! what difference did it make?
God and heaven were so very far away—if indeed there were a heaven
anywhere—that who on earth could tell anything about them? She looked
up wearily from the book; again her eyes met the poor print of the
Sacred Heart, the poor statue of the holy Mother. Like a flash the
thought came into her mind, “Jesus Christ—God—ascended into heaven,
and he had a heart like ours, and he had a mother.”
It was not as if she were uttering a belief—whether Jesus Christ was
God she did not know; she was not even thinking about it then. But it
was as if she had grasped a link in a mighty chain, which, if one
other link could be supplied, would solve and settle all doubt for
ever. Over and over she said the words, fearing to lose or forget
them: “Jesus Christ—God—ascended into heaven, and he had a heart like
ours, and he had a mother.” If this was true, how God in heaven must
pity her, how he must love her!
And suddenly the tears were falling on Rose’s cheeks. When she had
wept last she could not tell; certainly not since Ellen Lawton’s
death, though she had often craved the relief of tears. Now they fell
softly and plenteously, while she kept repeating the strange formula
with a keen sense that it soothed her and she was resting; and oh! she
had been so tired. A mother, a mother—how very sweet it must be to
have a mother! And a God with a heart like ours, a heart that could be
wounded and bleed and suffer sorely; oh! how one must love a God like
that.
“John,” she said abruptly, when they were sitting by the study-lamp
after tea, “what are Catholics? I mean, what do you know about them?”
“Not much of anything,” he answered in some surprise, “except as one
is always coming upon them in history and the papers. Why?”
“What makes them different from Protestants? Aren’t you always coming
upon them too?”
“Not in the same way, child. You know that Protestants are not so—so
obtrusive.”
“But why, John? I want to know about them.”
There was an animation in her manner which reminded him of old times;
he saw that she was really in earnest, and set himself to answer her
in his straightforward, kindly way, glad to notice any change for the
better in her tone of mind.
“I have never thought very much about them, Rose,” he said; “but every
general reader must come in contact with them somehow, even if, like
me, he has not had personal acquaintance with them in society. Of
course you know the distinguishing features of confession and
transubstantiation, the papacy, the worship of saints and relics,
prayer for the dead.”
“Are you sure they are all wrong?”
“Not at all. We were brought up to think them wrong, but I have never
looked so deeply into the matter as to make such an assertion on my
own judgment; it never has seemed worth while. However, if you care
for my opinion, I will tell you what, from all I have read and heard,
presents itself to my mind as the peculiar and fatal mark of
Catholicism. It is its claim of absolute authority over the bodies and
minds and souls of men—a claim which reached its height of tyranny in
the declaration of the infallibility of the pope.”
“What does that mean, John?”
“Why, that whatever the pope may say—no matter who he is, remember, if
he is only a pope—that thing you and I and every one must believe to
be right. However, I mean to be just to all sects. If I have the idea
rightly, their exact claim is this: that the pope, as pope, speaking
to the whole church as the Head of the Church, cannot be mistaken,
simply because God will not permit him to be. Do you understand?”
She was sitting in the full light of the lamp. He noticed the quiet,
thoughtful look upon her face; it made him very happy to see it there.
“John,” she said after a minute’s pause, “why should it not be?”
“What, Rose?”
“I mean, if there is a God Almighty, why could he not keep a man from
error in teaching, just as easily as he could make a man in the first
place?”
“Really,” said John with an amused smile at what he thought her
brightness, “I don’t see but that he could; that is, if you give up
the idea that we are free agents.”
“But do they say he is not generally a free agent?” Rose asked, like
one thinking out a problem. “Only, when God wants to use him to teach
the church, he will not let him teach a lie. _Why_ should not an
Almighty God do that? O John! look here.”
She hurried to the bookcase, brought back and opened the _Book of
Common Prayer_. “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic
Church,” she read. “Then there are those who do really believe it; who
really think that now—to-day—there is a church where God speaks
plainly and unmistakably, and always will speak so, and there can be
no error?”
“Yes, Rose.”
Was it only the glow of the lamplight shining upon her face? Did his
eyes deceive him, or was that creature, radiant with happiness and a
bloom of beauty never witnessed there before—was this his poor and
fading Rose of that very noon? Once in his life he had heard a child
laugh who had been suddenly and entirely released from excruciating
pain—a low, sweet laugh most exquisite to hear in the sense it gave of
indescribable relief. Such a laugh he heard now from Rose’s lips,
which he had almost feared would never so much as smile again.
“John,” she said exultingly, “I have it! There is a Heavenly
Father—God—and he made us all. And there is Jesus Christ—God—who
ascended into heaven, and he had a heart like ours, and he had a
mother. And there is a Holy Ghost—God—who is with the church, and so
she _cannot_ lie. And how those three are one, and how the blood of
Christ saves us, we may never be able to explain; but, if there is a
God, he will never let his church tell lies or err or make mistakes,
and whatever his church says that we ought to believe, whether we
understand it or not. And only Catholics claim an infallible voice.
John, I am going to try it. I shall speak to the priest to-morrow.”
“You are your own mistress, Rose,” he said gravely. “You can do as you
please. I only warn you that after that one act of your own choice,
you must give up your reason and will to another.”
The color flashed more brightly in her cheeks. He was amazed as he
looked at her; once again the fire was in her eyes, and the brilliant
intellect shone in the face that had been dulled so long.
“I shall give up my reason and my will to God,” she said. “It is he
who will speak to me, without erring and without lying. I do not
expect to be as wise as my Creator, and I am sure I shall be none the
worse for it when he who is wisdom itself teaches me. It is God that I
am talking about, John, and not a mere man that can make mistakes. I
am quite content to yield my intellect and my will to him.”
And then, as suddenly as it had come, the glow faded from her face;
she was kneeling down beside him with that look of anguish in her eyes
which for so many long weeks had wrung his heart with pity. “You know
I have suffered,” she said, “but, John, it is only the outside you
have seen; you can’t tell what it has been within. And now a great
light is coming—I am sure of it. It is not the love of beauty or
anything I used to crave. It is the thing I need and we all need;
something stronger than we are: something that cannot by any
possibility teach us a lie; something that cannot by any possibility
err; something plain to hear and plain to see—infallible! I have not
got it yet; I am only on my way to it. If it was in your power to stop
me, would you do it?”
“I do not understand you, Rose,” he answered thoughtfully, “nor do I
entirely follow your train of reasoning. Still, I grant that for a
temperament such as yours has of late disclosed itself to be there is
comfort in what you think you see. No, I would not say a word to stop
you, my poor child! It goes against the grain to think of one of us
becoming a Catholic; but if anything will help you, I shall bless the
hand that brings relief.”
She looked full in his face with a look of grave surprise. “I did not
think that of you,” she said; “you always have seemed so honest. Don’t
you know that nothing in heaven or earth can satisfy me, unless it is
the _truth_? No shams, no half-way things, but something like rock
that will never fail. I did not think that of you, John!”
John sat alone and puzzled over her words that night. “I always have
to puzzle things out,” he said. “They never come to me like a flash,
as they do to Rose. Stop, though! I am wrong there. She has been
months in getting at it, and they were months that almost killed her.
Why was it?”
Plainly enough he saw at last why it was. God, the soul,
eternity—those things which are invisible—were more real to Rose than
the visible things. And should they not be? He knew very well that he
would be stung to the quick to be told that his body—his material,
tangible, lower nature—had the upper hand in his life. No, his reason,
his intellect—something intangible and invisible anyhow, by whatever
name you named it—was the governing power. And if so, then why should
not One invisible and intangible be the ruler of that, and claim from
him more than a merely blameless life and an honest fame; demand
submission of his will and reason and thought? John shook his head
ruefully; the idea struck home; he did not like it, but there it was.
The next day Rose quietly laid before him her little Catechism, open
at the very first section, and John read this:
“_Question._ _Who made you?_
“_Answer._ GOD.
“_Q._ Why did he make you?
“_A._ That I might know him, love him, and serve him in this
world, and be happy with him for ever in the next.
“_Q._ To whose likeness did he make you?
“_A._ To his own image and likeness.
“_Q._ Is this likeness in your body or in your soul?
“_A._ In my soul.
“_Q._ In what is your soul like to God?
“_A._ Because my soul is a spirit endowed with understanding
and free will, and is immortal—that is to say, can never
die.
“_Q._ In what else is your soul like to God?
“_A._ Because as in God there are three persons and one God,
so in man there is one soul and three powers.
“_Q._ Which are the three powers?
“_A._ Will, memory, and understanding.
“_Q._ Which must we take most care of, our body or our soul?
“_A._ Of our soul.
“_Q._ Why so?
“_A._ Because, ‘What doth it profit a man if he gain the
whole world and lose his own soul?’
“_Q._ What must we do to save our soul?
“_A._ We must worship God by faith, hope, and charity; that
is, we must believe in him, hope in him, and love him with
all our heart.
“_Q._ How shall we know the things which we are to believe?
“_A._ From the Catholic Church of God, which he has
established by innumerable miracles, and illustrated by the
lives and deaths of innumerable saints.”
“John,” said Rose steadily, “be honest with God.”
* * * * *
Professor Howson is a name which no one hears now, though it was once
supposed that it would rank among those of New England’s noblest
scholars. But John Howson teaches still. People had often said of him
that he would never marry; that his books and his sister were enough
for him. He never did marry; but it was God and the church of God that
satisfied him. Once, in a great city, an old friend of his collegiate
days, who had not heard of him for years, met him face to face in his
dress of a religious, and stopped him in utter amazement.
“John Howson! You are unmistakable, but how is this? I was told of
your change, but did not know it had gone so far. Are not your Puritan
ancestors groaning in their shrouds, man, because of such doings?”
The priest returned a courteous answer, and would have turned to other
themes, but his friend persisted. Then, not with the old outspoken
frankness as of one who feared none, but instead, thoughtfully and
humbly as in the very fear of God, there came this reply:
“Once I matched my mind with the mind of God, and judged him, and
thought his will to be of no account. It was a great sin, and he saved
me from it. After that I could only say, as another in like case once
said, ‘I cannot give God less than all.’”
“A great sin?” his friend repeated. “I do not understand that.”
He saw a shade of peculiar awe creep over the countenance before him.
“And is it no sin,” John Howson asked in a deep voice, “to hear said
in the face of God that there is no God? to have counted your own
judgment superior to his? to have given God the lie? One who is now of
the mightiest saints thought that he did God service while he fought
against him, and afterward he named himself the chief of sinners. But
I did not so much as think of the service of God at all in matters of
belief.”
“I can’t see the fault in that,” his friend said wonderingly. “If it
was murder you had on your conscience, I might sympathize with you;
but this!”
“You are fresh from Massachusetts,” said Father Howson, “and it is
years since I was there. Do they still count the mind as nobler than
the body, and the intellect as among their highest gifts?”
“Yes,” was the proud reply.
“Some time,” returned Father Howson with deep meaning in his tone, “we
all shall have to learn that God judges sin of the mind by as terrible
a judgment as sin of the body, and that he demands his gifts with
usury. Believe me, it is better to forestall that judgment, and to
meet that demand here than hereafter.”
And Rose? Long since she learned to say, “I have loved, O Lord, the
beauty of thy house; and the place where thy glory dwelleth.” Long
since she learned that there is One invisible who is fairer than any
child of man, and to him she gave the heart which a wealth of
intellectual and earthly loveliness had failed to satisfy. She has
learned that there is a nobler Blood than any that the world can
boast; His place is with the nobility of an eternal kingdom, whose
peculiar marks of honor are poverty, and self-renunciation, and an
utter lowliness of obedience, whereby every faculty of one’s nature is
brought with a glad free-will into the obedience of Christ. One day
the daughter of the Puritans heard another voice than theirs call her
by that tender name: “Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thy
ear: and forget thy people and thy father’s house. And the King shall
greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord God.” Once before, but
after sore struggle and heartrending suffering, she had heard that
voice. Hearing it again, she rose up joyfully and followed it, as
then, without delay.
PRUSSIA AND THE CHURCH.
III.
We have already alluded to that feature in the recent ecclesiastical
legislation of Prussia which gives to the people the right to choose
their pastors, and we have also seen how nobly the Catholics of
Germany have thwarted this unholy attempt to create dissension and
discord in the church. When it could no longer be doubted that the
German bishops were immovable in their allegiance to the pope, Prussia
sought, by holding out every possible inducement to apostasy, to
create disunion between the priests and the bishops; but in this, too,
she met with signal defeat. Nothing, therefore, remained to be done,
but to devise measures whereby the administration of ecclesiastical
affairs would be placed exclusively in the hands of the laity; since
the breaking of the bonds which unite church and state would not have
as a result that weakening of ecclesiastical power which is so
ardently desired. This Professor Friedberg, in his _German Empire and
the Catholic Church_, expressly states in the following words:
“If the government were to adhere to the plan of a total
separation of church and state, what would be the
consequence? Would the bishops lose their authority because
the state no longer recognized it? Would the parochial
system be broken up if unsupported by the state? In a word,
would the church lose any of her power? It would argue an
absolute want of perception and a total ignorance of
Catholic history to affirm that she would. The stream which
for centuries has flowed in its own channel does not run dry
because its course is obstructed. It only overflows and
floods the country. To continue the metaphor, we must first
seek with all care to draw off the waters, and to lead them
into pools and reservoirs, where what remains will readily
evaporate.”
The Protestants of Prussia are opposed to the separation of church and
state, because they are well aware that in the present condition of
religious opinion in Germany the rationalists and socialists would at
once get control of most of the parishes of the Evangelical church, if
it were deprived of the support of the government; and, on the other
hand, both they and the infidels are persuaded that the Catholic
Church is quite able to maintain herself, and even to wax strong,
without any help from the temporal power.
“One thing,” says the _Edinburgh Review_, “the state is
quite at liberty to do. The state is not bound to pay or
maintain churches or sects which it does not approve.
Indeed, if these conditions are annexed to the acceptance of
state payment, the church herself would do well to reject
the terms. But will Prince Bismarck withdraw the stipend and
set the church free? Nothing of the kind. There is no
freedom of religious orders or communities in Prussia. The
whole spirit of these laws is to make every form of
religious belief and organization as subservient to the
state as a Prussian recruit is to the rattan of a corporal.
That we abhor and denounce as an intolerable oppression; and
it is only by the strangest perversion of judgment that any
Englishman can have imagined that the cause of true
religious liberty was identical with the policy of Prince
Bismarck.”[37]
To consent to a separation of church and state would be a recognition
of the independent existence of the church, which Prussia holds to be
contrary to the true theory of the constitution of human society in
relation to government and religion. This theory is that man exists
for the state, to which he owes his supreme and undivided allegiance;
whose duty it is to train and govern him for its own service alike in
peace and war. All the interests of society, therefore, material,
political, educational, and religious, must be subjected to the state,
independently of which no organization of any kind ought to be
permitted to exist. And in fact the whole spirit of the recent
ecclesiastical legislation of Prussia is in perfect consonance with
this theory. The Falck Laws deny to the church the right to educate
her priests, to decide as to their fitness for the care of souls, to
appoint them to or remove them from office; in a word, the right to
administer her own affairs, and consequently to exist at all as an
organization separate from the state.
It can hardly surprise us that the attempt should have been made to
prove that this is in accordance with the teachings of the New
Testament.
“The New Testament,” says the _British Quarterly_, “requires
that the Christian shall be a loyal subject of the
government under which he lives. ‘Let every soul be subject
unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God;
the powers that be are ordained of God: whosoever therefore
resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.’”[38]
After quoting several texts from the Epistles of St. Paul, of the same
general import, the writer in the _British Quarterly_ continues:
“Now, it is impossible to find in the New Testament any
injunctions of obedience to organized ecclesiastical power,
like those here given of obedience to the civil government.
It is not ecclesiastical authority, nor a corporate
ecclesiastical institution, but the personal God, and the
individual conscience in its direct personal relations with
God, which is set over against an unrighteous demand of the
civil authority in the crucial motto of Peter, ‘We ought to
obey God rather than men,’ and in the teaching of Christ,
‘Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and unto
God the things which are God’s.’ Of conscience as an
ecclesiastical corporation, or of conscience as an imputed
or vicarious faculty, determined and exercised by one for
another, the ethics of the New Testament have no
knowledge.”[39]
It is hard to realize the ignorance or the bad faith of a man who is
capable of making such statements as these. Let us take the last words
of the gospel of St. Matthew: “And Jesus coming, spoke to them,
saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going,
therefore, teach ye all nations, … teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you; and, behold, I am with you all days,
even to the consummation of the world.” Here surely is an organized
body of men, receiving from Christ himself the divine command to teach
all the nations of the earth their religious faith and duties, which
necessarily carries with it the right to exact obedience. But, lest
there be any room for doubt, let us hear Christ himself: “He that
heareth you, heareth me: and he that despiseth you despiseth me. And
he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.”[40]
Again: “And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the
heathen and the publican. Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind
upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall
loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.”[41]
When Peter and John were brought into court and “charged not to speak
at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus,” they should have submitted at
once, upon the theory that the state has the right to exact supreme
and undivided allegiance; but they appealed to their divine
commission, just as the bishops of Germany do to-day, and answered,
“We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”[42]
And in the council at Jerusalem, “an ecclesiastical corporation”
surely, the apostles say: “For it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost,
and to us, to lay no further burden upon you than these necessary
things”;[43] plainly indicating and using their right to impose
commands and exact obedience. But enough of this. The persecutors of
the church to-day are not at all concerned about the teachings of the
New Testament. The attempt, however, to make it appear that only
Catholics protest against the doctrine of absolute and undivided
allegiance to the state is wholly unjustifiable. There is no
Protestant sect in England or the United States which would submit to
the intervention of the government in its spiritual life and internal
discipline. Would the Methodists, or the Baptists, or the
Presbyterians permit the state to decide what kind of education their
ministers are to receive, or to determine whether they are capable of
properly discharging their spiritual duties, or to keep in office by
force those whom the church had cast off? They would go out to pray on
the hillside and by the river banks rather than submit to such
tyranny.
Is not the right of revolution, which in our day, especially outside
of the Catholic Church, is held to be divine, based upon the principle
of divided allegiance? Practically it is impossible to distinguish
between loyalty to the government and loyalty to the state; and no man
in this age thinks of questioning the right of rebellion against a
tyrannical government. This divided allegiance marks the radical
difference between Christian and pagan civilization. Before Christ
there was no divided allegiance, because the individual was absorbed
by the state, and nothing could have wrested mankind from this bondage
but a great spiritual organization such as the Catholic Church; and
this, we believe, is generally admitted by our adversaries. They fail
to perceive, however, that there is no other institution than the
Catholic Church which has the power to prevent the state from again
absorbing the individual and destroying all civil and political
liberty. If the church could be broken up into national
establishments, and the entire control of education handed over to the
state, the bringing all men to the servile temper which characterizes
the Russians and Protestant Prussians would be only a question of
time. Many will be inclined to hold that the general freedom, and even
license, of thought of our time would be a sufficient protection
against any such danger.
A little reflection, however, will suffice to dispel this illusion. No
number of individuals, unless they are organized, can successfully
oppose tyranny; and mere speculations or opinions as to the abstract
right of resistance can not stop the march of the state toward
absolutism. The most despotic states have often encouraged the most
unbounded freedom of thought, and we need not go beyond Prussia for an
example. In no country in the world has there been more of what is
called free-thinking, nor has any government been more tolerant of
wild theories and extravagant speculations; and yet the free-thinkers
and _illuminati_ have done nothing to promote the growth of free
institutions or to encourage civil or religious liberty. They are
without unity or organization or programme. Many of them to-day are
the strongest supporters of Bismarckian despotism. Even in 1848 they
succeeded only in getting up a mob and evaporating in wild talk.
The divine right of resistance to tyranny would have no sanction or
efficacy if it were not kept living in the hearts of men by
supernatural religion.
This is thoroughly understood by the advocates of absolutism, who do
not trouble themselves about doctrines of any kind, except when they
are upheld by organizations, and for this reason all their efforts are
directed to the destruction of the organic unity of the church. Had
Prince Bismarck succeeded in his attempt to get the Catholic
congregations which have been deprived of their priests to elect
pastors for themselves, there would have been but another step to open
schism, which would have inevitably resulted in favor of Old
Catholicism. But, as we have seen, out of more than a hundred
parishes, not one has lent itself to the iniquitous designs of the
enemies of the church.
Another striking example of the perfect unanimity of thought and
action which in Prussia exists between priests and people was given
last year when the so-called State-Catholics tried to get up a protest
against the encyclical letter of the Pope, in which he declared that
the May Laws were not binding upon the consciences of Catholics. All
the liberal papers of Germany were loud in praise of this project,
which presented the fairest opportunity to Catholic government
officials to curry favor by showing their acceptance of the Falck
laws; and yet, in spite of every effort that was made, only about a
thousand signatures were obtained, most of which were found outside of
the eight millions of Prussian Catholics.
Mr. Gladstone, in his article on the “Speeches of Pope Pius IX.,”[44]
says of the Catholic clergy that they “are more and more an army, a
police, a caste; further and further from the Christian Commons, but
nearer to one another and in closer subservience to the pope.” However
near the Catholic clergy may be to one another, it certainly shows a
great lack of power to see things as they are to maintain that they
are losing the hold which more than any other class of men they have
always had on the hearts of the people. The persecution in Germany has
shown there that inseparable union of priest and people which is
to-day as universal as the life of the church. Had there existed any
seed of discord, it certainly would have sprung up and flourished in
Prussia during the last four or five years.
What circumstances could have been more favorable to such development
than those created by the Old Catholics in league with Bismarck? The
unprecedented victories over Austria and France had set all Germany
wild with enthusiasm. “Deutschland über alles, über alles in der
Welt,” was the refrain of every song. On the other hand, many
Catholics, especially in Germany, had been prejudiced and somewhat
soured by the false interpretations which were everywhere put on the
dogma of papal infallibility. Just at this moment Dr. Döllinger, whose
reputation was greater than that of any other German theologian,
announced his separation from the church, and at once there gathered
around him a party of dissatisfied or suspended priests and
rationalistic laymen. Reinkens was made bishop, and the Emperor of
Germany publicly prayed that the “certainly correct conviction of the
_Hochwürdiger Herr Bischof_ might win ground more and more.” Fortune
smiled upon the new religion and everything seemed to promise it the
brightest future. What has been the result? In a population of eight
millions of Catholics this sect, with the aid of the state, German
enthusiasm, and the whole liberal press, has been able to gather only
about six thousand adherents; and they are without zeal, without
doctrinal or moral unity, having as yet not even dared to define their
position towards the Pope. Dr. Döllinger himself has lost interest in
the movement, and its most sanguine friends have yielded to
despondency. Old Catholicism was, in fact, impossible from the
beginning. But two roads open before those who to-day go forth from
the fold of the church: the one leads to the Babel and decomposition
of Protestant sectarianism, the other to the unbelief of scientific
naturalism.
To declare that Christianity is lying disjointed, in shattered
fragments, and yet to pretend that human hands, with paste and glue,
out of these broken pieces can remake the heavenly vase once filled
with God’s spirit of faith, hope, and love, is an idle fancy. Into
this patchwork no divine life will come; men will not believe in it,
nor will it inspire enthusiasm or the heroic courage of martyrdom.
Therefore they who leave the church, their native soil, have indeed
all the world before them, and yet no place where they can find rest
for their souls.
What the religious policy of the Prussian Liberals is, Herr von
Kirchmann, to whom in a previous article we introduced our readers,
informs us in the following words:
“The majority of the Liberal representatives are
highly-educated men who have fallen out with the Christian
churches, because they no longer accept their creed, and
therefore hold as a principle that freedom of conscience for
the individual is abundantly sufficient to satisfy the
religious wants of the people. At best, they would consent
to the existence of congregations; any organization beyond
this they consider not only unnecessary but hurtful.”
This, then, is the Liberal programme: the individual shall have
perfect freedom to believe, as he pleases, in God or the devil; but
there shall be no ecclesiastical organization, unless a kind of
congregationalism, which, having neither unity nor strength, can be
easily rendered harmless by being placed under police supervision.
These men of culture, as Herr von Kirchmann says, have fallen out with
all the churches; and they are liberal enough to be willing to do
everything in their power to make it impossible that any of them
should exist at all, since without organic unity of some kind there
can be no church, as there can be no state.
But let us hear what Herr von Kirchmann has to remark upon this
subject.
“This view,” he says, “may satisfy those who have reached
the high degree of culture of the Liberals; but those who
take it utterly ignore the religious wants of the middle and
lower classes, and fail to perceive the yearning,
inseparable from all religious feeling, for association with
persons of like sentiments, in order, through public
worship, to obtain the strength and contentment after which
this fundamental craving of the human heart longs.”
To the existence of this feeling, and its yearning for the largest
possible association, the history of all Christian peoples, down even
to the present day, bears witness; for this reason nowhere have men
been satisfied with the freedom of the individual, but have ever
demanded a church with acknowledged rights and the privilege of free
intercommunion.
“To the dangers which would threaten society if religious
associations should be broken up, and faith left to the whim
of individuals, these highly cultivated men give no heed,
because they do not themselves feel the need of such
support; but they forget that their security, the very
possibility, indeed, of reaching the point at which they
stand, rests upon the power of the church over the masses;
and should they destroy this by allowing the congregations
to break up into atoms, leaving the Christian creed to be
fashioned by passion and ever-varying interests, according
to the fancy of each and every one, nothing would remain but
the brute force of the state, which, without the aid of the
internal dispositions of the people, cannot save society
from complete dissolution.”[45]
Herr von Kirchmann, then, adds his testimony to that of many other
observers who, though they do not believe in the divine origin and
truth of the Christian religion, yet hold that its acceptance by the
masses as a system of belief, received on the authority of a church,
is essential to the preservation and permanence of our civilization.
This is a subject to which we Americans might with great profit give
our thoughts.
As Emerson, who is probably our most characteristic thinker, has
declared that he would write over the portal of the Temple of
Philosophy WHIM, American Protestantism seems more and more inclined
to accept this as the only satisfactory, or indeed possible,
shibboleth in religion. The multiplication of sects holding
conflicting creeds, while it has weakened faith in all religious
doctrines, has helped on the natural tendency of Protestantism to
throw men back upon their own feelings or fancies for their faith.
This, of course, results in the breaking up even of congregations into
atoms of individualism, and will, if not counteracted, necessarily
destroy our character as a Christian people; and for us it is needless
to say Christianity is the only possible religion.
Our statesmen—politicians may be the more proper word—though not
irreligious, lack grasp of mind and depth of view, else they could not
fail to perceive, however little they may sympathize with the
doctrines or what they conceive to be the social tendencies of the
Catholic Church, that just such a strong and conservative Christian
organism as she is, is for us an indispensable political requirement.
That none of the leading minds of the country should have taken this
view is a sad evidence of want of intellectual power or of moral
courage. The most that any of them feel authorized in saying in our
favor is that a country which tolerates free-love, Mormonism, and the
joss-house of the Chinaman ought not, if consistency be a virtue, to
persecute Catholics. In spite of appearances which mislead superficial
observers, we are the most secular people in the world. No other
people is so ready to sacrifice religious to material interests; no
other people has ever to an equal extent banished all religious
instruction from its national education; no other people has ever
taken such a worldly view of its religion. The supernatural in
religion is lost sight of by us, and we value it chiefly for its
social and æsthetic power. The popular creed is that religion is
something which favors republicanism, promotes the exploitation of the
material resources of the globe, softens manners, and makes life
comfortable.
The proposition to tax church property shows that a large portion
of the American people have ceased to believe in religion as a
moral and social power. A church is like a bank or theatre or
coal-mine—something which concerns only those who have stock in it,
and has nothing whatever to do with the public welfare. The
school-house occupies quite other ground. The country is interested in
having all its citizens intelligent; this is for the general good; but
whether they believe in God or the soul is a matter of profound
indifference, unless, possibly, to themselves, since this can in no
way affect the progress or civilization of the American people. This
is evidently the only possible philosophy for those who would tax
church property. The popular contempt for theology encouraged by
nearly all Protestant ministers is another evidence of the tendency to
religious disintegration. There is but little danger that any church
will ever get a controlling influence in the national life of this
country; our peril lies in the opposite direction; and that so few of
those who think should see this is to us the saddest sign of the
times; but those who do recognize it cannot help knowing that the
Catholic Church is the strongest bulwark against this flood-tide.
The social dangers of an open persecution of the Catholic Church are
most clearly seen in Prussia to-day. Since the German chancellor
entered upon his present course of violence five bishops and fifteen
thousand priests have been imprisoned or fined, and about the same
number of laymen have suffered for daring to speak unfavorably of
these proceedings. Never before, probably, have the police been so
generally or constantly employed in arresting men who are loved and
venerated by the people, and whose only crime is fidelity to
conscience. The inevitable consequence of this is that the officers of
the government come to be looked upon, not as the ministers of
justice, but as the agents of tyranny and oppression, which must, of
course, weaken respect for authority. These coercive measures, from
the nature of things, tend only to confirm the Catholics in their
conscientious convictions, and the government is thereby instigated to
harsher methods of dealing with this passive resistance. The number of
confessors of the faith increases, the enthusiasm and devotion of the
people are heightened, and it becomes an honor and a glory to be made
a victim of tyranny. The feeling of disgrace which is attached to the
penalties for violation of law is more efficacious in repressing crime
than the suffering which is inflicted; but this feeling is destroyed,
or rather changed, into one of an opposite character in the minds of
the people when they behold their venerated bishops and much-loved
priests dragged to prison for saying Mass or administering the
sacraments. No amount of reasoning, no refinement of logic, can ever
convince them that there can be anything criminal in the performance
of these sacred functions. In this way the ignominy which in the
public mind follows conviction for crime is wiped away, and the
sacredness of the law itself endangered.
This alone is sufficient to show how blind and thoughtless Prince
Bismarck has been in making war upon the Catholic Church just at the
moment when wise counsels would have led him to seek to add the
strength of reverence and respect to the enthusiasm with which the
creation of the new empire had been hailed. The spoilt child of
success, wounded pride made him mad. How serviceable he might have
found the moral support of the Catholic clergy Herr von Kirchmann has
informed him.
“I myself,” he says, “from 1849 to 1866, with the exception
of some intervals, lived in Upper Silesia, a wholly Catholic
province, and, as the president of the Criminal Senate of a
Court of Appeals, had the fullest opportunity to study the
moral and religious state of the people, which in nothing is
so truly seen as in those circumstances out of which spring
offences against the law. Now, although this province of
more than a million of men was thoroughly Catholic and
entirely in the hands of the clergy; although the school
system was still very imperfect, and the population, with
the exception of the landowners and the inhabitants of the
large cities, not speaking the German language, was thereby
deprived of culture and of intercourse with the German
provinces, yet can I unhesitatingly affirm that the moral
condition of the people was in no way worse than in Saxony
or the Margravate where formerly I held similar official
positions. The number of crimes was rather less, the
security of person and of property greater, and the
relations between the different classes of society far more
peaceable and friendly than in the provinces to which I have
just made allusion. The socage and heavy taxes pressed hard
upon the peasantry; nevertheless in 1848 insurrections
against the landlords were not more frequent here than
elsewhere. It was unquestionably the powerful influence of
the clergy which, in spite of so many obstacles, gave to the
people their moral character, and produced the general
contentment and obedience which reflected the greatest honor
upon the whole population. The vice of drunkenness, through
the agency of temperance societies established solely by the
priests, had been in an almost marvellous manner rooted out
from among the people, and the general welfare made manifest
progress. By means of my official and political position I
had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of a large
number of the pastors and curates, and still to-day I recall
with pleasure my intercourse with these men, for the most
part cultivated, but above all distinguished by their
thorough gentleness of character. They were firm in
maintaining the rights of their church, they were filled
with the excellence of their mission, but they never thought
of thwarting the civil authorities; on the contrary, they
found in the clergy a great and efficacious support, so that
this province needed fewer protective and executive
officials than others.”[46]
No enlightened and fair government has anything to fear from the
influence of men who are as firm in upholding the authority of the
state as they are in asserting their own liberty of conscience; who
will neither do wrong nor tamely submit to it. If, in the social,
religious, and political crisis through which the nations of
Christendom are passing, sound reason is ultimately to prevail and
civilization is to be preserved, the necessity of an institution like
the Catholic Church will come to be recognized by all who are capable
of serious thought. The divided allegiance, the maintenance of the
supremacy of conscience, is essential to the preservation of the
principle of authority in society. If it were possible to nationalize
religion by placing all churches under state control, the authority of
the state would necessarily become that of brute force, and would in
consequence be deprived of its sacredness. The respect of Christian
nations for the civil power is a religious sentiment; and if the
church could cease to be, there would be a radical revolution in the
attitude of the people toward the state. In Europe even now, in
consequence of the progress of unbelief, respect for authority and the
duty of obedience have been so far destroyed in the minds and hearts
of the masses that government is possible only with the support of
immense standing armies, which help on the social dissolution; and
with us things would be in a still worse condition, were it not that
the vast undeveloped resources of the country draw off the energies
which else would be fatal to public order. Our strength and security
are rather in our physical surroundings than in our moral resources.
Our greatest moral force, during the century of our existence, has
been the universal veneration of the people for the Constitution,
which was regarded with a kind of religious reverence; but this
element of strength is fast wasting away and will not pass over as a
vital power into the second century of our life. The criticisms, the
amendments, the patchings, which the Constitution has been made to
suffer, have, more than civil strife, debased it to the common level
of profane parchments and robbed it of the consecration which it had
received in the hearts of the people The change which has taken place,
though it have something of the nature of growth and development, is
yet, unquestionably, more a breaking down and dissevering. The
Catholic Church, by the reverence which she inspires for institutions,
is, and in the future will be yet more, the powerful ally of those who
will stand by the Constitution as our fathers made it.
Our statesmen, we know, are in the habit of looking elsewhere for the
means which are to give permanence to our free institutions. The
theory now most in favor is that universal education is the surest
safeguard of liberty, and it is upon this more than upon anything else
that we, as a people, rely for the perpetuity of our form of
government. This hope, we cannot but think, is based upon an erroneous
opinion of the necessary tendency of intellectual culture; which is to
increase the spirit of criticism, and consequently, by dissatisfying
the mind with what is, to direct it continually to new experiments,
with the hope of finding something better. Now, though this may be
well enough in the realms of speculation, and may be a great help to
the progress of science, it most assuredly does not tend either to
beget or to foster reverence for existing institutions of any kind;
and this same mental habit which has already made American
Protestantism so fragmentary and contradictory will beyond doubt
weaken and, unless counteracted, destroy the unity of our political
life. This is a question which does not concern us alone; with it is
bound up the future of the human race. If the American experiment of
government by the people fails, all hope of such government perishes.
If we allow our personal prejudices to warp our judgment in a matter
so catholic and all-important, no further evidence of our unfitness
for the great mission which God seems to have assigned us is needed.
Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of politicians for whom all other
questions than the present success of party have no interest, and who
therefore flatter the passions of the people instead of seeking to
enlighten them; and the insane hatred and fear of the church which the
Protestant masses have inherited from the Old World prevents them from
seeing what a source of strength and bond of union is her strong and
firmly-knit organism in a social state like ours, in which there are
so many elements of dissolution and disintegration.
Herr von Kirchmann, though, as we have seen, not a Catholic nor a
Christian, is yet too profound a statesman not to recognize the
supreme social importance of the church to the modern world.
“Human society,” he says, “cannot do without the principle
of authority, of obedience, of respect for law, any more
than it can do without the principle of individual freedom;
and now that the family has been shoved into the background,
there remains to uphold this principle of authority only one
great institution, and that is the Christian churches, and,
above all, the Catholic Church.
“The Reformation has so filled the Evangelical Church with
the principle of self-examination and self-determination
that she cannot at all take upon herself the mission of
protectress of authority, of respect for law, as law; which
is essential to modern society. She is also too far removed
from the laity, and lacks those special institutions which
would enable her energetically to uphold this principle.
“The same is true of all reform parties within the church,
and must be applied to the Old Catholics, should they
succeed in acquiring any importance. The Roman Catholic
Church alone must be considered the true mother of respect
for authority. She does not permit the individual to decide
in matters of faith and discipline; and she most perfectly
realizes the essence of religion, which cannot proceed from
the individual, but must have its source in the commandments
of God. In the bishops, in the councils, in the pope, the
individual finds authorities who announce to him religious
truth, and by the administration of the sacraments bring him
nearer to God. Changes in faith and worship which, with the
progress of science and of general culture, become
necessary, are here withdrawn from the disputes of the
learned and the criticism of individuals; in the councils
and in their head, the pope, an institution is found by
which modifications may be permitted without shaking faith
in the teachings of the church.
“In the position of the priest toward the laity this
relation of the individual to the church becomes most
intimate, and numerous special ordinances cultivate the
spirit of obedience and respect for the commands of
ecclesiastical superiors, while they also serve the ends of
Christian charity and benevolence. It ought not, indeed, to
be denied that this repression of individual
self-determination and this fostering of obedience may be
carried too far, and to some extent has, in the Catholic
Church, been exaggerated, as in civil society the
cultivation of individual freedom and the repression of
authority have produced an opposite excess; but precisely
through the interaction of these extremes will the true mean
be obtained; and therefore ought the state to seek in the
Catholic Church that powerful institution which alone, by
virtue of her whole organization, is able to ward off the
dangers which threaten society from the exaggeration of the
principle of individual freedom. But to do this the church
must be left in the possession of her constitution as it has
hitherto existed, and the state, consequently, should not
interfere with her external power any further than its own
existence demands. In this respect the principle of
individual freedom which pervades all modern life is so
powerful an auxiliary of the state that no fear of the
influence of the church need be felt, of which a little too
much is far less dangerous to society than too little.
“These are considerations, indeed, which are not in harmony
with the programme of modern liberalism, and will therefore
have but little weight with those who swim with the current
of the time; nevertheless, if we look around us, we perceive
many evidences of the instinctive feeling of human society
that in the Catholic Church may be found a protection for
the harmony of social life which now no longer exists
elsewhere. Only in this way can we explain the rapid growth
of the Catholic Church in her strictly hierarchical
constitution in America, and the increasing Catholic
movement in England, together with the efforts of the
Established Church to draw nearer to the Catholic; and this
tendency would be far more pronounced had it not to contend
against historical reminiscences which in England are more
vivid than elsewhere. Similar reasons influence the
government of France to seek rather to strengthen than to
weaken the power of the church; and in this matter the
unbelieving Thiers has not acted otherwise than the
religious MacMahon.
“After the principle of authority had been shaken by
revolutions and an unhappy war in France more than in any
other country, the people knew not where to seek help,
except in the fostering of religion and the support of the
Catholic Church. Like grounds prevent Italy and Austria from
coming to an open rupture with the church; they prefer to
yield somewhat in the execution of the laws rather than
suffer themselves to be deprived of her indispensable aid.
Similar tendencies exist in the other German governments,
and also among the rich and powerful families of Germany and
Prussia. Everywhere, even where these families are not
adherents of the Catholic faith, they feel that this church
is a fortress against the anarchy of individual freedom
which should be defended and not destroyed. The members of
these families are not blind to the defects of the church;
but they know that in the present age these are the least to
be feared, while her power against the self-exaltation of
the individual is indispensable to modern society. It is
altogether a mistake to attribute this bearing of the
wealthy classes of all civilized nations towards the church
to selfish motives or to the cunning of priests; these
motives may, as in all great things, slip in in isolated
cases; but this whole movement in Europe and America springs
from deeper causes—from causes which lie at the very bottom
of our common nature, which can neither suffer the loss of
freedom nor yet do without order and authority.
“About every ten years we are assured that, if only this or
that is reached, the Catholic Church will of herself fall to
pieces. Never has the attempt to bring about this
consummation been made with more spirit and energy than in
the literature and political constitutions of the last
century; and yet this church lives still in our day, and
what she has lost in temporal sovereignty is doubly and
trebly made up to her in the growing number of her children
and the gradually-increasing insight into the significance
of her mission for human society.
“For this reason the present conflict with the church in
Prussia ought not to be pushed so far as to bring her power
as low as the state has brought that of the Evangelical
Church. If the Catholic Church is to fulfil the great social
mission which we have just described, and which consists
essentially in her maintaining an equilibrium between
freedom and obedience, which is indispensable to society and
the state, her external power and internal organization must
not be interfered with in a way to render the accomplishment
of this exalted mission impossible.”[47]
Herr Joerg, the editor of one of the first reviews of Germany, has
said that Prince Bismarck has done more to strengthen and make popular
the Catholic cause in the empire than the two hundred Jesuits whom he
has exiled could have done in half a century. This, we believe, is
coming to be generally recognized. The war on the church was begun
with loud boastings. Men of high position declared that in two years
not a Catholic would be left in Germany. The prince chancellor
disdained to treat with the Pope or the bishops, and defiantly entered
upon his course of draconic legislation to compel to his stubborn will
the consciences of eight millions of Prussian subjects. He is not able
to conceal his disappointment. With glory enough to satisfy the most
ambitious he could not rest content, but must court defeat. All his
hopes have fallen to the ground. The Old Catholics who were to have
been his most powerful allies have sunk into the oblivion of contempt;
the priests whom he expected to throw off the authority of their
bishops have not been found; the uprising of the laity against their
pastors has not taken place; the bishop who was to have put himself at
the head of a German Catholic Church has not appeared; the Falck laws
have not served the purpose for which they were enacted, nor have the
numerous supplementary bills met with better success. He has indeed
made his victims personally most uncomfortable; bishops and priests he
has cast into dungeons, monks and nuns he has driven forth from their
homes and their country to beg the bread of exile; laymen he has sent
to jail for speaking and writing the truth; but with all this he has
not advanced one step towards the end he aims at. He has not made a
breach in the serried Catholic phalanx. His legislation has nearly
doubled the number of Catholic representatives in the parliament; it
has given new life and wider influence to the Catholic press; it has
welded the union of bishops, priests, and people, and bound all closer
to the Pope. From their dungeons the bishops and priests come forth
and are received in triumph like conquering heroes; imprisonments and
fines of Catholic editors serve only to increase the circulation of
their journals. In the meantime the radicals and revolutionists are
gaining strength, crime is becoming more common, and the laws aimed at
the church are beginning to tell upon the feebler organizations of
Protestantism. Since the law on civil marriage has been passed
comparatively few contract matrimony in the presence of the Protestant
ministers; great numbers refuse to have their children baptized or to
have the preachers assist at the burial of the dead. The government
has become alarmed, and quite recently circulars have been sent to the
officials charged with carrying out the law on civil marriage, in
which they are instructed to inform the contracting parties that the
law does not abrogate the hitherto existing regulation concerning
ecclesiastical marriage, and that they are still bound to present
themselves before the clergyman and to have their children baptized as
formerly. The service of the police, we need scarcely say, is not
required to induce the Catholics to seek the blessing of the church
upon their marriage contracts or to have their children baptized.
The result of all this is that many wise and large-minded men, like
Von Hoffmann, Von Gerlach, and Von Kirchmann, have lost all sympathy
with the policy of Bismarck towards the Catholic Church, as well as
confidence in its success. They now thoroughly understand that, were
it possible to destroy the church, this would be an irreparable
misfortune for the fatherland. The state needs the church more than
the church the state. She can live with Hottentots and Esquimaux, but
without her neither liberty nor culture can be permanent. It must also
be humiliating to Prince Bismarck to see with what little success
those who have sought to ape him have met. Mr. Gladstone, from faith
in the chancellor, thought to bolster up a falling party by
“expostulating” with the Pope, and he has succeeded only in finding
himself in the company of Newdegate and Whalley. President Grant has
been made to believe that the Pope is such a monstrous man that by
means of him even a third term might become possible; and he will
retire to the obscurity of private life with the stigma of having
sought to stir up religious strife for the furtherance of his own
private interest.
[37] April, 1874, p. 195.
[38] Romans xiii. 1, 2.
[39] The _British Quarterly_, January, 1875, p. 17.
[40] Luke x. 16.
[41] Matthew xviii. 17, 18.
[42] Acts iv. 20.
[43] Acts xv. 28.
[44] The _London Quarterly Review_, January, 1875, p. 160.
[45] _Der Culturkampf_, § 28, 29.
[46] _Culturkampf_, pp. 33, 34.
[47] _Culturkampf_ pp. 44-47.
NOTRE DAME DE PITIE.
“Was ever sorrow like, unto my sorrow?”
There is in the Imperial Library at Paris an old copy of the gospels
written on parchment, evidently of the fourteenth or fifteenth
century, with the arms of Colbert on the cover. It once belonged to
the church of Albi. At the end of the gospels is the _Planctus_, or
_Complainte de Notre Dame_ in the _langue d’Oc_—the old language of
Southern France—full of naïve piety and charming simplicity. No one
could hear unmoved the touching tone of reproach and grief it breathes
throughout. It is in thirty-two stanzas, the lines of which,
monotonous and melancholy, are like the repeated tollings of a funeral
bell. The last words of each verse are an expression of exhausted
grief—the dying away of a voice drowned in tears.…
It is entitled: “Here begins the Plaint in honor of the Passion of our
Lord Jesus Christ and the sorrow of his most holy Mother.”
“Planh sobre planh! dolor sobre dolor!
Cel e terra an perdut lor senhor,
E yeu mon filh, el solelh sa clardor;
Jusieus lan mort an grande desonor.
Ay filh, tan mortal dolor!”[48]
The cry of _Ay filh!_—“Alas! my Son”—at the end of every verse is like
a sob that breaks the plaint. This long wail of maternal grief, which
no translation fully renders, was doubtless sung round many an effigy
of the dead Christ in the dim old churches of Languedoc centuries ago,
just as the people of the Pyrenees at this day gather around their
dead to weep and improvise a dirge of sorrow. We were particularly
touched at coming across this ancient document; for it seemed to echo
the devotion to the Mother of Sorrows which we had found written all
over southwestern France. Everywhere in this _Terra Mariæ_ are
churches and oratories in honor of _Notre Dame de Pitié_, most of
which are monuments of an age as sorrowful as the holy mystery they
commemorate.
It is remarkable how popular devotion turned to the _Mater Dolorosa_
in the sixteenth century, when Christ seemed bleeding anew in this
land of altars ruined and priests slaughtered by the Huguenots.
Numberless are the legends of the apparitions of Our Lady of Sorrows
in those sad days, which led to the erection of a great number of
churches wherein she is represented holding her divine Son taken down
from the cross—one of the most affecting appeals that can be made to
the human heart. For the long, sad procession of mourners who go
weeping and groaning through this valley of tears—_gementes et
flentes in hac lacrymarum valle_—constitutes the greater part of the
human race. The widow, the orphan, the friendless, the infirm, the
needy, and the laborer with little or no joy in life, when they turn
towards Mary, love to find her at the foot of the cross in mute sorrow
over the inanimate form of her Son, or with the wheel of swords in her
bleeding heart, or some other attribute of human infirmity. Hence the
names given to these mountain chapels by the sorrowful as a mark
of their trust in this sweet type of grief: _Notre Dame des
Larmes_, _Notre Dame des Souffrances_, _de la Consolation_, _de
l’Espérance_—names which have balm in their very sound. Above all is
the title which seems to include all other sorrows—_Notre Dame de
Pitié_—the most common among the perils of the mountain streams and on
the broad moors of the Landes. There are innumerable _Pietàs_, or
_Pitiés_, all through this region—on the sands of the seashore below
Bayonne, where the sailors go to pray before embarking on the
perfidious waves of the Bay of Biscay; in dangerous mountain passes,
as in the oratory of Pène-Taillade beyond Arreau; among country
groves, as in the lone sanctuary near Lannemezan to which the
husbandman resorts to be spared the ravages of hail among his vines
and wheat-fields; in the valleys of Bigorre; on the Calvary of
Betharam; on the heights near Pau; and at Goudosse, where the poor
_goîtreux_ of the mountains go to pray. Yes, the shadow of this great
type of sorrow extends over all the land. There are several chapels of
_Notre Dame de Pitié_ in the ecclesiastical province of Auch that are
particularly renowned. One of these is the beautiful chapel of _Notre
Dame de Garaison_, in the Diocese of Tarbes, dear to every Catholic
heart in the land, embosomed among the hills of the Hautes Pyrénées
like a lily in the green valley, whose Madonna was solemnly crowned in
1865, by the authorization of Pope Pius IX., in the presence of forty
thousand people. At the very entrance is a _Pietà_, melting the heart
with the sight of the pale, inanimate Christ and Mary’s incomparable
woe.
“_Ay filh, tan mortal dolor!_”
Within are dim Gothic arches, large gilt statues of the twelve
apostles, and the holy image of the _Mère des Douleurs_, before which
we went to pray amid devout pilgrims. At one side is the fountain of
healing waters; behind is a garden of roses; and on the other side are
cloisters shaded with acacias, in the centre of which is the white
Madonna standing serene and holy in the peaceful solitude with
outstretched arms, as if calling on all:
“Dites, dites une oraison
A la Vierge de Garaison
Vous qui en ces lieux amène la souffrance,
Bon pèlerins,
Accablés de chagrins,
Pour que vos cœurs s’ouvrent à l’espérance.
Dans ce séjour,
Dites avec amour,
Dites, dites une oraison,
A la Vierge de Garaison!”[49]
Near Gimont, in the department of Gers, is _Notre Dame de Cahuzac_, in
a pleasant valley on the left bank of a stream that bathes the walls
of the church. Like all places of pilgrimage in this land of favored
sanctuaries, it has its old legend, which is associated with a
venerable elm, the relic of past ages. It was in the sixteenth century
when a young shepherd, leading his flock at an early hour to a distant
pasture, saw an elm in a garden by the wayside surrounded by an
extraordinary light. The amazed youth fell on his knees—a spontaneous
act in those days when the heart turned naturally to God at the moment
of terror—stammered a prayer, and, unable to turn his eyes away, saw
through the branches aflame, but not consumed, the wondrous form of
Our Lady of Pity. As soon as he recovered his self-possession he ran
to the Cistercian abbey at Gimont, and the monks, going to the tree,
found the sacred, image of Mary, which they bore in procession to
their church with songs of praise. The next day it was gone, and they
found it again in the favored elm. Three times they bore it to their
church: three times it returned to the tree. It was no use to contend
with divine Providence. The garden was then purchased and an oratory
built on the spot—a graceful monument of rural piety, to which one
generation after another has resorted for spiritual favors and
physical aid. It has its silver lamps and vessels; its walls are hung
with golden hearts, valuable medals, and other offerings from the
grateful votary. There is great devotion among Catholics to the one
leper who returned to give thanks.
Cahuzac became renowned throughout the kingdom and attracted pilgrims
of the highest distinction—lords, bishops, and cardinals. The
archbishops of Auch, who bore the high title of Primate of the two
Navarres, when they took possession of their see, came to place
themselves under the protection of Our Lady of Cahuzac. Popes granted
indulgences to the chapel, which thousands of pilgrims came annually
to win—not only peasants from the neighboring fields, but the nobles
of the land in penitential garb, with bare feet bleeding from the
roughness of the way.
This holy sanctuary was saved, as it were, by a miracle from the
Huguenots who came to lay it waste three centuries ago, the leader
being struck down, as by an invisible hand, at the very door, to the
consternation of his followers. It was closed at the Revolution, but
again spared; and when better days arrived, it was reopened to popular
devotion. The Abbé de Cahuzac, a young nobleman who had renounced the
honors of the world and received holy orders at Rome, became chaplain
of the church that bore his name. He served it with zeal and affection
for more than thirty years, and at his death bequeathed a part of his
fortune for its support, leaving behind him a holy memory still dear
to the people.
A confraternity of _Notre Dame de Pitié_ was founded in this chapel by
Dom Bidos, abbot of Gimont, under the patronage of Cardinal de
Polignac, which became celebrated in the province and included all
ranks of society. Men of illustrious birth, beside the man of humblest
condition, bore the lighted torch before the revered image of Cahuzac
in the public processions.
The arches and walls of the church were, under Henry IV., covered with
rich paintings, which in time became half effaced. The church has been
recently restored, and attracts great numbers of pilgrims from the
neighboring departments. It consists of a nave and five chapels. Over
the main altar is the revered statue, full of sweet, sad grace, at the
feet of which so many have sought consolation. On one of the capitals
in the nave is sculptured an episode from the old _Roman du Renard_,
in which the fox takes the guise of a preacher to a barnyard auditory,
who do not perceive the store of provisions already accumulated in the
hood thrown back on his shoulders. This species of satire was one of
the liberties of former times of which artists largely availed
themselves.
Another chapel of _Notre Dame de Pitié_ is at Sainte-Gemme, built
against the walls of an old feudal castle—a cave-like oratory of the
thirteenth century, beneath a square tower, simple, antique, severe.
Its gilt statue of the Mother of Sorrows and a few old frescos of the
Passion are the sole ornaments, unless we except the arms of the old
lords of Sainte-Gemme, carved among the arches. When the castle was
besieged by the Protestants in the sixteenth century, the _châtelaine_
and her attendants betook themselves to the foot of the altar, where
they prayed with fervor while the lord of the place defended it
against the attacks of the enemy. A superhuman power seemed to aid
him. After a few days the siege was raised, and he came, with his
handful of brave followers, to ascribe the deliverance to Our Lady of
Pity. The chapel became celebrated, and so great at times was the
affluence of the pilgrims that services were held in the court of the
castle before an altar set up beneath a venerable elm. Every Friday,
in the good old times, the chaplain piously read the Passion according
to St. John in this chapel, and then sang on his knees the _Stabat
Mater_ with the verse,
“Quando corpus morietur,
Fac ut animæ donetur
Paradisi gloria,”
to obtain a happy end for the dying.
In the middle of the sixteenth century Dominique de Cuilhens was
appointed chaplain of Sainte-Gemme. He was born in the vicinity—in the
old manor-house of Cuilhens, which falling into his possession in the
year 1569, he at once drew up a will in which he founded the little
hospital of St. Blaise for the poor, and bequeathed to the needy of
the parish the annual sum of forty-five livres, which the magistrates
of the place, who were the executors, continued to pay till 1789.
In 1648 the lord of Sainte-Gemme, about to join the royal army in
Catalonia, made a will, in which, in order to encourage morality in
the town, greatly weakened by the troubles of the times, he gave the
interest of a thousand livres, to be distributed annually by the
rector and consuls of the place to girls of irreproachable morals
about to marry—a legacy regularly paid till 1792.
The widow of his brother, Marie d’Antras, in her will ordered her body
to be buried in the sanctuary where the lords of Sainte-Gemme had been
buried since the ninth century, and left extensive domains for the
foundation and support of a chapel adjoining, to be served by three
chaplains, who were to say two requiem Masses a week for her soul, a
_De Profundis_ at the end of every Mass, and perform a funeral service
on the anniversary of her death. Moreover, the parishioners were to be
summoned by the ringing of the bell every Saturday at a late hour to
join in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which the three chaplains
were to say aloud, adding a _De Profundis_ in her memory. Out of these
domains were to be paid various legacies to relatives and domestics.
They were seized by the revolutionary government and never restored to
the church. The parish made an effort to save the legacy of the old
lord to poor girls of good morals, but in vain. The chapel of Our Lady
of Pity was also closed, and the government has never allowed it to be
reopened for public worship, except during Passion Week, when Mass is
still offered at the ancient altar and many come here to pray and
receive the Holy Eucharist.
There is another chapel of _Pitié_ near Puycasquier, the ancient
_Podium Asterii_—the height of Astier—an old town of the middle ages.
This is a votive chapel called _Notre Dame de Gaillan_, built to
commemorate the cessation of a pestilence that once raged in the
neighborhood, where on Whitmonday a dozen parishes around still come
in procession to hear Mass, deposit their offering, and place under
the protection of Mary their hopes for the coming harvests. It stands
a short distance from the town, hidden in a deep, narrow valley
between two streams, in the centre of a churchyard where lie whole
generations of the dead. It is a long, narrow chapel with arches of
the fourteenth century, not beautiful in style or ornament, but dear
to a grateful people, who come here in procession on the
twenty-seventh of April to fulfil the vow of their fathers when
delivered from the plague. One would think the benefit only of
yesterday, from the enthusiasm manifested when this day comes. The
bells ring out joyfully from the very dawn. All the men, women, and
children in the vicinity gather together, and, under the guidance of
their _curé_, proceed to _Notre Dame de Gaillan_, the glory of
Puycasquier, chanting the litany as they go. As soon as they reach the
edge of the hill, where they can look down on their beloved sanctuary,
they all fall on their knees and chant three times the invocation:
_Sancta Maria, Mater Pietatis, ora pro nobis!_ The _Libera_ is sung as
they pass through the graves in the churchyard, and the priest intones
the _Oremus_ when he comes to the door, and gives the absolution. Then
they enter the church with the joyful _Regina cœli, lætare_, as if
calling on the Virgin of Sorrows to rejoice over the resurrection of
her Son at a season when all nature rises to newness of life. There is
now a solemn pause of silent prayer. At eight o’clock precisely the
priest reverently takes down the miraculous Virgin from its niche, and
places it on a kind of trestle amid a profusion of flowers beneath a
rich canopy. The litany is begun, and four notables of the town carry
the statue to the churchyard gate, where it is received by four
ploughmen whose privilege alone it is to carry the Virgin on these
important occasions. Followed by the people in procession, accompanied
by the local authorities in official array, and frequently escorted by
the national guard under arms, they climb the heights of Puycasquier,
winding around the hill till they arrive at the opposite side of the
town, which they enter and proceed to the church, singing the martyrs’
hymn in honor of SS. Abdon and Sennen, the patrons of the parish—two
noble Persians, martyred in the early ages, who are honored in four
country churches at about equal distances from Auch, devotion to whom
became popular in France after their bodies were brought to Soissons
in the time of Louis le Débonnaire. The Virgin of Gaillan is thus
borne all around the parish, and then reinstated in her niche with
acclamations.
Among other usages peculiar to Puycasquier which have come down from
ancient times are two that are somewhat curious. On Easter Eve, at one
o’clock in the afternoon, the mayor and sub-mayor, in all the majesty
of their village consequence set off by their official regalia,
proceed in solemn state to the presbytery, accompanied by all the town
officers, the bells ringing, as is due, at a _haute volée_. The
_curé_, thus notified, stands ready to receive them in the wide-open
door. He invites them to enter, and hastens to present wine as a proof
of his hospitality, which is drunk to the peace and happiness of the
people under their rule. The two magistrates now pray the _curé_ to
accompany them to the church to sing the _Regina cœli_, and, placing
themselves at his side, they escort him through the crowd, which by
this time has assembled, to the holy place, where, in surplice and
stole and pluvial, he intones the Easter hymn, which is caught up by
the whole congregation. The _curé_ then places himself once more
between the powers that be and proceeds to the chapel of Gaillan,
followed by a crowd of all ages and conditions in holiday attire, full
of animation and joy, but not immoderate in their gayety. The _Libera_
and _Regina cœli_ are here chanted as on the twenty-seventh of April,
after which they return to the parish church to sing the latter a
third time at the Virgin’s altar. The day of the Resurrection thus
duly announced, the _curé_ is conducted by the mayor to the residence
of the latter, where the table is loaded with cakes of all kinds,
especially the _tourteau_[50] and _paëte_,[51] by no means
unacceptable to appetites sharpened by so long a walk in the fresh
mountain air. There is then an exchange of Gascon wit still more
savory, with which the festival ends.
Another custom no less ancient and peculiar is connected with the Mass
at Gaillan on St. Agatha’s day, which at least one member out of every
family in the parish attends, to implore a blessing on the fruits of
the earth. Before beginning the Holy Sacrifice, the _curé_ solemnly
blesses the loaves brought by his parishioners, and after the Mass is
over they cut them in pieces, and, going to their fields, bury them
here and there in the ground, setting up a little cross, often a mere
thornbush twisted into proper shape.
_Picasqué_, _petito bilo_, _gran clouqué_—Puycasquier, small town,
great belfry—is a proverbial expression associated with the town on
account of the fine old tower, visible all over the neighboring
country. It was fortunately spared when the place was ruined by the
Huguenots three centuries ago. Around its base are held great fairs
several times a year, the resort of all the people in the vicinity.
The baptistery of the parish church has a curious font of lead which
is very ancient—probably more than a thousand years old, from the
style. It is cylindrical in form and covered with bas-reliefs like the
lead font at Strassburg. There is a swan—emblem of the purity of the
soul after baptism. An archer stands ready to attack it as soon as it
issues from the regenerating waters, but the arrow he lets fly so
vigorously is received by a lion _passant_ in his shoulder, which
marches resolutely on, undisturbed by the evil adversary. It is the
Lion of the tribe of Judah, who saves the soul by his power and
bleeding wounds.
The votive chapel of _Notre Dame de la Croix_, at Marciac, is another
pious monument of Mary’s protection during a great pestilence. Over
the doorway is the following inscription:
Marciacam cum dira lues subverteret urbem,
Ipsamet hanc jussit mater sibi Virgo dicari
Sub crucis auspiciis gnatique insignibus ædem.[52]
It is a pretty church, with an altar of jasper and tabernacle of white
marble, over which is the Mother of Sorrows holding the body of the
crucified Saviour. It was built at the repeated instances of a poor
woman, who was at first treated as visionary or mad, because she
asserted a divine mission for the cessation of the pestilence, which
had carried off eight hundred and four persons in a short time. Her
persevering piety was at length rewarded by the foundation of the
chapel and the deliverance of her townsmen from the plague, which is
to this day commemorated. Pope Innocent XI. encouraged the devotion to
_Notre Dame de la Croix_ by granting many privileges to those who went
there to pray and perform some good work.
There is a chapel of _Notre Dame de Pitié_ at Condom called the
_Piétat_, now belonging to the _Filles de Marie_, but formerly to the
Brothers of St. John of God, who served the sick. Near it is a
miraculous spring called the _Houn dou Teou_, where pilgrims go to ask
deliverance from their infirmities.
Near the historic _Château de Lavardens_ is the chapel of _Notre Dame
de Consolation_ in the woods, quiet and solitary, surrounded by
graves. The pensive and the sorrowful love to come here to pray
undisturbed before the simple altar of Mary, Consoler of the
Afflicted. It is one of the stations for the processions in Rogation
Week. It is the very place to implore peace for the soul—and to find
it!
There is another _Notre Dame de Pitié_ at Aubiet, an obscure village
on the right bank of the Arrats, about twelve miles from Auch. The
houses are poorly built, the streets narrow and irregular, with
nothing remarkable but the fine tower of the ancient church. It never
was a place of much importance, except in a religious point of view,
and has never recovered from its almost entire destruction by the
Huguenots in the sixteenth century. In fact, it is only noteworthy for
its religious associations and picturesque situation on a hill
overlooking the fertile valley of the Arrats, which comes from
Mauvezin on the one side, and goes winding through a delicious
country, girt with vine-clad hills, towards Castelnau-Barbarens on the
other. Though small, the town is ancient, and figures under the name
of _Albinetum_ in the old legend of St. Taurin, who was martyred some
time in the fourth century in the Bois de la Verdale at the west of
the town—a spot now marked by a cross and an old mutilated bust of the
saint. A graveyard is near, where the villagers come to repose around
the place watered by the blood of the holy bishop who converted their
forefathers ages ago. How venerable the religious traditions of a
country which extend back to the first ages of Christianity, and how
good to pray at the tombs of those who lived so near the apostolic
times!
Small as Aubiet has always been, it formerly had five churches—a proof
of the religious spirit that animated the people; but most of them
were destroyed by the Huguenots in the sixteenth century. Among these
was the parish church, in which was a chapel of the Five Wounds, built
and endowed by the father of Père de Mongaillard, the Jesuit annalist
of Gascony; and the church of St. Nicolas, where was established a
confraternity of Blue Penitents under the patronage of _Monsieur St.
Jerome_. Nor was the hospital connected with this church spared,
though the holy asylum of human miseries, where there were numerous
beds for the poor.
SS. Abdon and Sennen are venerated as the special patrons of the
place. Père de Mongaillard, who lived in the seventeenth century,
tells us that, in his day, the people called upon all the musicians of
the country around to contribute to the pomp of the festival of these
saints, on which solemn Mass and Vespers were sung and a procession
made through the town. The day always ended with a great repast and
public rejoicings. These customs have been perpetuated, more or less,
to this day.
The most remarkable church at Aubiet is that of _Notre Dame de Pitié_,
which dates from the year 1499. It was providentially spared by the
Huguenots and became the parish church. The people, mourning over so
many ruined sanctuaries, gathered with fresh devotion around the altar
of Our Lady of Pity, with whom they were brought into closer
companionship. This altar is still in great repute. The church has
recently been repaired, and in one of its windows is depicted St.
Taurin in pontifical robes with the martyr’s palm in his hand.
Father Mongaillard relates some curious customs connected with this
church. One of the altars was dedicated to St. Eutrope, where a
portion of his relics was enshrined and regarded with great
veneration. The people brought wine for the priest to plunge a relic
of the saint therein, and then carried it to the sick, especially to
those suffering from dropsy or violent colic, who often found relief—a
custom also common at Marciac, where there is a chapel to _Sent
Estropi_, crowded with people on the last of April. This devotion is
now discontinued. St. Eutrope of Saintes was one of the early apostles
of the country. Notker, a monk of St. Gall, says he was consecrated
bishop and sent into Gaul by St. Clement, the successor of the
apostles.
Another singular custom at Aubiet was that of the boys of the place,
who always assembled around the high altar to hear Mass, and the
instant the priest elevated the Host cried repeatedly, in a loud
voice: “_Segnour Diou, misericordie!_”—Mercy, O Lord God!—so that
their exclamations, as discordant as they were singular, could be
heard by the passers-by, and produced a profound impression on their
minds.
The same father relates another practice in this church. When a child
was brought for baptism, the priest poured the regenerating waters on
its head three times, and the largest bell was rung to announce the
event to the whole parish and admonish the people to pray for the new
lamb of Christ’s flock. If a boy, the bell was struck nine times, very
nearly as for the Angelus; if a girl, six times were thought
sufficient. And when it sounded, every one within hearing cried
heartily: “God bless thee!”
Aubiet formerly had many clergy, and religious services were conducted
with a splendor scarcely to be found now in the largest cathedrals.
This was principally owing to a celebrated confraternity of the
Blessed Sacrament, which was organized in 1526 by Cardinal
Clermont-Lodève, archbishop of Auch, at the request of eighteen
priests of the town, who, with uncovered heads and robed in their
surplices, presented themselves for the purpose before that prelate
when he came to make his pastoral visit. The act of foundation still
exists. Every Thursday a solemn Mass was to be sung with deacon and
sub-deacon in honor of _Corpus Domini_, and on the first Thursday of
every month the Blessed Sacrament was to be carried in procession
around the church of _Notre Dame de Pitié_.
This institution became very popular, for it was an outburst of faith,
love, and reparation; and numerous legacies and foundations were made
all through that century for its support by people of every condition.
One of the priests, foremost in founding the confraternity, was the
first to show his pious liberality. This was Jehan Jourdan, the elder,
a venerable old man, who, in 1626, appeared before the assembled
clergy of the place and begged them to accept, out of his devotion to
the Holy Eucharist, the sum of two hundred and twenty crowns, that
Mass might be offered in perpetuity at the altar of Our Lady of Pity
for the welfare of the donor and his relatives during their lives and
the repose of their souls after death.
This same Jehan, the elder, in his last will and testament, likewise
founded seven votive Masses on every Friday in the year—one in honor
of God the Father; another of the Holy Ghost; the third, of the Holy
Trinity; the fourth, of _Notre Dame de Pitié_; the fifth, of St.
Joseph; the sixth, for the dead; the seventh, in honor of the Holy
Name of Jesus. The latter was to be sung with deacon and sub-deacon.
All the chaplains were to assist devoutly at its celebration, and if
any one failed to attend he was obliged to pay a fine of olive-oil for
the lamps. No one was to be appointed chaplain unless a native of the
place and _doctus in musicâ, et non aliter_.
Another remarkable foundation is still to be seen in an old Latin will
of a notary at Aubiet. He requests to be buried before St. Peter’s
altar in the church of Our Lady of Charity (as it was sometimes
called). Among his curious legacies are nine _sous_ for nine requiem
Masses for his soul, showing what was the customary fee in those days.
He also founds a solemn Mass of requiem at St. Peter’s altar every
Wednesday, for himself and all his relatives who have died in a state
of grace, for which purpose he bequeaths various lands.
Pierre Lacroix, in a will of the sixteenth century also, leaves a
certain sum for his funeral expenses. Six torches are to burn around
his bier, and eighty priests were invited to aid in the service. They
are to have bodily refreshments: _habeant refectionem corporalem_. On
the ninth day after his death all the priests of Aubiet are to
assemble to pray for his soul. They are to receive _duas duplas_—two
doubles—but no refreshments. At the end of the month the eighty
priests are again to be invited, who are to sing Mass for his soul;
six torches, of half a pound each, to burn meanwhile. They are to be
provided with bodily refreshments. At the end of the year the eighty
are again to be summoned, and this time they are to have eight liards
each _pro labore et pœna_, but nothing to refresh the body.
The lord of Beaupuy, who during his life always had three Masses a
week celebrated, leaves at his death a legacy of seven and a half
sacks of wheat a year from his lands at St. Mézard, with one-third of
the produce of the vineyards, to be delivered to two priests, each of
whom is to say one Mass a week for his soul.
Jehan Cavaré, a man of considerable distinction at Aubiet, makes
several rich bequests and foundations to the different chapels of the
place. At his funeral two wax torches of half a pound each are to
burn. To the attendant priests _qui cantabunt_ he gives three
_doubles_ and no bodily refection. If they do not sing, nothing is to
be given them.
One hundred poor are to be fed on Good Friday with a loaf, wine, and
_one sardine_ each. The same obligation is imposed at All Saints, but
this time there is no mention of the sardine.
Thirty crowns are to be given to two girls of irreproachable morals at
Aubiet on the day of their marriage; and a woollen gown, all made, is
to be given to twelve widows or poor single women of Mauvezin.
“Moved,” as he says, “by the grace of God and love for the church of
_Notre Dame de la Charité_,” he also founds seven Masses a week in
perpetuity in the chapel of the Blessed Sebastian, martyr. He also
founds seven other daily Masses—one of them on Saturday, _de lacrymâ
Christi_, in honor of the Holy Tears of Christ. For all these services
he leaves numerous lands and revenues.
These and many other foundations, extraordinary for a small country
village, express the reaction against the innovations of the age, and
are remarkable proofs of the deep faith and piety of the people. And
they are only examples of similar cases throughout the country, the
records of which it does the heart good to ponder over. How pious are
the formulas with which such bequests are made: _In remissionem
peccatorum suorum—Pro remedio animæ suæ et animarum parentum suorum,
et aliorum pro quibus deprecare tenetur_, etc. Everywhere they express
devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and to some saint in particular, as
well as to all the inhabitants of the heavenly country in general.
This was in accordance with the traditions of the country, where the
heart naturally turns to Jesus in the arms of Our Lady of Pity at the
awful moment of death. St. Bertrand of Comminges, when his end drew
near, had himself transported to the chapel of the Virgin and breathed
out his soul at the foot of her altar. Bernard de Sariac, a
distinguished bishop of Aire, founded on his death-bed a chapel in
honor of _Notre Dame de Pitié_. The old lords of the country show, by
the solemnity of their last bequests, their faith in Mary’s powerful
assistance at the supreme hour of death. William, Count of Astarac, in
his legacy to _Notre Dame de Simorre_ in 940, says: “Inspired by God
and the hope of Paradise, and in order to increase my reward in the
day of judgment, I give the most holy Virgin the following lands in
Astarac.” Raymond de Lavedan, in 1253, left this clause in his will:
“I give my land to St. Mary with all it bears towards heaven and
contains in its depths.” There are a thousand similar examples of
illustrious barons of the olden times whose tombstones in the Virgin’s
chapel in many instances remain an enduring testimony of their
devotion to Mary, though the building itself is demolished.
The confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament at Aubiet only admitted
thirteen of the most notable persons of the town. Among other
obligations, they had to accompany the Holy Eucharist when carried to
any of the members who were ill, bare-headed, wearing surplices, and
bearing lighted torches in their hands; to assemble in like robes on
the first Thursday of every month; to follow the divine Host in
procession; and every Thursday to attend a Mass of the _Corpus Domini_
under the penalty of a fine. One peculiarity of this Mass was the
_Kyrie Eleison_, which they sang with a thousand modulations:
KYRIE, _Pater æterne, fontana Deitas, ex quo manant flumina
rerum_, ELEISON![53]
KYRIE, _fons co-æternæ lucis et claritas, lucem formans
primo dierum_, ELEISON![54]
KYRIE, _fons superne, redundant bonitas, panem mittens de
cœlo verum_, ELEISON![55]
CHRISTE, _lucis fons, lux de luce prodiens; Dei pinguis
mons, quo pascente vivit esuriens et impletur pane vivente_,
ELEISON![56]
CHRISTE, _cordium via, vita, veritas; cibus mentium, in quo
sistit summa suavitas et satietas consistit_, ELEISON!
CHRISTE, _sumptio tui sacri corporis est refectio vires
præbens immensi roboris, et molesta salutis demens_,
ELEISON!
KYRIE, _decus amborum, Patris Natique, et duorum non duplex
Spiritus; quo spirante lux datur morum_, ELEISON![57]
KYRIE, _qui veritatis lumen es diffusum gratis, dictus
Paraclitus, dans solamen his desolaris_, ELEISON!
KYRIE, _sana palatum, quo gustamus panem gratum et missum
cœlitus, in Marid per te formatum_, ELEISON![58]
This is an example of the _tropus_ or _farcius_, so common in the
middle ages, which is a paraphrase or extension of the liturgy by
inserting additional words between the important parts—as at the
_Gloria in Excelsis_, the _Sanctus_, the _Agnus Dei_, etc.—the word
_farsus_, _farcius_, or _farcitus_, as it was differently written by
the monks of the middle ages, being derived from the Latin _farcire_,
used by Pliny the naturalist, Apicius, and Cato the agriculturist, in
the sense of filling, distending, enriching. Pope Adrian II. is said
to have instituted these _farci_ to be sung in monasteries on solemn
festivals. They were the _festivæ laudes_ of the Romans. Others
attribute them to the Greek church. These _farci_ were of three kinds
in France: the usual liturgy being expanded by inserting additional
words in Latin; or the text was Greek and the paraphrase in old
French; or, again, the latter was in the vulgar tongue of Oil and Oc.
These paraphrases in the vulgar tongue became popular, not only in
France, but in England and Germany. From them was derived the
proverbial expression, _Se farcir de Grec et de Latin_—that is, to
have the head full. These _tropes_ or _farcies_ of mixed French and
Latin are still very common in southwestern France, especially in the
popular Noëls, which are often rude lines in _patois_ alternate with
Latin, after the following style:
Born in a manger
_Ex Mariâ Virgine_,
On the chilly straw
_Absque tegumine_.
It is not surprising that, with daily High Masses and a perpetual
round of imposing services, the people of Aubiet should feel the
change when the place became impoverished, the number of priests
diminished, and most of the churches destroyed at the invasion of the
Huguenots. We are told that when the vicar was unable to sing High
Mass on the festival of St. John the Baptist in 1623, there was
universal murmuring, and the magistrates drew up a solemn protest
against so unheard-of a scandal, which document is still extant.[59]
But the church of _Notre Dame de Pitié_, although profaned, was left
standing. The admirable confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament soon
revived, and with it many of the former solemnities. Père de
Mongaillard tells us the _Kyrie eleison farci_ was still chanted in
his time.
We find a similar confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament at Touget,
another village of Gascony, which suffered horribly from the religious
wars. It was for a long time in possession of the Huguenots, who
abolished the Catholic religion and ruined the churches. To repair
these profanations the association was established, the statutes of
which are still extant in the Gascon tongue. By these we learn that
there were nine chaplains in honor of the nine choirs of angels;
twelve laymen in honor of the twelve apostles; seventy-two other lay
members in memory of the seventy-two disciples (husband and wife being
counted as one); and seven pious widows in honor of the seven Dolors
of the Blessed Virgin. They were all to be natives of the place, but
“no ruffian, renegade, public usurer, or vicious person admitted among
them.” Every Thursday all the members were to attend High Mass in the
parish church, robed in their surplices. They were to accompany the
Host in solemn procession through the village, at stated times, tapers
in hand; sing the Office of the Dead before the door of any deceased
member, and attend the requiem Mass for his soul. These and various
other pious obligations were encouraged by the bishop of Lombez, who
granted certain indulgences of _vray perdon_, especially on the
festivals of St. Germain, St. George, St. Vincent, and St. Fritz,
whose relics were honored in the church.
Such is the spirit of love, sorrow, and reparation which perfumes a
few of the countless chapels of Our Lady of Pity in southwestern
France, where so many hearts have forgotten their own grief before
that of Mary! In all these sanctuaries, wan and desolate, she seems to
plead for the nation. So pleads she all over the earth. Every mystery
of religion is perpetuated in the church. Christ is always crucified
somewhere on the earth. Mary is always sorrowing over his bleeding
wounds.
We have seen her weeping over the door of many a tabernacle in Italy,
as if over the Saviour wounded anew in the sacrament of his love. Who
can turn away from the affecting appeal in this day of profanations in
that unhappy land, where the very angels of the church veil their
faces before the agony of the divine Sufferer—before Mary’s woes?…
Around the altar sacred to her grief let us echo the ancient _Planh_
referred to at the beginning of this article:
“I conceived thee without corruption; to-day my heart is
broken with grief: thy Nativity was exempt from all
suffering; now is the day of my travail—
“Alas! my Son, on account of thy torments!
“When thou wert born the shepherds came singing with joy,
dancing to the sound of their pipes; now traitorous and
cruel Jews come to seize thee with horns and cries, staves
and swords.
“Alas! my Son, loving and beautiful.”
_Ay filh! amaros e bel!_
[48] “Woe on woe! grief on grief! Heaven and earth have lost
their lord, and I my son; the sun its clearness; Jews
have slain him, to their great dishonor. Alas! my son,
what mortal grief!”
[49]
Say, say an orison
To the Virgin of the Garaison,
Ye who in this spot solace seek from pain,
Pilgrims so good,
’Neath sorrows bowed,
That your hearts may open up to hope again.
Here while you stay,
Say with love, say,
Oh! say an orison
To the Virgin of the Garaison.
[50] The _tourteau_ is a round cake with a hole in the
centre, made particularly for Palm Sunday.
[51] The _paëte_ is a kind of biscuit for the Pascal
season.
[52] When a dire pestilence came nigh destroying the city of
Marciac, the Virgin Mother herself commanded this
temple to be dedicated to her under the powerful
protection of the cross and of her Son.
[53] O Lord, Father eternal, Fountain of the Deity, whence
flow all things, have mercy!
[54] O Lord, Fount and clearness of co-eternal light, who
didst make light on the first of days, have mercy!
[55] O Lord, Fount supernal, goodness overflowing, sending
down true bread from heaven, have mercy!
[56] O Christ, Fountain of light, light from light
proceeding; fruitful mount of God, on which feeding the
hungry liveth and is filled with living bread, have
mercy!
[57] O Christ, the way, the life, the truth of hearts; the
food of minds, wherein abides the sweetest sweetness
and fulness is contained, have mercy!
O Christ, the taking of thy sacred Body is a
refreshment, giving mighty strength, and removing every
obstacle to salvation—have mercy!
O Lord, the beauty of both, of the Father and the Son,
and the spirit of each, yet not twofold, by whose
breath the light of all right things is given, have
mercy!
[58] O Lord, who art the light of truth, freely spread
abroad, thou who art called the Paraclete, giving
consolation to those who are desolate, have mercy!
O Lord, purify our taste, that so we may enjoy the
gracious bread sent down from heaven, formed by thee in
Mary’s womb—have mercy!
[59] “In the year 1623, and the 24th of June, in the town of
Aubiet in Armagnac, in front of the parish church of
said place, before noon, in the reign of the most
Christian prince, Louis, by the grace of God King of
France and Navarre, appeared before me the undersigned
royal notary, and in presence of the witnesses whose
names are hereunto affixed, Messrs. Jehan Gaillan,
Jehan LaMothe, Jehan Gelotte, and Caillard Mailhos,
consuls of said Aubiet, and Jehan Belloc, syndic, who,
speaking and addressing his words to M. Jehan Castanet,
priest and vicar of said church of Aubiet, represented
to him, for want of a rector in said Aubiet, that from
all time and all antiquity it had been the custom to
celebrate in the parish church High Mass with deacon
and sub-deacon on solemn days like the present; and
whereas, because there was no one to aid him in
performing the office, the divine service was omitted,
the said consuls and syndic protest against the said
Castanet, vicar aforesaid, etc.
“The said Castanet affirmed that he did everything in
his power, but had no one to aid him.”
THE ETERNAL YEARS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”
III.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOD’S GOVERNMENT—ABUNDANCE.
We have adverted to the indirect government of the creation by God—to
the government which he condescends to administer first through the
primary laws which he has stamped upon the universe; and, secondly,
through the moral and physical activity with which he has endowed
mankind.
We are making vast and rapid strides in this day towards discovering
and unravelling these primary laws. At the present moment we seem to
have got ourselves somewhat into a tangle of knowledge, which
threatens to asphyxiate us with the overpowering perfume of its lavish
blossoms, like that of the exuberant growth of the tropical flora.
We are caught as in the meshes of a net, and are hardly allowed time
to solve one problem and satisfy ourselves with a conclusion before
some new tendril of the ever-growing parasite has flung another
flowering coil of verdure around us and arrested our steps once more.
We have come upon the time long ago predicted by the Archangel Michael
to the prophet Daniel: “_Plurimi transibunt, et multiplex erit
scientia_.”[60] We are dazzled and bewildered; and some timid souls
are like ostriches, which hide their heads in the sand, preferring not
to see and know, and hoping that their ignorance and the ignorance of
the multitude generally will serve as a dam to the coming flood, and
leave us freed from a torrent of questions which, if once they are
there, must be answered. It is to be regretted that these persons
cannot learn to possess their souls in patience, and to watch calmly
and intelligently the progress of this gigantic growth of science,
assured that it will all arrange and classify itself in time, in
perfect harmony with what they know to be true and enduring, and which
they so dishonor by their apprehensions.
However, since this is too much to expect of many, there is nothing
for it but to allow such people to keep themselves in peace in the way
that suits them best; only not permitting them to discourage others
from investigation and reverent inquiry. St. Thomas tells us that the
end of all science is contained within the end of all theology and is
subservient to it. Theology, therefore, ought to command all other
sciences and turn to its use those things of which they treat. But we
shall not arrive at this virile steadfastness until the real study of
theology has become more general. There is very little in our modern
education or habits of thought to teach that calm gaze into the depths
of the divine mysteries which imparts such strength of mental vision
that the soul ceases to be dazzled by the false light of falling
stars. The robust vigor of the studious habits of old has ceased from
among us, and the modern mind is attenuated and enfeebled by a vast
variety of subjects indifferently explored, many of them received on
trust and without inquiry, and all smoothed down to one dead-level of
superficial thought and inadequate expression. Not that for a moment
we would imply that mere habits of study are all that is needed. These
habits may exist, and do exist to a great extent; but the silence and
the solitude do not exist, and the studies themselves have long ago
ceased to be of a nature to clear the mind for the gradual, patient,
interiorly-evolved contemplation of the eternal truths which lie at
the bottom of all things. The old scholastic philosophy and theology
laid the only real foundation of all speculative knowledge, and built
for us, for all future time, that solid fabric of theological truth in
the received and authorized teaching of the great doctors of the
church which, like a mighty magnet attracting to itself strong bars of
iron, will draw within its own embrace all other truth and all other
science, because “the end of science is _within the end of theology_.”
Meanwhile, if we would not find ourselves swamped in the torrent of
surmises, partial discoveries, inverted reasonings, and unreverential
decisions, we must go back to the spirit and method of the ages which
produced the deeply metaphysical thinkers and theological writers of
old. The flood of events pours on, and the concussion of each tears
through our daily life and ploughs up the hours and the days in
hurried disorder, leaving no time for seed to develop in the fallow
soil, for the green blade to strengthen and the harvest to ripen.
Modern inventions speed the latest intelligence into the innermost
recesses of our homes, and we live like people in a house without
doors or windows, open to every blast; while the age, whose needs seem
most to call for contemplative recluses, on the contrary stamps
contemplation out of the heart of man, and substitutes the paramount
necessity for outward activity. There is no solace, there is no rest,
but in prayer. There is no consolation but in cultivating thought in
the hidden recesses of our minds, and, amid the racket of life, to go
deep down into the silent caverns of our souls and dwell in an inner
solitude with thoughts of eternal truth. The tendencies of the age
have added a new difficulty to the treatment of many of the questions
more or less inextricably mixed up with any largely philosophical
views of the union of science with divine truth.
We have perverted our language because thought, of which language is
the clothing, is perverted. We dare not handle questions that in
themselves are pure, because we have allowed necessary words to
represent unnecessary indelicacy. No word that expresses a necessary
fact is in itself evil; but woe to the imagination which makes it so!
Purity is always dignified. But if you take the white roses of
innocence to crown a wanton, white roses will fall into disrepute; and
this is what we have done with language. Words no longer only mean the
thing they represent. They have been made to insinuate the foul
underflow of evil fancy that corruption has poured forth. How shall we
cleanse the source, that we may once more use language of strength and
purity? How shall we again become manly and brave, and yet avoid the
charge of being coarse and too outspoken? Only by going back to the
noble candor of the great thinkers of old, and by trying to see things
as they are in the mind of God, and not as they are in fallen man; by
looking at the laws of creation as they came from the hands of the
Creator, before man had written his running commentary of evil and
sin, and thus defiled the glorious page. There are two forms of
purity. The one is the purity of ignorance. The intellect that knows
nothing of the species cannot predicate the accidents; and no doubt
blank ignorance is better than an evil imagination. But there is
another and a higher purity; it is the purity of an informed mind
which, from the sublime heights of science, or, better far, from the
depths of union with God in the all-pervading sense of his presence,
has acquired that faculty of viewing subject-matter in the abstract
which leaves no association of imagination or fancy to drag it down
into the lower nature and so defile it. The more truly scientific a
mind becomes, the more will it inhabit those cool, serene heights of
passionless intellect. But the first, the truest, the absolutely sure
science of theology is the one royal road to the habit of mind which
can, as it were, stand outside its lower nature and contemplate facts
and truths in their essential nature, divested of human contact or
defilement; or, where both must be recognized, can eliminate the law
from its abuse, and trace back the former to the bosom of the Creator;
for “to the pure all things are pure.” This seems to be the faculty
which is more and more dying out amongst us.
It is probable that some of the hurry and absence of precision and of
tenacious research which characterize the modern form of mind may be
the natural result of the sudden rush of new discoveries which have
taken us, as it were, by surprise and carried us off our feet. By
degrees it is probable we shall, as a race, accept the changes in our
condition, and shall become gradually adapted to the varied forms of
life imposed upon us by the vast and multiplied combinations which
every day are extending our power over the external world and opening
new paths for activity and enterprise. Doubtless this power will
increase rather than diminish, and at the same time take less hold
upon us in a revolutionary way, and we shall lose some of that flurry
and excitement which now characterize us—much in the way that the
young colt of a week old starts no more than does the old mare when
the engine rushes down the railway that skirts the field; and yet when
railways first began both were alike alarmed.
But for the present we have lost much of our original moral and
intellectual dignity. Upon such questions as interest us we are
excited and flurried. Those which we do not affect to understand we
cannot seriously listen to; and between the bustling activity of the
first and the listless frivolity of the last it is not an easy task to
bring forward old truths with new faces, old facts with a fresh moral,
lest those who listen should persist in viewing the question from the
wrong side, and in taking scandal where no scandal was meant.
We have set ourselves the task of investigating the chief attributes
of God’s government of creation and its uniformity of design in
complexity of action. To do this we must condescend to the primary and
natural law which he imposed on our world when he called it out of
chaos; and we must endeavor to explain what were the special
characteristics of that law, and what light it throws upon the
attributes of Him who gave it.
The three chief characteristics which we discover in the government of
creation are abundance, patience or longanimity, and progression. The
first command which the Creator uttered over the first recorded living
and moving creatures of his hand was, “Increase and multiply.” This
was the initial law of all that we see and know in the external world;
and as no temporal law or material condition exists in God’s creation
without its spiritual intention and inner meaning, this law is typical
of what is beyond sight and belongs to the domain of faith. In
attempting to define that command we find it conveys an impression,
wider than the heavens and more diffused than the ambient air, of
generosity, benevolence, and paternity. It is the law of “our Father
who is heaven.” It beams upon us like the genial warmth of the
noontide sun. It shadows us like the stretching boughs of a large
forest perfumed with the dews of earth. It was spoken first to the
products of the water and the denizens of the air; and again it was
spoken over the two first beings created “after His own image and
likeness.”
Wherever there is life, even life in its lowest form—and so low that
science hesitates to pronounce upon it as being life, and stands
uncertain how to designate evident growth without equally evident
life, like the unintelligent but absolutely accurate formation of
crystals—there too the law reigns of “increase and multiply.”
Attraction and affinity declare the law, and carry it on, while
repulsion is but the inverse of the same; and though, for aught we
know, and judging by induction, there is not one molecule added on our
earth to the original chaotic matter, and all reproductions are
composed of the same elements passing through varied forms and phases,
nevertheless the same impulse governs all living things and everywhere
represents the large, lavish benevolence of the God of life.
The animal creation is the unreasoning and innocent embodiment of the
natural law, and carries out its mandates unconscious of the why and
the wherefore; whereas in fallen man the natural law has overlapped
the moral law, and the latter has become warped by the pressure of the
former, making all things discordant. As abundance is one of the
characteristics of the natural law, so the modes and forms of its
execution lie at the very root of all creation. The Spirit of God, the
brooding Dove, moved over the face of the waters. The same image of
incubation and consequently of imparted heat (motion and heat being
allied as reciprocal cause and effect), was in the mind of the old
Egyptians when they carved a winged world amongst their mystic signs.
So sacred, so holy, so full of deep-hidden meaning was the idea as it
lay from all eternity in the divine Mind, that it was through the four
thousand historic years which preceded the birth of the God-Man the
mode through which God taught the chosen people to expect the
Redeemer. It became the hope of every maiden to form one link in the
long chain which was to lead up to the Messiah. It sanctified all the
ties of domestic life and made them less a necessity than a high moral
duty.
So universal was the sentiment that many, in the tenacity of their
desire to carry on the holy tradition, and too earthly to perceive the
sin of doing wrong that good might come, thrust aside the law of
conscience rather than fail in what weighed upon them as an
overwhelming necessity—to continue the natural line—that perhaps they,
too, might form one of those from whose loins should spring the
Saviour of the world. It was thus that a dignity was imparted to
natural ties which surpassed among the Israelites the same sentiment
among the Gentiles, but which was but a foreshadowing of their sacred
and sacramental state in the church of God.
“Wisdom is justified by her children”; and all that God has ordained
must reach its ultimate perfection in his church before it can pass
into another phase. “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle
shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled.”[61]
As all things in creation are by and for him, as all culminate in him,
so when the prophecies were accomplished, and Mary, the immaculate and
virgin daughter of the House of David, had, through the operations of
the Holy Ghost, become the Mother of God—the law “increase and
multiply” having thus ascended to its mystical fulfilment and ultimate
development—so from henceforth did it confer a new and more holy
character on natural ties by consecrating them as the type and image,
of what is spiritual.
The one end in view had survived through all, despite man’s ignorance,
infirmity, and sin; and that end once attained, the sinless Mother
clasping to her bosom the Infant God who was from all eternity in the
bosom of the Father, from that moment all that was human had a new and
divine element in it. All creation, all life, all we have and are,
became in a special way “holy to the Lord.” “Know ye not that ye are
the temple of God? If any man violate the temple of God, him will God
destroy. All things are yours, the world, or life, or death, or things
present, or things to come: all are yours: and ye are Christ’s, and
Christ is God’s.”[62]
Through long centuries man had failed to comprehend even while he felt
the underlying mystery of creation. He looked on the fair fields of
nature with undiscerning eyes. He hardly guessed at the enigma of the
outer world as leading upwards to something nobler; and therefore he
dragged the image of God down into the mire of his own existence. He
even sought the Deity in what was below himself, worshipping, not men
and heroes, but beasts and creeping things; because, being dominated
by the idea of the great and all-pervading force of the laws of life
and nature, the lower creation presented a more simple and abstract
image of their potency. The idea of the principle of life haunted him
like a dark and perplexing riddle. Its magnitude weighed upon him. Its
universality perplexed him. He had not the light of truth in its
plenitude to illumine the dark places of the earth. He could only make
guesses at the typical meaning of creation; and as the whirr of life
rushed ceaselessly around him without bringing any answer to his
questionings, it became a relief to embody the idea which obseded him
in the obscurity of inarticulate being, as affording, if not some
solution, at least an absolutely simple and vulgar manifestation of
the great fact, until the very scarabei became sacred; and with
inverted moral sense, in lieu of seeking for transcendent and pellucid
truth in what was above him, he dug down into the very miseries of his
own degradation in his attempt to describe the incomprehensible, and
that to a degree which we cannot pollute these pages by expressing.
Thus had man covered over with the veil of his iniquities and the
thick darkness of his ignorance all the sanctities of life, until the
church of God revealed to him that Christ is the head of the church,
as the husband is the head of the wife, and placed matrimony among the
sacraments; because as a sacrament only is it holy to the Lord, and
because, as a sacrament, it is typical of that highest and most divine
union of Christ with his church—that union which is her strength, her
inviolability, her guarantee, and her ever-enduring and indisputable
infallibility.[63]
How little did poor fallen humanity dream of the sanctity and dignity
of common life until the church turned the full light of revelation on
the laws of our being and taught us what those laws prefigured in the
Eternal Mind! It is not until St. Paul wrote by inspiration that
astonishing chapter to the Ephesians that the laws of being were
really less awful in their hidden sanctity. They were never in
themselves mean, miserable, and degraded. It is true the state of
matrimony only foreshadowed a sacrament; for under the old law there
were no sacraments in the specific sense in which we now use the term
in the Catholic Church. It was holy under the old law, and it may be
said to have had a sacramental character; and that character was the
anticipation of what it was to become when it should be raised into
one of the seven sacraments of the church, and the type of Christ as
head of the church. But at that time mankind was still in darkness.
Humanity could not earlier review the expression of the mystery. Only
the Gospel could open their eyes to the full understanding of the
sacramental principle which alone makes life holy, and, O sorrowing,
suffering hearts! which alone to you can make it endurable.[64]
See how the beneficent thought of God has touched all our common lot!
See what flowers blossom amid the thorns, what gems of light sparkle
in the dark ways of life, ennobling all, beautifying because
sanctifying all, and enabling us, while the heavy burden of sorrow,
disappointment, regrets, and even ruined hope, may seem to take all
the color out of life, and to send us back to a treadmill existence
and a gray, despairing twilight, to realize that nothing can alter the
fact that we are holy to the Lord, and that in our daily, hourly lot,
as husbands, wives, sons, daughters, masters, and servants, we are
carrying on the ceaseless weaving of that web of sacred typical life
which has from all eternity been in the mind of God as the law of our
natural being, and in one form or another envelops, like the husks of
the sweet nut, the gradually-ripening sanctity of those who, even in
this life, are to touch on perfect union with their Creator.
Can any one seriously doubt that, if a greater and more hallowed
veneration for the laws of our natural existence became more general
and more intense, they would, in their typical and sacramental
character, develop further heights of holiness—not as the exceptional
ways of a few miraculous saints, but as the table-land of all
humanity? As it was the hardness of heart in the Israelites which
compelled Moses to give a law of divorce, so may it not be our
hardness of heart, lessened indeed, but not yet melted, which leaves
us so often such mere commonplace appreciation of natural ties, and
thus fails to realize in them all that they possess and can yield?
Jesus is our father, our brother, our friend, our master, and our
spouse. These titles are taken from our common life. But the abstract
idea which these titles express by subdivision and restriction dwelt
for ever in the mind of God as the form and fashion he would give to
human life in his foreknowledge of the divine Incarnation, for which
end _solely_ do all things exist. What further thoughts can we need to
make us tender over our own duties and our own condition? What a noble
origin there is to all that we are apt to look upon as an encumbrance,
a failure, a mere unfortunate accident! Our ties enchain us; then let
us hug our chains, and find in wearing them “the freedom wherewith
Christ has made us free.” All our life is a God-directed education of
our souls; and the fashion of our human life is the mould which God
has prepared for us each as individuals, save always where there is
sin or its proximate occasion, or where a higher vocation—that sublime
infringement of the common law—comes to impel the soul to forsake all
and follow the divine Spouse. Then all else melts before the furnace
of divine love; the intermediate, ordinary steps which lead others to
God through the sanctities of common life are cleared at one bound,
and God puts in his claim to do what he will with his own.
To resume all in a few words: all we see around us, from the soil
beneath our feet, through the vegetable and animal worlds, even to
ourselves, is the working out of the first law of increase and
multiply. Consequently, this being, as we have already said, the
representative idea of the creation, its sacredness lies in that very
fact, and dates not merely from the new dispensation nor from the old,
but from the Eternal Mind before creation was. We have arrived at the
facts which prove this representative idea by the aid of natural
science, of which the old spiritual writers knew next to nothing, and
who consequently, looking at nature through the black mists of man’s
defilement, sometimes took distorted views of laws and facts the
exquisite harmony of which come out in the deductions of modern
research, and so establish the claim we are now making to the absolute
beauty and sanctity of all the fashion of human existence as leading
up by typical forms to spiritual truths. The witness of this like a
golden thread in the dim web of patriarchal times may be found in the
fact that it was the eldest son who officiated as the priest of the
family, thus blending the natural and spiritual by making the former
the basis of the latter. This was the reason of the envy and malice of
Joseph’s brethren. He was not the first-born; and yet it was for him
that his father made the sacerdotal coat of many colors. Therefore did
they dip the coat in the blood of a kid, as in mockery of his
sacerdotal character, given him by his father, but not acknowledged by
his brethren.
Little did they dream that while, in the full exercise of their own
free-will, they gave license to their thoughts of hatred, they were
enacting as in a type the one great fact of the universe, the world’s
one important history, the tragedy of all creation, when he who,
though in his human nature he is the younger born of God’s children,
holds, and for ever shall hold, sacerdotal rank over the elder and
fallen Adam.
They who said, “See whether it be thy son’s coat or not,”[65] were the
forefathers of those who exclaimed, “Let Christ the king of Israel
come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.”[66] They
mocked at the father who claimed to have made his younger son the
priest of his house, and their descendants declared of the great
Priest of our race that “he ought to die because he made himself the
Son of God.” In both cases their pretensions were turned into ridicule
and treated as a crime. They dipped the sacerdotal coat of Joseph in
the blood of a kid; but the great High-Priest they covered with his
own blood, in derision of his claim to be their King and their God.
And through it all, through the good and the evil, the adaptive
government of God worked out his ultimate designs, turning the
wickedness of men to his own glory and hiding the secrets of his
providence beneath the course of events, the incidents of common life,
the history of a people, of a tribe, of a family. We look back on the
long-drawn-out story and understand somewhat of the underlying
mystery. But while it was going on it was but little even guessed at.
God is unchangeable, the same for ever and ever. What he did then does
he not do now?—for his church, his bride, above all, but also for all
humanity, all the wide universe according to its measure, as it can
bear it, when it can receive it; leading on by degrees so slow that to
us they seem almost imperceptible, but which widen and spread like the
rings on the surface of the water when a stone has been flung into its
depths.
Our range of vision is so narrow, and our knowledge of even the past
so limited and so full of inaccuracies, that we can do little more
than guess at the manifold unrolling of the divine intentions. We know
enough to fill us with hope as to the ultimate destination of all
creation, and of ourselves as the children of God. We know not the
future, save faintly as faith reveals it. Even of the past we know but
dimly and in broken lines. To one only of the children of men, so far
as the Holy Scripture informs us, was the past fully and entirely made
known, so far as that was possible to a mortal man supernaturally
sustained to bear it. How many in the hallowed, bold, and rash moments
of inarticulate prayer have ventured in their lesser degree to say
with Moses, “Show me thy glory”! As the thought grows upon us of God’s
wonderful ways and of his unutterable love and beneficence, we too
long to know with certain knowledge something of that Glory which the
great lawgiver intuitively felt would be at once the knowledge of all
and the consummation of every desire. “Show me thy glory.” Hear the
answer: “Thou canst not see my face: for man shall not see me, and
live. Thou shalt stand upon the rock. And when my glory shall pass, I
will set thee in a hole in the rock, and thou shalt see my back parts:
but my face thou canst not see.”[67] And thus Moses saw the back parts
of Him who is from all eternity, through the aperture of time. He had
revealed to him the far-off intention of creation. He looked back, in
God, to the time before time “when he had not yet made the earth, nor
the rivers, nor the poles of the world; when Wisdom was with him
forming all things, playing before him at all times, playing in the
world, and whose delights were to be with the children of men.”[68]
The back parts were beheld by him, and even this he could not have
endured in his feeble flesh had not the Eternal “right hand protected
him.” All that the past could teach him in the flash of one moment was
then made known to him. What floods of light, knowledge, and divine
hope and expectation must that wonderful backward view have imparted
to Moses, the man singled out of all mankind to read the past! But
even with the strength which knowledge such as that must have
conferred upon him, still he could not see the face of God and live.
We are using weak human words, because they alone are given us. It was
the forward look of God which Moses could not see and live. It was the
unutterable Glory that is prepared for us in the future, with and
through Jesus, that not even the man who had conversed with God as man
speaks with his fellow-man, face to face, could see and live. Its
stupendous and exceeding brightness, would have shattered his being as
the flash of lightning shatters the oak; even as our Lord revealed to
one of his chosen saints that, could she perfectly realize his immense
love for the souls of men, that moment of intense joy would snap the
frail thread of her life with its excessive ecstasy. What Moses saw he
tells us not. No word escapes him of that transcendent vision. He
neither tells us of its nature nor of its effects upon himself. But
who could marvel if, having had it, he was henceforth the meekest of
men? What could ever again disturb the serene patience of him who
could divine so much of the future from having seen all the past? And
how impossible it must have been for any torments of pride to ruffle
the calm serenity of one who was humbled to the very dust by the
unutterably lavish and surpassing developments of love and grace and
glory which his vision of the past bade him anticipate in that future
which even he who had borne to see the past could not gaze upon and
live!
As “the end of all science is contained within the end of all
theology,” so the seeing the glory of God would be the knowledge of
all history taken in its widest and fullest meaning; for if history
could be truly written, whether as the life of an individual, the
history of a nation or of the whole world, it would be the unravelling
of the hidden providence of God working through all events to his own
greater glory. The perfect sight is the perfect knowledge; and that
cannot be obtained save through the “light of Glory,” which is the
beatific vision. The perfect knowledge of God would be the knowledge
of all things, not only of all science, but of all facts; for all are
contained in him. The use of our faculties in the acquirement of
knowledge or in its exercise is like the gathering up of fragments
caught from the skirts of his garments as we follow slowly in his
mighty footsteps; and the closer we get to him in our patient toil,
the brighter is the lustre and the sweeter the perfume still left upon
these shreds of the divine passage through the mazes of creation and
the heaped-up centuries of time.
[60] Daniel xii. 4.
[61] Matthew v. 18.
[62] 1 Cor. iii. 16, 17, 22, 23.
[63] Ephesians v. 23, 32.
[64] This statement, if its terms are taken in a strict,
theological sense, is not correct. In the sense that
matrimony under the old law was holy, and foreshadowed
a sacrament, it may be called sacramental. There were
no sacraments, in the specific sense in which we now
use the term in the Catholic Church, before Christ
instituted them.—ED. C. W.
[65] Gen. xxxvii. 32.
[66] Mark xv. 32.
[67] Exodus xxxiii. 18-23.
[68] Prov. viii. 22-36.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE STUDENT’S HAND-BOOK OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE.
Containing sketches, biographical and critical, of the most
distinguished English authors, from the earliest times to
the present day, with selections from their writings, and
questions adapted to the use of schools. By Rev. O. L.
Jenkins, A.M., late president of St. Charles’s College,
Ellicott City, Md., and formerly president of St. Mary’s
College, Baltimore. 1 vol. 16mo, pp. 564. Baltimore: John
Murphy & Co. (New York: The Catholic Publication Society.)
1876.
This book has many excellencies. The author shows himself thoroughly
versed in his subject. He writes with elegance, occasionally with
force, as in the remarks on the influence of the Protestant
Reformation on literature. His taste is true and his judgment sound.
In fact, judging by the work itself, he would seem possessed of the
qualities fitted to make him an admirable compiler of a literary
manual.
The first sentence of the author’s preface explains the object of the
book: “The compiler of this work has long felt the necessity of some
text book of British and American literature which, in its general
bearing, would be free from sectarian views and influences, and, in
the extracts, be entirely unexceptionable in point of morality.” This
sentence is open to misinterpretation. It is plain, however, from the
general plan of Father Jenkins’ work, as well as from numerous
passages in it, that he has had in view from the beginning to restore
to the Catholic Church, the inspirer of the highest literature, the
mother of Christian art, and the fosterer of the sciences, her
rightful place in English letters. In most of the text-books used in
schools her influence on thought and literature is altogether ignored
and herself in too many instances derided. It is clear, then, what the
learned author meant by freeing his book from “sectarian views.” While
giving their lawful place to all writers, of whatever manner of belief
or no belief, he had for his direct object the pruning out of all
anti-Catholic and immoral passages, and the insertion of established
Catholic authors who are systematically excluded from ordinary
text-books.
No object could be better calculated to confer more lasting benefit on
the minds of the young generation growing up around us, for whom
chiefly the present work is intended. We open the book with eagerness,
therefore, and turn over page after page with interest, often with
admiration, until we come up to the present century, when, especially
within the later half of it, Catholic literature in England and the
United States has, from a variety of causes, received a new and
remarkable impulse. It is hardly too much to say that Catholic
questions are among the chief questions of the day here as well as in
England; they have been such for the last fifty years; they promise to
be such for at least fifty years to come; and Catholic writers to-day
hold their own in every branch of literature. After three centuries of
silence, of death almost, the church has risen again among these
peoples who went astray, the voice of truth is heard, and its
utterances are manifold. Surely there is reason to expect that due
notice of such awakening, of such signs of life and hope, be taken in
a literary text-book, which, after all, can only hope to make its way
in Catholic schools. Yet here, in this crucial point, Father Jenkins’
work is singularly and lamentably defective. Whether or not he
intended to supply the deficiency is not known to us; but those who
took up the work after his death ought to have supplied it.
We turn to the book, and what do we find? The only Catholic writers of
the century who are found worthy a place in this Catholic manual are,
to take them as they occur: Dr. Lingard, Thomas Moore, Cardinal
Wiseman, Dr. Newman, Aubrey de Vere, in England and Ireland; Bishop
England, Robert Walsh, and Archbishop Spalding, in America. And these
are all!
Where is Dr. Brownson? His name occurs in a casual note of the
author’s, in the same way as the names of Griswold, Cleveland, or Reid
occur. Where is Dr. Pise, Dr. Huntington, George H. Miles, Dr. White,
Colonel Meline, John G. Shea, Dr. R. H. Clarke, Archbishop Hughes—they
simply run off the pen—together with dozens of others, many of whose
names will not need recalling to the readers of this magazine? We
shrink from extending the catalogue of the absent to England and
Ireland.
Writers conspicuous by their absence are by no means restricted to the
Catholic faith. Among strange omissions are the following: Southwell
is in, but not Crashaw; Shakspere, but not Massinger, or Beaumont and
Fletcher; Addison, but not Steele; all the earlier novelists are
absent. The dramatists of the reign of Charles II. are ignored.
Goldsmith is remembered, but Sheridan is forgotten. Scott is in, but
Burns is out. Moore and Byron, and even Rogers, find their place; but
Shelley and Keats are nowhere to be found. Dickens and Thackeray are
here, but Bulwer Lytton is absent; and so the list goes on.
The book is supposed to reach up to the present day. The writers on
political philosophy, the scientists, the theologians, many of the
writers on history known to us as living among us still and destined
to live long after us, are altogether omitted. Not a hint even of
their existence is given. The “compiler,” as he styled himself, says
in the preface that “whatever has relation to our common humanity, and
interests all men alike, whether it be fictitious or real, in poetry
or in prose, comes within the appropriate province of literature. Even
popularized science is not excluded.” And he adds, strangely enough in
the light of the chief defect we have noticed: “If, in the early
periods, the name of an eminent divine or scholar is introduced whose
writings might seem to belong rather to the department of science than
belles-lettres, it is because he ranks among the few men of his epoch
who were remarkable for intellectual vigor and general knowledge.”
This being so, where are the English, Irish, and American Catholic
theological, philosophical, and polemical writers of the last
half-century?
Of course a work of this kind, which aimed at doing justice to our
Catholic writers of the present century, would quite overrun the
limits of an ordinary text-book of English literature. Still, the
addition of two or three hundred pages devoted just to this subject is
necessary to complete what in its present form is, for the purposes
for which it was intended, quite incomplete.
THE EDEN OF LABOR, THE CHRISTIAN UTOPIA. By T. Wharton
Collens, author of _Humanics_, etc. Philadelphia: H. C.
Baird, Industrial Publisher, 810 Walnut Street.
LABOR AND CAPITAL IN ENGLAND, FROM THE CATHOLIC POINT OF
VIEW. By C. S. Devas, B.A., Lecturer on Political Economy at
the Catholic University College, Kensington. London: Burns &
Oates, Portman Street.
These two publications may be combined in one notice. They treat of
the same subject, essentially in the same spirit, though looking at it
in different lights. Both deal with that momentous struggle between
labor and capital which has shaken the world in all ages; both profess
to find the solution of the economic problems of the day in the
teachings of Christianity as interpreted by the Catholic Church; but
one invokes the aid of the imagination in portraying what labor might
be if all men were just and charitable; the other confronts the actual
position of labor in England. Each is equally valuable in its own way,
and both are champions of the rights of labor.
Mr. Collens’ work, _The Eden of Labor_, is the fruit of much thought
upon the subject, a powerful imagination, and a feeling heart for
those who labor. The author pictures Adam as founding a patriarchal
empire after the fall, in which, under wise and equitable laws, labor
was universally rewarded by competency and happiness. In the
description of this antediluvian Utopia—of its system of government
and society, of its condition and rewards of labor, of its land
tenure, its trade, foreign and domestic, and its currency—the author
gives himself the opportunity of promulgating his conception of the
true doctrines of political economy. In this he takes issue with the
liberal school of political economists which recognizes Adam Smith as
its founder. He denounces its teachings as framed solely in the
interest of the selfish and tyrannical employer of labor, and as
leading irresistibly to the robbery and enslavement of the
over-matched laborer. While admitting the truth of Adam Smith’s law
that “labor is the true measure of exchangeable values,” the author
strenuously argues that he (Smith) and his disciples nullify the just
results of that axiom by defending the specious but unchristian
doctrine of “supply and demand,” which results in the supremacy of
might over starvation, and by losing sight of their original
affirmation of the common right of all to the use of “natural values,”
which the liberal economists in the end surrender absolutely to the
capitalist.
As a foil to his picture of the “Eden of Labor,” Mr. Collens gives, in
his description of Nodland, or the empire of Cain, a history of the
enslavement and misery of labor, and the corruption and tyranny of the
“money lords,” consequent upon the surrender of society to purely
selfish instincts, and its abandonment of laws which Adam had derived
from his original intercourse with God. This second part may be
regarded as a satire upon our modern civilization. An ingenious
monogram representing Labor, half-starved, drawing a miserable
subsistence from the reservoir of “Natural Values,” which at the same
time feeds the plethora of Capital, is prefixed to the work and fully
explained by the author in the appendix.
Philosophers from Plato to Sir Thomas More have sought, in their
descriptions of Utopia under different names, to portray a
commonwealth in which justice should reign and labor receive its
rightful reward. In following the steps of those illustrious thinkers
Mr. Collens has the opportunity of presenting to his readers, with
freshness of treatment and originality of plan, his solution of the
labor questions specially affecting this age. The danger besetting
works of this kind, where the author is dissatisfied with the existing
order of things, and feels a strong sympathy with oppressed labor, is
that they insensibly verge towards the vindication of the theories of
communism and the revolutionary rights of man. We are convinced that
no conclusions could be more opposed, or even abhorrent, to Mr.
Collens’ mind than these. His preface, written on “the Feast of the
Holy Name of Jesus,” and the whole spirit of his work, bespeak him a
fervent Catholic; but, if followed to a logical and forcible
conclusion, it would be difficult to distinguish the goal to which the
doctrines embodied in the author’s denunciation of the “appropriators
of natural values” would lead from that seen at the end of
Proudhon’s—“_La propriété, c’est le vol._” This, however, is a defect
inherent in all Utopias—not of their own nature, but from the fallen
condition of man. With this caution we can safely recommend Mr.
Collens’ work as both interesting and instructive.
Professor Devas’ pamphlet is on a more ordinary plane of authorship.
It is historical and practical in the sense, as to the latter word, of
treating of the existing facts of labor in England and their remedies.
But we are not of those who would confine the meaning of the word
“practical” solely to results immediately before us. A work like that
of Mr. Collens, depending largely upon the imagination and
investigating first principles, may be practical in the highest and
most extensive sense, so far as it influences the original sources of
human action. In his special treatment of the subject, however,
Professor Devas has written a very able treatise. It is a reprint of
three articles originally published in the _Month_, two of them
containing the substance of a paper read before the Academia at
Westminster. The first treats of labor and capital in general; the
second, of the economic powers in manufacturing industries; the third,
of their relative positions in agriculture. In his first article
Professor Devas discusses the question whether contracts should be
left to competition or a fair rate of wages—_justum pretium_—fixed,
and, if so, how and by whom. He holds a middle view between the
liberal economists who will listen to nothing but the rule of “supply
and demand,” and the socialist school which denounces all competition
and would have the state fix a compulsory rate. He cites the
Nottingham hosiery trade as a case in point where wages are not fixed
by competition, but by tariff determined upon at a periodical meeting
of masters and workmen, in which the state of the market and all
attending circumstances are mutually considered, and suggests this
example as a mode of arriving at the _justum pretium_ in all trades.
In his chapter on manufacturing industries Professor Devas takes the
bold ground of defending trades-unionism, not in its details but in
its general principles. He is of opinion that the trades unions have
been one of the chief agents in alleviating the condition of the
working classes and raising the rate of wages in England during the
last forty years. In this latter conclusion he is supported by Dr.
Young in his recently published work on _Labor in Europe and America_.
In spite of the fact that the large strikes in England and upon the
European Continent have been in the majority of special cases
unsuccessful, the general result, according to Dr. Young, has been an
advance of wages during the last twenty years. The effects of
trades-unionism in Europe may be likened to the flow of the tide,
which, repulsed as to each successive wave, yet gains slowly upon the
beach. This advance, however, is not always aided by strikes; on the
contrary, they have frequently postponed it, by the exhaustion of the
struggle, for many years. Their potential combination, or what
O’Connell, in a different agitation, called “moral force,” has been a
more successful factor in obtaining justice for them.
ORDO DIVINI OFFICII RECTANDI, ETC., 1876. Baltimoræ: Apud
Fratres Lucas, Bibliopolas.
Whether by the word “_rectandi_” the compiler of this guide for the
clergy would imply that the principal duty devolving on them with
regard to the Office is its correction rather than its recitation, we
are unable to say. We do not, it is true, find the verb “_recto_” in
the dictionary, but feeling confident, from the Ciceronian style
displayed in other parts of the _Ordo_, that it must be good Latin,
especially as it has appeared two years in succession, presume that it
must be the dictionary which is at fault, and cannot suggest any other
meaning for the word.
Whether that is its meaning or not, however, it certainly well might
be.
We do not profess to have made a thorough examination of the book. It
is full of misprints, as usual, of which the one just mentioned and
the familiar “_Resurect_.” are good examples. Whether the putting of
St. Anicetus for St. Anacletus, which was also noticed last year, can
be considered as such seems rather doubtful.
There are some trifling omissions which really ought to be supplied.
The anniversaries of the consecration of about forty of the bishops of
the United States are passed by in silence. For what special reason
the remainder are given it is hard to imagine, unless it be to remind
those who use the _Ordo_ that they ought to take notice of such an
anniversary and find out when it occurs; but, unfortunately, it has
just a contrary effect, for every one who sees the anniversary of
another diocese noticed expects to be similarly reminded of his own,
and only remembers that he has not been when the time has gone by.
The law according to which the feast of St. Leo varies between the 3d
and the 7th of July is a matter of curious speculation. From its
occurrence for two successive years on the 3d we are inclined to
cherish the hope that it has finally settled down upon that day.
Why cannot we have an _Ordo_ that would be creditable to the compiler
and the publishers, and in which confidence could be placed? More care
is all that is needed.
This notice has been delayed till this month on account of more
important matter. It will probably do as much good now as if it had
been published at an earlier date.
SERMONS BY FATHERS OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS. Vol. III.
London: Burns & Oates. 1875. (For sale by The Catholic
Publication Society.)
It is somewhat rare to meet with sermons that will bear publication.
The circumstances attending their delivery, the authoritative
character of the priest, the sacredness of the time and place, tend to
disarm the critical faculty and dispose the hearers to a favorable
impression. Not so, however, when they are given to the world in
book-form, to be subjected to the cool criticism of the closet.
Sermons that can stand this test are certainly worthy of praise; and
this merit, we are happy to say, belongs to the volume before us. The
selected sermons are by Fathers Kingdon, Purbrick, Coleridge, Weld,
and Anderdon—names already familiar to many of our readers. Their
subjects are such inexhaustible themes as the Passion of Our Lord, the
Holy Eucharist, Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception, etc., treated mainly
in their devotional and practical bearings. They thus form a
collection of spiritual reading rendered particularly attractive by
many excellencies of style and expression. Regarded merely as sermons,
they are models in their conformity to the accepted canons of this
branch of composition. The subjects are clearly divided, with an easy
transition from point to point. The style throughout is graceful and
flowing, and there are many passages full of eloquence—a kind of
eloquence not merely ornamental but practical in its effects. The
secret of it lies in that warmth and earnestness which can proceed
only from those who are animated by a fervid zeal for the good of
souls.
FATHER SEGNERI’S SENTIMENTI; OR, LIGHTS IN PRAYER.
Translated from the Italian by K. G. London: Burns & Oates.
1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Father Segneri is one of the greatest of the distinguished preachers
of the seventeenth century. His name is frequently met in the Italian
dictionaries, as an authority of the language. His sermons are based
upon the classic models of eloquence. Though not as exhaustive as
those of the great French masters of sacred oratory, they are more
forcible in rhetoric and more luxuriant in style. We have a great
desire to see the complete works of Father Segneri rendered into
English, and those who have read the volume of his sermons, lately put
forth by the Catholic Publication Society, will doubtless welcome
anything bearing his name.
The little book before us is made up of pious reflections found among
the papers left by Father Segneri, and evidently intended for his own
private perusal. They give us a glimpse of the tender religious,
seeking obscurity, craving the higher gifts, while the world applauds
his brilliant and conspicuous talents. This contrast is always
pleasing. The _Sentimenti_ reveal how far this holy man had advanced
in virtue, and how well founded is the reverence which has ever been
felt for his sanctity.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES: French Political Leaders. By Edward King.
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Son’s. 1876.
These are bright and readable sketches of various prominent Frenchmen
of the day. Whether all of those whose biographies are given may be
fitly designated “political leaders” is for the reader to satisfy
himself and the future to determine. Mr. King does not aim at profound
reflection. He cuts skin-deep and passes on. The title of the book
seems to us suggestive of something more serious than this. The
political leaders of France will influence more than France, and it
would be worth considering who and what are the French political
leaders of the day. Of what stuff are they made? Whither are they
tending? In what do they lead? Is it a lead backwards or forwards? Mr.
King passes such questions by, and contents himself with more or less
interesting biographies of those whom he takes to be political
leaders. Among them we find Henri Rochefort, but fail to find Louis
Veuillot. Mr. King is like all non-Catholic writers—least at home when
he comes across a Catholic. Among his leaders Mgr. Dupanloup, the
Bishop of Orléans, very properly holds a place. We scarcely recognize
the bishop, however, as painted by Mr. King. One sentence will suffice
to show our meaning: “The haughty mind which sneered at the Encyclical
Letter [which Encyclical Letter?] and the Syllabus became one of the
most ardent defenders of illiberal measures.” By “illiberal measures”
Mr. King seems to mean freedom of education in France, of which Mgr.
Dupanloup has been a lifelong, and recently a successful, advocate.
“The haughty mind which sneered at the Encyclical Letter and the
Syllabus” is something new to us, particularly as Mgr. Dupanloup, long
previous to the Council of the Vatican, wrote a pamphlet in defence of
the Syllabus for which he received the special thanks of the Holy
Father. It is to be hoped that all Mr. King’s biographies are not
equally as accurate as that of Mgr. Dupanloup.
FIVE LECTURES ON THE CITY OF ANCIENT ROME AND HER EMPIRE
OVER THE NATIONS, THE DIVINELY-SENT PIONEER OF THE WAY FOR
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. A supplement to the student’s usual
course of study in Roman history. By Rev. Henry Formby,
London: Burns, Oates & Co.
In these lectures Father Formby essays the proof of what many a
well-read student would at first hearing pronounce as a thesis
exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, of demonstration—viz., that
the Roman Empire, the arch-persecutor of the church of God, drunk with
the blood of ten millions of martyrs, and nursing-mother of every
heathen idolatry, had, in spite of these seeming contradictory
characteristics, a divine mission, fulfilled especially by her
universal empire and the singular part she played in the formation of
the political and social life of the nations of the world.
The learned author signalizes among other marks of the divine
providence shown in the history of the mistress of nations, which
point her out as a pioneer of the kingdom of Christ, the following
remarkable classes of services rendered by her to the accomplishment
of that work:
1. “The formation of the nations of the world into a political unity
of government, in which there existed a great deal to foreshadow and
prepare the minds of men for the future church; while every eye was
taught to look up to the city of Rome, not only as the centre of all
political action, but as supreme in religion, as well as the fountain
of all civil honor and dignity.
2. “The preliminary mission of the Roman Empire to civilize the
nations, and to promote among them education and the cultivation of
literature and the arts of life, the care of which was to become, in a
far higher and more effective manner, part of the mission of the
future church.
3. “The mission of the Roman Empire to inculcate and preserve among
the nations the knowledge of a certain number of the doctrines and
virtues forming part of the original revelation which Noah brought
with him out of the ark.
4. “The advantage, for the formation of the Christian society, of the
firm establishment of the outward framework of good public order, of
municipal liberties, and of the general peace of the world, including
the necessary security for life and prosperity.”
These are weighty considerations, and worthy of a much more extended
development than the author gives in the lectures before us. His
thesis affirmed as probable (and we deem it no less), Roman history
would need to be re-written, and by one who should be not only an
historian, but a philosopher and a Christian. The perusal of these
lectures cannot fail to interest the student, and particularly those
who pretend to study the philosophy of history.
POPULAR LIFE OF DANIEL O’CONNELL. 1 vol. 16mo, pp. 294.
Boston: Patrick Donahoe.
Public attention in these days is being more and more turned to
O’Connell and the work he wrought. No later than last year the Holy
Father held him up as a guide to Catholics in their conflict with
powers leagued together against the church, against Catholic rights,
and, as a matter of consequence, against all right. The more the great
Irish leader’s life is studied, the more evident becomes the fact that
freedom, liberty, right, were not to him merely national but universal
claims. What he demanded for his own he would have granted to all, and
in claiming his own he asked no favor; he called for none of what are
known as heroic remedies; he appealed simply to the spirit of all
sound laws and the sense of right that is in the conscience of all
men. It would be well if, in future lives of him, this great, this
greatest perhaps, feature of O’Connell’s character were brought out in
stronger relief. For it is just this that makes him more than a leader
of his people; it makes him a leader of all peoples who have wrongs to
right and abuses to abolish. The small volume before us tells the
story of O’Connell’s life in the conventional manner. “Popular” is on
the title-page, and there is no reason why the “life” should not be
popular. It “has been compiled from the most authentic sources,” says
the preface modestly enough, and in this the value of the book is
rated in a line. It is a compilation, and no more. As a compilation
there is no especial fault to be found with it. On the contrary, the
various parts are stitched cleverly together, so as to make a
sufficiently interesting narrative. Compilations, however, are
becoming too numerous nowadays, and the literature in which shears and
paste-pot play the chief part is growing into a school, and a school
that cannot be commended. It is not encouraging to open what the
reader takes to be a new book, and find in it page after page of
matter that has been writ or told a thousand times already.
ELMWOOD; OR, THE WITHERED ARM. By Katie L. 1 vol. 16mo, pp.
233. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1876.
The title of this story, though sufficiently thrilling, gives but a
faint indication of the chamber of horrors that lies concealed between
the pleasant-looking covers. The title of the first chapter is
“Midnight,” and it begins as follows: “W-H-I-R-R! groaned the old
clock. The sound rang throughout the immense corridor, reverberating
like the moan of a lost soul.” Three lines lower down, “A wild,
unearthly yell” breaks “with fearful distinctness on the midnight
silence.” Chapter III. begins: “Silence! Gloom! Remorse! Anguish!
Alone! all alone!” and so on. We spare the reader the prolonged agony.
The story might be called a series of paroxysms, and, were it only
intended as a caricature of the dime novel, would be one of the most
successful that was ever written. Murder glares from every page, and
agony reverberates along every line. There is an abundance of “tall,
slight figures robed in white,” “ethereal oil-lamps,” “howling
tempests,” “deathly faintnesses,” thrilling “ha! ha’s!” “blue
chambers,” “north-end chambers,” “awful arms,” “blood-stained hands,”
poison, murder, despair, agony, death. There are the usual heroes with
the conventional marble brow and clustering curls around it, and the
heroines, tall and stately, sylph-like and sweet, blonde or brunette,
according to order. Everybody is Maud, or Elaine, or Edwin, or
Herbert. One quite misses Enid, Gawain, Launcelot, and Guinevere. Of
course there is no special quarrel with nonsense of this kind, beyond
the regret that there should be found persons not only to think and
write it, but sane persons to publish and propagate it. When, however,
we find religion dragged in to give it a kind of moral flavor—dragged
in, too, in the most absurd and reprehensible fashion—what might be
passed over as a foolish offence against good sense and good taste
becomes a matter of graver moment, to be utterly condemned as
irreverent and harmful, however unintentional the irreverence and harm
may be. It is necessary to be severe about this kind of literature.
Uninstructed Catholics who, by whatever misfortune, have access to
paper and types, do a world of harm, though they themselves may be
actuated by the best motives possible. This book would do no more harm
to sensible persons than cause a laugh, possibly a shudder, at its
tissue of absurdities. But falling into the hands of non-Catholics, it
would by many be taken as the natural outcome of Catholic teaching,
and disgust them with everything connected with the Catholic name. The
preface to the book speaks of “the moral conveyed in the following
pages,” which, it says, “is too obvious to need particular
specification.” Possibly; nevertheless, we thought it our duty to
specify it above. The preface adds that the book was written “during
some of the sweetest hours” of the writer’s life, “in the midst of the
most charming surroundings, and solely for the eyes of a few friends.”
It is to be deeply regretted, for the writer’s own sake, that one, at
least, of her few friends had not the courage and kindliness to deter
her from “sending forth upon its new and unexpected mission” a book
that can only bring pain to the author and pain to those who feel
bound to condemn it.
THE SCHOLASTIC ALMANAC FOR 1876. Edited by Professor J. A.
Lyons, Notre Dame, Ind. Chicago: Jansen, McClurg & Co. 1876.
This is modelled on the _Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac_, the
first of the kind published in this country, only it is not
illustrated. Its literary matter is very good, and in its paper,
press-work, etc., it is a creditable publication.
THE SPECTATOR (SELECTED PAPERS). By Addison and Steele. With
introductory essay and biographical sketches by John
Habberton. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1876.
This is the first of a series to be made up of selections from the
standard British essayists. The present volume contains careful
selections from the _Spectator_. Those who care to see what journalism
was in the days when Addison and Steele were journalists will welcome
this series, so well begun in the elegant volume before us. It is to
be feared that Addison or Steele would stand a poor chance of
employment in the present “advanced” stage of journalism.
Nevertheless, our editorial writers would do neither themselves nor
their readers much harm in trying to discover what is the special
charm that lingers about the pages of these dead-and-gone magazines.
When they have made the discovery, they will be in a fair way to make
it worth the while of an enterprising publisher, say a century hence,
to wade through the pages of their journals for the purpose of
unearthing the author of such and such articles, with a view to giving
them again to the world.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIII., No. 134.—MAY, 1876.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1876.
THE ROOT OF OUR PRESENT EVILS.
When Mr. Dickens repaid the hospitality which he had received by his
extremely humorous satires of this country, he called the attention of
all Americans to the extent to which our national vanity was likely to
blind us. Mr. Chollop’s opinion to the effect that “we are the
intellect and virtue of the airth, the cream of human natur, and the
flower of moral force,” has been secretly cherished by many better
men.
The conviction of ordinary Americans is that our system of government
is so evidently perfect, and the course of our development so
manifestly healthy, that nothing but sheer blindness can account for
any suspicion as to their future stability. To those who question the
success of our future we are wont to reply by a smile of genuine pity,
or by pointing to the results already achieved and the difficulties
which have been surmounted. We have fused the most incongruous
race-mixture into one homogeneous nation. We have occupied a
continent, and laid the foundations of a great empire upon a
comprehensive and stable adjustment of all the functions of
government. We have eliminated the vast system of human slavery from
which our ruin had been predicted. We have overcome the most powerful
assault upon the integrity of our national existence; and any violent
attempt upon our government seems at present to be both impossible of
occurrence and hopeless of success.
It cannot be denied, however, that recent events have awakened in the
minds of earnest and patriotic Americans a sense of uneasiness and
anxiety very different from any similar feeling in the past. The
professional politician sees in the corruption lately developed in
Washington simply the evidence of decay manifested by a powerful
organization which has enjoyed unlimited power and survived the issues
which brought it into existence. He would persuade the people that a
“rotation” is all that is necessary in order to restore things to an
honest and sober condition. Less thoughtful men demand a return on the
part of officials “to the simplicity of our forefathers,” and applaud
blindly every effort at retrenchment. All observant writers and
thinkers deprecate any such impossibility and are quite clear as to
the folly of attempting it. The _Nation_, March 16, says: “We confess
that there is to us something almost as depressing in this kind of
talk as in the practice, in which many of our newspapers indulge, of
drawing consolation for the present corruption of this republic from
the reflection that the corruption of the English monarchy one hundred
and fifty years ago was just as great; because both one and the other
have a tendency to turn people’s minds away from real remedies and
throw them back on quackery.”
The feeling exhibited by this writer is not confined to himself; and
the protest which he makes against disguise and quackery is extended
much further than he himself has carried it. For the most part careful
observers are willing to postpone the question of treatment until the
public is settled as to what the malady really is. We are shaken out
of our customary habit of mind by witnessing the disgrace and infamy
which cover our present administration. Everybody feels that something
ought to be done. But to pay particular attention to this portion of
the body politic, without examining how far the disease extends and
what is its source, is simply to run the risk of suppressing a symptom
instead of curing a disorder.
The slightest attempt at candid observation reveals clearly that
corruption is not confined to Washington. A few years ago it was
supposed to be limited to a certain class of local politics; then it
was restricted to the city of New York. Now it is proved to extend
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and to exist in every circle of
society. The suspicion which once attached to the “ward politician”
now hangs about our representatives and senators. Dishonesty in
commercial transactions perpetrates renewed outrages. We shall soon
have to establish fresh associations to insure our insurance companies
and to guarantee our banks. The medical profession feels called upon
to issue tracts in order to guard against the physical degeneracy of
the entire race.
To deny that there is a pronounced, marked, and universal decadence in
morality is simply to stultify all faculties of observation and to
contradict the testimony of every sense. It is not necessary to repeat
the list of scandals which are daily appearing, or to appeal to the
conviction, which prevails everywhere, that we have seen but a small
portion of those which really exist. It is the common sentiment that
the next century will witness either a complete and radical reform of
the present state of things, or else a condition far worse than the
enemies of this country have ever yet predicted.
Startling as this conviction may appear, the only thing which ought to
surprise us is that the present disorder has not been foreseen and is
not now more fully understood. It would have been easy to predict the
increase of wealth and the consequent increase of luxury in our midst.
No sane person can doubt that these sources of temptation will be
greater in the future. The presence of wealth, the possibility of
attaining it, will call forth all the activity of the rising
generation, and the keenness of the struggle, in which all are free
within the limits of the law, will tend constantly to lower the
standard of honesty. The strictness of party discipline, the disgust
which the mass of citizens have for attending to the details of
politics, offer the widest scope for unprincipled adventurers. There
are few careers in which quackery, fraud, and imposture cannot secure
those fruits for the possession of which honesty and labor are forced
to suffer and to strive.
It does not involve a cynical view of mankind to decide that where the
occasion of sin abounds wickedness will increase and prove
destructive, unless adequate means are taken to preserve the purity of
a nation.
This restraining influence in the history of nations hitherto has been
religion, which is supposed to furnish motives and to supply the
strength and means of combating these evil tendencies, and of defining
and consolidating public morality.
The religion under profession of which the older portions of the
republic developed was professedly Christian and retained much of the
traditional morality of the middle ages. There was no particular form
of Protestantism which succeeded in impressing itself permanently upon
the growing republic, although some connection of church and state was
universally recognized in the early State constitutions. The rigid
forms of Puritanism and Quakerism were well calculated to preserve
frugality and simplicity of life as long as they could be maintained
in rigidity. But no system of mere forms or external restraint could
suffice for the direction of a civilization which, still in its
infancy, presents so much richness and luxuriance of growth. Neither
the austerity of the Roundhead nor the dignity of the Cavalier could
hope to remain as the type upon which the American character was to be
moulded. The external habiliments of the early generations were bound
to disappear, as they have disappeared. But their principles—_i.e._,
the beliefs of Protestantism—were to remain and to form the intellect
and conscience of the American people. However great the influence of
Southern statesmen upon our external constitution, the New England
mind has wrought most powerfully upon the popular sentiment of the
country. This action has been manifold.
The stock in trade, to use a homely comparison, with which
Protestantism assumed its duty of providing for the moral and
intellectual necessities of the American people was contained in the
principles of the so-called Reformation.
In addition to the theory of private judgment, which was retained,
with the utmost inconsistency, the early religion of this country
reposed upon two fundamental and mischievous errors which were
inherited from the authors of the Reformation. These were the heresies
of justification by faith alone and the total depravity of human
nature. If any proof were wanting of the strength and permanence of
the religious instinct in man, it would appear in the fact that such
monstrous delusions could so long receive the assent of those who
professed at the same time perfect freedom of belief. These disgusting
caricatures of Christian dogma have almost lost their control over
human reason, and will remain only to demonstrate the needs of man and
his weakness when acting in abnormal ways and under false traditions.
But the fruit which they have borne will not speedily perish. After
crystallizing into a system and founding institutions for perpetuating
its growth, the Calvinism of New England assumed all the proportions
and manners of an established sect. The preachers were intellectually
well worthy of the position which they enjoyed. Great eloquence, rich
thought, and all the scholarship of which they were possessed were
wasted in elaborate sermons proving, or attempting to prove, their
dark and malignant creed. A large mass of the people, however, not
attracted by the airs of Calvinism, were repelled by the heavy and
metaphysical style of the Calvinistic pulpit.
Before the separation of the colonies from the mother country New
England Calvinism had become sufficiently dry and devoid of sentiment
to prepare the way for a more emotional religion. Thousands of eager
souls drank in the enthusiasm of Asbury, Coke, and the other apostles
of Wesleyanism. The founders of Methodism in America, though obliged
to adopt some articles of faith as distinctive of their organization,
owed their success to the fact that, discarding all reasoning, they
appealed to religious emotion, and were mainly instrumental in
founding that school of theology whose doctrine is that it matters
little what one does or believes, provided one _feels_ right.
Emotionalism has run its course and dies out in the Hippodrome,
whither the official teachers of evangelicalism have led their
congregations to receive from the ministrations of two illiterate
laymen that spiritual stimulant which can no longer be obtained from
educated preachers in the fashionable meeting-house.
While the ancient organizations of Puritanism continued, with more or
less dilution of its original doctrines, another movement had arisen
in the very heart of Calvinism. The Unitarian movement has proved a
complete reaction against what are called the doctrines of the
Reformation. It has resulted in the extinction of the religious
sentiment. Its popular summary is to the effect, that it makes little
difference what one feels or believes, provided he _does_ right. From
the society of the Free Religionists back to the original shades of
Calvinism is a gloomy road for even the imagination to travel, but no
one can pass over it in fancy without perceiving the utter
impossibility of persuading one who has once emerged from, ever to
return to, the earlier darkness.
To continue in a creed which involved blasphemy against the goodness
of God and the denial of all the natural sources of morality, or to
surrender one’s self to religious emotion without any solid
intellectual principle, or else to place individuals in entire
dependence upon their private perceptions of religious and moral
truth, and finally pass from one degree of scepticism to another—one
of these three alternatives was proposed as the occupation of the
American intellect during the most active period of national growth.
The Egyptian darkness which Calvinism brings upon any thoughtful soul
was the inheritance of the religious youth of the country. What virtue
can exist when total depravity is daily preached? What bar does it put
to the passions of man to know or to believe that his salvation does
not depend upon his good life? What conception of the universe can he
form who sees in it only the work of what a popular preacher has
called an “infinite gorilla”? Nothing is more pathetic than the
history which we have of minds whose natural goodness vainly struggled
against these detestable heresies. And if the religious heart of New
England found in its creed nothing but discouragement, what was the
effect of that religion upon the popular mind? Is it not mainly to its
influence that all that is repulsive and hard in the Yankee character
is to be attributed?
But, on the other hand, what has been left by the decay of emotional
religion? It might have been prophesied with safety that the result
would be simply a reaction. So far as can be observed, it is nothing
more or less. The writer was not a little amused at reading lately in
a Methodist paper an editorial charging strongly against the present
style of revivals, under the heading of “Religious Fits.” The editor,
in the course of his remarks, very bluntly asserted that religious
fits are not much better than any other kind of fits—a proposition
which sums up the vital weakness of Methodism. And when a whole nation
or a large class is reduced to this condition, the recovery from the
fit will be attended with great disaster. “The religion of gush,” as
it has been forcibly styled, is fatal to morality. It is an attempt to
feed a starving man upon stimulants. The appearance of strength which
it gives is simply an additional tax upon the system. Emotional
religion may succeed in quieting women who are secluded in domestic
life, or even the weaker sort of men who are occupied solely in
teaching it; but for the common mass, who are daily exposed to
temptation, it is, at most, a salve with which the wounds inflicted
upon conscience are plastered over. There is nothing in it to
discipline the soul before trial, and nothing to repair its weaknesses
after it has fallen.
With regard to the results of the naturalistic revolt against
Calvinism there is little to be said. The charming writers who have
given it prestige are not its product but its cause. In so far as they
assert the dignity of human reason against Calvinism, to this extent
they are in harmony with our natural instincts and have tended to
produce a wholesome influence. But even transcendentalism is past its
wane, and will be known in the future only by its literary reputation.
Free religion has developed no permanent constructive idea. Its
principal effect will be to obliterate whatever of Christianity has
clung to the tradition of New England Protestantism. Its mission will
be accomplished when all connection between the past and present shall
have been effectually broken. It leaves us only a considerable amount
of scientific knowledge which we should possess without it. Its
morality staggers through the wide range extending from free love and
spiritism into the undefined vacuity which it supposes to lie between
these bolder theories and old-fashioned uprightness. Like emotional
Protestantism, it is wholly incapable of withstanding any strain or of
guiding and controlling the absolute individualism which it has
created. If the Congregational pastor of Plymouth Church affords a sad
example of the impotence of emotional pietism, the unfortunate
plaintiff in the lawsuit against him is no less a melancholy instance
of the aberrations of the last phase of American Protestantism.
There is little affectation of concealment, on the part of thoughtful
Americans, of the conviction that our national growth and the success
of our government are subject to the universal laws according to which
past empires have risen and perished. It is to be hoped that the
success with which we have been blessed so far will not blind our eyes
to this truth. We must have a solid basis of morality, or we are
doomed to fall into such a condition as will make our absolute
extinction a desirable thing. Whence is this new life to come? Is
there anything in American Protestantism which can reverse its steady
process of decay and disintegration? Has it any principles which can
arrest for one moment the popular tendencies? We are unable to see in
it even a “serviceable breakwater against errors more fundamental than
its own”; quite the contrary. Its dogmatic front only serves to
disgust those who mistake it for Christianity. Protestantism never
converted a nation to Christianity or formed one. It could do neither
even if it had an opportunity. In its latitudinarian aspect it
directly fosters the present vagueness of moral convictions; while its
emotional tendency only justifies the substitution of sentiment for
reason and nullifies all attempts to subject the feelings to the
judgment.
However one may be disposed to prefer the paganism which universally
pervades our era to the unlovely fanaticism of earlier times,
experience, both past and present, forbids the indulgence of any hope
of future success springing from it.
It is hard to imagine what thought has been expended upon this subject
by those who profess to see the way out of our present difficulties
through a lavish system of public education. We hear declamations on
this subject which fill us with bewilderment. If the public schools
were able to furnish the people with sound moral instruction, we could
understand something of the enthusiasm which describes them as the
sources of national morality and as the salvation of the future. God
knows we have no desire to cut off one ray of light; but the present
moment is not one in which to indulge in madness. The sooner it is
understood that our system of education is destroying the generation
that is subjected to its influence, the better. It stands to reason
that the great need of the hour is to save our children from its
evils. Our public education barely succeeds in exaggerating all the
moral and physical degeneracies of the day. To develop the desire and
capacity for action and enjoyment, without providing means of guiding
and restraining within wholesome limits the power thus produced, is
simply to court disaster. We are suffering at present from aversion to
hard labor and a quiet life from the unbridled desire of wealth and
pleasure, from the absence of well-defined moral sentiment. The
present system of education, so vehemently applauded, is an
aggravation of all the morbid tendencies of our condition. This
complaint will not receive much attention coming from this source, but
it is finding universal utterance from the medical profession, and its
justice will speedily appear to the most casual observer.
There is nothing in paganism, however brilliant its science or art,
that can restore the health of a race which is morally corrupt. The
“positive stage of development,” as it is styled by a certain class of
modern writers, is an age of decrepitude. If the analogy be true which
they hold to exist between the life of man and the development of a
race, we must expect death as soon as the “positive” era has been
attained. The muscular epoch has passed. The age of delusions has left
the mind incapable of anything but observing facts; the demand for
artificial stimulants has exhausted the brain of the nation; and the
body politic, though surrounded with luxury, is moribund beyond the
power of recovery.
While we do not fully accept the analogy of positivism, we are
convinced that neither Protestantism nor paganism can raise the nation
from the slough in which it seems about to settle. Nor will it be
saved by the infusion of fresh blood, as was the ancient world
according to some ingenious writers. The Hun and Vandal and Goth would
never have changed their originally savage state had they not met in
the world that they destroyed an indestructible power which, after
surviving the assaults of both Roman and barbarian, by its subtle
constructive faculty altered the face of the earth. This power was
Christianity, whose work of universal civilization was so fatally
marred by the religious catastrophe of the sixteenth century.
Now that the false Christianity of our forefathers has developed its
utter worthlessness as a guide, it will be well to inquire whether the
religious system, which is historically identified with Christianity,
contains any of those elements of stability so lacking in our
civilization.
It is not to be expected that such a discussion, even if resulting
favorably to Catholicity, will be sufficient to convert the American
people to its faith, but it will greatly conduce to removing
misconceptions and ignorance on the part of many of our
fellow-citizens with regard to the relative merits of Catholicity and
Protestantism.
No system can ever prove efficient which is unable to maintain its own
integrity. No intellectual movement can hope to exert any large
practical influence after it has lost its unity. Protestantism, having
begun with a denial of the need of authority, was soon forced to
contradict itself in practice in order to preserve its existence. But
the principle which had given it life could not be disregarded, and
the germ of discord, involved in the idea of a teaching body without
any claim to be believed save what private conscience might be willing
to concede to it, continued to produce disintegration without end.
The evils of our present exaggerated individualism are universally
admitted. Men are united upon all points except those involving moral
responsibility. While it is quite clear that in matters of science we
are willing to trust to authority, on the other hand, in the more
complex and easily perverted order of ideas (involving as they do the
gravest consequences), every man is endowed with infallibility. This
is simply an inversion of the natural order. The normal and rational
order is preserved by Catholicity. With the Catholic Church religious
truth as the basis of morality is a tradition whose bearing upon human
science and politics always requires fresh application and is
co-extensive with the possibility of human growth. But while this
application of principle is left to individual effort and furnishes
the proper exercise of the intellect, the excesses of individualism
are always to be counteracted by a living authority. The ability of
the church to maintain her unity has been demonstrated and perfected
in its operation by the storms which the last three centuries have
launched against her. The opposition to her, on the contrary, has
brought about its own destruction. If the absurdities of modern
individualism are to be remedied, the cure lies in an earnest
consideration of the claims of Christianity. Protestantism, though a
grievous calamity, has served to settle for ever all those questions
concerning the supreme source of doctrinal authority which had been
raised by the intrigues of the secular power in the middle age. Now it
is no longer possible to confuse the sentiment of obedience to
authority by reference to unlawful sources. The attack of modern
governments upon the church tends still further to circumscribe the
limits of secular power, and to define clearly that which belongs to
Cæsar and that which belongs to God.
The stability and permanence of Catholic thought are maintained in
great measure by the prerogatives of the spiritual power, which
promulgates and guards the divine tradition committed to its care. But
the real power which that tradition exercises is its truth and its
conformity with facts. The divine revelation is made to reason. It
supposes a rational being. It is accepted on rational and convincing
evidence, and becomes operative in virtue of divine grace. Its aim is
to elevate and ennoble human nature and to heal its infirmities. In
fulfilling this mission it acts in harmony with God’s other works,
always above and with reason, but never against it. It puts no
obstacle in the way of human science, which, as the Vatican Council
declares, can only contradict revelation by being incomplete or by
misinterpreting divine truth. It encourages labor in its development
of nature as a means of discipline and as furnishing the necessary
condition of peace and civilization. It stimulates art to search after
beauty as a means of showing the necessity and embellishing the truth
of heavenly doctrine. It is true that the Catholic faith does not
permit the intellect to repose in any one of these occupations as its
sole end. In the light of divine truth science and art are united by a
synthesis; and the rest which faith forbids the soul to take in
earthly pursuits is denied by its own nature. The synthesis which
faith provides is sought restlessly and eagerly by the mind. Modern
thought, which has been turned away from Catholicity, searches vainly
for some principle of unity.
The faith which redeemed the ancient world and prepared the germs of
that degree of civilization that has not been wholly destroyed by
Protestantism, was in no respect like the withering, soul-destroying
horrors of Calvinism. The doctrines which supplied matter for the
intense intellectual life of the middle age, which corrected Aristotle
and piled tome after tome of the close, serried reasoning of St.
Thomas Aquinas, was in accord with human reason, vindicated the
dignity and powers of man, and stimulated him with fresh vigor in
every sphere of science, poetry, and art. Scholasticism was nothing
else than an effort of human reason to demonstrate the reasonableness
of Christianity. The present generation is so grossly ignorant of
those eight hundred years of most intense life which formed
Christendom that it is not capable of appreciating their influence and
still less their character. But whoever will read the _proœmium_ of
the _Summa Contra Gentiles_ of the “Angel of the Schools” will see the
difference between the constructive doctrine of the middle age and the
reactionary delusions of the sixteenth century—the bitter fruit of
that splendid revival of paganism. Protestantism, viewed as a system
of doctrine, was simply an extravagant caricature of the
supernaturalism of the Catholic Church. As a system of morality it was
nothing else than the emancipation of the passions from the restraints
imposed by Christianity. Having destroyed the necessary conditions of
faith by denying authority, it presented the ideas of grace and
sanctification in such a distorted manner as to render sacraments
unnecessary and unmeaning, to do away with free will, merit, and
natural goodness—in a word, to abolish human nature. Wherever the
heirs of the so-called Reformers have revolted from the unnatural task
of propagating their religious system they have left mankind, not
simply bewildered by the darkness whence it has emerged, but without
the heavenly guidance which genuine Christianity provides. It has
robbed men of the light of heavenly doctrine, and has furthermore
stripped them of the aid of the sacramental system, the means of the
action of divine grace and of the growth of supernatural life, without
which natural virtue and natural intelligence cannot long endure in
purity.
The present state of our people calls for what Protestantism has not.
Justification by faith could not save its first professor from
breaking his vows and debauching another person equally bound; nor
will its influence increase by repeating his famous dictum, _Pecca
fortiter sed crede fortius_. The evanescence of genuine fanaticism on
the part of evangelical religion is no guarantee of a better state of
morals. Our people have got beyond simply _believing_ and _feeling_;
they wish to _do_ right, but they are gradually coming to acknowledge
that man cannot _do_ right without _knowing_ what he ought to do,
viz., what is right; and the best and wisest will confess that they do
not know what they ought to do, and that they can see nothing in the
future from whence they may expect to learn. Whether they will be
content to review the evidences of Catholicity we know not. Many are
doing so, but the intense worldliness of the day is not favorable to
serious thought on the part, of the multitude. Should, however, the
authority of true Christianity be revealed to, and accepted by, them,
we may justly expect a development of the utmost significance in the
history of the world.
Catholicity not only preserves and restores the Christian truth of
which men have been robbed by the heresies of the Reformation, but it
preserves, sanctifies, and makes fruitful the natural goodness which
remains in the individual, the race, and the nation. But above all
things it applies those principles of natural justice and purity which
are now so seriously jeopardized.
An unjust man can console himself, when transmitting his dishonest
gains to his descendants, by reflecting that he is to be justified by
faith alone. This has been done to our certain knowledge, and
doubtless every New Englander can recall similar cases. A man who
admits the injustice of his transactions can find ways of forgetting
his indebtedness. The fraudulent bankrupt can revel in the wealth of
his wife and children. Even the thief who admits in the abstract the
obligation of restoring that which he has stolen, without the
assistance of the confessional is too apt to cling to that which he
has once acquired.
We want, first, to hear the Catholic doctrine of the necessity of
restitution in the place of maudlin denunciation of “carnal
righteousness.” We want to have it well understood that no amount of
exalted emotion will relieve the guilty thief until he has handed over
his ill-gotten goods. We do not say that the neglect of this doctrine
is the cause of the special cases of corruption which come before our
eyes; but we freely assert that the spread of dishonesty is due to
nothing less than the ineptitude and fatuity of Protestantism in this
respect.
We further assert our conviction that no amount of preaching will
change the present widespread disregard of the rights of property.
These must be enforced in the private life of each man, backed by a
supernatural principle. The means which the Catholic Church has
provided for the support and assistance of the individual conscience
is the confessional. This it is which has created the very sentiment
of honesty that is now dying out among us for want of it. Antiquity
did not possess this sentiment. The Greeks encouraged stealing and
made a god of theft. The Romans acknowledged only the claims of
hospitality and the force of law. Our barbarian ancestors grew and
thrived upon piracy and pillage. It was no abstract or speculative
doctrine which overcame their savage traits and established the new
sentiment which condemns successful villany; nor will the present
decay of honesty be arrested by any system which divorces it from the
institution that has brought it into existence.
The most fatal symptom, however, of our lapse into paganism reveals
itself in that department of morality in which the struggle is carried
on with the most lawless of human passions. The morality of
Protestantism offered no assistance to the individual in this conflict
between reason and the excesses of that instinct which is at once the
most necessary and at the same time the least governable. Developments
such as Mormonism and the Oneida Community, the increasing frequency
of divorce, and the freedom with which the maxims of the ancient
Christian morality are questioned, are sufficient to illustrate the
decay of fixed principles of morality. Such results are not strange
when we recall the actual conduct of the founders of Protestantism.
Nor is it unreasonable to expect a certain amount of laxity in an
intellectual movement which constitutes each individual his own
supreme judge and teacher of morals; but the worst is that the very
source of purity is thoroughly vitiated. In ancient Christianity the
laws of chastity were clearly defined, peremptory, and plainly set
before the intellect. Modern individualism, having begun by denying
man’s responsibility and asserting his necessary depravity, has placed
the rule of virtue, not in reason, but in instinct. The old morality
was a sentiment based upon dogmatic conviction. The modern
Neo-protestantism has nothing upon which to depend for its purity of
life except the natural feelings of modesty and shame. The very idea
of attempting to subject sexual instinct to reason is scouted as an
absurdity by popular writers. The license taken by those whose
occupation is to amuse the public every day increases in
shamelessness. Art, whether pictorial or dramatic, will not listen to
any suggestion of restraint, and the natural sentiment upon which our
virtue rests is constantly being weakened.
It is foolishly supposed that this species of disorder, having gone to
certain lengths, will at last return to rational limits. It is with
some such notion that the enthusiasts, who profess to see in popular
education a panacea for all evils, expatiate upon the future. This,
however, is mere thoughtlessness. The development of the nervous
temperament in the system of a nation is no remedy for this moral
illness; on the contrary, the reverse is true. The result is the most
dangerous form of sensuality. When an intense and excitable organism,
quick in its intellectual movements, eager in its appreciation of
beauty, is left to follow its own instincts in the application of
wealth, we have the nearest approach to the ancient classic type of
culture. The recent development of American art is a source of
universal remark. Here the successful artist finds golden
appreciation. The diva of the lyric stage, the painter and sculptor,
meet with substantial welcome. The growing taste for beauty of line is
well known and acknowledged. Extravagance in dress is becoming a
national weakness. There is every indication that the next century
will witness in our descendants a race more elegant in its tastes,
more intense in its enjoyment of every form of beauty, than even the
heirs of European refinement—a generation as unlike the ungainly type
of Brother Jonathan as an Athenian of the age of Pericles was
dissimilar to the rude Pelasgic fisherman of the Hellespont. We think
of Greece most commonly in her æsthetic character and influence; but
we must not forget that her immorality as recorded in history was
hideously dark. The product of her sensuous and overwrought knowledge
and enjoyment of nature spread with her literature and art. They
brought death to the strong and vigorous race which had overcome the
world. The annals of Suetonius and Tacitus, the calm records of
current facts, are too obscene to bear circulation among ordinary
readers of our day. The literature of their time has to be expurgated
before it is fit to be perused by youthful students. The crimes which
are charged by the apostle in his terrible invective against the
heathen culture, which are rehearsed by Terence and Aristophanes,
satirized by Juvenal, laughed at by Horace, celebrated in the flowing
measures of Anacreon, Ovid, and Catullus, and coldly set down by
historians as the public acts of the cultivated classes—these
frightful excesses live to-day, with all their unnatural beastliness,
in the exquisitely-wrought marbles and frescos of Pompeii.
There was never a case in which either a nation or an individual was
cured of this species of corruption by increasing the æsthetic
faculties and amplifying the temptations of wealth. But, it is urged,
education gives the rising generation the ability to read, and
therefore puts it in the way of acquiring sound instruction. Let it be
understood that we believe no parent has a right to deny this
instruction to his children; but we bespeak on the part of all earnest
men the utmost attention to the practical issue of this theory, in
order that they may see how incomplete it is as a safeguard to the
virtue of the youth now growing up. What is the nature of our popular
literature? Upon what sort of reading is the newly-acquired art
exercised? What is the ratio of books which furnish useful instruction
to those works whose aim is solely to amuse and excite the
imagination? And of the latter class, what is the proportion between
the harmless and noxious publications? Those who receive only
elementary instruction practically go to school in order to learn to
read novels and the trashy and immoral periodicals whose costly
illustrations and increasing number amply prove the increasing demand
for them. The influence of the press is necessary and indispensable,
but there is nothing in our literature which will in any degree
restrain the tendencies of our civilization.
We wish it were possible to use language of sufficient force to
express the reality of our perilous condition; for our people have
already gone far enough in this direction to excite the utmost alarm.
The moral corruption of New England is such as to threaten with
extinction the vigorous race which originally inhabited it. The
medical profession of this country is so profoundly impressed with the
constant decrease in the birthrate of the native stock and with its
marked physical decadence, that essays on these subjects are to be
seen in every scientific periodical.
Ten years ago Dr. Storer called attention to the fact that, as far
back as 1850, the natural increase of the population, or the excess of
births over deaths, was by those of foreign origin, and that
subsequently the ratio in favor of foreign parents was constantly on
the increase. “In other words,” he says, “it is found that, in so far
as depends upon the American and native element, and in the absence of
the existing immigration from abroad, the population of our older
States, even allowing for the loss by emigration, is stationary or
decreasing.” Dr. Storer did not hesitate to attribute this fact to the
criminal destruction of human life or to the suppression of the family
by those whose natural instincts ought to procure its conservation.
The evidences of this widespread evil are before us in every daily
issue of the press.
The demands of pleasure, the numerous inducements to women to find
their occupation outside of domestic life, and to shrink from the
duties and cares of maternity—none of those temptations which furnish
the occasion of this crime are to be met by increasing the size and
beauty of our public schools or by providing the children of the poor
with elegant accomplishments. Nor will the result be more favorable if
the privilege of the elective franchise is added to the other
extra-domestic responsibilities of American women. What, then, is to
save us when marriage, if recognized, has ceased to be a desirable
state, when luxury and nervous development have subjected the chastity
of single life to the severest temptation, and when our inherited
morality has vanished in the process of our growth?
If the native American race is not going to die out, it must learn
from foreigners the secret of their vitality. Christianity has, in the
confessional, the means of applying not only sacramental grace to the
fallen and repentant, but of securing them from further disorder. Dr.
Storer has told the country very plainly that “the different frequency
of the abortions depends, not upon a difference in social position or
in fecundity, but in the religion.” In other words, the cultivated
American is far below the ignorant immigrant in morality; and the
reason of this is that the immigrant referred to is a Catholic and his
employer is not.
Dr. Storer proceeds to observe: “It is not, of course, intended to
imply that Protestantism, as such, in any way encourages or, indeed,
permits the practice of inducing abortion; its tenets are
uncompromisingly hostile to all crime. So great, however, is the
popular ignorance regarding this offence that an abstract morality is
here comparatively powerless.” This touches the fundamental truth
involved in the whole discussion—“an abstract morality” never can
prove effective against any concrete evil. But the doctor further
expresses his conviction, drawing the legitimate conclusion and
stating the fact: “And there can be no doubt that the Romish
ordinance, flanked on the one hand by the confessional and by
denouncement and excommunication on the other” (he has previously
quoted from the pastoral of a Catholic prelate), “has saved to the
world thousands of infant lives.”
The American people is beginning to perceive that wealth and culture
without true morality mean ruin. If it does not perceive that
Protestantism is the cause of its present corruption, it at least
confesses that its inherited religion is powerless to remedy the evils
of the day. We cannot ask it to reject its false guide much faster
than it is doing. We cannot tell how soon it will be able to receive
the divine truth of Christianity. It will be no pleasure to us to have
the old faith vindicated by the destruction of this people.
We beg to be allowed to preserve our Catholic population and to keep
them pure and faithful, at least until non-Catholics can offer
something which will meet their own contingencies. If this demand be
persistently disregarded and our honest attempt to save ourselves be
misconstrued into an assault upon others, we will do the best we can,
at all events.
But, in the meantime, let all earnest men admit the reality of danger.
Do not let attention be absorbed by particular manifestations of a
disease which is universal. The evils which threaten our life will not
be removed by retrenchment of government expenses, or by a temporary
destruction of party tyranny, or by an ostentatious simplicity in
official circles, or by “justification by faith,” or by pietistic
feeling, or by acting out individual crotchets, or even by sound moral
doctrine in an abstract form, but by the living truth of God, taught
by him through human lips, applied by him with divine efficacy through
the ministry of human hands. The truth which has saved the ancient
world and has produced all that is desirable in modern civilization is
alone able to preserve our nation in its future growth.
A FRENCH NOVEL.[69]
This title will prove a disappointment to those who only associate the
idea of a French novel with that typical production of vicious and
feverish literature to which the fiction-mongers of France have so
long accustomed us, and whose corrupt influence has made itself felt
far beyond the limits of the nation which gives it birth. Our present
purpose is not to discuss one of those pernicious books, but to
consider one which rises as far above their level by its artistic
beauty and literary merits as by the nobler tone of its morality. A
novel by a Catholic writer, impregnated from first to last with the
spirit and principle of the faith, full of noble sentiments, and yet
as amusing and as exciting as any “naughty” novel; a book where all
the good people, even the holy people, are as charming, witty, odd, or
fascinating as if they were anything but holy; a book that conveys in
the characters and scenes it brings before us a great moral lesson,
and which at the same time absorbs and excites us as powerfully as the
cleverest novel of the sensational school, with its inevitable murders
and forgeries and double marriages—the appearance of a novel such as
this is surely an event that it behoves us to examine closely as the
curious literary phenomenon which it is.
Mrs. Augustus Craven’s last work, _Le Mot de l’Enigme_, which, under
the title of _The Veil Withdrawn_, appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD
simultaneously with its issue in the _Correspondant_ of Paris, is
known to most of the readers of the present article, but we would ask
them if, when enjoying its persual, they have sometimes stopped to
consider what a genuine achievement the book was, and how pregnant
with promise for the lighter Catholic literature of the future? Any
book by the author of the _Récit d’une Sœur_ is sure to command a wide
audience in Europe and America among readers of different languages
and creeds; but there are reasons why _The Veil Withdrawn_ should meet
with a specially triumphant welcome from us Catholics, for it is in
truth a triumph over prejudices whose narrow and tyrannical rule have
hitherto been fatal to Catholic fiction. The _Récit d’une Sœur_, the
peerless story that stands unrivalled amidst the literature of the
world, taught many lessons to our day, but no one, perhaps, more
important, considering its possible results, than that which it
conveyed to Catholic writers—namely, that religion, in its most ardent
form and its most rigid application, is compatible with the tenderest
romance; that human hearts and imaginations, far from being chilled or
fettered by the sublime truths of the faith, are kindled and enlarged
by their influence; that human passions come into play as powerfully
in souls ruled by the divine law as in those that reject and defy it,
the only difference being that to the former they are weapons used in
noble warfare, servants and auxiliaries, whereas to the others they
are tyrants that strike only to destroy. The loves of Alexandrine and
Albert revealed this secret to the world, and this alone would have
sufficed to immortalize the _Récit_. No romance ever reached the skyey
heights to which these lovers soared; and yet, while their hearts sang
their sweet love-song together, their souls were fixed on God,
dreaming of heaven, where their love was to find its perfect
consummation, scorning the pitiful meed of earthly happiness, unless
it might lead them to the secure possession of the eternal bliss of
which this was but the transient foretaste. “_Pour la vie, c’est trop
court!_”[70] was Alexandrine’s reply when Albert asked her for the
ring on which the words were graven, _Pour la vie!_ And such should be
the motto of all love worthy of the name.
This pure key-note is struck and sustained with a master-hand
throughout the whole story of _The Veil Withdrawn_, and the success
with which the principle it enunciates has been forced into the
service of art is the point which we would invite Catholic writers in
all countries to consider attentively. Our grand mistake, as a rule,
is to assume that Catholic literature, in order to be true to its
mission, must be constantly talking of holy things, bringing forward
pious maxims and practices; that the heroes and heroines of its
stories must be pious people, or else very wicked people whose final
cause is the glorification of the pious ones who are to convert them;
it must never deal openly with the great problems of life, never
grapple with its deepest mysteries, never describe men and women as
they ordinarily exist around us—human beings endowed at their birth
with the fatal inheritance of Adam, with mighty capabilities for good
and evil, with passions and instincts that have to work out their
issue to ruin or to endless victory; souls where all the forces are
clashing in deadly and desperate strife—these things are forbidden
ground to the Catholic novelist. He may tread timidly on the outskirts
of the battle-field, but he must not venture into the thick of the
fight; he must not lift the veil and let us look upon the scene where
this momentous combat is going forward, where nature and grace and all
the allied enemies of the human heart are wrestling and striving in
fierce war. These things would not be “edifying”; they would not be
fit reading for young girls; they might put ideas into their heads and
excite their imaginations. And why, we ask, is it invariably taken for
granted that Catholic writers only write for young girls? Are there no
Catholic men in the world? It might be urged, with better show of
reason, that young girls are not obliged to read novels at
all—stories, yes; but novels do not form any necessary part of their
education. These are intended for men and women—people who have found
out the “answer to the riddle,” learned some of the dark and painful
lessons of life; who turn to the pages of a novel to find an hour’s
harmless recreation, if nothing more, and to forget the dull round of
care and vexing realities in the amusement or excitement of imaginary
troubles and joys. We are far from saying that the novel has no higher
purpose than this; but if it claimed no other, this, in itself, is a
legitimate one. Human nature must have relaxation. The most ascetic
saints sought recreation of some kind from the strain of work and
contemplation. Still more must ordinary mortals seek it; and as
novel-reading has become one of the easiest and most popular forms of
mental diversion, it is of the highest importance that it should be of
good and wholesome quality. Now, a novel is neither good nor wholesome
when it ignores the canons of art, and eschews the true study of human
nature, and confines itself to pretty commonplaces and pious allusions
and exemplary sentiments exchanged between namby-pamby people who are
represented as in a state of society which, practically, has no
prototype in real life, where strong passions and conflicting
interests and fierce temptations have no existence, but where all
difficulties are adjusted by a pious suggestion offered at the right
moment by a friend or a book. Grown-up men and women will not be put
off with this sort of thing, be they ever such good Catholics; when
they take up a novel, they do so for interest or amusement, and, for
lack of better, they fall back on the real novels, sensational or
otherwise.
This is a lamentable state of things, and as fatal to Catholic writers
as to their readers. It is this false idea of the character and
requirements of Catholic literature which has brought it to the low
ebb at which it now is among English-speaking Catholics, in spite of
the growing numbers of a cultivated and intelligent audience. Every
one recognizes the fact, and many deplore it, but no one has the
courage to attempt the remedy. It would require, indeed, something
more than any effort of individual influence to break down the
prejudices and puerile traditions that fence in the authorized field
of Catholic fiction in the present day, and it is difficult to say
which calls for strongest denunciation—the prohibition which excludes
certain subjects, or the large license given to the use of others. The
Catholic novelist is forbidden to strike the deep, vibrating chords of
nature and of souls, but he believes himself free to handle the most
sacred subjects, to preach and moralize to the top of his bent. It is
hard to speak of this folly as dispassionately as we should wish; but
looking at it with all possible indulgence, is there not something in
the stupid conceit and self-complacent audacity of it that may justly
rouse indignation? We see grave men, who have graduated in the
schools, give up long years to the study of sacred science, in order
that they may some day be competent to speak worthily on these high
themes, that they may learn how to balance the relations of right and
wrong, and define the limits of temptation and sin, of cause and
effect; and when, with knowledge ripened by study and meditation, they
venture to write, it is in a spirit of great reverence and in fear and
trembling. On the other hand, we see incompetent laymen, young ladies
and young gentlemen fresh from school, utterly inexperienced, but well
supplied with the boldness of inexperience and incompetence, dipping a
dainty pen into a silver inkstand and proceeding to discourse in a
novel of pious subjects—of prayer, and temptation, and sacraments, and
priests and the priestly character, and controversial subjects—as
flippantly as they might discuss the merits of a new opera or a new
costume. And they fancy, forsooth, that this is doing good and giving
edification! They imagine that it is enough to mention sacred subjects
and emit pious or quasi-pious sentiments in order to reach the human
heart and strike the _sursum corda_ on its springs! One could afford
to laugh at the silly delusion, if the danger did not lie so close to
the folly of it. A moment’s reflection and a little humility would
suffice to convince these well-meaning persons of their mistake. Many
of them might really attain their end of edifying if they had only the
sense to confine themselves within the range of their powers. If a
beginner, or one endowed with a delicate sense of music but limited
musical ability, should attempt to perform one of Beethoven’s glorious
sonatas, he would only irritate us by spoiling the masterpiece; but if
the same person wisely contented himself with playing some simple air,
he might afford genuine and unalloyed pleasure, touching some chord of
feeling in the listener’s heart, evoking, mayhap, sweet memories of
childhood, sacred and long forgotten. Few things provoke the disgust
of an intelligent reader, pious or not, more than to come upon
religious platitudes in a book ostensibly written to amuse; and the
prospect of meeting with this kind of thing at every page is
sufficient to prejudice him against a book which bears a Catholic name
on the title-page. Even the name of a Catholic publisher brands it at
first sight as “dull and silly.” Here, as elsewhere, the cause and
effect react upon each other, and the puerile tone and absence of
artistic treatment in the author, by failing to gain the favor and
attention of the public, paralyzes the most energetic efforts of
Catholic publishers, and those few Catholic writers who can command a
wider audience are unavoidably driven to the Protestant publishers in
order to secure a hearing.
Is it too much to say that a Catholic novelist who would successfully
break through these narrow-minded and false theories, and courageously
inaugurate a new reign in Catholic fiction, would be conferring a
great benefit on our generation? We claim for Mrs. Augustus Craven the
merit of having achieved this feat. The mission which she began in the
_Récit d’une Sœur_ was successfully continued in _Fleurange_, and may
be said to triumph completely in _The Veil Withdrawn_. Her last novel
is a book which appeals as strongly to the interest of the unbeliever
and the heretic as of the most fervent Catholic. The moral lesson it
conveys may be accepted or not, just as the reader pleases; it is
there, brilliantly and powerfully delivered; but, like so many
messages broadly written on the face of nature or faintly whispered to
our hearts, we may hearken or we may close our ears to it, as we
choose; the story still remains one of enthralling interest, full of
tenderest romance, of fiery passion, of picturesque description, of
sparkling repartee, of gay and pathetic and thrilling situations. With
the skill of a real artist the author lifts the curtain and bids us
look into the hearts of our fellow-creatures; she touches the hidden
springs, reveals the dubious motives, evil sometimes blending with
good so closely that it requires the finest analysis to discern their
true proportions, to decompose the elements, and show where and how
far each in turn prevails.
The two characters who stand out from the canvas as the leading
figures in the picture are brought face to face in the most terrible
conflict that human hearts can know. Ginevra—not a child, not a placid
convent maiden suspecting no life beyond her “narrowing nunnery
walls,” but a woman with a strong, impassioned soul—is first
inebriated with the pure wine of permitted happiness; the cup is
dashed from her, and she tries to clutch it in defiance and despair.
It eludes her still. She beholds her happiness wrecked, her life
blighted, at the very outset. She does not take her rosary, and, with
conventional propriety, accept the ruin of her young life with the
resigned spirit and smiling countenance of a saint; far from it. The
evil that is in her starts into activity and makes a fierce fight
against her cruel lot. She plunges into the whirl of society, and
tries to drown her misery in such consolations as excitement and
gratified vanity can give. We follow her step by step in the perilous
career, now trembling at her rashness, now rejoicing at her escape,
but never, in the bottom of our hearts, believing that she will prove
unworthy of her nobler self.
Let us glance over the story, not to analyze its merits as a work of
high art and moral philosophy, but simply to review it in the light of
a novel characteristic of our times and full of the stir of
nineteenth-century life.
It opens at Messina, in an old palazzo, where Ginevra, blossoming out
in her fifteenth summer, sits watching the sea through the half-closed
window, listening to the wave sobbing on the beach, unconscious and
dreamy, but already vibrating to the “low music of humanity” that
stirs the unwakened pulses of her heart. She rivets our attention at
the first glance as a creature whose beauty, sensitiveness, and
dormant energy of character contain all the elements of some high
romance. The description of her home and its inmates forms a charming
and animated picture. Fabrizio, the learned and somewhat austere
father; Bianca, the mother, with her tenderly brooding love; Livia,
the sister, at first so misjudged, but destined to rise to such
prestige amidst them all; Ottavia, the fussy, superstitious, devoted
old nurse; Mario, the sombre and jealous-tempered brother—they all
come before us with the reality of living characters whom we love,
fear, or suspect as they gradually reveal themselves. The episode of
the flower flung from the window in a moment of frolic and girlish
vanity, and which leaves so deep a mark on Ginevra’s life, is cleverly
introduced and prepares us for the retribution which awaits the poor
child’s innocent misdemeanor. Her life glides on peacefully in the old
frescoed saloon, where she cons her book and tends her nightingales,
until one day, while high perched on a stool, ministering to her
singing bird, the old majordomo flings the door wide open and in a
sonorous voice announces _Sua eccellenza il Duca di Valenzano_!
Ginevra starts, and so does the reader; for he knows instinctively
that this visitor is the fairy prince of the story, destined to make
the golden-haired maiden supremely happy or supremely miserable.
Ginevra’s confusion, at being discovered by this illustrious intruder
in such an awkward attitude and so childishly engaged, is charmingly
described. She knows not whether to be terrified or delighted when the
handsome duke goes forward and assists her to descend from her aerial
standpoint. But old Don Fabrizio knows what to feel about it, and
surveys the group in the embrasure of the window with a glance of
stern displeasure. This high-born client of his has nothing in common
with Don Fabrizio’s daughter, and it is with undisguised reluctance
that the proud lawyer obeys the duke’s request to introduce him to the
_signorina_.
And now the story is fairly afloat, and we follow it with an interest
that grows in proportion as the plot advances, rising in dramatic
power at every chapter. We know that Valenzano is not to be trusted,
that he has in him all the elements of a faithless lover and a cruel
husband; but we surrender ourselves all the same to the charm of his
manner, his genius, his irresistible fascinations. The love-making is
as warm as the author dares to make it in a country where the freedom
of Anglo-Saxon courtship is unknown, and where the course of true love
runs smoothly between the contracting families on one side and the
family lawyers on the other. Ginevra goes forth to her new life with a
mixture of delight and fear that are like the foreshadowing of the
flickered destiny that awaits her, and Livia’s voice strikes like a
note of painful warning in the concert of the family joy and triumph
and congratulation, when she reminds Ginevra that “marriage is like
death”—a thing that we wait and watch for, but never know until we
have passed the gates and it is too late to turn back. The description
of the bridal festivities, when she goes home to her husband’s palace,
and, worn out by the grandeur and the glare, takes refuge alone in the
quiet starlight, and removes the circlet of glittering jewels from her
brow, that cannot bear the pressure any longer, presents one of those
pictures of life in the great Italian world that Mrs. Craven excels in
depicting.
Life has now become like an enchanted dream to Ginevra. But the first
touch of the awakening reality is not long delayed. One night, when
the moon was high in the blue heavens and flooding earth and sea with
a mystic glory, Ginevra and Lorenzo were sitting on the terrace,
listening to the water lapping on the shore, to the nightingales
trilling in the ilex groves; the young wife, hushed into silence by
the ecstatic beauty of the scene, laid her hand upon her husband’s arm
and whispered to him, “Let us lift up our hearts in prayer for one
moment, and give thanks for all this beauty.” Lorenzo bent on her a
look of tenderest love, and then murmured with a smile, as if
answering the poetic folly of a child,
“‘Beatrice in suso, ed io in lei guardava.’[71]
Thine eyes are my heaven, Ginevra. I feel no need to raise my own any
higher.” A cold chill like the first suspicion of a great sorrow crept
over the young wife. But Lorenzo quickly chased it away, and she tries
to banish the memory of it. But we do not forget it. Slight as the
incident is, it has all the import of the first growl of the distant
thunder, the small patch of cloud, “no bigger than a man’s hand,” upon
the summer sky, that are the certain forerunners of the storm.
But the storm will not burst just yet, and meantime we follow Ginevra
in her brilliant career, first travelling here and there with her
husband, and finally enthroned as a queen in her delightful world at
Naples. The first thing that makes us tremble for her is Lorenzo’s
startled exclamation of anger—was it?—when he comes upon Donna
Faustina’s card amongst those that are left at the young duchess’
door, and the latter, in surprise, asks what it means. He turns it off
adroitly, and Ginevra dismisses it from her mind. The interval that
follows is bright with incident and pictures of society in Naples and
in Paris. We see Lorenzo at work in his studio, where Ginevra sits to
him as a model for his Vestal, and where his rapturous admiration of
her beauty makes her recoil instinctively as from a homage unworthy of
her, too much “of the earth earthly.” And yet this husband, who is
almost an unbeliever, who smiles with indulgent fondness on his wife’s
ardent piety, is glad enough that she should have religion to guard
her from the perils that beset her on all sides; he recognizes the
power and utility of her faith, and is careful not to shock it or to
let her see how little he really shares it. Lando, the cousin and boon
companion of the duke, now comes upon the scene, and for a time we
side with Ginevra in her dislike and suspicion of him; but soon we
find out our mistake, and acknowledge that, in spite of his loose
principles and wild ways, he is kind-hearted and a stanch and loyal
friend to Ginevra. He does his best to save both her and Lorenzo,
though to the last he is unable to understand why any woman in her
right mind should care so much more for her husband’s love than for
his fortune, and why the ruin of the latter should be as nothing to
her compared to even a passing breach in the former. The scene at the
concert, where she first detects Lorenzo at a card-table, and it
breaks upon her that her husband is a gambler, is finely introduced,
and the conversation of Lando with the terrified young wife is
admirably drawn. But we know that the real crisis in her peace and
happiness has yet to come, and we hurry on till Donna Faustina enters.
Lorenzo disarms us, and almost gains our sympathy for this evil genius
of Ginevra, by the frankness with which he tells her story to the
latter; but the relations between all three, as he now tries to
establish them, are radically false, and it requires no prophetic eye
to foresee how they must end. What barrier have either Faustina or
Lorenzo to stem the torrent of passion when it breaks loose—outraged
love and desire of revenge on her side, and on his the embers of a
love that he fancies dead, but which it only needs the vanity of his
own undisciplined nature and the spell of her guilty passion to fan
into a livelier flame than ever? While the storm is rapidly rising in
this direction, Gilbert de Kergy crosses Ginevra’s path; but she is
yet far from suspecting that he is the messenger of fate to her, the
one who is to exercise a supreme influence in her life and call out
its energies in her soul’s defence with a courage that till now has
never been demanded of her. We know how the battle is sure to go with
Ginevra, as we foresee the issue with Lorenzo and Faustina. We see the
force that will ensure the victory in the one case, just as we see how
the want of it must lead to slavery and surrender in the other. And
here again the skill and power of the author triumph and afford a
striking contrast to the old system we have denounced. She never
moralizes, or reminds us that Lorenzo, being a bad Christian, who
never goes to Mass or the sacraments, is certain to fall, and that
Ginevra, in spite of passions that sway her heart with such relentless
power, will come safe out of it because of that restraining force
which, like a mysterious presence, rules her even when she is
unconscious of it—the author does not say these things; she proves
them by making her characters demonstrate their truth and act out
their conclusions. We will quote the passage where Gilbert and Ginevra
part, only to meet again in those sweet and tempting days at Naples.
Gilbert has been lecturing on his travels with an eloquence that
carried away his hearers. Then Ginevra says:
“I remained seated near the mantelpiece, and fell into a
dreamy silence, while Diana sat down to the piano. She began
to execute, with consummate art, a nocturne of Chopin’s,
which sounded to me like the expression, the very language,
of my own thoughts.… I woke up from my reverie with a
strange thrill, and blushed to the very roots of my hair;
for in lifting my eyes I met those of Gilbert fixed upon me,
and mine were full of tears. I brushed them away quickly,
and muttered something about the effect Chopin’s music
always had on my nerves, and then rose and drew near to the
piano, where Diana continued to pass her hands in rapid
changes over the keys.… Gilbert remained silent and pensive
in the place where I had left him, following me with his
eyes, and perhaps trying to guess the real cause of my
emotion.… When the time had come for me to go, and Mme. de
Kergy clasped me to her heart, I no longer strove to repress
my tears.… Gilbert gave me his arm and conducted me to my
carriage without speaking. As I was entering it, he said in
a voice that faltered slightly:
“‘Those whom you are leaving are greatly to be pitied,
madam.’
“‘I am still more to be pitied,’ I replied, and my tears
flowed freely.
“He was silent for a moment, and then he said:
“‘As for me, I have the hope of seeing you again; for I
shall come to Naples, … _if I dare_.’
“‘And why should you not dare? You will be received and
welcomed as a friend.’
“He made no reply, but when he had placed me in the
carriage, and I held out my hand to him to say adieu, he
murmured in a low voice: _Au revoir!_’”
And he keeps his word. He goes to Naples and meets Ginevra at a ball,
whither she has rushed, half mad with despair and jealousy, reckless
of everything resolved to drown the anguish of her heart in the
intoxication of gayety and the adulation of the world, that until now
she had carelessly despised. It was the night after the masked ball at
the Festina, where, on the impulse of the moment, she and her
beautiful friend Stella went as dominos to join in the fun and mystify
their friends a little. Ginevra recognized Lorenzo’s stately figure
the moment she entered the ball-room, and, terrified at finding
herself alone in the crowd, seized hold of his arm, clinging to him in
silence. Lorenzo, deceived by the color of her domino, mistakes her
for Faustina, whom he is expecting. He stoops low and whispers a
tender welcome in her ear. Ginevra, with a stifled cry, starts from
him and rushes frantically from the scene. The next night, with the
delirium of this discovery upon her, she goes forth in her loveliest
attire to dispute the palm of beauty with the rest.
“I had my diamonds and pearls brought out, and I gave
precise directions as to how I intended to wear them; this
done, long before the time came I began my toilet and spent
an endless time over it. So many women seem to take pleasure
in making a triumphant entry into a ball-room, I said to
myself, and in being flattered and admired, why should I not
taste of this pleasure as well as they? I am beautiful, I
know that—very beautiful even. Why should I not attract and
indulge my vanity and coquetry like other women?”
And she does attract, and her vanity is satisfied to overflowing. Her
beauty and the dazzling splendor of her jewels create a perfect furore
the moment she appears. She announces her intention of dancing, and
the noblest cavaliers in the room are at her feet in a moment,
quarrelling for the honor of her hand. Never was the triumph of a
coquette more complete than Ginevra’s. Her youth and its instinctive
love of pleasure vindicated themselves for a time, and she enjoyed her
success to the full; but as the night wore on nobler instincts
asserted themselves, worthier voices made themselves heard above the
din of this ardent and puerile vanity, and Ginevra feels the cold
chill of remorse stealing over her; a sense of vague misfortune takes
possession of her and stills her feverish gayety like a touch of ice.
Her last partner leads her to her seat, and she sinks into it
exhausted and miserable.
“At the same moment,” she says, “I heard near me a voice
well known though well-nigh forgotten—a voice at once calm,
strong, and sweet, but which now sounded slightly sarcastic.
‘Although I cannot aspire to the honor of dancing with the
Duchess de Valenzano, may I hope that she will deign to
recognize me?’
“I turned around quickly. The speaker who stood there and
thus addressed me was Gilbert de Kergy.”
The ordinary French novelist had here a fine opportunity for bringing
matters to a crisis between Ginevra and Gilbert; but the present
author uses it differently. Gilbert does not take advantage of the
temporary madness of Ginevra to gain influence over her and beguile
her from her allegiance to Lorenzo, faithless and cruel as he is.
Gilbert is far too noble for this, and his first feeling, on beholding
his ideal in this dangerous and unworthy atmosphere, is one of censure
and poignant regret. Neither he nor Ginevra is of the conventional
type of defaulters; both are good, high-principled, and brave; they
are both practical Christians, and the idea of betraying their duty to
God and to their own honor would have revolted them had it presented
itself in its naked horror. But it did not. The approach was gradual,
imperceptible. And here we have a great truth illustrated—one which it
is customary in Catholic authors to ignore practically, if not
theoretically: The possession of the faith and the practice of
religion do not act as opiates on human beings, deadening their hearts
and annihilating nature, and lifting them to a secure region where the
great temptations of life cannot reach them, or where, if they do,
they glide off harmless as arrows glance from the steel cuirass of the
soldier. Ginevra is pure and true as ever woman was who vowed at the
altar “that most solemn vow that a woman can utter”; she was,
moreover, genuinely pious. Gilbert was the very ideal of manly
chivalry and honor and goodness, an accomplished type of the Christian
gentleman; but neither he nor she was fireproof when the time of trial
came. He loved Ginevra before he knew it; and she, forsaken,
humiliated, stung in her love and her wifely pride, is thrown into his
constant companionship, not by her seeking, but through one of those
accidents to which women of her class and circumstances are liable
every day. She is grateful for Gilbert’s brotherly regard, she admires
his noble life and his sentiments, so true, so different from those of
other men; she is grateful to him for the frank rebuke which he spoke
out at the ball when she was drifting she knew not whither. Step by
step the friendship grows to a tenderer feeling, and at last
culminates in a love whose depth and power Ginevra does not even
suspect, so gradual has been its development. We tremble for her; but
even when we see her tottering blindfold on the edge of the abyss, we
feel certain she will never take the fatal plunge. All this is
depicted with infinite delicacy and rare psychological skill.
Livia now reappears upon the scene as one of the visible forces that
are guarding Ginevra along the slippery road. Livia is one of the most
striking and carefully drawn of the subordinate characters. It is
worth mentioning _en passant_ that here, as elsewhere, Mrs. Craven
breaks boldly through the time-honored traditions of the Catholic
novelist. The holier and more spiritual-minded her _dramatis personæ_,
the brighter, more sympathetic and accessible they are. Stella, the
heroic friend in days of sorrow, so gifted, so beautiful, so untainted
with the spirit of the world where she lives and moves—Stella has the
high animal spirits of a school-girl, the glad heart—_le sang joyeux_,
as she herself calls it—of a happy child. Livia, who in her father’s
home was pensive almost to melancholy, the moment she embraces the
austere rule of the cloister, spending her days in the contemplation
of heavenly things, grows as merry as a lark. Joy is henceforth the
keynote and regulator of her life; we have no trace of the downcast
face and solemn, mournful voice that have hitherto been characteristic
of pious people in novels. No one pulls long faces here, or whines or
sighs, except it may be those who have forsaken the fountain where
true joy has its spring, to drink of the poisoned waters of this
world’s pleasures, of sin, ambition, or folly. How winning, too, is
Livia’s tender interest in the gay life of her brilliant young sister!
She has not closed her heart against the actors on the world’s stage
outside her convent gates, but keeps her sympathies wide open to all
life and all humanity beyond them.
“‘Gina mia, you don’t tell me everything,’ she says one day
that Ginevra is conversing with her through the grating. ‘Is
it that you think I take no interest in your life now?’
“‘It is not only that, Livia, but it is difficult to talk
about such trivial, foolish things in presence of these bars
and looking at you as you stand behind them.’
“‘Nay, it is always good for me to hear you and for you to
talk to me,’ replied Livia. ‘It is true that when Aunt
Clelia comes here with her daughters, I put on a severe
countenance now and then, and tell them pretty plainly what
I think of the world; … but I must say that my aunt bears me
no malice for it, for she counts on my vocation to get good
husbands for Mariuccia and Teresina.… She does not look upon
me as “_jettatrice_” at all now, I can tell you!’
“She laughed so merrily as she spoke that I could not help
exclaiming with envy and surprise:
“‘Livia, how happy you are to be so gay!’”
The sense of humor, so essential to preserve the balance in true
mental power, is not wanting in this story. Donna Clelia is lightly
and brightly touched. She is everywhere true to herself;
self-important, silly, and good-natured, she and her daughters are
redeemed from hopeless vulgarity as much by their _naïveté_ and
naturalness as by the sheer inability of the author to depict
vulgarity—a fact which we notice without comment, leaving our readers
to decide whether it be a merit or a fault. Donna Clelia’s intense
satisfaction at being able to parade “my niece, the duchess” is one of
those touches that throw a character into striking relief. Her
enthusiasm for the “view” from the _baronessa’s_ house, where “not a
donkey-boy, nor a cart, nor a horse, nor a man, nor a woman could pass
in the narrow street but you saw them so plainly you could tell the
pattern of their clothes,” gives us the measure of her artistic
perceptions, while her raptures over the situation “with the church on
one side and the new theatre on the other … _figurateir!_ so that the
_baronessa_ can let herself into the church on the right, and through
a passage into her box in the theatre on the left,” is equally
characteristic of the manners and minds of the society around her. The
description of the splendid pageant of the Carnival, passing under
Donna Clelia’s balcony, is as spirited a bit of picturesque writing as
we have come upon for a long time. But we hurry on through these gay
and vivid scenes, impatient for the crisis that is at hand between
Gilbert and Ginevra. Nothing, so far, had prepared our heroine for its
approach.
“Apparently,” says Ginevra, “and in reality, our intercourse
was precisely what it had always been; every word he said to
me might have been said before the whole world. I felt, it
is true, that he spoke to me as he did not speak to any one
else, and I, on my side, spoke to no one as I did to him. We
were seldom alone, but every evening, in the drawing-room or
on the terrace, he managed to converse with me for a moment
or two when no one was by. He did not disguise from me that
these stolen moments were to him the most enjoyable of the
evening, and I knew they were the same to me. From time to
time something indefinable in his voice, in his glance, even
in his silence, made me shudder as at some threat of danger.
But as he had never swerved by so much as a word from the
position he had assumed towards me—that of a friend—my
slumbering conscience did not awake!”
The awakening, however, came at last. The immediate occasion of it was
an eruption of Vesuvius, which is described with a dramatic power
worthy, if possible, of the sublime and terrible subject. The mountain
is on fire; the lava streams forth from a rent in its side, and,
strong and pitiless as fate, flows on over vineyards and villages and
smiling gardens, spreading desolation before it. Ginevra, with a large
party of friends, goes out to witness the magnificent spectacle from a
safe eminence. She and Gilbert are thrown together and climb to the
top of a hillock overlooking the scene of the conflagration. The
flames rose on all sides as in some vengeful apocalypse, high,
fantastic, awful. Ginevra could not take away her eyes from the sight,
but gazed on it as on some mysterious apparition that held her
spell-bound. At last she exclaimed:
“‘This is truly _la città dolente_! We have before our eyes
a faithful picture of the last day!’
“Gilbert did not answer. He was a prey to some emotion more
poignant than mine, and, in glancing towards him in the
lurid glare of the fire, I was frightened by the change in
his features and their strange expression. ‘Would to
heaven,’ he muttered at last, ‘that it were so in reality,
and that the last day were come for me! Yes, I wish I could
die here, on this spot, near you and worthy of you!’
“In spite of the appalling scene around us, in spite of the
roar of the detonations thundering above the dull noise of
the lava, the accent of his voice struck upon my ear, and
his words made my heart leap up with an emotion mingled with
terror.
“‘You are growing giddy,’ I said, and my voice trembled.
‘Take care; the effect of looking long at this is sometimes
to draw one on to the abyss.’
“‘Yes, Donna Ginevra,’ he replied in the same strange tone,
‘you are right; I am giddy and I am walking on to the abyss.
I know it. I exposed myself rashly; I presumed too much on
my strength.’
“The look which he fixed upon me in pronouncing these words
gave them a meaning which it was impossible to
misunderstand. It was no longer Gilbert who was speaking to
me; it was no longer the man to whom I fancied I had granted
only the safe privileges of a friend. The bandage which I
had wilfully placed upon my eyes fell off in an instant,
and, in the sudden emotion which followed, the sight of the
roaring flames that encircled us, the certain peril to which
one step further would lead us, appeared to me as the exact
representation of the danger to which I had madly exposed my
honor and my soul! For one moment I covered my face with my
hands, not daring to utter a word. At last I said in a voice
of supplication:
“‘Monsieur de Kergy, cease to look upon the fire that
surrounds us; lift up your head and see how, far above this
hell, the night is calm and beautiful!…’
Gilbert’s eyes followed mine and remained for some time
fixed upon the peaceful stars, that seemed, indeed, as far
away from the terrible convulsion of nature as from that
which was agitating our souls. Mine felt the need of a
mighty help, and I murmured in a low voice, and with a
fervor which had long been absent from my prayers: ‘O my
God! have pity upon me.’ A long silence ensued, and then
Gilbert said in a voice that was low and tremulous:
“‘Will you forgive me, madame? Will you trust yourself to me
to lead you from this place?’
“‘Yes, I will trust you,’ I replied. ‘But let us make haste
to leave it, for it is dangerous.…’
“‘Do not fear,’ he said in a tone that had resumed its
wonted calmness; ‘we must make haste, but the only danger
would be if you were to become frightened. Give me your
hand.’
“He would have taken it, but I hesitated and made an
involuntary movement, as if I meant to descend without his
help.
“‘In the name of Heaven,’ he said quickly, and trembling
with agitation, ‘don’t refuse my assistance in this
extremity! You cannot do without it; you _must_ give me your
hand!’
“His voice was now almost imperious; I gave him my hand,
and, grasping his arm firmly with the other, we descended
the hill slowly together.”
But although this first victory is the sure guarantee of the ultimate
one, Ginevra has a fierce battle yet to fight. Perhaps it will be
better that our cursory notice of the story should, however, end here,
and that we should leave our readers to discover the sequel for
themselves: how the same strong hand which held Ginevra safe on the
brink of the precipice led her faithfully through the peril, and
brought her back, not only to the inward peace which follows every
generous renunciation, every conquest over self, but how it finally
won back her husband’s love, crowning them both with a joy such as
they had never known in the days of their early happiness. The fitness
of Lorenzo’s punishment, the wreck of his fortune through one passion
and the vengeance brought upon his selfish pride by the other, is
worked out with a constructive art of no mean order. The minor
characters and their parts are carefully finished and satisfactorily
disposed of. Livia to the last shines like a sweet, pure star above
the horizon of Ginevra’s stormy life, pointing onwards and upwards
with faithful hand, never too strong for pity or too far removed for
sympathy, sorrowing with those who mourn, rejoicing with those who
rejoice. Her interview with Ginevra after the fearful ordeal through
which the latter has passed, when she comes like one who has been
“saved, but through fire,” to seek consolation in the peaceful
atmosphere of the convent, rises to a high degree of power. We are
strongly tempted to quote the scene between Padre Egidio and Ginevra,
but it is almost too sacred to be made matter of critical comment, and
would lose, moreover, much in effect by being detached from the
complete frame, and especially from the crucial experiences which
prepared Ginevra’s soul for that touch of the divine hand which healed
and strengthened and uplifted her in one instant. Such an episode can
only be appreciated in its proper place as part of a whole which
justifies and glorifies it. The close of the story is full of deep
pathos.
It is significant that this novel, which is recognized as the herald
of a new era in Catholic literature, should have made its appearance
at the same time in France and in America. May we not venture to infer
from the coincidence that America, in harmony with sound Catholic
teaching, placing greater confidence in human nature, may aid in
redeeming Catholic English fiction, and prove to the world that the
faith does not paralyze the imagination, but elevates it; leaving the
novelist at liberty to deal with the deepest problems of life, to
disport himself freely in the wide realms of fancy, nature, and the
world, and, guided and enlightened by the Spirit of truth, to grasp
with a firm hand and turn to the best account all those things that
come within the scope and province of art?
[69] _Le Mot de l’Enigme_—_The Veil Withdrawn_. By Madame
Craven. Translated by permission. New York: The
Catholic Publication Society. 1875.
[70] “_For life_, is too short!”
[71] “Beatrice gazed upwards, and I on her did gaze.”
—DANTE.
CHARITAS PIRKHEIMER.[72]
“Good and evil fortune are to a brave man as his right hand and his
left: he uses either equally well.”—_Saying of S. Catherine of Sienna._
Charitas Pirkheimer, the eldest daughter of John Pirkheimer and
Barbara Löffelholz, was born on the 21st of March, 1466. Her family
was a distinguished one in the annals of Nuremberg, her native town,
one of those old free cities of Germany whose burghers, as Æneas
Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., once said, were better lodged and
more daintily fed than the kings of Scotland. Among the citizens of
Nuremberg there was a kind of prescriptive aristocracy or patriciate
composed of those families technically called “_Rathsfähig_”—that is,
capable of being elected members of the ruling body or council of the
little republic. Of those whose names occur again and again in this
history one of the most ancient was that of the Pirkheimer, who, for
at least a hundred and fifty years before the birth of Charitas, had
been celebrated for their learning, piety, and statesmanship. Upright
and honorable in their private life, as well as in the execution of
their public trusts, they were looked up to by all, and their women no
less than their men were distinguished for strength of character, love
of learning, and solid, enlightened piety.
Nuremberg was at that time a centre of art and letters. Her youths
went to Italy and studied at the old universities of Padua and
Bologna, whence they brought back the prevailing enthusiasm for
classical lore; the new art of printing had found in her citizens
discerning patrons; the streets were full of the beautiful houses of
the rich merchants; churches and monasteries adorned with treasures of
sacred art abounded, as even to this day the passing tourist can see;
Albert Dürer, Adam Krafft, and Peter Vischer made their native city
known far and wide in the world of art; while Regiomontanus drew his
astronomical instruments from Nuremberg and published his works there,
and his disciple, Martin Behaim, a Nuremberger by birth, discovered
the sea-route to the East Indies. Literature was even more firmly
established, and John Pirkheimer himself instituted a sort of academy
after the model of those of the Italian princes. Wilibald, his only
son and the last of his name, continued his work and became famous as
the friend or patron of nearly all the renowned men of learning of his
time.
Among these refining influences Charitas grew up, and early showed her
enthusiasm for “polite” studies. The historians of Nuremberg,
Lützelberger and Dr. Lochner, both Protestants, have left high
testimony of the breadth of her intellect and the great consideration
in which she was held by men of all parties. The latter calls her “a
gifted, enlightened, pious, and prudent woman, who has conferred
lasting honor on the Convent of St. Clare,” and who “deserves a high
degree of respect for the firmness and dignity with which she
withstood the storm of the Reformation, which to her and her community
was a sorrowful event.” Lützelberger, in a lecture delivered at
Nuremberg, said to his Protestant audience:
“The Reformation was a deep grief to her pious heart,
accustomed as it was to the gentle amenities of convent
life, and, if we would judge her aright, we must put
ourselves entirely in her circumstances. But this done, she
will appear to us peculiarly worthy of respect and
consideration as a gifted and conscientious opponent of the
new religion.… Both by speech and in writing did she oppose
all attempts to convert her; and even if we differ from her,
we cannot but admire her earnest conviction, her prudence
and understanding, and especially the patience which she
added to her other virtues.”
Her father, John, was at the time of her birth a doctor of civil law
(the degree had been conferred at the University of Padua), and was
shortly after called to the service of the Bishop of Eichstädt,
William of Reichenau, as counsellor, in which capacity he also for
some years served the Duke of Bavaria and the Archduke of Austria at
their respective courts at Munich and Innsbrück. He was also often
sent as envoy and representative to other courts, after which services
he returned to his native city and died there, a member of the
council. Of his seven daughters only one married—Juliana, the
youngest; the rest all took the veil. Charitas and Clara were joined
in a lifelong friendship in the Convent of St. Clare in Nuremberg. By
all accounts the former seems to have entered the convent at the age
of twelve, whether as a novice or a scholar we are not told. The
convent had existed as a Clarist institution for two hundred years,
when some nuns of Söflingen, near Ulm, had introduced the Franciscan
rule; but the building, which was several centuries old, had been
tenanted before by a community of Sisters of St. Mary Magdalen. All
the nuns, with very few exceptions, were Nurembergers by birth and
descent (this was a condition of their admittance); and as each
generation of every illustrious family was represented by one or two
members, the convent had become peculiarly a cherished local
institution, whose welfare was closely connected with that of the
town. One of the council was charged with its temporal concerns, and
gifts and bequests were often made to it by the citizens. It was also
the school where the young girls of patrician family were mostly
educated.
A model of strict observance and reformed rule, it was under the
spiritual direction of the barefooted Franciscans, who, in the middle
of the fifteenth century, under the protection of Pope Eugenius IV.,
had, in a time when discipline was relaxed in many of the houses of
their order, taken up their abode in Nuremberg and put things upon the
old ascetic footing ruled by the great reforming saint, Francis of
Assisi.
Apollonia Tucher was Charitas’ best and dearest friend. They lived
together more than fifty years, and died within a few months of each
other. Through her Charitas also learnt to know and appreciate Sixtus
Tucher, her cousin, the provost of St. Lawrence, also a prominent man
in those days. Apollonia was at that time prioress and Charitas a
teacher in the convent school. The provost kept up a regular
correspondence with the two nuns, of which unfortunately one part has
been lost; but all _his_ letters are preserved, and were first
translated into German by his nephew, Christopher Scheurl, and
dedicated to a successor of his at St. Lawrence—Provost George Behaim.
His advice to Charitas and her friend was a great boon, and now and
then he would send little presents, such as gilt lanterns for the
church, which he always accompanied by some symbolical warning. Among
other things, he once reminded them that the convent life alone was
not enough to save their souls. “There is no other way to deserve the
eternal Fatherland,” he says, “but by industriously keeping all God’s
commandments.” He also furnished them with books, a _Commentary on the
Liturgical Hymns and Sequences_, 1494, _and_ 1506, and the _Discourse
of St. Augustine on the Siege of Hippo_. This was sent apropos of a
siege in 1502 which Nuremberg suffered at the hands of the Margrave
Casimir, and during which three hundred brave and noted burghers, all
heads of families, lost their lives. On the occasion of her father’s
death, in 1501, he writes to Charitas:
“Therefore we must not sorrow when a man has deserved to
return from a strange land to his own country, from an inn
to his own house, from work to rest, from death to life,
from time to eternity, and especially when he has, by a
blessed exchange, accumulated many good works; for we are
all like unto merchants sent into this pilgrimage of earth,
that with temporal goods we may buy and win eternal life.”
This learned and holy man died at the age of forty-six, in 1507, but
not before he had seen his friend Charitas chosen abbess of St. Clare.
She was only thirty-eight, but her strength of character made the
choice unanimous; and if the nuns could have foreseen what a stormy
time they would soon have to tide over, they would have congratulated
themselves still more on their good sense in electing her. From
henceforth she was the heart and soul of the convent: the nuns looked
to her for advice, support, and comfort; the council saw in her a
distinguished, learned, and enlightened countrywoman, the example not
only of her own community, but of those in the neighborhood who
followed her lead. One of the first events that marked her rule was
the attack of the plague which visited Nuremberg in 1505 and laid low
one of her own spiritual family. She insisted upon nursing the sick
nun, notwithstanding the remonstrances of her anxious sisters, and was
rewarded by the recovery of the patient. In those years of peace and
prosperity the convent fully vindicated its claim to being a house of
happy labor. Besides the instruction given to the young girls of the
city, the nuns were occupied in various artistic works, such as
illumination, copying, and embroidery. Their particular industry was
the manufacture of carpets and tapestries for hangings. They fulfilled
orders for public and civic buildings, as well as for private
families, and once the town council gave the imperial regalia into
their hands for putting in order for the coronation of Charles V. at
Aix-la-Chapelle. Nuremberg had the care of these venerated garments,
and was jealous of its reputation; so that the nuns felt a high
responsibility in being allowed to handle and repair such treasures.
They carefully mended and re-embroidered the white dalmatic, and lined
other pieces of the imperial dress, until they were fit to do honor to
the care of the city of Nuremberg. The convent had also a library of
some note for that time, the Scriptures and the fathers of the church
forming the principal part of it. Charitas’ favorite among the latter
was St. Jerome. She was solicitous concerning the daily reading of the
Scriptures, both in Latin and in German, which was done in common as
well as in private—a fact which she brought to her own defence in the
evil days that followed. She might truly say that she stood on
evangelical ground; for, as she wrote to the learned but scarcely
Christian Celtes, she saw in Scripture the “field of the Lord, whence
learning must draw the kernel from the shell, the spirit from the
letter, oil from the rock, and blossoms from the thorn.”
She had much to do also to manage the temporal concerns of her house.
The town demanded a yearly account of her stewardship; and in every
report made by the council on her administration there is nothing but
praise and recognition of her business talents. She corresponded with
a circle of lettered friends whom she knew through her brother
Wilibald, and these literary friendships form one of the most
interesting phases of her life. Conspicuous among her friends was her
brother himself, the friend of Albert Dürer, who has left us a
portrait of him, the correspondent of Erasmus, the polished man of
letters, the scholar of two Italian universities, for some time the
head of the council of the republic, and the leader of the Nuremberg
contingent in the war with Switzerland (1499). This last office he
held when he was only twenty-nine, and he afterwards became the
historian of the war. When the first beginnings of the Reformation
disturbed and excited all thoughtful minds in Germany, he looked upon
them as simple moral reforms, a renewal of ancient fervor and
discipline. But as the true nature of the changes heralded by Luther
broke upon him, he separated himself from the movement and rallied to
the side of the church doctrines so ruthlessly attacked. He proved a
great support to his sister in the days when the convent was under the
ban of the triumphant Reformers of Nuremberg, and his opinion of the
classical studies which some of the atheistic _literati_ would fain
have exalted as the _only_ learning fit for civilized men was clearly
expressed in these words: “It is not my belief that Christian
knowledge is incomplete without heathen literature. God forbid! Divine
Wisdom needs no human inventions, and it is possible to attain to the
highest point of theology without the help of Plato and Aristotle.”
Wilibald was accustomed to write to his sister in Latin, as Sixtus
Tucher also did, and Charitas’ style, notwithstanding her lowly
opinion of her own proficiency, was such as to do honor to her
education. He often sent her presents of books—for instance, the Hymns
of Prudentius, the Christian poet, and some writings of her favorite
doctor, St. Jerome. Later on he dedicated to her the works of
Fulgentius, which he had edited. Both Charitas and her sister Clara
were great admirers of Erasmus and diligently read his German
translation of the New Testament (in 1516), as well as some works of
the famous scholar Reuchlin (1520). To the former Charitas excused
herself from writing “on account of her bad Latin,” but sent him many
complimentary messages through her brother, and both he and Reuchlin
spoke of her in high terms in their letters to Wilibald. Clara also
was marvellously fond of books, and playfully told her brother that
there was nothing she envied out of her convent except his library.
The women of the Pirkheimer family all seem to have been distinguished
for their love of art and books. Catherine, Charitas’ niece, was
almost a transcript of her aunt and showed a wonderful strength of
character. The abbess’ married nieces were earnest and generous women,
a great support to the convent in the evil days that followed; and her
sister Sabina, the abbess of a Benedictine monastery on the Danube,
was a patroness of sacred art, the friend of Dürer, who sent her
designs for her illuminations and took great interest in the school of
miniature-painting established in her community.
Celtes was one of Charitas’ correspondents, and dedicated to her his
compilation of the works of Roswitha, the poet-nun of Gandersheim in
the tenth century. On the occasion of his being attacked by robbers
she writes him a letter of condolence, in which, in the style of the
day, she alludes to “the precious treasure of true wisdom, which is
the noblest and only possession wherein consolation may be found”; but
at another time she thinks it due to her conscience to speak to him of
a higher wisdom, and says:
“Your worthiness, of which I am a humble follower, will
pardon me for being also a lover of your salvation, and
therefore do I beseech you from my heart, not, indeed, to
give up worldly knowledge, but to add to it that higher one
which will lift you from the writings of the heathen to the
sacred books, from the earthly to the heavenly, from the
creature to the Creator. For although no kind of knowledge
or experience ordained of God is to be despised, yet a
virtuous life and the study of theology is to be considered
above everything; for man’s mind is weak and may err, but
true faith and a good conscience can never err.”
Christopher Scheurl, a clever jurist and called the Cicero of
Nuremberg, who had learnt letters at the University of Bologna,
dedicated his book on “The Use of the Mass” (_Utilitates Missæ_) to
Charitas, and sent it to her from Bologna, where it was printed in
1506, through his uncle, Sixtus Tucher. In his dedication Scheurl says
that in all his life he has only known two women—the pious Cassandra
of Venice and Charitas of Nuremberg—who “for their gifts of mind and
fortune, their knowledge and high station, their beauty and their
prudence, could be compared to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi,
and to the daughters of Lælius and Hortensius.” He praises her that,
following the example of her illustrious ancestors, she has preferred
“the book to the wool and the pen to the spindle,” and proved her high
degree of mental culture by such remarkable letters as he had seen and
received.
Albert Dürer was also often in communication with the sister of his
friend Wilibald. He, with the administrator of the convent, Kaspar
Nützel, and another companion, had gone in 1518 to the Reichstag at
Augsburg, where the painter was to take the old Emperor Maximilian’s
portrait. They wrote her a joint account of their doings there, which
she received in the same jesting spirit as it was written; for she
says she “cried for laughing” when she read it. She also touches on
the political questions of the day, and playfully gives them each his
lesson to learn in Augsburg. The convent administrator was to admire
in the Swabian Confederation “an example of strict observance”; the
secretary of the council, Lazarus Spengler, was to observe “the
apostolical life in common” of the members; and the painter to take
note of the fine buildings for which Augsburg was famous, in case they
might some day want good designs for the rebuilding of the convent
choir. She also bade them not to forget the “little gray wolf” among
the stately black and white habits of the religious of Augsburg (her
nuns wore a gray habit), and alluded to the three men as the captive
“sand-hares”—a name given to the burghers of Nuremberg, first in
scorn, but now become a mere jest.
Charitas’ mind was like a diamond of many facets; she was no angular,
sour ascetic, narrow in her sympathies and petrified in her
prejudices, but a genuine, warm-hearted woman, with as much love for
innocent mirth on the one hand as for the widest researches of
learning on the other. With her the words of her contemporary, Abbot
Trithemius, were true—“To know is to love”—and her affection for her
own family, no less than her appreciation of the intellectual movement
of the age, is shown in her voluminous correspondence. She and her
brother often exchanged little simple domestic presents, and she
delighted to send him sweetmeats, preserves, and cakes made in the
convent, often with her own or her nieces’ hands.
But she was not destined to end her life in these pleasant and
peaceful interchanges of friendship. The storm was brewing, and the
“new learning,” or new doctrine, as it was called, was beginning to
take formidable proportions and go far beyond the needed reforms which
Pope Adrian VI., one of the noblest men who ever sat in the apostolic
chair, so anxiously recommended to the nuncio Chieregati on the
occasion of the Reichstag at Nuremberg in 1522. Charitas grieved to
see holy things indiscriminately attacked, often with unworthy motives
cloaked by the convenient plea of conscience and zeal for the Gospel,
and grieved still more to hear no voice among her learned friends
raised in defence of all she held dear. At last, however, Jerome
Emser, licentiate of canon law at Leipsic, and private secretary of
Duke George of Saxony, published a masterly defence of the old faith,
and Charitas eagerly read it through and caused it to be read aloud to
the nuns during meals. The sisters and the abbess of the Convent of
St. Clare at Eger, who had sent her Emser’s writings, begged her to
acknowledge them in a letter to the author, which she accordingly did,
writing in fervent, unconstrained terms and thanking him in the name
of her sixty sisters and all other convents of her order. But this
letter fell into other hands, and in a distorted, mutilated shape, and
accompanied by a malicious commentary on its sentiments and motives,
was published by an enemy of Emser and Charitas. Even her brother
Wilibald, who had not yet seen through the real motives of the
Reformers, was vexed at her taking part in the fray, and told her she
had better have held her tongue. This was the beginning of a teasing
persecution of pin-pricks which gradually became serious and well-nigh
insupportable as years went on. Her brother, when he had fully rallied
to the Catholic party, had left the council and could be of little
practical use to his sister, while the majority of the council were
decidedly hostile. The convent’s administrator especially used his
station and authority only to torment the poor nuns. Charitas at this
time began to keep a diary, of which her biographer has made good use.
Dr. Lochner, the historian of Nuremberg, recognizes that many evil
deeds were done in the name of religion; and as to the case of the
Convent of St. Clare, he says that “it was the victim of that force
which at many times clothes itself in the garb of a moral and divine
reform, without being any the less mere force, the right of the
strongest.”
In 1524 Charitas says:
“There came to the convent many strangers, men and women,
but especially the latter, to tell the nuns the new things
that were being taught from the pulpit, and to represent to
them what a ‘damnable’ state was that of the religious life,
and how impossible it was for them to be saved in the
cloister, adding most unceremoniously that nuns were all the
devil’s creatures. Many citizens spoke threateningly of
withdrawing their relatives from the convent, whether the
persons in question wished it or no.”
As may be supposed, these attacks made no impression on the sisters;
but the town council, ready enough now to seize upon any pretext,
ascribed their steadfastness to the influence of their spiritual
directors, the Franciscans, and ordered the convent to be put under
the control of the new preachers. Charitas immediately drew up a
petition, which was approved by the community, in which she
represented to Kaspar Nützel, the administrator, that this was the
first time for forty-five years that she had seen her sisterhood in
grief, and went on to beseech him, as he had always been her friend
and supporter in temporal matters, so, now that she required his help
more than ever, he would not fail her in this spiritual distress. She
likewise wrote to Jerome Ebner, another of the highest dignitaries of
the council, whose daughter Katharine was one of her community; and to
Martin Geuder, her brother-in-law, to whom she touchingly appealed on
the ground of the innocence and evangelical character of the community.
“I beg of you,” she says, “do not allow yourself to be
persuaded by those who untruly say that the clear word of
God is hidden from us; for, by the grace of God, this is not
so. We have the Old and New Testaments here as well as you
who are out in the world; we read it day and night, at
meals, in the choir, in Latin and in German, in common and
in private. By God’s grace we know well the holy Gospels and
St. Paul’s Epistles, but still I think he is more
praiseworthy who fulfils the Gospel’s precepts in his
actions than he who has them always on his lips, but does
not act up to them.” She continues: “We desire to be no
burden or offence to any one; but if any one can point out
an abuse, let him do so, and we will gladly reform it. For
we acknowledge ourselves to be weak creatures, who may go
easily astray, and who do not dare to take pleasure in good
works. We only ask that no one shall do us wrong and
violence, and that we shall not be forced to do that which
we consider a disgrace and against our eternal salvation.”
Charitas’ former petition to Nützel was now supplemented by a more
formal petition of the convent, addressed to the town council. She
protested against the violent change meditated, and repelled the idea
of submitting to spiritual directors imposed by the republic; she
asked the councillors why they should object to a few women
voluntarily living in common, and besought them not to root up a
time-honored institution which was so intimately connected with the
annals of their native city. Part of the council was decidedly in
favor of less violent measures, and by the advice of these members the
intrusion of Lutheran directors was put off for a time and affairs
left to take their own course; but the lull was but momentary. People
still besieged the convent, threatening its inmates and disseminating
scandalous rumors in the town, and the poor nuns lived in daily fear
of some outbreak. This was in the Advent of 1524, and in March, 1525,
the storm broke loose again.
One of those frequent and useless disputations on the subject of
religion which made such a characteristic feature of the
sixteenth-century movement took place at Nuremberg at the beginning of
March. Eight religious of the Carmelite, Franciscan, and Dominican
orders took the Catholic side against seven preachers of the Lutheran
doctrines (among them the famous Osiander) under the leadership of the
prior of the Augustinians at Nuremberg. The debate lasted for eleven
days, or five sessions, without any shadow of an accommodation
appearing possible, and at the sixth session the Catholic doctors gave
in a written statement to the effect that the affair had become a
discussion such as by imperial mandate was strictly forbidden, and
that, as there was no impartial judgment to be looked for, the
presidents of the _colloquium_ being known adherents of the new
doctrines, they thought it best to retire from the useless conflict.
The council, however, had attained its end, and prepared an
opportunity for formally introducing the new religion into the
republic. The convents and monasteries were ordered to give up their
rule and the members to enter the world again. Four of the male
communities did as they were bid; the Dominicans and Franciscans still
refused to comply. The former were compelled to leave in 1543, and the
latter stood their ground till the last brother died. They were,
however, forbidden to preach and hear confessions, and the direction
of both convents of women, St. Clare and St. Catherine, was taken from
them.
The first open attack on St. Clare was made five days after the
religious disputation, on the 19th of March, 1525. A deputation from
the council demanded admittance into the interior of the convent, and,
though Charitas pleaded the “enclosure” and offered to gather the
community at the grated window through which it was customary to speak
with strangers and men, she was forced to accede to their demand and
admit the councillors into the winter refectory. The two
representatives began with a honeyed address, telling the assembled
nuns that, now the light of the Gospel was fully manifested in the
city, it were a shame that they alone should be denied the privilege
of seeing it. Therefore a learned and distinguished preacher, Herr
Poliander, of Würzburg, would impart to them this knowledge, and, the
Franciscans being removed, the council would provide the nuns with
suitable confessors. The abbess heard them out, and then retorted that
her nuns were well stored with Gospel knowledge, which had been
clearly preached to them before, and that the connection between their
order and the Franciscans was of long date and authorized by papal and
imperial decrees, but that, if they were to suffer violence in this
matter, God and their conscience urged them to declare that it was so,
and that they protested against such violence being used. The
councillors said that, since they objected to secular[73] priests as
confessors, they might choose one of the Augustinians (who had
apostatized), since they too were “religious.” But Charitas answered:
“If we are to have religious, why not leave us the Franciscans? We
know and honor them and have had long experience of them; but as to
the order you name, we also know how lax its discipline has grown.”
“Nay,” said the councillors, “you will soon not have that to complain
of; for these brothers will doff their cowls and enter into another
state.”
To which the abbess replied: “That is no comfort to us. They could
only teach us to follow their example; and as they have taken to
themselves wives, they would have us take husbands. God forbid!”
The useless conversation was carried on some time longer, and on
Charitas asking the reason why the council so oppressed her
sisterhood, and whether they had committed any offence, the
councillors were forced to allow that the “council knew of no offence
or abuse on their part, but, on the contrary, only of honor,
diligence, and modesty,” but that in other communities it was not
always so, and the new laws must be enforced everywhere alike. The
very next day Poliander, the Lutheran preacher, came for the first
time to preach to the reluctant nuns, while on the 21st of March the
Franciscans were allowed to pay their charges a farewell visit,
administer the sacraments, say Mass, and preach. This was the last
time the nuns enjoyed these holy privileges; henceforward the dying
were deprived of the Viaticum and Extreme Unction, and Mass was no
longer said in the convent chapel. On the 22nd Charitas assembled a
chapter of her nuns, which decided on presenting a second petition to
the council, and the abbess sent to ask Kaspar Nützel to come in
person to the convent. He consented and sent her a friendly message,
but it was clear he expected submission. He came and set before the
community the advantages of gracefully giving way and the evil they
would entail on themselves by resistance; but Charitas answered to the
point: that, although he had spoken in friendly terms, he had not
mentioned the real subject of the dispute—_i.e._, the question of who
should be the convent’s spiritual directors. “We see,” she said, “that
every means is being used to drive us to accept the new doctrines, but
until the whole church accepts them neither will we. Nothing will part
us from the fellowship of the universal church nor from the vows we
have vowed unto God.” She then offered to let the administrator ask
each nun her opinion separately during her own absence; but Nützel saw
that this would be useless, and even refused to take the petition,
whereupon the abbess read it aloud before him. The gist of it was
contained in the prayer that, in the name of the Gospel-freedom which
the times had so extolled, no violence should be done to the
consciences of the nuns. They begged also that if their confessor was
taken from them, at least no one should be imposed upon them in his
place. But it was evidently in vain, although Nützel reluctantly
pledged himself to represent their case to the council. Before he left
the convent, however, he attempted to cajole the abbess out of her
firm resistance to his wishes, and, taking her aside, begged her to
put her authority and influence on his side, telling her that she
might personally do much to prevent even bloodshed, and that, if he
could only win her over, he would think himself sure of the city and
the neighborhood. Indeed, many pinned their faith to her steadfastness
and looked to her example for support in their own temptations. But
neither flattery nor threats could win her over, nor even the hint
that by her obstinacy she would confirm others in contumacy, and bring
upon her native town the vengeance of the peasants who had risen in
arms against the Catholics. To this she answered calmly that it was
well known that the peasants had risen because, in the midst of this
new preaching of fraternity and evangelical freedom, they saw a way to
abolish the custom of vassalage, and meant forcibly to possess
themselves of that which their richer brethren were so glibly prating
of in theory. As the second petition had remained without effect,
Charitas drew up a third, a model of clearness and logic. Quoting St.
Paul, she said, “I can do all things in Him who is my strength,” and
she again assured the council that nothing would drive the sisters out
of the church. This paper was signed by all the nuns. She also asked
through Nützel for a secular priest, a holy man of the name of
Schröter, for a confessor, since the council was determined that the
Franciscans should no longer serve the convent; but this prayer was
also refused.
Things grew worse and worse. Poliander preached vile and opprobrious
sermons to the poor nuns, upbraiding and accusing them; and when he
left Würzburg, two others, Schleussner and Osiander, succeeded him and
preached regularly three times a week in the chapel. A sharp and
degrading watch was kept over the nuns, as the council suspected them
of stopping their ears with cotton-wool or exercising other petty
devices to escape the words of the distasteful sermons. This continued
throughout Lent, and the violence of the preachers inflaming the
passions of the people, the nuns lived in daily fear of seeing the
latter put into execution their frequent threat of burning down the
convent. The serving-girls could hardly go out of the house in safety
to purchase provisions, and the friends of the nuns had to use all
manner of subterfuges to be able to visit them in peace, while every
knock at the door frightened the poor women as if it heralded their
doom. But worse was yet to come. On the 7th of June three of the
councillors, Fürer, Pfinzing, and Imhof, visited the convent and laid
before the nuns five propositions with which the council demanded
instant compliance: an inventory was to be taken of all the convent
possessions, a laxer rule introduced, the religious dress laid aside,
the grated window replaced by a common one of glass, and free
permission granted to every nun to leave if she chose, taking with her
whatever dowry she had brought to the convent, or a suitable
remuneration for the services done during her stay there. Charitas
wisely showed a disposition to yield in minor matters, in which she
knew that the council would find means at any rate to force her
compliance, but on the matter of the religious vows she stood firm,
answering:
“In so far as my sisters owe me any personal obedience and
consideration, I am ready to forgive them the debt, but I
cannot absolve them from vows vowed unto the Lord; for what
are we poor creatures that we should lay hands on the things
that are God’s?”
The council allowed her four weeks to make up her mind to these
changes, and promised, in case of compliance, to protect the convent;
but if these conditions were resisted, neither the house nor the nuns
would be either protected or supported. Charitas called a chapter
together and announced her determination to have nothing to do with an
“open convent,” at the same time asking the sisters’ opinion on the
council’s proposal. The nuns unanimously (there were nearly sixty of
them) declared that they did not wish to be “made free” after the
council’s pattern of freedom; they meant to keep to their vows and
maintain their rule, and begged the abbess not to forsake them. She
then swore to stand by them as long as they would stand by their vows,
and exhorted them to steadfast courage and fervent prayer. Her friends
in the council, seeing that their influence was too weak to help the
convent, advised her to consent to the lesser propositions, and
accordingly the inventory was quietly made and handed over to the
authorities; the grating was taken down, and, at Wilibald Pirkheimer’s
suggestion, some part of the nuns’ habit was dyed black and assumed
only at the parlor window and in the gardens, while in the private
parts of the house the usual gray garb was worn. But the nuns
steadfastly refused to change the rule or to consider themselves
absolved from their vows, and, unless they were to be forcibly ejected
from the convent, there was no possibility of carrying out these two
important changes. But the council was prepared for anything, and soon
even this last violent act was publicly enforced.
Dame Ursula Tetzel had already tried some months before, with the help
of her brothers, to get her daughter Margaret, who had been for nine
years in the convent, to leave it and come home; but the girl herself
vigorously resisted the attempt, and Charitas represented it to the
mother as an infringement of the rights of the convent. Things had
marched rapidly enough since then to enable Dame Tetzel to renew the
attempt with more certainty of success; and accordingly she, with the
wives of the two councillors, Ebner and Nützel, who had each a
daughter in the convent, determined to take their children home at all
hazards. They gave the nuns a week’s notice, and on the 14th of June
appeared with a number of their male relations in two large
conveyances or wagons. A great crowd had collected round the convent
door, and a considerable excitement prevailed; the street and the
churchyard were full. Charitas, on her side, had requested two of the
councillors, Pfinzing and Imhof, to be present as witnesses of the
disgraceful scene she foresaw. The young nuns, respectively nineteen,
twenty, and twenty-three years old, fell on their knees before the
abbess, weeping and entreating her not to let them be taken away. They
even wished to hide themselves; but this, of course, Charitas forbade
and led the girls with her to the chapel where they had taken their
vows. She prayed and wept with them, and hesitated taking them over
the threshold into the presence of their mothers; but the latter came
into the chapel and violently upbraided their children, who with tears
piteously begged to be left alone. Katharine Ebner especially spoke in
eloquent tones for more than an hour, and, as the councillors
afterwards said, “She spoke no word that was weak or useless, but
talked with such force and cogency that every word weighed a pound.”
Her mother stormed, and Held, the brother of Dame Nützel, threatened
her “like an executioner,” but Katharine continued speaking in her own
behalf and that of her friends: “Here will I stand and not move one
step; and if you employ force, I will complain to God in heaven and
every man upon earth.” She was rudely dragged forward, but, stretching
her arms towards the abbess, cried out: “Dear mother, do not let me be
driven away from you!” Four persons, however, seized hold of her, and
amid loud cries on all sides she was dragged over the threshold of the
chapel, where she and Margaret Tetzel fell over each other, the latter
having her foot crushed in the crowd. Dame Ebner followed her daughter
with angry threats, telling her that if she did not go willingly she
would fling her down the stairs and break her head on the pavement
below. At last poor Charitas could stand it no longer and took refuge
in her cell, while the councillors who had witnessed the scene
declared that, had they foreseen such a sad sight, they would not have
come for a world of money, and never again would they lend the
sanction of their presence to such violent proceedings.
The poor young nuns were put in the wagons and driven away, but they
still cried out to the crowd that they were suffering violence and
demanded to be taken back to their convent. Dame Ebner got so incensed
that she struck her daughter on the mouth, and the poor girl bled all
the way home. There were many in the crowd who cried “Shame!” and
would gladly, had they dared, have attempted a rescue, but the strong
hand of the “trained bands” of Nuremberg was not to be defied in vain.
Charitas never saw her spiritual children again, but she heard from
time to time that they were still unchanged in their feelings. Clara
Nützel ate nothing for four days after she was taken away, and day and
night cried to be taken back again.
This scene of violence made a great stir at the time and awakened much
sympathy for the convent, and at least it had this good effect: that
no more forcible abductions were attempted. Some time later one nun,
Anna Schwarz, whose sisters had left the other convent of Nuremberg,
St. Catherine, left St. Clare of her own accord; she was the only one
who voluntarily gave up her vows. In this case, however, her mother
was not well pleased and by no means urged her to leave. The community
was now reduced to fifty-one members, and of these none henceforward
left the convent, unless by the call of God to a better and more
peaceful life.
In the following autumn Melanchthon visited Nuremberg, and, though
their views now differed, his friendship with Pirkheimer was not
weakened. He inquired into the state of affairs, and, together with
the administrator, Nützel, visited the convent and had a long
conversation with the abbess. She says in her diary: “He was more
gentle and discreet in his speech than any of the new teachers I have
met before”; and, indeed, she had long had the greatest esteem for the
young and ripe Greek scholar.
“He spoke much of the new doctrines,” she continues; “but
when I told him that we did not place our hope in our own
works, but solely in the grace of God, he replied that in
that case we might be saved in the cloister quite as well as
in the world. Indeed, we agreed in the main on all points,
except concerning the vows, which he holds not to be
binding, but yet strongly disapproved of the violence that
had been done to the nuns to force them to give up their
vows. He took leave of us in a very friendly manner, and
afterwards strongly reproved the administrator and the other
councillors for having forbidden the Franciscans to
celebrate divine service at St. Clare, and having dragged
the children out of the convent against their will; indeed,
he told them that, between themselves, he considered that
therein they had committed a grievous sin.”
Charitas dated from his visit a quieter state of things and the
cessation of many petty persecutions on the part of Kaspar Nützel. She
says of Melanchthon in her diary: “I hope God sent this man to us at
the right time; …” and later in a letter she writes thus of the
administrator: “Would to God every one were as discreet as Master
Philip; we might then hope to be rid of many things that are very
vexatious.”
Although the three young nuns were not restored to the convent, their
parents, smarting under the many insinuations made against their
conduct, conveyed to the abbess, through Sigismund Fürer and Leonard
Tucher, a formal acknowledgment of their satisfaction at the “manner
in which the girls had been brought up and their health cared for”;
while the two men added of their own accord that as to the girls they
must tell the truth—_i.e._, that if it depended upon them, they would
be back at the convent before evening. Kaspar Nützel himself said the
same thing to the abbess, thanking her for the care bestowed on his
daughter’s physical and moral well-being, and acknowledging himself
indebted to the convent for this favor. But, better than this, he soon
wrote a letter in which he distinctly stated that he regretted having
several times “overstepped his legitimate authority in his attempts to
convert her to the new doctrines,” and promised that in future he
would attend with peculiar zeal at least to the temporal concerns of
the convent. Their possessions had, however, been so curtailed during
these troublous times that they almost literally subsisted on alms.
On All Souls’ day, 1527, the same two councillors who had witnessed
the forcible taking away of the young nuns two years before, and two
other associates, were commissioned to institute a domiciliary
visitation in the convent and to speak in private with each sister,
with a view to elicit their grievances and give them a chance of
speaking freely. The poor nuns were very much frightened at the
proposal, but Charitas only made this remonstrance:
“Worthy masters,” she said, “you are somewhat vehement
confessors. It has pleased our rulers to abolish private
confession to one man, and now you require us poor women to
confess to four men at once, and lay open to them all our
spiritual needs!” And as the men were rather staggered, she
continued: “You say many abuses among us have come to the
ears of the council. We should like to hear them detailed.
We have been driven and oppressed like worms for three
years, and would gladly, if we could, have hidden ourselves
under a stone like worms; but if we have offended in
anything, let it be clearly brought home to us.”
The men looked at each other, and one said: “This point is not yet
settled”; while another asked helplessly: “What am I to say? I do not
understand the matter.” At last they went through the form of
examining each nun alone and separately, and got tired and left off
when they had examined thirty-nine. The preacher Osiander once held a
discussion with Charitas for four hours without any result but both
parties remaining stronger in their own belief; and on another
occasion, when Dr. Link, formerly an Augustinian, and now preacher at
the hospital, sent her a controversial pamphlet, she answered him in
writing, argument for argument, and made all who saw her defence
marvel at the clearness of her logic and the ease of her style. He had
put himself forward as an example (doubtless because he had been, like
her, a religious), but she answered:
“Forgive me if I do not care to follow the example of any
man; our example is Christ, and, even if we were to look for
models among men, it would be strange if we sought for them
among living men while such men as St. Augustine, St.
Jerome, St. Cyprian, and others are set aside and disowned.”
Later on she again wrote to him:
“If God does not inspire us with love for your new faith, we
cannot of ourselves force our hearts to it. We should
deceive ourselves and do violence to our conscience (which
is wrong) if we were to listen to the threats or persuasions
of men. It is no luxurious life, God knows, that keeps us in
our convent; neither is it any belief that simply to have
taken the veil assures salvation. We do not place our hope
in the conventual rule, but in the mercy of God and his only
Son. I hold none of my nuns back against their will; if they
choose to leave, they are free to do so. I only ask that
they should not be forced to do it, as has happened already
on one occasion.”
Towards the end of 1528 came a time of negative peace for the nuns,
and, as the “silver wedding” or jubilee of the abbess fell about
Christmas time, the convent prepared itself for a modest festival in
honor of this event. It was the first time that an abbess had held her
office for so many years, and the celebration was looked upon with so
much the more interest that no former abbess had gone through such
stirring and troublous times during the period of her abbess-ship. The
festival was put off till Easter, 1529, and was long remembered by the
nuns as one of their few red-letter days. Their friends from the town
sent them presents of wine, fruit, cakes, and preserves, and
Pirkheimer and Dame Ursula Kramer, his neighbor, both sent their plate
to adorn the nuns’ table on the occasion. This pleased the simple
women immensely, and Katharine, Charitas’ niece, wrote in glowing
terms to her father, giving him an account of the festivities of the
day. We will quote a few passages from her letter:
“In the morning the whole community came to the mother, each
sister bearing a torch, and the prioress put a crown upon
her head and led her to the choir, where we said the Office
for the day and then sang the Mass as best we could. Then
the mother took the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle
and exposed it, and the community knelt to adore it and make
a spiritual communion. We comforted ourselves with the words
of St. Augustine: _Crede et manducasti_ (Believe, and thou
hast eaten). The mother then sat by the altar, and one by
one we all went up to her and embraced her, … and she had
her hands full of rings, and gave each of the sisters one as
a pledge of their renewed espousals with their Bridegroom
and of their resolve to be true to him; … although it has
not been the custom hitherto with us, the mother thought
that, considering these exceptionally sad years, it would be
a remembrance of the obedience and earnestness with which we
have hung together through these vicissitudes.… Then we took
the mother to table, … and you, dear father, have proved
yourself a generous host. The sisters said, ‘Oh! that Master
Pirkheimer were here to see how we are enjoying his good
gifts’; and your plate and Dame Kramer’s delighted us also
mightily.… At last, at night, we had a little dance. The old
nuns danced as well as the young ones. Mother Apollonia
Tucher, who has been fifty-seven years in the convent, took
hold of me and turned me round; … and the dance was so
hearty that the mother said, ‘Dear children, spare my
tables.’”
This was the last joyful event of Charitas’ life. Three months after
this festival her niece Crescentia, Pirkheimer’s daughter, died, and
the wicked tongues of the town took occasion to wag against the nuns,
accusing them of worrying her to death; but Pirkheimer himself put
down these scandalous rumors by publicly thanking the community for
the care bestowed on his child, and by making a special gift to the
convent in recognition of it. He also singled out the sisters who had
had special care of his daughter during her illness, and sent them
tokens of his gratitude; and, not content with this, he left the
convent fifty gulden in his will, which they received after his death.
Another cross befell the abbess in the loss of reason of two of her
nuns—a circumstance of which her enemies did not fail to make good
use; but, the two sisters being perfectly harmless, except at long
intervals, no removal was necessary, and they went about their common
duties peacefully until their death.
In 1530 Charitas lost her well-beloved brother Wilibald, which was a
sad break-up to her; but before he died he published an _Apology for
the Convent of St. Clare_, which greatly comforted, if it did not
help, the nuns. But the council contemptuously overlooked this as it
had done all previous petitions.
Two years after her brother’s death the noble Charitas Pirkheimer
followed him to a better land, and her sister Clara was chosen abbess
in her stead. Her friend Apollonia Tucher died within a few months, on
the 15th of January, 1533, and the new abbess the following month,
whereupon her niece Katharine became abbess and ruled the community
for thirty years. She was the last abbess but one; for towards the end
of the century the last nun died and the convent reverted to the
town.[74] But the good fight had been fought, and the noble defeat
only brought fresh and eternal honor on the name of the Clarist Order;
for, as says Montaigne, “There are defeats that dispute the palm with
victories,” and Lacordaire comments thus on the saying: “This noble
axiom applies no less to moral than to military defeats, and we should
never tire of inculcating the principle that as long as honor and
conscience are safe, so long also is fame deserved.”
[72] _Charitas Pirkheimer, Abbess of St. Clare at
Nuremberg._ By Franz Binder. Herder, Freiburg im
Breisgau. The biographer, Franz Binder, has compiled
the life of Charitas, which we have condensed in the
present article, from trustworthy sources, the
principal ones being the _Works of Wilibald
Pirkheimer_, in Latin, published at Frankfort in 1610;
MS. letters of the Pirkheimer family preserved in the
town library at Nuremberg; Charitas’ own diary,
published at Bamberg in 1852; Dr. Lochner’s _Biography
of Celebrated Nurembergers_, published in 1861; and
other less important and shorter works in which passing
reference is made to the events of Charitas’ life.
[73] Literally _lay priests_, but, we think, referring to
seculars.
[74] The church of St. Clare at Nuremberg remained for a
long time closed. It was then opened again and soon
afterwards given over to Protestant worship. It was
subsequently used for commercial purposes, as a
magazine of wares, a market-place, and place for local
exhibitions, and finally as a barracks. In 1854 it was
given back to the Catholics of Nuremberg as their
second church. In the following year its restoration
was begun, and on May 13, 1857, the Church of St. Clare
was publicly consecrated anew for Catholic worship.
MYSTERIES.
“It might have been.” We say it oft,
With aching heart, with streaming eyes;
We grope with eager, outstretched hands
After another’s slighted prize.
We call a life a wasted life.
O mourning souls! be not too sure.
Out of great darkness may come light,
And, after evil, hearts grow pure.
God only knows. We leave to him
The things that are not what we would,
And trust that in his own good time
He will do that which he sees good.
His will be done. The quivering lips
Must say it, though with bitter tears.
_His will!_ It is enough, enough
To hush our murmurs, soothe our fears.
He overrules all pain and sin,
Makes dire disgrace work out his word.
Poor souls, bow down before his might
And trust all myst’ries with the Lord.
ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS
VI.,” ETC.
CHAPTER XV.
A TRIP SOUTHWARD.
When the first overflow of emotion had subsided, Sir Simon drew a
chair close to the sofa and wanted to hear every detail about
Raymond’s illness—what the doctor had done, and, if possible,
everything he had said about it at each visit. When Franceline had
told the little there was to tell beyond the one terrible central
fact, it was Sir Simon’s turn to be catechised. He submitted willingly
to the inquisition. He went over the story of Clide de Winton’s
letter, and all the happy consequences it had entailed—the
hard-hearted Jew sent to the right-about, the rest of the duns
quieted, all Sir Simon’s difficulties happily settled. Clide’s name
was openly mentioned in the course of the narrative, and coupled with
epithets of enthusiastic admiration and gratitude—he was a
noble-hearted fellow, true as steel, generous as the sun, delicate as
a woman; it was impossible which to admire most, his generous conduct
or the delicacy with which he had done this immense service to his
father’s old friend. Franceline said nothing while this panegyric was
being sung, but she could not hide from herself the fact that it was
sounding in her ears like the sweetest music. She had found out long
since why Clide’s name had become a dead-letter with Sir Simon, why he
never even alluded to his existence in her presence; since he now
broke through this reticence, was it not a proof that the motive of it
had been removed, and that he was free to speak of Clide, and she to
listen, and that consequently no barrier existed any longer between
their lives? The truth was that Sir Simon had come to the conclusion
that the barrier was of no great importance to either of them by this
time. He was not given much to diving into the depths of human hearts,
analyzing their motives and impulses; and he did not give other people
credit for spending their lives in such unprofitable work as brooding
over sentimental grievances and pining after the impossible. It was
evident that if Franceline had been in love with Clide, she must have
either died of it by this time or got over it. She had not died,
_ergo_ she had got over it. There was no harm, therefore, in singing
that fine young fellow’s praises in her hearing, and it was a great
satisfaction to the baronet to be able to pour out his grateful
eulogies to a sympathizing audience. So they went on playing at cross
purposes, each perfectly unconscious of what was uppermost in the
other’s thoughts; Sir Simon settling it in his own mind that Ponsonby
Anwyll would carry the day, now that everything else had adjusted
itself so satisfactorily, while Franceline dreamed her own little
dream, and fancied it must be the reflection of it in her father’s
thoughts that filled his eyes with those gentle sunbeams as his glance
met hers.
Sir Simon, having emptied his budget of news, proceeded to unfold his
programme, and was agreeably surprised to find that he was to be
spared the trouble of defending it. Franceline was overjoyed at the
prospect of seeing a new country, and Raymond acquiesced in everything
as placid and innocently happy as an infant. So it was agreed that
they would start for the south without the loss of a day, if possible.
Angélique was called into council and ordered to begin to pack up at
once. To-morrow morning Dr. Blink should decide what climate was best
suited to Raymond, who was now the person to be chiefly considered.
Meantime, Sir Simon took rather an unfair advantage of the medical man
by biassing the inclinations of both patients towards a certain
sun-girt villa on the Mediterranean, where myrtle and olive groves
were said to crown every hillside, where the vine and the orange and
the pomegranate grew like wild flowers elsewhere, mirrored in the sea
that is “deeply, darkly, beautifully blue.”
“When did you come home—to England, I mean?” said M. de la Bourbonais
when the baronet paused in his glowing description of a Mediterranean
sunset.
“This morning. I came straight on here from Dover. The lawyer wanted
that deed that led to my finding the snuff-box. I must go back with it
by the early train to-morrow; it is absolutely necessary that it
should be forthcoming to prove the validity of Lady Rebecca’s marriage
settlement.”
“Marriage settlement!” exclaimed Raymond and Franceline together. “Do
you mean that she is going to be married?”
“Good gracious, no! Poor soul, she’s gone—gone to her great account,”
said Sir Simon, shaking his head with becoming solemnity. “She died
three days ago. It was a happy release, a most merciful release! She
really had nothing to regret, poor, dear soul.” And her step-son
heaved a dutiful sigh, and drew his hand across his forehead with a
gesture expressive of resigned sorrow.
Raymond was in no mood to laugh, even if the subject had been less
solemn; but he could not but remember—and Sir Simon knew he must
remember—how often this mournful event had been devoutly invoked by
both of them in days not so long gone by. It was probably the
recollection of this that prompted his next question.
“How did she leave her property?”
“Oh! admirably; nothing could be kinder or juster,” replied the
baronet, heaving the tribute of another sigh. “She left her £50,000 to
me unconditionally, chargeable merely with a life legacy for three old
servants; the jointure, you know, reverts to the estate. So you see
the duns would not have had so long to wait even if De Winton had not
come to the rescue. She was an excellent woman. Of course one feels
the blow, but it really would be selfish to regret her; she was a
great sufferer, and it was a happy release.”
“Then you did not stop in London to ask if there were any letters at
your bankers’?”
“No; were there any?”
“There was one from me—or at least written at my request.”
“Ha!”
Sir Simon looked up, full of curiosity. Franceline feared she was in
the way of some explanation, so made an excuse to leave the room about
some _tisane_ it was time for her father to take.
“You must be more puzzled than ever now to know why I refused to let
my pockets be examined that night,” said M. de la Bourbonais,
resorting to his old trick of fixing his spectacles to hide his
shyness.
“Why was it?” said Sir Simon, pulling out his cigar-case, and
carefully selecting one of the choice Havanas, as if he had the
remotest intention of lighting it; it was only an excuse not to have
to look at Raymond.
“You may remember that there were little _pâtés de foie gras_ at
dinner; they looked like _petits pains_?”
“I remember it perfectly; and excellent they were. I had just got the
recipe from the _Frères Provençeaux_; it was the first time Dorel had
ever made them. Well?”
“Franceline was, you know, very ill just then; she could eat nothing.
I fancied these might tempt her, so I slipped a couple of them into my
pockets with some bonbons. This was why I would not turn them out. I
was ashamed to exhibit my poverty to all those men, especially to that
stranger who had been taunting me with it; I would not let him see
what a poor devil I was, and to what straits poverty drove me to get
food for my sick child.”
“My poor Raymond!” was all Sir Simon could say, and he grasped his
hand.
“Then you remember I came back? I was rushing home when it occurred to
me that I had done a mad thing; so I threw away the _pâtés_ and the
bonbons, and went back and made a fool of myself, as you know. I think
I must have been mad. I know I had been taking a great deal of wine to
keep me up; anyhow, I did not reflect, until I saw the effect of my
presence, what a preposterous act it was, and that you should have
been all fools to see any proof of my innocence in it.”
“You might have trusted _me_,” said Sir Simon reproachfully. “I would
have believed you—I did believe you in spite of my senses. I came to
the conclusion you were, as you say, either mad or drunk, and had
taken it unawares. Why didn’t you write to me?”
“I did. I wrote you a full account of it all; but, as ill-luck had it,
your letter telling me to send back the ring arrived before mine left.
I was so incensed at your suspecting me that I tore up the letter. I
was a fool, of course; but you know of old that pride is my weak
point. It was not until I was struck down by illness, and brought face
to face with death, and with the thought that I was going to leave my
child friendless in the world with a dishonored name, that I resolved
to sacrifice it, and for her sake to write to you and ask you to take
charge of her and do what you could to clear my memory from the stain
that my own vanity and folly had fixed upon it. Father Henwick wrote
to you to this effect in my name on Tuesday. The letter is lying at
your bankers’.”
“I was as much to blame as you. I ought to have known you better than
to mistrust you; I ought to have known there _must_ be some mistake in
it,” said Sir Simon, rising and going to the window. “I ought to have
written to you to ask you for an explanation, and so I was always
intending to do; but what with the excitement of Clide’s finding
his—of his finding out my difficulties and so on,” he continued,
checking himself in time before the murder was out, “and then poor,
dear Lady Rebecca’s telegraphing for me, I nearly lost my head, and
kept putting off writing from day to day, in hopes that you would
write.”
“Is monsieur going to stay to tea? Because, if so, it is time I began
the omelette,” said Angélique, following Franceline into the room,
carrying a tray with something on it for M. de la Bourbonais.
But Sir Simon said he must be going that very minute. How the time had
flown, and he had so many things to see to at the Court! Raymond was
rather exhausted when his friend left, but he slept sounder that night
than he had done for a long time.
* * * * *
The warm southern spring had burst its green bonds and flown suddenly
into the arms of summer; it lay disporting itself in the splendor of
new-clad flowers along the shores of the Mediterranean, laughing up at
the dazzling sky like a babe smiling into its mother’s face.
Everything was fresh, lustrous, and dewy. The sun was not too hot to
be enjoyable, the birds were not too tired to sing, a light breeze
came fluttering from the sea to cool the vines, and died away in sighs
and whispers amidst the ilex-grove that made a background to the
white-washed villa where a group of three persons were sitting out on
the terrace under the shade of a broad veranda. I dare say you have
recognized the young lady in the fleecy muslin dress. The pink tint in
her ivory complexion is a decided improvement; but it has not so
changed her that you could forget her. She looks stronger now; there
is an energetic grace in her movements that tells of improved health;
so, too, does the warmer glow of the dark gold hair and the more
animated glance of the eyes. You see she has brought her doves with
her, and seems to have many interesting things to say to them as they
perch on her head and her finger, and utter that, to her, melodious
chant of theirs, but which Sir Simon Harness has the bad taste to find
wearisome and lugubrious.
“Could you persuade those doves of yours to cease that dismal noise
just for ten minutes, Franceline? It’s working under difficulties,
trying to correct proof-sheets while they keep up that dirge.”
Franceline, deeply offended, carries off her darlings to the other
side of the house, without deigning any further comment than a toss of
her pretty head at the speaker and a look of mild reproach at her
father, who yields a tacit consent to the insult by his silence.
Moreover, when Franceline and “those doves of hers” are out of sight,
he breathes an audible sigh of relief and proceeds to read the
contested sentence aloud again. There was a good deal of arguing and
bickering over it; Sir Simon insisting that the epithet was too strong
and should be modified, while M. de la Bourbonais maintained that
whether _he_ applied the term “patriot cast in the rough antique
mould” to Mirabeau or not signified very little, since the facts as he
stated and construed them applied it far more forcibly. They were
squabbling over it still when, half an hour later, Franceline came
back, apparently in a forgiving mood, and expressed her wonder how
people could go on quarrelling when everything around was so full of
peace, in a world where all created things were steeped in beauty and
in bliss; where life was not a struggle, but a joy; where nothing was
needed but the will to vibrate to the pulse of love with which the
great mother’s breast was heaving, to respond to the sun’s wooing and
the wind’s wafting, to the music of flowers and birds, to be a voice
in the choir and a grain of incense on the altar, to live, to love,
and to be happy. What were proof-sheets worth if they could not swell
the glad concert and sound their chime in the joy-bells of life? They
were sounding their little chime, though, in spite of the frequent
clash of arms they gave rise to between the author and his pig-headed
Tory critic. The crisp little rolls of paper were an immense
superadded interest to Raymond—and consequently to Franceline—in their
new life of golden sunshine. They would come to an end soon now; a few
more bundles of proofs, then a pause of solemn expectation, and the
great work would appear immortalized between the boards.
CHAPTER XVI.
FOUND AT LAST!
While the three inmates of the white-washed villa were watching the
days go by, and wondering if to-morrow could possibly be as happy as
yesterday and to-day, Clide de Winton was living a very different life
in his lodgings near the asylum. He had not yet been permitted to see
the lady whom he believed to be his wife. She had fallen ill with an
attack on the lungs which had very nearly proved fatal, and during the
six weeks that it lasted it was impossible to let any one approach her
except the familiar faces of the doctor and her attendant. She had
rallied from this illness only to return to her old delusion with a
fonder intensity than ever. Day after day she decked herself in her
faded flowers and ribbons, and stood or knelt at her window,
stretching out her arms to the mid-day sun, calling to him with the
tenderest words of endearment, and telling him her passionate
love-tale over and over again; then turning from this to paroxysms of
despair more violent than formerly, and which threatened at each
crisis to shatter the fragile vase and send the feeble spark flying
upwards.
“And now she courted love; now, raving, called on hate.”
Clide had repeatedly asked to see Mr. Percival, but the desire for an
interview was evidently not mutual; for, although no refusal was ever
sent, the promises held out by the medical man were continually
broken; the visit of Mr. Percival was always “unexpectedly prevented”
by one cause or another. Stanton arrived at the conclusion that he did
not wish to meet Clide, and that, moreover, he was constantly at the
asylum unknown to them, and that the only way to see him would be to
lie in wait and collar him, and make him speak out by main force,
since he would not do it otherwise. Mr. de Winton saw difficulties in
the way of this summary method of proceeding, but his valet entreated
him to leave it in his hands and not trouble himself about that. Clide
had small confidence in the diplomatic skill of his man, but he could
trust him not to do anything dangerously rash; so he asked no
questions, but let him follow his own devices for catching Mr.
Percival. That gentleman, however, proved himself a match for Stanton.
He was not to be taken either by stratagem or force; and though
Stanton dodged about the park gates, and recruited a small police
force, amongst little boys on the lookout for a penny, to skulk about
late and early to watch the comers and goers from the asylum, and give
him timely warning, it led to nothing but vain hopes and frequent
disappointments.
Clide was growing sick to death of the miserable business. He had been
more than two months now stationed at his post. Isabel’s illness had
made two-thirds of that time utterly useless to him; but it was now a
full week since the doctor had declared her convalescent, and he
seemed no nearer the solution of her identity than when he first
descried her through the panel of the door. He determined at last one
morning to go in and speak out his mind to the medical man. He told
him that he insisted on an interview with Mr. Percival, or else he
would take steps in the matter which might be disagreeable to all
parties. It was quite inexplicable, he said, that they should not have
been able to find an opportune moment or letting him approach the
patient all this time, and the persistent obstacles that were thrown
in the way of an interview with the man who called himself her
guardian led him to infer that both Mr. Percival and the doctor were
in league to prevent her identity being tested and established.
The effect of this broadside was startling. But although it took the
doctor entirely by surprise, it did not throw him off his guard or
disturb his presence of mind. He looked at the speaker for a moment in
silence, and then said in a perfectly cool and collected manner:
“I see there is no use in playing at this game any longer. I have
humored you up to this, and borne with your mania, because I knew it
was a mania. It has been plain to me from the third time I saw you,
Mr. de Winton, that you were yourself the victim of a delusion and an
eligible candidate for a lunatic asylum. I have prevented Mr. Percival
from taking steps to have you confined—the law empowers us to do so
when a madman threatens the security and honor of another—because I
hoped the monomania would wear itself out with patience. I find I have
been mistaken. I shall interfere no farther with Mr. Percival in his
legitimate desire to protect the lady who is under my care from your
persistent persecution. She is no more your wife than she is mine.
Your story about her is as groundless as the ravings of a man in
fever.”
While the doctor delivered himself of this attack Clide stared at him
in stupefaction. He saw the medical man’s glance fixed on him with the
expression of one who was versed in the art of reading the mind
through that lucid and faithful interpreter—the eye. But though he was
both shocked and indignant, he was not a whit frightened; he bore the
scrutiny without flinching, without dropping his lid once.
“You are a clever tactician, I see,” he said coolly. “Carrying the war
into the enemy’s country is one of the desperate strategies of a
daring general, but it is sometimes more fatal to the invader than to
the invaded. You have now thrown off the mask and shown me exactly
what manner of man I have to deal with, and I shall resort to other
means than those I have hitherto employed for seeing the patient whom
I am now absolutely and fully convinced is no other than my unhappy
wife.”
He rose, and was leaving without further parley when the doctor cried
out:
“You can see her this moment, if you choose—that is, if you choose to
be guilty of homicide. I am prepared to state before the first men in
the faculty, and to stake my character on the assertion, that—if she
be your wife—the sight of you, supposing that it brings recognition,
will be fatal to her life by causing the rupture of a vessel on the
brain. Come back with any qualified witnesses you think fit, and I
will repeat this in their presence, and then, on your responsibility,
I will conduct you to the patient.”
Clide made no answer, but left the house, and was soon on his way to
Piccadilly in a cab. The admiral had come to town the night before; it
was partly the desire to be able to give his uncle some definite
information concerning the inmate of the mad-house that had driven him
to burn his ships and have it out with the doctor.
The cab stopped, and as Clide alighted he was accosted by a friendly
voice and the grip of a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Hallo, De Winton! How are you? Where have you turned up from?”
It was Ponsonby Anwyll’s voice; he looked in the highest state of
elation, blonder and burlier than ever, the very picture of good
temper, good digestion, and general prosperity.
The sight of him jarred on Clide; he had naturally a vindictive
feeling toward poor Ponsonby since that random shot of Sir Simon’s
about his making Franceline a good husband by and by. He did not
believe a word of it; but it made him feel savagely to the young
squire, nevertheless. How dare he behave so as to get his name coupled
with hers at all?
“I have been hanging about town for some time,” returned Clide as
stiffly as he could without being uncivil. “I suppose you’re on leave?
Or perhaps quartered somewhere hereabouts?”
“Quartered! No such luck! We’re vegetating in Devonshire still, I’m
sorry to say; but there’ll soon be an end of it for me. I mean to sell
out and settle down one of these days. I’ve come up to try and get a
month’s leave. I think I’ll succeed, too, the colonel is such an
awfully good fellow; and what do you think I’m going to do with it?
Where do you think I’m going to spend it?”
“How should I know?”
“At Nice! Sir Simon Harness has asked me over to stay at his villa
there; the De la Bourbonais are there, you know. You’ll be glad to
hear that Franceline has made a splendid recovery of it, and the count
has picked up wonderfully too.… Oh! I beg a thousand pardons. Pray
allow me!…” This was to an old lady whose umbrella he had whisked into
the middle of the street with a touch of his stick, that he kept
swinging round while he held forth to Clide. When he had picked it up
and dusted it, and apologized three times over, he went on to say:
“Why shouldn’t you run over and see them all too, eh? You used to be
very friendly with the count, eh? And Sir Simon would be enchanted to
see you. There’s nothing he likes so much as being come down on by a
friend unawares, you know.”
“I never gratify my friends in that respect,” said Clide freezingly;
“I always wait to be invited. Are you to be a large party at the
villa?”
“I don’t fancy so; but I really don’t know. The only invitations I
know of are myself and Roxham. He’s a capital fellow, Roxham; I’m glad
we are going together. I wish you’d come too, though, eh? Perhaps
you’ll think it over and pop down on us one of these days when we
least expect it? Have you any message for Sir Simon or any of them?”
“My best respects to M. de la Bourbonais and his daughter.
Good-afternoon. A pleasant journey to you!”
“Wish me good-luck about the leave first!” said the good-natured,
obtuse dragoon as he strode on, laughing.
“The lumbering idiot! How I should like to kick him! The impudence of
the lout calling her Franceline!” This was Mr. de Winton’s soliloquy
as he stood looking after Ponsonby, giving at the same time a pull to
the bell as if the house were on fire.
The admiral was out. Cromer, his old valet, who had first sounded the
signal about Isabel, happened to be at his master’s for the day, and
said he believed he had gone to see Master Clide. Clide jumped back
into his cab and told the man to go like the wind, as he wanted to
overtake some one. His reflections on the way were none of the
pleasantest. What was bringing Ponsonby Anwyll to spend a month at Sir
Simon’s while M. de la Bourbonais and his daughter were there? What
but to marry Franceline? Had she, then, so completely forgotten Clide?
Why not? If his love for her had a tithe of the unselfishness it
boasted, he ought to be the first to rejoice at it; to be glad that
she was happy and was about to become the wife of a good and honorable
and warm-hearted man whom she loved. Did she love him? could she love
him?—a lump of red and white clay with as much soul as a prize bull!
She that was such an ethereal, lily creature—how could it be possible?
What could any girl see in him to love? If this was an irrational and
unfair estimate of Ponsonby’s outward and inward man, it was natural
enough on Clide’s part. No man, be he ever so reasonable, is expected
to do justice to the claims of any other man to be preferred by the
woman he loves. But Clide was more savage with Sir Simon even than
with Anwyll. What business had he to go meddling at making a match for
Franceline? Why could he not have let her alone, and let destiny take
its course—or, to put it in a more concrete shape, let Clide de Winton
take his chance? Clide did not consider that his chance virtually had
no existence whatever in Sir Simon’s calculations. He believed that
Isabel’s identity was established beyond a doubt, and that this fact,
much as he might regret it, excluded Clide for ever from having any
part in Franceline’s destiny. He believed, moreover, or he wished to
believe—which with the sanguine Sir Simon meant one and the same
thing—that Clide had quite got over his _passion malheureuse_ for
Franceline, but, whether he had or not, it could not be helped; he
could not marry her, and it was preposterous to expect that she was to
remain unmarried out of consideration for his feelings. Here was an
admirable settlement in life that presented itself, and it was Sir
Simon’s duty, as her self-elected guardian and her father’s oldest
friend, to do all in his power to secure it to her.
Oh! but if Franceline would but wait a little longer—it might be such
a very little while—until Clide was free! “What a pitiful thing a
woman’s love is compared to a man’s! If I had been in her position,
and she in mine,” he thought, “I would have waited a lifetime for
her!”
You see Clide was assuming, in spite of his oft-sighed hopes to the
contrary, that Franceline did love him. He argued the point bitterly
in his mind, accusing her and acquitting her and cursing his own fate
all in the same breath, as he rattled over the stony street. But the
cursing brought no relief. Help was nowhere at hand. In the old
story-books, when a man found himself at bay with difficulties, he
called the devil to the rescue, and the devil came. These delightful
legends generally represent him in spectacles and a bottle-green coat;
they may sometimes differ as to the precise color of the coat, but
they all agree that he was the most accommodating practitioner, often
volunteering his services without waiting to be asked. When it came to
striking a bargain, no one was more liberal than he. The man in
difficulties made his own terms: unlimited wealth, a long life with
the lady of his choice, the sweet triumphs of revenge—one or all of
these the devil would concede with the utmost generosity; all the
client had to do in return was to scratch his name to a bit of paper,
signing his soul away—a sort of post-obit bill to be presented at some
period that was not always even of necessity specified.
If this obliging old legendary personage had appeared at this juncture
to Clide de Winton, I suspect he would have had little difficulty in
striking a bargain with him. To be free; to burst at once this odious,
insufferable chain that must soon be dissolved by death; to be able to
seize the prize that was about to be snatched from him at the very
moment he felt sure that a little delay would have secured it to him
for ever—to obtain this Clide would have signed away his life, ay, and
his soul’s life too, for the asking. No evil one, it is true,
presented himself in a bottle-green coat or any other visible attire,
but one, nevertheless, got close enough to the distracted lover’s ear
to whisper a proposal audibly. An invisible devil jumped into the cab
with him, and sat close to him all the way from Piccadilly home, and
never ceased urging, pleading; no tongue of flesh ever spoke more
distinctly:
“You have the game in your own hands. The doctor is out now. You know
your way to her room. No one will stop you. Go straight up, and walk
in, and address your wife; you are her husband, and have a right to do
it. The shock will kill her; but what of that? What is life to her
that any merciful man should wish to prolong it? Death will be the
cessation of mental and bodily anguish to her, poor raving maniac, and
it will set you free—free to marry Franceline. You know Franceline
loves you. The mercy will then be for her too; if she marries Ponsonby
Anwyll, it will be only to please her father. She will be miserable;
it will break her heart. Go and save both her and yourself.”
When the tempter comes armed with such weapons as these, and finds us
in the mood in which Clide was as he drove home through the noisy
streets into the quiet suburb, the issue of the struggle, if struggle
there be, is hardly doubtful. There was a struggle in this case. You
could see it in the feverish movements of the tempted man; he could
not sit still, but kept shifting his limbs as we are apt to do when
there is no other escape from the steady contemplation of our
thoughts. One moment he leaned back with his hands thrust deep into
his pockets, and stared out of the window; the next he started forward
and bent down on his knees, as if examining closely something at his
feet. He took off his hat, smoothed it with his coat-sleeve, pushed
back his hair, and put his hat on again. This physical agitation
seemed to bring him no relief. He drew out his pocket-book and read
over attentively the memoranda of the day before—appointments at the
club, with his tailor, books that he had dotted down for reading; but
while he perused these commonplace items the voice of the tempter kept
on whispering, louder and louder, sweeter and sweeter. The dusty cab
was the temple of a vision. Franceline stood before him, with her arms
outstretched; she drew nearer, she called him by his name; he felt her
breath upon his cheek, the soft touch of her hand in his. Could sin
come to him in such guise as this? His features for a moment were
convulsed, swayed by the terrible conflict. Gradually the combat
ceased, and an expression, not of calm, but of rigid determination,
settled on them; the dark brows drew together, making that black line
across the forehead which gave to Clide’s face its peculiar, strong
individuality. He had not accepted the tempter’s arguments, but he had
accepted the issue they pointed at, twisting reasons to his own
purpose, and adopting the sophistry of passion: “I will go and accost
her. Ten to one—what do I say? a hundred to one, she is not my wife.
The absence of the silver tooth ought to have convinced me of that
long ago. It ought to have settled the non-identity from the first;
for Percival says he never heard of such a thing. As to its killing
her, supposing she be my wife, it’s all nonsense; the fellow is in
Percival’s pay, and that’s why he has fought out so against my seeing
her. I’ll defy him once for all, and make an end of it one way or
another.”
Clide did not, or would not, see the palpable paradox that there was
in this train of reasoning; but deafen himself as he might by
sophistry and inclination, he could not drown the voice of conscience,
that clamored so as to make itself heard above every other.
“Has the admiral been here?” was his first question as he sprang out
of the cab and rushed up-stairs.
“Yes, sir; him and Mr. Simpson.”
“Ah! Simpson. Are they long gone?”
“Not above a good quarter of an hour. They’re not gone very far;
they’re over yonder,” said Stanton, with a knowing jerk of his head in
the direction of the asylum.
Clide started.
“What do you mean? What are they gone to do there?”
“They’re just gone to have it out with the doctor, sir. Mr. Simpson
says it’s all gammon about your not being let see her. He’s gone over
to insist on seeing her himself—him and the admiral; and if the doctor
refuses to let them up, Mr. Simpson’ll set the law on him.”
“Good God! they will kill her. They have done it already perhaps! I am
too late to stop them!” said Clide, white to the lips, and taking a
stride towards the door. The room reeled round him. Was he going to be
an accomplice in the murder of his wife? He would at that moment have
renounced Franceline for ever to prevent the act that a few minutes
ago he was bent on committing.
Stanton was frightened.
“Stay you here, Master Clide,” he said, taking him by both arms and
forcing him into a chair. “Don’t you take on like that. I’ll run
across and stop ‘em. There an’t no ‘arm done; the doctor’s never in
the ‘ouse at this hour, and they never ‘ud let them hup without him.
You stay quiet while I run after them. I’ll be back in no time.”
Clide made no resistance; he let himself drop into the chair in a kind
of stupor. The sudden reaction, coming close upon the fierce mental
conflict he had gone through, acted like a blow on a drunken man; it
stunned and felled him.
“Go, then, and be quick, for God’s sake!” he muttered.
* * * * *
Ten minutes went by, and then fifteen, and Clide began to wonder what
was keeping Stanton.
He could bear the suspense no longer, but took up his hat and went to
see what caused the delay.
Stanton, meantime, had not been amusing himself. In answer to his
inquiries the porter informed him that the two gentlemen he was
looking for had called at the house and asked to see the doctor, and,
on hearing that he was out and not expected home for half an hour, had
declined to come in, but were walking about the place waiting for him.
Stanton hesitated a moment whether he should run home at once with
this reassuring news to his master, or fetch the admiral and Mr.
Simpson, and bring them back with him; he decided for the latter and
set off to look for them. The grounds were spacious and thickly
planted enough to admit of two persons easily getting out of sight for
a few minutes; but when Stanton had looked all round, walking hastily
from avenue to alley, and could see no trace of the two gentlemen, he
began to think they must have changed their minds and gone away. He
went on, however, a good way behind the house until he came on a low
brick wall that he fancied must mark the limits of the premises. He
was about to turn back when he heard a loud, shrill scream proceeding
from the other side of the wall. He ran along by it till he saw a door
that was ajar, and then, without pausing to consider where he was
going or what he was doing, rushed in and ran on in the direction of
the scream. Presently he heard voices raised in angry strife. A few
more steps brought him in presence of Admiral de Winton, Mr. Simpson,
and a third gentleman. They were disputing violently. The admiral was
supporting a woman who had apparently fainted; the stranger was
expostulating and trying to take her from him; Mr. Simpson was
standing between them, speaking in loud and authoritative tones:
“Very well, very good; we shall see if it is as you say. But we must
see for ourselves; we must find out if there was nothing in her crying
out ‘Clide! Clide!’ the moment she saw this gentleman and heard his
voice. Stand back! Don’t lay a finger on him or on her! I _do_ know
what I am doing—I know better than you do. Stand off, I tell you!”
The stranger was, however, determined to make a fight for it, and was
answering in a bullying, insolent manner when Stanton came up.
“I know that voice! Where have I heard it?” was the valet’s first
thought as the loud, harsh tones fell on his ear.
There was a garden seat close at hand. The admiral was carrying the
fainting woman towards it. Stanton ran forward to help.
“Go to the house and call for proper assistance,” said Mr. Simpson
shortly to the stranger. “You know where to find it, I suppose; you
know the house.”
“I know I sha’n’t move from this while my child is at the mercy of two
escaped lunatics! That’s what I know,” retorted the other savagely.
The words were not out of his mouth when Stanton was at his throat,
collaring him with both hands.
“You scoundrel! I’ve caught you at last,” he said. “You villain of
villains! I’ll do for you! He’s the fellow that called himself
Prendergast, and that’s master Clide’s wife!”
All this took much less time to enact than to relate. The scream which
had brought Stanton to the spot had been heard by an attendant; there
was always one on the watch in the neighborhood of the patients’
garden, and she came hurrying up in an instant.
“Who are you all, and what are you doing here?” she cried, casting an
alarmed look at the three men and at the lifeless figure stretched on
the wooden seat.
“A couple of escaped lunatics!” shouted Mr. Percival, struggling
furiously. Stanton was holding him by the collar, while Mr. Simpson
pinioned him from behind, the admiral standing meantime, bent in eager
scrutiny, over the strange figure, decked out in faded flowers and
ribbons, that lay insensible before him.
“Come here!” he said, beckoning to the attendant; “come and attend to
this poor creature, and leave those gentlemen to settle their business
alone.”
The woman evidently felt that this was what it most concerned her to
do; she allowed the admiral to lift the patient in his arms, while she
guided him into the house. They had just entered by a back door when
Clide de Winton walked by in search of Stanton. The porter had
directed him to “somewhere about the grounds,” and, after looking in
vain up and down the avenues, he was going to give it up in despair
when he saw the door in the garden wall, now wide open, and heard a
voice which he recognized as Stanton’s, “Come on! You may as well give
in and come quietly; bad language and kicks will only make it worse
for you, you rascal!”
Clide was quickly on the spot, and beheld Stanton and Mr. Simpson
wrestling desperately with a man whose fury seemed a match for their
united strength.
“I’ve caught him, Master Clide! We have him tight—that rascal
Prendergast! You an’t he? You be choked for a —— liar!”
Clide stood for a moment confounded. There was not a trait of
resemblance, as far as he could see, between the stout, full-bodied
man with jet black hair, and the gray-haired, thin, miserable-looking
mortal whom he remembered as Mr. Prendergast. His first idea was that
Stanton had made another outrageous mistake, as in the case of Miss
Eliza Jane Honey.
“Who are you? You are not the Mr. Prendergast I knew, are you?” he
said, addressing the stranger.
“Of course I am not! I never saw you or this madman in my life! My
name is Mathew Percival; my daughter is unfortunately a patient in
this asylum, and this fellow will have it that she is his wife!”
“My master’s wife, you scoundrel! Don’t think to come over us with
making believe not to understand! She’s Mr. Clide de Winton’s wife!”
said Stanton, taking a tighter grip, as if he feared the prize might
make a sudden dart and escape from him.
“You _are_ the man who called himself Prendergast, and whose niece, as
you then called her, I married!” said Clide. The voice and the broad
Scotch accent were unmistakable, though the speaker had made an effort
to disguise them. “You say she is your daughter now. Speak the truth
at once. The patient in yonder house is the Isabel Cameron whom I
married. Let him go, Simpson! Stanton, let go your hold on him! Speak
out now.”
Mr. Prendergast, or Percival, looked down sullenly for a moment, as if
making up his mind how to meet this challenge; then he looked up with
the dogged, defiant air of a man at bay who is resolved to die game.
He was going to speak, when a woman, the same attendant who had just
left them, came running up in breathless haste.
“Stanton! Which of you is Stanton?” she cried.
“It’s me!”
“Then go as fast as you can and fetch your master! His wife is calling
for him; run quickly, or it will be too late. She is dying!”
“I am his master! I am her husband! Take me with you!” said Clide,
turning so white that Stanton thought he was going to faint and made a
movement to give him his arm; but Clide waved him away and walked on
with a steady step.
Something between a cry and an oath escaped from Percival; he made no
attempt to follow them, but muttered more to himself than to his
companions:
“The murder is out! There is nothing more to tell. She is his wife,
and I am the Prendergast he knew.”
Stanton’s fury had subsided in an instant, quenched by the chill which
those words of the attendant had thrown upon the group: “_She is
dying!_” What had human passion or earthly vengeance to do now with
Isabel or Mr. Prendergast? In the presence of the Great Avenger all
other vengeance was silenced. The three men walked on toward the house
without exchanging a word. The porter let them in. The doctor, he
said, had not yet returned. It did not matter; they would wait, not
for him now, but for Death.
When Clide entered the room, he beheld Admiral de Winton seated beside
the dying woman’s bed; her face was lifted toward his with a mute
expression, half of yearning, half of fear, while she listened to the
soothing words he tried to speak to her. The moment Clide appeared her
eyes turned toward him. There was no mistaking the identity now; those
eyes, so faded and dim, were the same that had first fired his foolish
heart with their dark young radiance. The cheeks, once round, were wan
and hollow, the glossy, ebon hair was specked with gray, but the face
was that of his long-lost wife, the Isabel of his boyish love.
“You have come!… You have come to say that you forgive me!” she said
in faint, low tones, fastening a wistful, trembling glance on him; for
Clide did not advance at once, but stood on the threshold, arrested by
the mournful spectacle.
“Isabel!” he exclaimed, approaching softly, and he knelt down and
leaned over her.
She looked at him so long without speaking that he began to fear she
did not know him after all. He raised the little hand to his lips, and
then stroked it caressingly; the action, the touch, seemed to strike
some chord long sleeping.
“Clide, Clide!” she murmured, and the tears rose and rolled in large
drops down her cheeks. His heart was wrung with pity; there was no
room for any other feeling. If she had wronged him as deeply as he had
ever feared, he forgave it all. He remembered nothing but that they
had once loved each other, that she had suffered cruelly, and that she
was dying.
“My poor Isabel! I forgive you with all my heart, as I hope to be
forgiven; so help me God!”
He let his head fall on the pillow beside her and wept silently.
Admiral de Winton made a sign to the attendant that they had better
withdraw and leave them alone; she hesitated a moment, and then
followed him and closed the door softly behind her. And so they were
once more together—those two who had been joined and parted, and
reunited now for a moment only before the final parting. No one
disturbed them, no eye looked behind the curtain while that last
sacred interview lasted. For three hours Clide knelt by the side of
his dying wife, her hand in his, her head resting on his breast. He
whispered words of tenderness and mercy to the wearied spirit; he told
her of a Love greater than his, and of a pardon mightier and more
availing, of which his was but the pledge and the forerunner.
At sunset she died.
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
NAPOLEON I. AND PIUS VII.[75]
In the _Life of Pope Pius VII._ Miss Allies has given us a picture of
rare beauty and deep interest. We think, however, that the title of
the book has not been well chosen. It is not a biography of Pius VII.,
but a history of the efforts of Napoleon Bonaparte to make the Papacy
an appendage and support of the vast empire which he had founded with
his sword. The materials for the narrative have been drawn chiefly
from the _Mémoires_ of Cardinal Consalvi and the _Memorie Storiche_ of
Cardinal Pacca, both of whom were witnesses of the facts which they
relate. The author is also greatly indebted to the recent work of
d’Haussonville, _L’Eglise Romaine et le Premier Empire_.
The shock of the Revolution of 1789, which unsettled everything in
Europe—ideas, customs, laws, government—could not possibly have left
the church undisturbed. In France the goods of the clergy were
declared to belong to the nation. The churches were turned into
temples of Reason, the convents converted into barracks, the priests
who remained faithful to their consciences guillotined or sent into
exile. The new republic, “one and indivisible,” aspired to be also
universal, and soon the clash of arms resounded throughout Europe.
Napoleon, at the head of the army of Italy, gained those brilliant
victories which kindled in his heart the flame of an all-devouring
ambition. He was ordered to march upon Rome, and he wrote to Cardinal
Mattei: “Save the pope from the greatest of evils; be persuaded that I
need only the will in order to destroy his power.” Pius VI. was in
consequence forced to sign a treaty in which he gave up a considerable
part of his territory, and in the following year (1798) the French
republic invaded Rome. The reign of the popes was declared to be at an
end; the Holy Father was dragged away into captivity, and in August,
1799, died at Valence. The following November the cardinals met in
conclave in Venice under the protection of Russia, England, and
Turkey, and elected Barnaba Chiaramonti, who took the title of Pius
VII., and on the 3d of July, 1800, entered Rome amidst universal
demonstrations of joy. Just two months before Bonaparte had led his
victorious troops across the Alps, and, having triumphed over Austria,
had a _Te Deum_ sung in the cathedral of Milan for the deliverance of
Italy from infidels and heretics—the Turks, namely, and the English.
Shortly afterwards he informed Pius VII. of his wish to open
negotiations for the arrangement of religious matters. The First
Consul was preparing to assume the purple. “I did not usurp the
crown,” he said; “it was lying in the mire: I picked it up. The people
placed it on my head.” He felt, however, that an empire founded upon
“blood and iron” could not dispense with the moral support of
religion. He therefore determined to enter into a Concordat with the
pope. This resolution, we are bound to believe, sprang purely from
political and selfish motives. Whilst fortune smiled upon him Napoleon
cared for religion only so far as it served his ambitious ends. To
Menon, in Egypt, he wrote: “I thank you for the honors you have paid
to _our prophet_.” In India he would have been for Ali, for Confucius
in China, and in Thibet for the Dalai Lama. Consalvi was despatched to
Paris to enter into articles of agreement with the First Consul. When
the cardinal presented himself before Bonaparte, he turned abruptly
upon him and said: “I know what brings you to France. I wish the
negotiations to begin at once. I give you five days, and, if at the
end of that time matters are not arranged, you must return to Rome;
for my own part, I have already provided against such a contingency.”
After many discussions the First Consul declared that he was ready to
ratify the Concordat. Joseph Bonaparte, Bernier, and Crétet were to
sign for the French government, and Consalvi, Spina, and Caselli for
the pope. At the appointed hour and place they all met. Bernier held
in his hand what he said was the Concordat, and, as the cardinal
claimed the right of signing first, he attempted to get him to affix
his signature without looking at the document; but a glance showed
Consalvi that a spurious paper had been substituted, and he refused to
sign his name. The Concordat was to be proclaimed at a public dinner
on the following day; so the discussions were reopened and continued
through the whole night, but no satisfactory conclusion was reached.
The hour for the dinner arrived, and when the cardinal entered the
banquet-hall Bonaparte called out to him in a mocking tone:
“So you wish to break with me, Monsieur le Cardinal? Well,
be it so! I have no need of Rome! I have no need of the
pope! If Henry VIII., without the twentieth part of my
power, was able to change the religion of his subjects, how
much more able am not I! In changing the religion of France
I shall change it in all Europe, in all places where my
power is felt. When will you go?”
“After dinner,” replied the cardinal with seeming unconcern. This
outburst of wrath was meant to frighten Consalvi: Bonaparte had really
no intention of breaking so suddenly with the pope. Again negotiations
were begun. The Concordat was signed, and Joseph was deputed to take
it to the First Consul to obtain his _placet_; but the great man tore
the paper into a hundred pieces. Finally, however, he yielded, and the
public exercise of religious worship was again permitted in France.
But when Bonaparte published the Concordat, he added to it the
“Organic Articles,” by which many of its provisions were practically
annulled; and he was even guilty of the falsehood of making it appear
that these articles were part of the convention with Pius VII. He was
resolved to rule the consciences of men in the same absolute way in
which he commanded his army. The bishops were required to submit all
their official documents to the prefects of the departments. To
prelates who were particularly zealous pastorals were sent, made to
order by the central bureau at Paris. A bishop was not permitted to
appoint or remove a priest without Bonaparte’s permission. Public
worship was placed under the supervision of the police.
On the 16th of May, 1804, the senate voted that Napoleon should assume
the title of emperor. Two months before, with premeditation and in
cold blood, he had had the Duc d’Enghien assassinated at Vincennes;
and this stain upon his name made him the more anxious to receive the
imperial crown from the consecrated hands of the pope. A middle course
was not open to Pius VII. He had either to accept Napoleon’s
invitation or to declare himself his enemy.
With the understanding that the “Organic Articles” should be repealed,
and that the constitutional clergy should make their retractation in
his hands, the pope set out for Paris. In his long journey he was
permitted to stop but twice, and upon his first meeting the new
emperor he was treated in the most uncivil manner.
On the eve of the coronation Pius VII. received a visit from
Josephine. She came to unburden her heart to him. The church had never
blessed her marriage with Bonaparte, and she felt that this would
probably be her last opportunity to have this matter arranged. The
pope declared that he would not assist at the coronation unless the
marriage was first contracted according to the rite of the church. The
duplicity of Napoleon had deeply wounded the Holy Father, and the
emperor’s wrath could not shake the pope’s firm resolve. During the
night preceding the coronation, therefore, Cardinal Fesch performed
the marriage ceremony in the chapel of the Tuileries in the presence
of two witnesses. When the moment for the coronation came, Napoleon
took the crown from the altar of Notre Dame, and himself placed it on
his head. He had given the Holy Father his word that there should be
but one coronation; in violation of this promise he had himself
crowned a second time in the Champ de Mars. He crammed for his
interviews with the pope, in order to astonish him by his knowledge of
church history. Already he was pondering over the thought of keeping
the Holy Father in France. The archiepiscopal palace was to be fitted
up for Pius VII. and reserved exclusively for the Pontifical Court.
When this was intimated to the pope, he replied that it had not been
unforeseen; before leaving Rome he had signed a formal abdication, in
case he should be forcibly detained in France. The document was in
Palermo in the hands of Cardinal Pignatelli; the emperor might
imprison Barnaba Chiaramonti, the simple monk, but not Pius VII., the
Vicar of Christ.
The subject was dropped. The petty jealousy and dread of rival power
or popularity which was so marked a feature in Napoleon’s character
could not be concealed whilst the Holy Father remained in Paris as an
independent sovereign. He was not allowed to celebrate pontifical Mass
at Notre Dame on Christmas day; and he was hurried off to Mâcon before
Easter, and thence continued his journey back to Rome, having refused
to assist at the ceremony of Napoleon’s coronation at Milan as King of
Italy.
Jérome Bonaparte, a younger brother of Napoleon, had married a
Protestant girl in the United States, and the emperor, who wished his
brothers and sisters to make matrimonial alliances with the most
powerful families of Europe, applied to the pope to annul the
marriage. Pius VII. declared that he had no power in the case.
Napoleon sought revenge by meddling still further with the affairs of
the church in Italy, and by taking forcible possession of Ancona, a
portion of the papal territory. The Holy Father protested in a letter
dated the 13th of November, 1805, which Napoleon did not find time to
answer till January 7, 1806. In those two months he had brought to a
close one of his most brilliant campaigns, had conquered the emperors
of Austria and Russia, and dictated terms to all Europe.
In reply to the protest of the Holy Father Napoleon wrote to his
ambassador at Rome in the following style: “The pope has written me a
most ridiculous, a most foolish letter. These people thought I was
dead.… Since these idiots do not object to the possibility of a
Protestant occupying the throne of France, I will send them a
Protestant ambassador.… I will change nothing outwardly, if people
behave themselves with me; but otherwise I shall reduce the pope to be
bishop of Rome. Really, nothing is so wanting in sense as the court of
Rome.”
Only the Emperor of Russia and the King of England he declared were
masters in their own states, because they had no pope to trouble them.
A month later (February, 1806) Pius VII. received another letter from
Napoleon.
“Your Holiness,” he wrote, “must profess the same regard for
me in the temporal order as I profess for you in the
spiritual order. All my enemies must be your enemies. That
an Englishman, a Russian, a Swede, or a minister of the
Sardinian king should henceforth reside in Rome or in any
part of your states is entirely unfitting. No vessel
belonging to any of these states should enter your ports.”
The Holy Father replied that he was unable to assent to demands which
were opposed to the character of his divine mission, “which owns no
enmities, not even with those who have departed from the centre of
unity.” Napoleon attributed the pope’s firmness to the counsels of
Consalvi, and he determined to drive him from office. “Tell him,” he
wrote to his ambassador, “that but two courses remain open to him:
always to do what I wish or to quit the ministry.” He also informed
the cardinal that none of his movements were unknown to him, and that
for the first compromising act he should answer with his head; he
would have him arrested in the streets of Rome. “These priests,” he
said, “keep the soul for themselves and throw me the carcass.”
All this storm of imperial rage had broken upon the Head of the church
because he had dared defend the honor of a Protestant girl, the
daughter of a simple American citizen, against the attacks of the most
terrible monarch of Europe.
Napoleon’s dream was to found a great western empire like that of
Charlemagne, and for the accomplishment of this design he saw that the
co-operation of the pope was necessary. He was therefore willing to
defend the pope on condition that he should become his tool and lend
himself as an obedient slave to his ambitious projects. But when he
saw that there was no hope of bringing Pius VII. to accept his views
on this subject, he began to govern the church after his own fashion.
The bishops and priests who did not conform to his wishes were thrown
into prison or forced to keep silence. He had his victories proclaimed
from the pulpits; he furnished pastorals and exhortations in which it
was made to appear that he was the defender of the faith, fighting
against infidels and heretics; he recommended that prayers should be
said that “our brothers, the persecuted Catholics of Ireland, might
enjoy liberty of worship.” “Inform M. Robert, a priest of Bourges,” he
wrote, “of my displeasure. He preached a very foolish sermon on the
15th of August. L’Abbé de Coucy is a great worry to me. He keeps up
too great a correspondence. I wish him to be arrested and put into a
monastery.… It is really shameful that you have not yet arrested M.
Stevens. People are too sleepy; else how could a wretched priest have
escaped?… I see from your letter that you have caused a _curé_ of La
Vendée to be arrested. You have acted very wisely. Keep him in
prison.” All religious newspapers—save one, the _Journal des Curés_,
whose publications were strictly supervised—were suppressed. “No
priest,” said Napoleon, “should bother his head about the church
except in his sermons.” A special Sunday each year was set aside to
commemorate the coronation and the victories of the _Grande Armée_;
and in the sermon preached on that day particular mention was to be
made of those who had fallen at Austerlitz. M. Portalis was charged
with the preparation of a new imperial catechism, which was published
in August, 1806. The children of France were taught that “the honor
and the service of the emperor is one and the same thing as the honor
and service of God”; that those who were wanting in their duty to
Napoleon rendered themselves worthy of eternal damnation; and that God
had given the crown not only to him, but to his family. The French
bishops submitted in silence to this orthodox imperialism.
The next step was to deprive the pope of his temporal power. As Pius
VII. had refused to enter into the emperor’s plans for the founding of
a great western empire, he was to be imprisoned. Napoleon had just
annihilated the wonderful troops of Frederick the Great, and from his
palace at Berlin he once more dictated terms to the Holy Father. “Let
the pope,” he wrote, “do what I wish, and he will be repaid for the
past and the future.”
All Europe, save England, was lying helpless at the feet of the
conqueror; and that the pope should continue to defend the interests
of a Protestant country against the power of a second Charlemagne was
an impossible supposition.
But Napoleon was now so great that he refused to enter into personal
correspondence with Pius VII.; so he wrote to Eugene Beauharnais, the
Viceroy of Italy, with instructions that he should communicate his
letter to the pope.
“They say,” wrote the emperor,” that they want to publish
all the evil that I have committed against religion. The
idiots! They ignore, then, that there does not exist a spot
in Italy, Germany, or Poland where I have not done more for
religion than the pope has done evil.… What does Pius VII.
mean by denouncing me to Christendom? Does he imagine that
their arms will fall from the hands of my soldiers?…
Perhaps the time is not far off when, if this meddling in my
affairs does not stop, I shall acknowledge the pope to be
nothing more than bishop of Rome, holding a rank in all
respects similar to my bishops.… In two words, this is the
last time that I consent to treat with these wretched
priests of Rome.”
The pope replied to these insults in a letter full of meekness and
humility, in which he declared that he had refused Napoleon nothing
which his conscience would permit him to grant. Napoleon gave orders
for the occupation of Rome by the French troops under General Miollis;
and the army passed in through the open gates of the city on the 2d of
February, 1808. The pope was a prisoner. The Neapolitan cardinals were
carried off by force; and in March all who were not natives of the
states of the church were ordered to leave Rome. The dethronement of
the pope was proclaimed with the sound of the trumpet, and his
dominions were declared irrevocably united to the kingdom of Italy.
The Holy Father signed the bull of excommunication, and in the night
of the 5th of July, 1809, General Radet broke into his apartments,
arrested him and Cardinal Pacca, hurried them into a closed carriage,
and drove out of Rome through the Porta Pia, accompanied by a
detachment of _gendarmes_. The pope, who was ill and weak, was driven
in great haste through Italy to Savona, a fortified town near Genoa,
where he was imprisoned.
Europe was dumb, the press was silent, and people dared not even
express sympathy for the Holy Father. Napoleon tried to make the world
forget that there was a pope; but he himself was often reminded of his
existence. Many dioceses were without bishops, and the pope refused to
confirm those who had been appointed, so long as he was deprived of
his liberty. The emperor had some of the highest dignitaries of the
French church to write to the prisoner of Savona to represent the evil
consequences of this refusal; but to no purpose. All the cardinals
were summoned to Paris to grace the Imperial Court. The
_Penitentiaria_ and _Dataria_ were also removed thither. Napoleon sent
a circular to the bishops, ordering them “to suppress the prayer to
St. Gregory VII., and to substitute another feast for that of this
saint, whom the Gallican Church cannot recognize.” Everything was “to
be organized as if no pope existed.” No priest was to be ordained
without the emperor’s permission. “Give orders,” he wrote, “to the
prefect of the Taro department to choose fifty of the worst priests at
Parma and fifty of the worst at Piacenza.… Let them embark for
Corsica.”
The time had now come when Napoleon was resolved to be divorced from
Josephine. He consulted the Archbishop of Bordeaux and his clergy on
the subject. Their reply was unfavorable, and he summarily dismissed
them and had the vicar-general and the superior of the seminary
deprived of their offices. One day, after a very silent repast with
the empress, he broached the subject to her. She fell fainting to the
floor; the emperor summoned the chamberlain and had her carried to her
apartments. Her adieu to sovereignty was effected under trying
circumstances. A grand reception took place at the Tuileries on the
evening of her departure. She assisted at the funeral of her worldly
greatness, and the fate of Napoleon was decided at the same moment by
a few hurried words spoken by two courtiers as they were leaving the
imperial presence. Negotiations for the marriage of Napoleon with the
Grand Duchess Olga, sister of the Czar of Russia, were all but
concluded. That night M. Floret, the first secretary of the Austrian
Embassy, whispered to M. de Sémonville that the emperor might easily
have the hand of Marie Louise of Austria. This was related to
Napoleon; the alliance with Russia was broken off; and two years later
came the retreat from Moscow, when the arms fell from his soldiers’
hands. But to espouse a daughter of the Catholic house of Austria it
was necessary to obtain not only a civil but also a religious divorce
from Josephine. No other authority than that of the pope, Cardinal
Fesch declared, would be otherwise than “uncertain or dangerous” on
the subject; but to apply to the captive of Savona would be useless.
Napoleon therefore created an ecclesiastical tribunal for the
occasion, over which his uncle, Cardinal Fesch, was appointed to
preside. The emperor first attempted to make it appear that his
marriage with Josephine in 1804 was invalid, because it had taken
place without witnesses or deed; but the cardinal was able to show
that this was not true. He next alleged as a cause of illegality the
absence of the parish priest; but the faculties conferred upon Fesch
by Pius VII. more than supplied this deficiency. As a last resort
Napoleon declared that he had never consented to the religious
marriage, thus openly confessing that he had deceived Josephine,
Cardinal Fesch, and the Holy Father. This statement, however, was
probably an after-thought and false, which is not surprising in an
habitual liar like Napoleon. The tribunal was threatened with the
anger of the emperor if it kept him waiting beyond a certain day. As
it had been created only to do his bidding, his marriage with
Josephine was declared null; but let us remark that the Holy Father
had nothing to do with this business; he was not even consulted, as he
had already given proof of what might be expected from him in the case
of Jérôme Bonaparte and Miss Paterson. Nearly all the cardinals were
at this time living in Paris. Fourteen of them gave it as their
opinion that the divorce had been rightly granted; thirteen others
asserted that the tribunal was incompetent, and that the case should
have been submitted to the pope. In consequence they determined not to
assist at the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise. When Cardinal
Fesch reported this to the emperor, he got into a fit of rage. “Bah!
they will not dare,” he exclaimed; and when Cardinal Consalvi, the
leader of the thirteen, came to a public audience at the Tuileries
eight days before the ceremony, Napoleon came up to him, stopped
before him, gave him a thundering look, and passed on without speaking
a word. As he entered the chapel of the Louvre for the wedding he wore
an air of triumph; but his countenance grew dark when he perceived the
thirteen were not there.
“Where are the cardinals?” he asked in an irritated tone.
“A great number are here,” was the reply.
“Ah! the fools; but they are _not_ here,” said Napoleon with another
glance at the empty seats. “The fools, the fools!”
He declared that it was his intention to cause _the resignation of
these individuals_, and that henceforth they were to be deprived of
the Purple. In this way arose the title of Black and Red cardinals.
The property of the thirteen was seized and their income went to swell
the public treasure, whilst they were sent to different provincial
towns and placed under surveillance.
The difficulty as to the appointment of bishops to vacant dioceses had
not been settled. In May, 1810, Napoleon despatched two cardinals,
most favorable to his pretensions, to Pius VII., whom he still held a
prisoner in Savona, to persuade the pope to confirm the bishops
appointed by the emperor; but the Holy Father was immovable. Napoleon
thereupon resolved to make his own bishops and dispense with the papal
confirmation. Cardinal Fesch, who had accepted the title of
Archbishop-elect of Paris, now refused to take possession of his see
without the approval of the pope.
“I can force you to obey me,” said Napoleon to his uncle.
“Sire, _potius mori_,” replied the cardinal.
“Ah! ah! _potius mori_—rather Maury. Be it so. You shall have Maury.”
Cardinal Maury accepted, and in a few days his vicar-general was
arrested and sent to the dungeon of Vincennes, where he remained till
the fall of the empire. About the same time Vincennes opened its
gloomy gates to Cardinals di Pietro and Gabrielli. This was in 1811.
Pius VII. had been in prison for two years. Napoleon now ordered his
jailers to treat him with greater severity. No person was allowed to
see him without the emperor’s permission; and for violating this
regulation some priests from Marseilles were thrown into a filthy
dungeon. All letters to and from the Holy Father were submitted to the
inspection of the keeper of the prison.
“It is useless for the pope to write,” said Napoleon; “the
less he does, the better it will be.… The less that which he
writes reaches its destination, the better.… I trouble
myself very little as to what he may do.… Let him be told
that it is distressing for Christendom to own a pope so
ignorant of what is due to sovereigns, but that the state
will not be disturbed, and good will be effected without
him.”
On the 8th of January, 1811, experts sent from Paris entered the
episcopal palace at Savona, where the Holy Father was confined, opened
his doors and drawers, searched his correspondence, unsewed his
clothes, and broke open his desk, in order to discover something that
might incriminate him. They even took away his breviary and the Office
of the Blessed Virgin. He was also ordered to deliver up the Ring of
the Fisherman; but, justly suspecting that it would be used for
fraudulent purposes, he broke it in two and handed the pieces to
Napoleon’s agent. A moral terrorism reigned over the religious world
in France and Italy. The emperor’s vengeance pursued even ladies who
gave alms to the Black cardinals. The cardinals, bishops, and priests
who had spoken against his tyranny were in prison; the rest remained
silent.
Napoleon now called a National Council to devise measures for
governing the church without the assistance of the pope. The French
bishops had for the most part been kept ignorant of the precise nature
of the trouble between himself and Pius VII., and he intended by this
new move to impress upon the mind of the Sovereign Pontiff that he
could nor rely upon the support of the bishops. First, however, a
deputation was sent to the pope to urge upon him the pressing
necessity of conforming without further delay to the will of the
emperor. Pius VII. was at this time in very feeble health, and
Napoleon did not hesitate to bribe his physician, Dr. Porta, that he
might inform the members of the deputation of the most favorable
opportunity to take advantage of the weak and suffering state of the
Holy Father to wring from him the desired concessions. For some days
those who surrounded him were able to attest the presence of all the
symptoms of madness.
“You will have seen,” wrote his jailer to the Minister of
Worship, “by my last letters that the uncertainty of the
pope when he is left to himself goes to the length of
affecting his reason and his health. At present the mental
alienation has passed off.”
Still, the bishops sent by Napoleon to Savona were obliged to return
without the pope’s signature to the document of concessions. The
National Council was opened on the 17th of June, in the Cathedral of
Notre Dame, under the nominal presidency of Cardinal Fesch. The
opening discourse was delivered by Mgr. de Boulogne, Bishop of Troyes,
who spoke in eloquent and burning words “of the Supreme Head of the
episcopate, without whom it resembles a branch separated from the tree
and withered, or a vessel tossed by the waves without rudder or
steersman.”
“This see may be removed,” he said, “but it cannot be destroyed. Its
magnificence may be taken away, but never its strength. Wherever this
see shall establish itself it shall draw all others around it.” These
words fell like burning coals in the midst of the assembly and
produced great emotion. The effect had not died away when the Bishop
of Nantes arose to comply with the formality of asking each prelate
whether it pleased him that the council should be opened. “Yes,”
answered the Archbishop of Bordeaux, “saving the obedience due to the
Sovereign Pontiff, to whom I bind myself and whom I swear to obey.”
Then Cardinal Fesch in a loud voice read the oath as prescribed by a
bull of Pius IV.: “I acknowledge the Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and
Roman Church to be the mother and mistress of all other churches; I
promise and swear perfect obedience to the Roman pontiff, the
successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus
Christ on earth.” One by one the bishops bound themselves irrevocably
to the cause of Pius VII. Napoleon was furious and berated his uncle
for “getting up one of his scenes.” Two laymen were appointed to be
present in his name at all future meetings of the bishops.
Some of the courtier prelates drew up a fulsome address to Napoleon, a
kind of treatise on state theology, which they presented to the
members of the council for their signature. Mgr. de Broglie, Bishop of
Ghent, declared he would never sign it. Another bishop proposed that
“the liberty of the pope” should be demanded. This was received with a
confused murmur of applause; but Cardinal Fesch, who dreaded the wrath
of his nephew, declared that the time was inopportune for such a
request. Napoleon, unable longer to restrain himself, ordered the
council to put an end to its “idle debates.” He gave the members eight
days to devise an expedient for providing bishops for the vacant sees.
As a sign of his displeasure he refused to receive the council
officially at the Tuileries. The bishops, he said, had “acted as
cowards.” In answer to the demand to find an expedient for providing
bishops for the vacant sees without the confirmation of the pope, the
council declared that it would first be necessary to send a deputation
to consult Pius VII. This declaration was carried by Fesch to his
imperial nephew. He was received with an outburst of anger. Napoleon
would soon show the bishops their place. When the cardinal attempted
to reason with him, he rudely stopped him: “What! theology again!
Where did you learn it? Be quiet; you are an ignoramus.” He threatened
to dissolve the council and organize a system of state religion, but
finally drew up a decree himself, in which he falsely asserted that
the pope had made the desired concessions. The bishops were deceived,
and, with two exceptions, voted in favor of the decree. A little
reflection, however, convinced many of them of the fraud which had
been practised upon them, and they recalled their votes. Suddenly, on
the 11th of July, Napoleon dissolved the council. The following day,
at three o’clock in the morning, Mgr. de Broglie, Mgr. de Boulogne,
and Mgr. Hirn, who had taken a prominent part in opposing the decree,
were arrested in their beds and carried off to the prison of
Vincennes. In August five cardinals and eight bishops, partisans of
the emperor, were sent to Savona to make still another effort to win
over Pius VII. to Napoleon’s plans. The Holy Father, who was so
closely guarded that no one was allowed to see him except his bribed
doctor and the jailer, was in total ignorance of all that had passed
in the National Council. For five months, from September, 1811, to
February, 1812, these cardinals and bishops used every argument and
artifice to induce the pope to sign the decree of the council.
Their efforts were successful. Pius VII., worn out with importunities,
feeble in body and in mind, wrote the brief of adhesion. But Napoleon
was not satisfied. He was already organizing his army for the fatal
Russian campaign, and he wrote to his Minister of Worship the
following instructions: “I send you the original papal brief. Keep it
and communicate its contents to nobody. I wish to find the bishops in
Rome on my return, to see what we can do.… The truth is, the church is
experiencing a crisis.” His victory over Russia was, in his
imagination, already an accomplished fact; he would return the
undisputed sovereign of all Europe, would gather the bishops in Rome,
and would give to the church, as he had given to the state, a _Code
Napoléon_.
On the 24th of January, 1812, the Holy Father wrote to him in the most
unaffected and simple manner, and begged to be permitted to consult
disinterested counsellors and to have free communication with the
faithful. Napoleon disdained to answer this letter, but sent through
his Minister of Worship the following notification to the deputation
at Savona: “His majesty deems that it is unfitting to his dignity to
answer the letter of the pope.… His majesty pities the ignorance of
the pope, and compassionates a pontiff who could have played so great
a part, but who has become the calamity of the church.… His majesty
understands these matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction better than
the Holy Father.… If the pope cannot make a distinction which is
simple enough to be grasped by the most uncultivated seminarian, why
does he not voluntarily descend from the papal chair and leave it to a
man who is less feeble in mind and better principled than he?” And
now, just as he was setting out on the Russian campaign, he ordered
that Pius VII. should be transferred from Savona to Fontainebleau.
The Holy Father was unwell, but to this no attention was paid. Just
before reaching the Mont Cenis he fell dangerously ill. The journey
was not interrupted. A bed was fitted up in the carriage and a surgeon
procured, who, with the instruments that might be needed, accompanied
him. When they reached Fontainebleau nothing was prepared, and the
pope had to pass the first night in the porter’s lodge. A _Guide-book
of Paris_, published at this time, informed the French that they
possessed a “papal palace” in their capital. But the end was drawing
near. On the 24th of June, 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen at the
head of an army of five hundred thousand men. As he reached the
opposite bank his horse stumbled and fell. His fatalism led him to
consider this a bad omen. The Russians fled before him, and, after the
victories of Smolensk and Borodino, he rode into Moscow on the 15th of
September. It was silent as a desert, and the Kremlin, where he took
up his residence, was like a tomb. At midnight from a hundred quarters
the flames burst forth, and in the lurid light of the burning city the
army began the fatal retreat. The weather, which had been fine,
suddenly grew cold; sleet and snow and rain beat with merciless fury
upon the men, from their benumbed hands their arms fell, and by the
roadside they laid down to die. On the 18th of December Napoleon
arrived, a fugitive, in Paris. In this one campaign he had lost
250,000 men, half of whom had died of cold and hunger.
With the beginning of the year 1813 he wrote to Pius VII. and begged
him to believe that his feelings of respect and veneration were
independent of circumstances. Shortly afterwards he went to visit the
Holy Father at Fontainebleau, and upon their first meeting for eight
years he embraced him with every mark of affection. The health of the
pope was wretched, and advantage was taken of his weak condition to
obtain still further concessions.
Upon the promise of Napoleon to liberate the imprisoned cardinals,
bishops, and priests, Pius VII. signed the Concordat of
Fontainebleau—an act which he almost immediately recalled, and which
he never ceased to regret. When the faithful Pacca, after so long a
separation, was at length admitted to his presence, he expressed his
admiration for the pope’s heroic constancy.
“But finally,” cried out the Holy Father in anguish, “we
have sullied our conscience. Those cardinals dragged me to
the table and made me sign.”
Pius VII. was still held a prisoner, and Napoleon acted as though the
Concordat of Fontainebleau still existed. He appointed bishops,
imprisoned priests, and drafted seminarians to fill up his decimated
regiments.
The victories of Lutzen and Bautzen were more brilliant than
important. In August, 1813, the Emperor of Austria declared against
his son-in-law. Then came the crushing defeat of Leipsic, and Napoleon
was slowly driven back upon France, closely followed by the allied
armies. Orders were sent to remove Pius VII. from Fontainebleau, and a
few days later the war was raging at the very gates of the palace
which he had so recently occupied. Finally, on the 10th of March,
1814, when all hope was lost, Napoleon signed a decree which restored
his dominions to the pope. Since his removal from Fontainebleau Pius
VII. had been driven about through various parts of France, closely
guarded; but now that he turned his face toward Rome, his journey
assumed the appearance of a triumphal procession, and at length, on
the 24th of May, 1814, the Feast of Our Lady, Help of Christians, he
re-entered the Holy City amid the universal enthusiasm of his people.
Just one month before, in the palace of Fontainebleau, Napoleon signed
the decree which declared his empire at an end; and, a fallen
sovereign, he passed out in silence through the ranks of the men whom
he had so often led to victory.
In his last meeting with Josephine he took her hand and said:
“Josephine, I have been as fortunate as any man upon earth. But in
this hour, when a storm is gathering over me, I have in the wide world
none but you upon whom I can repose.” And in St. Helena he said to
Caulaincourt: “If I live a hundred years, I shall never forget those
scenes; they are the fixed ideas of my sleepless nights. I have had
enough of sovereignty. I want no more of it; I want no more of it.”
It is not easy to form a just estimate of the character of Napoleon.
We have heard veterans who had fought at Austerlitz and Lutzen declare
that when he rode along the line his glance did so blind the eye that
they could not look upon him; and they thought so. This light of glory
still enshrines his memory and dazzles us, to prevent us from seeing
him as he was. No one has ever doubted his surprising strength; his
almost incredible power to bear labor, whether of body or mind; his
wonderful intellect, which grasped things with equal ease, in general
and in detail; his unequalled ability to organize an army, a nation,
or a continent; his courage, which rose superior to the most crushing
defeat.
But with these great endowments he had a coarse and selfish nature. He
was as ready to lie as to tell the truth. No act that was expedient
was bad. His ambitious ends sanctified all means by which they could
be attained. Dissimulation, deceit, hypocrisy, betrayal of friends,
imprisonment, murder, assassination, he was ready to use indifferently
as his purposes demanded. Without moral convictions himself, he
believed others equally devoid of them. To assign conscience as a
reason for anything was in his eyes pretence and hypocrisy. The
religious scruples of the pope and cardinals he held to be mere
obstinacy and ill-will. When Pius VII. declared he had not the power
to annul the marriage of Jerome with Miss Patterson, Napoleon saw in
this only a desire to take revenge for the way in which he had been
insulted at the coronation. After having persecuted bishops and
priests, keeping many of them in prison, during his whole reign, he
had the impudence to declare in St. Helena that the priests were all
for him as soon as he allowed them to wear violet-colored stockings.
He was the coarsest reviler and insulted all whom he feared or hated.
The pope and the cardinals were “idiots and fools”; the republicans
were “mad dogs and brigands”; the King of Prussia was “the most
complete fool of all the kings on earth”; the Spanish Bourbons were “a
flock of sheep”; De Broglie, the Bishop of Ghent, was “a reptile”; the
priests who disapproved of the Concordat were “the scum of the earth”;
and of the philosophers he said: “Je les ai comme une vermine sur mes
habits.” His conduct towards women was coarse and contemptuous. They
ought to know nothing and were not fit to have opinions. He told
Madame de Staël to go home and knit her stockings; the greatest woman
was she who had the most children—he wanted soldiers. He did not
conceal his contempt for men. “Every year of my reign,” he said in St.
Helena, “I saw more and more plainly that the harsher the treatment
men received, the greater was their submission and devotion. My
despotism then increased in proportion to my contempt for mankind.”
From 1804 to 1815 he sacrificed to his mad ambition not less than five
millions of men. Several thousand French subjects were shot merely for
desertion. Each principal town had its _place aux fusillades_. The
prisons of France were filled with his victims. A more thorough tyrant
than he never lived. Liberty of all kinds was odious to him. He hated
all whom he could not enslave. To be free was to be his enemy. While
he reigned men spoke with bated breath, the press was fettered, and
the church was in chains. In his own family he was a despot; he gave
his brothers crowns, but only on condition that they would become his
slaves; and when Lucien thought that even royal honors might be bought
at too dear a price, he was forced to leave France.
His jealousy was surpassed only by his vanity. “Go,” said he to his
soldiers, “kill and be killed; the emperor beholds you.”
He had a barbaric love of vulgar display, and this was one of the
passions which impelled him to his bloody wars. No man ever had less
heart. If he loved any one, it was Josephine, and her he sacrificed
without a pang. Remorseless as destiny, which was his god, he trod out
with the iron hoof of war right and life, and where he passed there
was wailing and desolation as after pestilence. In his last illness on
the desolate rock of St. Helena he spoke with reverence and feeling of
religion. From the hands of the priest sent to him by Pius VII. he
received the sacraments of the church. For six years he had held in
cruel confinement Christ’s vicar, the gentlest of men; for six years
he himself pined in living death on the barren island of St. Helena.
It was the 5th of March, 1821, that he died. On the tomb of St. Peter
Pius VII. offered up the divine Sacrifice for the repose of the soul
of Napoleon.
[75] _The Life of Pope Pius VII._ By Mary H. Allies. London:
Burns & Oates. 1875.
MODERN ENGLISH POETRY.
Mr. Stedman, the author of _The Victorian Poets_, appears to be a
painstaking and conscientious writer. He has read with extraordinary
industry all the poetry of the period to which his criticism is
limited, including not a little which, if he deemed it his duty to
study, it was not worth his while to name. He has brought to this
study a highly, although we think not methodically, cultivated mind
and a retentive memory. He has a remarkable fluency of diction,
bordering occasionally on volubility, and a certain fecundity of
illustration; but his words have at times a vagueness, not to say
inaptness, of application which is not suggestive of clearness or
depth of thought. His work, he will pardon us for thinking, is rather
an “essay in” technical than “philosophical criticism.” He himself
appears to be conscious of this; for he writes in his preface: “If my
criticism seems more technical than is usual in a work of this kind,
it is due, I think, to the fact that the technical refinement of the
period has been so marked as to demand full recognition and analysis.”
Furthermore, he informs us that he “has no theory of poetry”; and we
must own that, in the absence of any theory of poetry, a philosophical
criticism of it seems to us to be out of the question. The qualities
he requires of it “are simplicity and freshness in work of all kinds,
and, as the basis of persistent growth and of greatness in a
masterpiece, simplicity and spontaneity, refined by art, exalted by
imagination, and sustained by intellectual power”; but does he
understand what he means by this? We do not. Are we to understand that
the only inseparable qualities, the only properties, of poetry which
must characterize “work of all kinds”—by which we presume he means
every real poetical production—are simplicity and freshness? What does
he mean by simplicity? what by freshness? Does he refer these
qualities to expression only? If so, what does he mean by “simplicity
not being excluded from the Miltonic canon of poetry”?
In the higher efforts of poetry, he tells us, we must still have
simplicity; but instead of freshness we are there to look for
“spontaneity.” Are, then, “simplicity and spontaneity” the basis of
persistent growth (we must own that even the meaning of this
expression is hidden from us) and of “greatness in a masterpiece”? No;
it must be “simplicity and spontaneity refined by art, exalted by
imagination, and sustained by intellectual power.” But will not the
simplicity, and most assuredly the spontaneity, disappear in the
“artistic refinement”? Still more difficult is the idea of “simplicity
and spontaneity exalted by imagination” being the “basis” of a
poetical “masterpiece.” Poetry is the offspring of the imagination.
Its excellence depends absolutely on the force and vigor of that
intellectual power. There can be no poetry in its absence. And what
other is imagination than intellectual power?
The poetic feeling we believe to be the echo of the soul to God in the
presence of all his works. It is the emotion—really rapture—which
wells up within it at the contemplation of the sensible images in
which he reveals portions of his beauty in every variety and
combination of form, proportion, color, touch, scent, and sound. Let
the poet stand alone by the long margin of the sea on a still summer
day. What but it is that profound emotion of which he is so intensely
conscious as he looks out upon the immense ocean in its still unrest,
which the blue heavens only seem to limit because his power of vision
can reach no further, and when he hears the mellow murmur of the
wavelets as, rearing themselves in graceful curves, they fall in low
whispers along the yellow sands, as if depositing some message from
infinitude, and then rapidly withdraw?
What else is that indefinable transport, resembling, only in an
infinitely inferior degree, the ecstasy of a saint, which holds in
suspense all our faculties as, in the languid heat of summer-tide, we
stand at the foot of craggy heights between which in distant ages some
river has found for itself a channel; and, as we gaze into the
impenetrable shade of the dense thickets which cover their sides, hear
the distant sound of falling waters, and scent the fresh perfume of
the breathing foliage, the river flowing past us at our feet, to be
almost immediately hidden from our view by projecting headlands,
covered, they too, with the living darkness of foliage crowding upon
foliage, trees on trees?
The delightful trance into which the poetic soul is lulled by the
beauty and truth of God speaking through even the least of his works
defies analysis; but we may say of it with some confidence that the
objects that provoke it never weary of their charm. And wherefore?
Because they do not obstruct the instinct of immortality, the yearning
for infinitude, which is a passion within the soul of the poet, but is
wholly absent from no one in whom God’s image is not quite effaced. On
the contrary, their apparent endlessness, their want of boundary and
definite outline, suggest infinitude, and awake the echoes of
immortality from their profoundest depths, and minister to the deep
yearning of the soul for something more lovely than aught of which it
has been hitherto cognizant.
This it is which accounts for the immense superiority of Gothic to
Grecian architecture—a superiority so complete as to elevate it into
quite another sphere of beauty. The pleasure we experience at the
sight of the highest efforts of a Greek architect is almost
exclusively æsthetic, sensible, artistic. It is occasioned by
sharpness of outline, grace of form, beauty of proportion. In these is
the only poetry it can express; which can never, consequently, mount
to sublimity. It can only be beautiful at best. It pleases the sense,
but the soul—of the poet, at all events—soon wearies of them.
But the Gothic cathedral, with its soaring arches interlacing one
another, its many naves, aisles, chapels, and recesses, its endless
wealth of tracery and sculpture, its clustering pinnacles and spires
pointing heavenwards, the deep shadows of its buttresses, and its many
mounting roofs—in short, the utter absence of definiteness of outline,
and its grandeur as well as grace of form and beauty of
proportion—respond, and powerfully, to the soul’s craving for
infinitude, impatience of limitation, and heart-yearning for the
infinitely Beautiful and True.
This poetic sense it is which causes all mere human pleasures so soon
to pall upon us. For it is impossible for the human soul to experience
any save a transient pleasure from aught less than the infinite and
eternal. Life itself is not a pleasure, because we know it is passing
away. If we believed we should be annihilated at death, the pain of
life would be intolerable.
We hold, therefore, that this suggestiveness—which must not be
confused with obscurity, an element antagonistic to poetry—must
underlie every expression of poetry, whatever form it may take. A
didactic poem is a contradiction in terms, although such a production
may abound in poetical passages. It reminds one of the pictures one
sees sometimes in which the painter represents with great accuracy a
melon or grapes, a glass with wine in it, knives and forks, a loaf of
bread, a cheese sometimes, not omitting the maggots, or a lobster
tempts his brush—in short, anything which goes into the human mouth
for bodily sustenance. Ordinary folk gape with wonder at the
cleverness of the imitation; but there is no one so dull as to suppose
that there is in it any of the poetry of art.
The visible creation is the expression of the divine Idea in it. It is
impossible, consequently, that it should not express, in all its
infinitude of forms, modes, color, scent, sound, etc., the truth and
beauty of Him who conceived it. It would be contrary to reason to
suppose that he sent it forth into objective existence as a mere toy
for the amusement of his august creature, as we throw dissolving views
of grotesque figures upon a white surface for the amusement of
children. It was to convey to us intimations of himself, as well as
snatches of his happiness. The spherical form of the unnumbered
worlds; the limited power of our visual organ, which can only see the
beginnings of things; perpetual motion; sound and scent, which fail
not when they are no longer within the reach of our senses; the
revolution, in never-ending cycles, of years, seasons, weeks, and
days; renewed life never failing to come forth from rest and
repose—ay, even from death and corruption; imaginary horizons,
vanishing distances, light prevailing over darkness; the thrill of
awful pleasure with which the created soul of man apprehends this deep
meaning of things—that spiritual instinct to which time is a pain,
eternity a rapture—in all are mirrored, in every variety and form of
grace and loveliness, as well as of unsightliness and horror,
Infinitude, Immortality, God the infinitely lovable, because he is the
infinitely Beautiful and True.
In proportion to the strength of this instinct is the excellence or
inferiority of the poetic gift. From this must it draw all its highest
inspirations. Poetry is, in fact, its advertent expression; and thus
the poet is, like God—only, of course, after a secondary and imitative
fashion—a creator (ποιητὴς). He avails himself of some of the
illimitable wealth of imagery in which God has expressed, or given
objective existence to, his own one but infinitely varied idea, and,
by fresh combinations, throws them into really new forms or creations.
Out of many examples that come to mind—for excellence in this is less
uncommon than in the higher order of poetry, of which the crown and
lord of nature form the material—may be quoted the following creation
of a midsummer noon in the _Earthly Paradise_, by Morris:
“Within the gardens once again they met,
That now the roses did well-nigh forget;
For hot July was drawing to an end,
And August came the fainting year to mend
With fruit and grain; so ‘neath the trellises,
Nigh blossomless, did they lie well at ease,
And watched the poppies burn across the grass,
And o’er the bindweed’s bell the brown bee pass,
Still murmuring of his gains. Windless and bright
The morn had been, to help their dear delight;
But heavy clouds, ere noon, grew round the sun,
And, half-way to the zenith, wild and dun
The sky grew, and the thunder growled afar;
But, ere the steely[76] clouds began their war,
A change there came, and, as by some great hand,
The clouds that hung in threatening o’er the land
Were drawn away; then a light wind arose
That shook the light stems of that flowery close,
And made men sigh for pleasure.”
This brings us to another, and an important, point in which it is our
misfortune to differ from Mr. Stedman. He regards poetry as an art. He
treats it as such throughout this work; and as such he criticises it.
Hence his criticism is almost exclusively technical; hence, too, it
exhibits frequent inconsistencies. For example, amongst the properties
he assigns to the highest poetry, which we have already quoted, he
places spontaneity. By this term he means, we presume, a freedom from
effort, the unbidden outflow of imagination, not the labored product
of teaching and practice. But this is utterly inapplicable to art,
which supposes instruction, clumsy first efforts, and perfection
acquired only by years of toil. What there is of art in poetry is
limited, or nearly so, to its expression; and even here the less there
is of art, and the more of what Mr. Stedman means by spontaneity, the
loftier and the more genuine the poetry. It is no praise but a
depreciation of Matthew Arnold’s or Tennyson’s poetry to trace the
inspiration of one to Bion and Moschus and of the other to Theocritus.
In good sooth, he does the laureate injustice in the far-fetched
examples of imitation of Theocritus he ascribes to him. It is the
blemish of nearly all our modern poetry that its expression is so
labored, so technical. For this it is that, in the highest poetry,
nearly all who have tried it have failed; none more signally than
Tennyson in _Queen Mary_. One only has succeeded—Sir Aubrey de Vere.
Another—whom, because he has so foully outraged the moral sense of all
mankind, we prefer not to name until he has made reparation, and who,
if he had not cast from him all sense of the beautiful and the true,
might have been perhaps the greatest poet of the age—is as remarkable
for the originality and unstudiedness of his expression as for the
brilliance and fecundity of his imagination.
Mr. Stedman literally limits poetry to expression. In a passage at the
side of which is the marginal index, “What constitutes a poet,” he
writes: “Again, the grammarian’s statement is true, that poetry is a
means of expression. A poet may differ from other men in having
profounder emotions and clearer perceptions; but this is not for him
to assume, nor a claim which they are swift to grant. The lines,
“Oh! many are the poets that are sown
By nature—men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine,
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse,”
imply that the recognized poet is one who gives voice, in expressive
language, to the common thought and feeling which lie deeper than
ordinary speech. He is the interpreter; moreover, he is the maker—an
artist of the beautiful, the inventor of harmonious numbers which
shall be a lure and a repose.”
It is clear from this unintelligible and self-contradicting passage
that the writer has no theory of poetry. Yet in it he makes a very
definite attempt to sketch such theory, although he before told us
that he has none. What he means by it being “a grammarian’s statement”
that “poetry is a means of expression” we know not. Had he asserted
that poetry is the poet’s means of expression, we could have
understood him without agreeing with him; but he identifies poetry
with its expression. Say they must co-exist; but they are not
identical. There is not a human soul without a body, nor a leaf
without the sap of the tree; but great confusion would ensue from
identifying the one with the other. He goes, however, even further
than this. It seems to be his idea that no one can be a poet who does
not write poetry. It is true he uses the term “recognized,” but he
goes on to describe the poet as “an artist of the beautiful, the
inventor of harmonious numbers.” But it is not necessary, for any one
to be a poet, that he should be recognized as such. There are those
who “want the acomplishment of verse” through the very intensity of
the poetic gift. Their intuitions are so profound that language sinks
under the task of conveying them; expression is overwhelmed. People
never write more feebly than when under the influence of strong
emotion. For this reason it is, too, that poetry may sometimes be
improved by the travail of art, the less, however, in proportion to
the inspiration of the poet. There are those, pre-eminently Shakspere,
in whom the expression is nearly as inspired as the poetry.
Ingenium miserâ fortunatius arte
Credit, et excludit sanos Helicone Poëtas
Democritus.
In more than one passage Mr. Stedman approaches the truth about
poetry, as when he says that “poets differ from other men in having
profounder emotions and clearer perceptions”; and again when he
writes: “Certain effects are suggested by nature; the poet discovers
new combinations within the ground which these afford.” If for
“effects” had been substituted “conceptions of the beautiful,” it
would have been very near a sufficiently accurate description of the
creative power of the poet; but he is hampered by his identification
of poetry with its expression, and so, even here, substitutes
“effects”—which really has no meaning in the context—for ideas. Poetry
is the intuition of the Beautiful and True as expressed in nature and
in man, not an analysis of its causes and effects. Not the least
inspired of modern poets, Rossetti, has very exquisitely sung this
theory of poetry in a sonnet on “St. Luke the Painter”:
“Scarcely at once she [Art] dared to rend the mist
Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
Are symbols also in some deeper way,
She looked through these to God, and was God’s priest.”
The fault of almost all the modern English poets is that they are too
artistic. Certainly their poetry cannot be blamed as _carmen quod non_.
Multa dies et multa litura coercuit, atque
Perfectum decies non castigavit ad unguem.
But it makes too much display of labor. We admire its artistic skill,
and that is its principal attraction. We feel that it is not nature
which is hymning amidst so much art. The result of such obvious effort
betrays the handicraft of the artisan rather than the inspiration of
the poet. It is the Versailles fountains instead of Niagara. It cannot
be too much insisted on that poetry is not one of the fine arts. The
greater number of modern English poets, however, treat it as such, as
much as is possible with only the imagery of words for their material.
They are disciples rather of Horace than of Democritus. There is
plenty of _labor_ and _litura_, and of verse _perfectum decies ad
unguem_; of _ingenium miserâ fortunatius arte_ but little. They
surpass in mountain-labor the forgotten Lucilius, who _in versu
faciendo sæpe caput scabunt, vivos et rodunt ungues_; but they have
too little of “the sacred madness of the bards” for admission into
Helicon. The reason is not far to seek. We notice a similar phenomenon
in Greece when religious belief was forced to retire before scepticism
and the prating sophists. To the sceptical temper of the age is
undoubtedly owing the labor devoted to expression, which has done all
it could to reduce poetry to an art. It has also occasioned a certain
subjectivity, if we may use the word—a painful mental analysis—which
is fatal to poetry.
Robert Browning is the greatest offender in this regard. So painfully
intense, in truth, is his introspection that he pays far less
attention to expression than his contemporaries. Cut off from the
divine suggestiveness of nature by his hard materialism, he does
nothing but think; and thinking poetically rather than syllogistically
is an unamalgamation. Thought and expression are alike confused,
rugged, and difficult. The reader, without even melody of rhythm to
help him on, stumbles and gropes through intricate sentences,
parentheses in parentheses, a startling image here and there; anon a
whirring flight of poetry, or what resembles it; but the wings soon
droop, and the poet is on the earth again, or lower than the
earth—anywhere but soaring heavenwards. He has in him the making of a
poet. Had he the Catholic faith, his imagination would carry him to
great heights and keep him there. He might have soared nigh to
Shakspere. His talent is dramatic—which is to say, his poetic gift is
of the highest order; but nature has no divine suggestiveness to him,
the hollow shell whispers no eternity in his dull ear; for him man has
no end, events no purpose; and inasmuch as man has a definite end, and
a sublime one, to which events definitely contribute, he is not able
to create men and women, a destiny, or destinies, in any of which
should there be a living verisimilitude. A plot in which men, women,
and children talk and act as men, women, and children do talk and act
is out of his reach. His highest effort is the dramatic poem, in
which, however, occur at times passages of great dramatic power,
showing what he could have done had he not been a heathen.
Mr. Tennyson has been the subject of various articles in THE CATHOLIC
WORLD; but so markedly does he contrast with Browning, and so
noteworthy is the different bias given to the poetry of each by the
materialistic spirit of the age, that we cannot afford to pass him by
here in complete silence.
We may look in vain in the poetry of the laureate for passages of
dramatic force such as now and then light up the creaking, groaning
poetry of Browning; but he never grovels, as the latter does very
often indeed.
Tennyson has strong sympathy with the one faith, and, as one may
think, a kind of supernatural bias in its favor, or he too, like the
author of _Paracelsus_ and _Bishop Blosegram’s Apology_, might have
used his poetry as a fantastic costume for crude psychological
problems and for the mind-darkness of doubt. The distinguishing
characteristic of his poetry is the exquisitely artistic finish of its
expression. Every line shows signs of careful toil. His genius has
been without doubt hampered by it. He is more artist than poet; and,
as though conscious of this, he seems to claim inspiration by an
affectation of oracular obscurity. Yet not unseldom the refined
simplicity of word and phrase, the grace of imagery, and all the
artistic brilliance of choicest ornament express poetry, although
never of a very high order. An elegiac poem such as _In Memoriam_, of
nearly seven hundred quatrains, however beautiful in expression, has
“unreal” on the face of it; and that is fatal to its pretensions as a
poem. Yet are there indications here and there of true poetic feeling.
Painful is it, and not without shame, to have a difference with all
the world of criticism. But if we have reason, our fellow-critics will
not disdain us; and if we have not, we throw the blame on our theory
of poetry. But there is a modern poet—Rossetti—whom, on the whole, we
must place on a higher pedestal than Tennyson. With an equal
simplicity of word and phrase, a refinement of expression not
inferior, he has the art, if it be the result of art, to conceal his
art. It is true he has all the artistic finish of Tennyson—so much so
that we cannot but feel that it is an artist who is singing to us; but
the artist disappears in the poet. We must disenchant ourselves of the
thrall of his poetry before we can criticise the artistic perfectness
of its expression. It is not only that, as Tennyson, he paints scenes
of nature and human doings with consummate art; but, true poet that he
is, he catches the very life of nature and it throbs within his verse.
His soul echoes to the Beautiful and the True imaged in nature through
all her modes and forms of color, scent, and sound; he reads their
meaning; and when he reproduces them, as Mr. Stedman has it, “in
different combinations,” they are as suggestive of those ideas of God
as the very images of nature herself. Take, for example, the eleventh
song in _The House of Life—The Sea Limits_:
“Consider the sea’s listless chime:
Time’s self it is made audible—
The murmur of the earth’s own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea’s end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was
This sound hath told the lapse of time.
“No quiet, which is death’s—it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world’s heart of rest and wrath
Its painful pulse is in the sands
Lost utterly, the whole sky stands,
Gray and not known, along its path.
“Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee.
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again—
Still the one voice of wave and tree.
“Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea’s speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And earth, sea, man, are all in each.”
This is poetry of the loftiest kind.
We cannot forbear quoting one more example of his “quality.” It is
poetry which reaches near to Shakspere. “The poet of the world”
himself might have thus grandly imaged lust—with more nervous
terseness, may be; but the structure of dramatic numbers exacts that,
and we do not yet know that Mr. Rossetti is not equal to the drama.
“Like a toad within a stone
Seated while time crumbles on;
Which sits there since the earth was cursed
For man’s transgression at the first;
Which, living through all centuries,
Not once has seen the sun arise;
Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
The earth’s whole summers have not warmed;
Which always, whitherso the stone
Be flung, sits there, deaf, blind, alone—
Ay, and shall not be driven out
Till that which shuts him round about
Break at the very Master’s stroke,
And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
And the seed of man vanish as dust:
Even so within this world is lust.”
Thus much we have quoted in support of a criticism which will not be
readily assented to by all. Our space does not admit of our quoting
more. But we refer the reader to _The Blessed Damozel_ as a gem not to
be outshone; and, for dramatic power joined to the loftiest poetry, to
_A Last Confession_.
Next after Rossetti, if at all after, comes William Morris. In the
form and sound and bias of their numbers there is a close resemblance.
The imaginings of the latter flow more profusely, perhaps because he
does not tarry to spend so much care upon his art. Indeed, whilst the
_art_ of Rossetti is faultless in its way, a seldom blemish, like a
minute blur in a diamond of the best water, may be detected in that of
Morris, as the word “now” thrice in three successive quatrains, the
word “golden” in five successive lines, in a scene, of almost tragic
pathos, of _Sir Galahad, a Christmas Mystery_—the finest music he has
smitten from the chords of no feeble instrument:
“Why not, O _twisting_ knight, now he is dead?”
But amidst so much finish and faultlessness slight fallibilities like
these are, as it were, a relief. The truth is, the artistic spirit in
both, which (and no wonder) is all enamored of mediæval art—art in
those ages of faith when she appeared in forms of beauty as sublime as
faultless—is too forgetful of the living, breathing, moving present.
That they should drink in inspirations of the Beautiful and the True
from the forms in which that most poetic age embodied them, is well;
but the art—the poetic expression—was _natural_ to that epoch; it is
not natural to this. If this is made too conspicuous, as we think it
is in both these poets, there is a risk of mannerism; and mannerism is
an artistic blemish. The attempt to entice men away from the turbid
and muddy torrent of sounding hap-hazard words, which, setting in from
Johnson and Gibbon, has swollen into an inundation of all but sheer
nonsense from the babbling tributaries of the cheap press, to the
nervous grace of simple words and simple sentences and the suggestive
imagery of pure nature, is a service to letters as well as art, for
which alone they and Tennyson, and all the poets of that school,
deserve to be crowned. But aught by which so profoundly artistic a
renaissance is needlessly dissociated from the present should have
been carefully eschewed. In the matter of words we do not think that
such as “japes,” “dromond,” “whatso,” the substitution of the ending
“head” for “hood” in words for which universal custom has decreed the
former, and so on, are a needed revival of the obsolete. We think,
too, that simplicity of grammatical construction has been pushed to
the verge of affectation. Still, it is so artistically done, is so
beautiful in itself, and evidences such a return of leal homage from
hideousness to the rightful Beautiful and the True, that it goes
against us to complain.
It is time that the appointment of a poet-laureate should cease in
England. It is an anachronism. It is almost an insult to the world of
letters. These are not times in which people are likely to accept the
criticism of the British crown or of the crown’s advisers as decisive
of a poet’s merits. So, too, there is such a dearth of independent,
trustworthy criticism, it has become such a follow-the-leader kind of
business, that if the crown merely caps the opinion of the
contemporary public, there is every chance of the wrong man being put
in the wrong place. At any rate the appointment should not be limited
to one. There should be “power to add to their number.” We have no
hesitation in assigning a higher niche to either Rossetti or Morris
than to Tennyson. In two respects Morris surpasses Rossetti. We have
as yet from the latter no sustained efforts such as _The Earthly
Paradise_ of the former, and the poetic fire appears to be kindled in
him with less effort. We are quite sure that it is in no spirit of
challenge or rivalry that he takes Tennyson’s very own theme in _The
Defence of Guenevere_, _King Arthur’s Tomb_, _Sir Galahad_, _a
Christmas Mystery_, and _The Chapel in Lyoness_; but it is an
involuntary expression of conscious power. In all the _Idyls of the
King_ there is not a passage of such vivid poetry as the following in
_The Defence of Guenevere_:
“‘All I have said is truth, by Christ’s dear tears.’
She would not speak another word, but stood
Turned sideways, listening like a man who hears
“His brother’s trumpet sounding through the wood
Of his foe’s lances. She leaned eagerly,
And gave a slight spring sometimes, as she could
“At last hear something really; joyfully
Her cheek grew crimson, as the headlong speed
Of the roan charger drew all men to see.
The knight who came was Launcelot at good need.”
The poetry of the _Idyls_, glittering and charming as it may be, is
cold and pulseless by the side of _King Arthur’s Tomb_, a poem which
rises to the utmost height of tragic pathos. The description of the
remorse of Guenevere for merely ideas of disloyalty to her kingly
husband which she had permitted herself to entertain, as well as of
the satisfaction she made, is poetry in its noblest form, short of the
drama. But we should never meet throughout all the poetry of Tennyson
such blemishes as those we have already quoted, nor such as
“I tell myself a tale
That will not last beyond the whitewashed wall”
—an image which is beneath the dignity of poetry, whilst it rather
dulls than quickens our idea of the fleeting nature of his tale; or
“… till the bell
Of her mouth on my cheek sent a delight
Through all my ways of being.…”
But for a poetry so lofty and so inspiring we can well afford to pay
the penalty of a few blemishes.
We think that he shares with Tennyson, to a certain extent, the fault
of obscurity—never, as Tennyson, in single passages, but in the design
and end of entire pieces. We cannot suppose, for example, that he has
not a definite end and purpose in _The Earthly Paradise_; but it is an
immense defect that it must be very carefully studied in order even to
conjecture one; that it does not readily occur, and still more that,
study it as one may, he cannot feel quite sure he has conjectured
rightly. And we feel this very serious defect the more keenly because
in several of the separate portions of that poem we are afraid to
trust ourselves implicitly to the poet; we dare not throw ourselves
into his imagination, fearful whither it is to bear us. This is
specially remarkable in _Cupid_ _and Psyche_. The subject startles us
from the first. Gods and goddesses whose memory only remains as the
long-passed-away images of falsehood instead of the Beautiful and the
True, especially sensuous impersonations of impurity, are a subject
which is calculated to scare rather than attract us. But we gain
confidence as we read on. Had Byron sung of it, we should have
luscious and sensuous imagery of base suggestiveness. Had it been the
theme of a living poet, we should have had shameless obscenity. Our
poet transfigures it into purity itself. Not an unchaste image shocks
the soul. The whole subject is etherealized—we would say, if we felt
quite sure of its purpose, even spiritualized. As we interpret it, the
heathen myth, although used without stint, is, by the inimitable
genius of the poet, stripped of all impure suggestiveness, and is even
made a vehicle of exquisite beautifulness for conveying one of the
most touching revelations of the great poem of humanity. Psyche (the
soul) is represented to us undergoing by the power of divine love all
sorrow, overcoming superhuman difficulties, succored always, when hope
was well-nigh gone, by guardian angels, until,
“Led by the hand of Love, she took her way
Unto a vale beset with heavenly trees,
Where all the gathered gods and goddesses
Abode her coming; but when Psyche saw
The Father’s face, she, fainting with her awe,
Had fallen, but that Love’s arm held her up.
“Then brought the cup-bearer a golden cup
And gently set it in her slender hand,
And while in dread and wonder she did stand
The Father’s awful voice smote on her ear:
‘Drink now, O beautiful! and have no fear;
For with this draught shalt thou be born again,
And live for ever free from care and pain.’
“Then, pale as privet, took she heart to drink,
And therewithal most strange new thoughts did think,
And unknown feelings seized her, and there came
Sudden remembrance, vivid as a flame,
Of everything that she had done on earth,
Although it all seemed changed in weight and worth,
“Small things becoming great, and great things small;
And godlike pity touched her therewithal
For her old self, for sons of men that die;
And that sweet new-born immortality
Now with full love her rested spirit fed.
Then in that concourse did she lift her head,
And stood at last a very goddess there,
And all cried out at seeing her grown so fair.”
This is the inspiration of true poetry. Nothing at all approaching it
can be found throughout the poetry of Tennyson.
In contrast to the soul led by divine love, the poet depicts her
sisters devoured by envy and hatred, until, deceiving themselves the
while with the dream that they too were objects of delight to divine
love, the one having reached “the bare cliff’s rugged brow,” her end
of life,
“She cried aloud, ‘O Love! receive me now,
Who am not all unworthy to be thine.’
And with that word her jewelled arms did shine
Outstretched beneath the moon, and with one breath
She sprang to meet the outstretched arms of Death,
The only god that waited for her there,
And in a gathered moment of despair
A hideous thing her trait’rous life did seem”;
and the other
“… rose, and, as she might,
Arrayed herself alone in that still night,
And so stole forth, and, making no delay,
Came to the rock a-nigh the dawn of day;
No warning there her sister’s spirit gave,
No doubt came nigh her the doomed soul to save,
But with a fever burning in her blood,
With glittering eyes and crimson cheeks, she stood
One moment on the brow, the while she cried,
‘Receive me, Love, chosen to be thy bride
From all the million women of the world!’
Then o’er the cliff her wicked limbs were hurled,
Nor has the language of the earth a name
For that surprise of terror and of shame.”
Can anything be grander than this imaged suicide of the evil human
soul? And the glowing description of Psyche content to forget her
father and her father’s house, and finding the fondest delight in
sequestering herself alone with her divine Lover, whom she never sees,
only whose voice she hears, is the most exquisite piece of poetic
imagining to be met with anywhere. But the poem deserves a criticism
to itself.
We have here to pause. We had hoped to apply similar canons of
criticism to others of our modern poets. We had selected Buchanan,
Adelaide Procter, Matthew Arnold, Aubrey de Vere, and especially his
father, whose mantle has descended on him. Sir Aubrey de Vere is the
only one of the modern poets who has written a poem belonging to the
highest order of poetry—_Mary Tudor_, a historical drama—which,
although at a long distance from the dramas of “the poet of the
world,” is the nearest to them that has been written since his day.
[76] This epithet, to our mind, is a blemish in a very
beautiful creation. In the midst of lofty and
suggestive natural imagery it abruptly sinks us to a
vulgar matter-of-fact struggle of men at fisticuffs
armed in the product of the blacksmith’s shop.
ON THE FIRST OCCASION OF THE FORTY HOURS’ DEVOTION IN THE NEW
CATHEDRAL OF BOSTON.
“_No word shall be impossible with God._”
O blessed bells! ring joyfully to-day;
O incense clouds! float gladly up to heaven;
All glory, honor, power, and praise be given
To Him whom earth and sea and sky obey.
Behold, the conqueror doth assert his sway
Here where men once would fain have died unshriven,
Proclaimed the Holy Faith unholy leaven,
And drove its followers out as Satan’s prey.
But now, beneath a great cathedral’s dome,
The Sacred Heart doth beat, and men adore;
Our Lord hath found at last a glorious home,
In spite of unbelief that rages still.
“Thy kingdom come,” pray we as ne’er before,
Whose eyes have seen his power to work his will.
MARCH, 1876.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._ FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
VII.
“This is very singular!” cried Sir Roger Lassels, master of the earl’s
household, as they passed the edge of the wood. “I had made a bet with
myself that we would follow the road on the bank of the river. At all
events, the expedition will not be a very long one, since they have
given me no order for provisions. It is true, however, that our poor
young lord’s head is not as sound as it might be. Ah! well, in the
time of the late duke things were not managed in this fashion. When
they were going into the country, the duke would send for me eight
days in advance. ‘Lassels,’ he would say—‘my dear Lassels,’ slapping
me on the shoulder, ‘above all take great care that we shall want for
nothing. Prepare everything in advance; because in matters of cooking,
you know, I hate nothing so much as the uncertainty of the ‘fortune of
the pot.’ He was right, very right, was the duke. The duchess used
always to say on seeing our wagons passing by: ‘With Roger Lassels
they carry everything with them.’”
In the meantime the first rays of the sun were not slow in dissipating
the heavy mists of morning; the air became pure and exhilarating, and
the northern pines, which grew in great profusion in that portion of
the forest, imparted to the atmosphere a sweet, pungent odor. Myriads
of dewdrops, more brilliant than diamonds, were suspended from the
points of the leaves, which the slightest breath of air was sufficient
to call down in a laughing shower. Creeping vines, thickly laden with
blossoms, crossed and recrossed the road, almost hidden by the thick
verdure with which it was overgrown. The birds saluted the return of
day with a thousand joyous songs; the deer and young fawns bounded
beneath the heavy shade of the forest. All nature wore an air of
majestic beauty, calm and tranquil; the heart of man is alone found to
remain always in a state of agitation and unrest.
“Oh! what a beautiful shot,” cried a voice from the crowd, on seeing a
large grouse, its wings dripping with the dew, flying slowly above
their heads.
“Take it, then!” cried another.
“For what purpose?” exclaimed Northumberland.
Sir Walsh, hearing the voice of Lord Percy, took advantage of that
moment to urge his horse beside him, and declare the pain it caused
him to see his friend so deeply depressed.
“What could you expect?” replied Percy. “All is ended with me. I have
renounced everything. I am detached from everything earthly. A single
moment has dissipated all the illusions of my short and miserable
life—illusions in which so many others remain for ever enveloped. I
believed that henceforth a word would be sufficient to answer my every
thought; to suffer alone, while awaiting death, which is only the
beginning of life. Might I not thus believe myself to be almost
shielded by evils, since I was determined to endure them all? One evil
only I had not foreseen—that of being made the cause of suffering to
others; of becoming, in the hands of an unjust and barbarous ruler, an
instrument destined to destroy my friends! Ah! it is this that makes
me rebel, that bows me to the earth and surpasses everything that I
have yet been made to suffer. I go at this moment to arrest the
Archbishop of York—to conduct him, doubtless, on the road to
execution; and the day will come when those who loved him will
exclaim, while they point the finger of scorn at my abode: ‘There
lives the man who arrested the great Wolsey, the venerable friend who
had reared and educated him in his own house!’”
“The great Wolsey!” replied Walsh, astonished.
“Yes, _great_,” said Northumberland. “When he will be no more, then
will they forget his faults and appreciate his great qualities. He has
known how to keep the lion chained, so that you have only seen him
lap; but you will know him better if he ever gets the chance to use
his teeth.”
“Who is this lion?” asked Walsh.
“I cannot name his name,” replied Northumberland angrily; “he is one
whose claws tear the heart and destroy the innocent; one who is—But
never mind!” And he abruptly ceased speaking.
After riding for some time through the forest, they at last emerged
into a vast plain, in the midst of which appeared several villages;
and very soon they found themselves near a church, whose ringing
chimes announced the beginning of the divine Office.
“Ah!” said Sir Roger Lassels to himself, “there is to be Mass at the
chapel of Sir William Harrington.”
At that moment the Earl of Northumberland turned to Sir Walsh. “If
agreeable to you,” he said, “we will stop and hear Mass. We shall, at
any rate, arrive soon enough at Cawood. You will have an opportunity,
if you are curious, of visiting the monuments Sir William Harrington
has had erected to the memory of his parents in this chapel, founded
by him in order that prayers may every day be offered for the repose
of their souls.”[77]
“I ask nothing better,” replied Sir Walsh.
They all entered the chapel, where Mass had already begun. A great
number of the inhabitants of the surrounding country were assembled,
and Lord Percy found himself close beside a woman, still very young,
but whose features seemed to have been entirely changed by misery and
suffering. Two small children knelt beside her and held to her coarse,
black woollen gown.
“Mother, I am very hungry yet!” said the eldest in a voice as sweet as
that of a young dove. “Brother has eaten up all the bread.” And he
laid his head against her shoulder.
The young woman looked at the child, and her eyes filled with tears.
“My dear child,” she replied in a low, choking voice, “I have nothing
more to give you; this evening, may be, I shall find something to buy
bread with. If your father were living, we would be very happy; but,
my son, a poor widow is cast off by all the world, even though she is
too feeble to work for bread for her children.”
Tears streamed from her eyes as she pressed the starving child close
to her bosom.
Northumberland listened to the woman’s mournful complaint, observing
especially that she did not murmur; she only wept. The expression of
her pale and suffering face, as well as the feeling she had expressed
of entire abandonment, filled his soul with pity.
“Such as these,” he said to himself—“such as these indeed have a right
to complain of life and its miseries. I have ignored them. Shut up in
my castle, I have even forgotten the orphan. Of no possible service to
my kind, the earth supports me like an arid, sterile plant. Cruel
selfishness! Is it, then, essential for all to smile around me before
I can think of those who are crushed by poverty and misfortune? My
tears, my sighs, my regrets, have all been in vain, have vanished into
thin air; there remains for me nothing but duty to my neighbor, and
that I have not done!”
Greatly agitated, he remained for an instant motionless, then, leaning
over toward the woman, he requested her to leave the chapel for a
moment.
Surprised that any one should think of speaking to her, she raised her
eyes, all streaming with tears, to his face, while astonishment was
painted on her emaciated features.
She arose, however, and followed him out, and they stopped a short
distance from the chapel.
“You weep!” said Northumberland compassionately. “You are a widow, it
seems. Are you not able to support your children?”
“Alas! sir,” replied the young woman without hesitation, “my husband
died in a strange land while on a voyage which would have secured us a
living; and I, a stranger in this country where he has left me, and
where I have no relations, no friends, to assist me, have been brought
down to extreme poverty. My work has scarcely sufficed to keep us
alive, and to-day it has failed entirely.”
“Poor woman!” said Northumberland, putting some pieces of gold in her
hand, “hereafter have no fears; I will take care of you and your young
children.”
“My God!” cried the woman, falling on her knees—“bread, bread for my
children! Are you an angel sent from heaven to save us? O sir! who
will thank you for me? Ah! it shall be my poor children and your own!
May they love and bless you as I do this moment.”
“Alas!” replied Lord Percy, “I have no children; I shall never have
any! But you, poor mother, can at least rejoice in the happiness of
possessing children to love and cherish you.”
In spite of the painful recollections awakened in his soul, when Percy
returned to the chapel his heart was overflowing with a secret and
sweet consolation; he felt that henceforth he would find brothers and
friends in these unfortunates, whose father he would replace by taking
upon himself their support.
When the Mass was ended, they all remounted their horses to continue
their journey. They had scarcely started when they were joined by a
troop of horsemen as numerous as it was brilliant, being composed of a
great number of the most distinguished gentlemen in the province, who
were proceeding to York to assist at the installation of their
archbishop. At their head rode old Robert Ughtred, chief of one of the
oldest Yorkshire families, whose valor and merit had been admired by
all his contemporaries. Six of his sons accompanied him. At his side
rode Clifton, Lord d’Humanby, his friend and relative; Thomas
Wentworth, of Nettlestead; Sir Arthur Ingram de Temple, Lord of
Newsam; Walter Vavassour; John de Hothum, Lord of Cramwick and of
Bierly; William Aytoun, Swillington; Meynill, Lord of Semer and
Duerteton, together with a crowd of others. They recognized with
astonishment the Earl of Northumberland, and eagerly approached to
salute him.
This meeting, but little agreeable at first, became still less so when
informed of the object of their journey. Percy, however, deemed it
inexpedient to let this opportunity pass of creating for himself a
sort of justification for the future. On being told, therefore, that
they would spend two days at the little village of Cawood before going
to salute the archbishop, he assured them he would be most happy to do
the same and not separate from their company; but he was forced to go
where he had been ordered, and that it was a mission on which he
proceeded with the greatest reluctance and sorrow.
The travellers, astonished at his singular explanation, looked
inquiringly at each other; but as they regarded the Earl of
Northumberland with great deference because of his rank, his
well-known worth, and the affection they cherished for the memory of
his father, they held their peace, and continued their journey until
within a very short distance of Cawood.
* * * * *
Notwithstanding the resolution taken by Cardinal Wolsey that the
ceremony of his installation should be attended by the least possible
_éclat_, he could not prevent the entire nobility of the province from
assembling to do him honor and to express on this solemn occasion
their affection and joy. The little village of Cawood and the castles
around it were crowded with visitors. The archbishop’s courtyard was
constantly filled with carts laden with game, fruits, and all kinds of
provisions, sent to him from every direction to assist in doing honor
to the entertainment it was customary to give on these occasions.
Wolsey felt touched to the heart by these testimonials of friendship
and esteem, in which there was no reason to suspect that self-interest
mingled its destructive poison. Nevertheless, he felt more than ever
depressed, and his spirit was overshadowed by dark and terrible
presentiments, in spite of all his efforts to dispel them.
It was the hour for the repast taken by our fathers at noon, and
Wolsey found himself seated opposite the salt-cellar which divided the
table, and served also to designate the rank of the guests. In those
remote times a common expression prevailed: “It takes place above or
below the salt.”
The chaplains were seated around him, quietly discussing the
foundation of the cathedral of York. Some of them stated that the
Venerable Bede alleged in his writings that it was Edwin the Saxon,
King of Northumberland, who, having embraced the Christian faith in
the year 627, was the first to build a wooden church, which he
afterwards rebuilt of stone. But the others contended, the monument
having been pillaged and devastated by the Danes, then burned by the
Normans, together with a portion of the city, the title of founder
could only be accorded to Archbishop Roger, who commenced the erection
of the superb edifice in 1171, and to his successors, John of Romagna
and William of Melton, who had the honor of completing it after forty
years’ labor. They insisted that it would assuredly be just to include
among them Robert Percy, Lord of Bolton, who had all the wood cut
employed in the construction, and Robert Vavassour, who had furnished
the stone.
The archbishop for a long while had finished eating. He had listened
patiently to their lengthy discussions. When he saw at last they had
nearly concluded, he arose to say grace; but at the moment they were
standing with bowed heads awaiting the act of thanksgiving, the black
velvet robe of Dr. Augustine, his physician, became entangled in the
foot of the large silver cross that was carried before the archbishop.
This cross was standing in one corner, resting against the tapestry,
and the robe made it fall with its entire weight on the head of Dr.
Bonner, who sat on the opposite side of the table. He uttered a
piercing cry.
They all rushed toward him.
“What is the matter with him?” demanded the archbishop, who had seen
nothing of the accident.
“The cross,” explained Cavendish, his master of the horse—“the cross,
which was leaning against the wall, has fallen in Dr. Bonner’s face.”
“In his face! Is he bleeding?” cried Wolsey.
“Yes,” replied several of those who surrounded the wounded man, “but
it is nothing serious; the skin only is broken.”
“Ah!” said Wolsey, and he stood motionless; his head sank on his
breast, as though he had suddenly fallen into a profound reverie.
“Woe is me!” he at length exclaimed, “woe is me!” And the tears
coursed down his cheeks. He quickly wiped them away and retired
immediately to his bedroom, where no one dared follow him without
being summoned.
The attendants of the cardinal, however, were extremely apprehensive,
having remarked the sudden change in his manner and the extreme pallor
which had overspread his countenance. Dr. Bonner especially earnestly
insisted that Cavendish should go to him at once.
He finally resolved to do so. On entering the apartment he found the
archbishop on his knees, and remarked that the floor of his chamber
was wet with tears.
Wolsey made a sign for him to retire; but the faithful servitor stood
near the door and hesitated to obey him. The cardinal then called him
to assist him in rising to his feet, feeling, he said, extremely
feeble.
“Alas! my dear lord,” said Cavendish, “what is it that so deeply
grieves you? and why will you withdraw from your trusty servitors, if
it is in their power to assist you?”
“I thank you, Cavendish,” replied the cardinal, inclining his head,
“but listen to me. My poor friend, I am going to die very soon—I have
a presentiment of it; and God, in his mercy, often sends us these
warnings, in order that we may not be surprised by death. The cross of
York has fallen: it represents myself.”
“Why think you so?” asked Cavendish earnestly. “This cross fell
because it was struck; nothing could have been more natural than such
an accident.”
“No! no!” exclaimed Wolsey, “it was not at all natural, but it is only
too true. York is overthrown! Augustine is my accuser; he makes my own
blood flow in making Bonner bleed, the master of my faculties and
spiritual jurisdiction. My destiny is accomplished. My doom is sealed.
Cavendish, if you doubt it, you will soon be convinced. My shadow, the
sound of my name alone, is sufficient to alarm them; already I am no
more, and yet this remnant of life makes them tremble, even in the
midst of their triumphs. It is necessary for their peace that my last
breath be extinguished; they have resolved and they will accomplish
it!”
“No! no!” cried Cavendish, deeply moved. “The king loves you; he will
defend you! All love you,” he continued warmly. “See with what
eagerness they hasten hither to give you the most earnest assurances
of their devotion.”
“That is true,” replied Wolsey, who was becoming more calm, and was
greatly relieved by the presence of Cavendish. “It is the only feeling
of joy I have experienced in a long time; but I am grieved not to have
received any token of remembrance from the young Earl of
Northumberland. His intellect, goodness, and his many amiable
qualities have always made me regard him with the greatest esteem and
affection. They say he loves solitude, and I am well assured that he
receives no visitors; but I very much fear he cherishes bitter
recollections of the court and Anne Boleyn. However, he should not
take it ill that I have helped to prevent him from marrying such a
woman!”
Whilst Wolsey was speaking a great noise was heard in the courtyard.
Cavendish, at the cardinal’s request, immediately went out to
ascertain the cause.
He had advanced but a few steps when he encountered another equerry,
coming in all haste to announce the arrival of the Earl of
Northumberland.
Overjoyed at hearing the name, Cavendish at once returned to inform
the archbishop.
“Here is Lord Percy himself, who also comes to congratulate your
grace!” he exclaimed the instant he came in sight of Wolsey.
“The dear child!” cried the cardinal, his heart overflowing with a
gush of tenderness. “Cavendish, you are not mistaken. Eh? Ah! I shall
never forget him! Let us go and receive him, Cavendish.”
He advanced with a tottering step, and more rapidly than he was able,
toward the staircase which Northumberland had just ascended. On seeing
the archbishop approaching to meet him Lord Percy felt his heart
suddenly throb with a sensation of inexpressible wretchedness.
“He comes to meet me!” he exclaimed.
He found him so much changed, so old and worn, that without his
vestments he would scarcely have recognized him.
“He also has found the cup of life embittered!” said Northumberland.
“Sorrow carves deep furrows on the brow, and with her haggard finger
impresses every feature.”
He turned anxiously to look for Walsh, but found he was no longer near
him. In the meantime Wolsey advanced rapidly toward him, and, taking
him in his arms, pressed him closely to his heart.
“You are most welcome, my dear lord! How happy I am to see you!” he
exclaimed. “But why have I not been informed of your coming? I should,
at least, have been prepared to give you a better reception; for you
must know that what formerly required but a moment to effect I am now
scarcely able to execute at all. But you will, I hope, appreciate my
good intentions; and if I am ever so happy as to be re-established in
my fortune, I shall then be able to express more worthily the joy I
feel at receiving you in my house.”
“I thank your lordship,” answered Northumberland.
But he was unable to utter another word. However, he embraced Wolsey,
though with great excitement of manner, his hands trembling visibly in
those of the archbishop.
“Let us go,” continued Wolsey glancing at the followers of Lord Percy.
“I am glad to see you have remembered the advice I gave you in your
youth, to love and take care of all your father’s old domestics; that
is why, I suppose, you have brought so many of them with you.”
“Yes, I prefer them,” replied Northumberland. And Wolsey went and took
them each by the hand, praising their fidelity and recommending them
to love their young master as he himself had always done.
The more Wolsey exerted himself to assure Northumberland of the
gratification he experienced at his coming, the less strength Percy
felt to thank him. However, the cardinal begged to be allowed to
accompany him to his bed-chamber, where they might be alone, except
Cavendish, who remained near the door, as his duty required him.
For a moment they sat in silence. Wolsey regarded Lord Percy with
astonishment on observing the latter change color and become every
instant more and more embarrassed. At length, arousing himself
suddenly to a determined degree of resolution, he approached, and,
laying his hand gently on the arm of the archbishop, said in a voice
tremulous with emotion: “My lord, I arrest you on the charge of high
treason!”
Wolsey sat so completely stupefied that he was incapable of uttering a
word; they gazed at each other in mournful silence.
“Who has induced you to do this?” the cardinal at length exclaimed,
“and by what authority do you it?”
“My lord,” replied Northumberland coldly, “I have a commission that
authorizes me; or that compels me, rather,” he continued in a low
voice.
“Where is this commission? Let me see it?”
“No, my lord, I cannot.”
“Then,” cried Wolsey, “I will not submit to your authority.”
As he said this, Sir Walsh pushed Dr. Augustine, whom he had arrested,
rudely into the apartment. “Go in there, traitor,” he cried; but
perceiving the cardinal, he fell on his knees before him, and,
removing his cap, bowed almost to the floor.
Wolsey turned pale on seeing Walsh; he at once recognized him as being
an officer of the king’s palace, and knew he would not be there
without an express order.
“Sir,” he exclaimed, “rise, I implore you! My Lord of Northumberland
comes to arrest me! If he has a commission, and you are with him for
that purpose, you will be pleased to let me see it.”
“My lord,” answered Walsh, “if it please your grace, it is true that I
have one; but we cannot permit you to see it. They have added to the
paper on which it is written some instructions that we are bound not
to make known.”
“Then,” cried Wolsey, melting into tears, “all is over with me! They
deprive me even of the means of defending myself, and my cruel enemies
behold all their schemes accomplished. It is well, sir,” continued the
archbishop, turning his back on the Earl of Northumberland; “I consent
to surrender myself to you, but not to my Lord of Northumberland, who
comes here only to enjoy my discomfiture. As to you, I know you; your
name is Walsh, and you are one of the officers of the king, my master.
Therefore I do not demand your commission; his will is sufficient. I
am perfectly aware that the greatest peer in the realm is liable to be
arrested by the lowest subject, if such be his majesty’s good
pleasure. This is why I shall obey you without delay. Begin, then, to
put your orders into execution. If I had known them, I would have
assisted you myself; but, at least, I submit.”
Saying this, the archbishop seated himself in silence; but the tears
continued to flow rapidly down his cheeks.
Meanwhile, Lord Percy felt so deeply wounded by the suspicion
manifested by the archbishop, and his believing him to be actuated by
a principle of low revenge and cruelty in coming to arrest him, that
he was about to withdraw without offering him a solitary word of
consolation, as he had intended; but a sudden feeling of compassion
induced him to return and take a seat by his side.
Wolsey was deeply moved by this.
“My lord,” he exclaimed, “I swear before God I am innocent of all the
crimes my enemies impute to me, beyond doubt, for the purpose of
securing my death! I have committed many errors, I know; but it has
been against God and against myself that I have committed them, and
not against my king, whom I have always served with an inviolable
fidelity. I have possessed great riches; but I employed them in
founding great and useful establishments. I have held correspondence
with foreign princes, and have acquired great influence in their
councils, but I have always used it in the interests of my king and
the state. And now he has abandoned me to the malice of my enemies,
and does not hesitate an instant to believe all the calumnies they
have heaped upon my head! No, I shall indulge in vain illusions no
longer. I go now to my death; and it is my king who strikes the fatal
blow! Ah!” continued Wolsey, transported by his feelings, “would I
might appear before him, that I might justify myself in the face of
heaven and earth! Then I should fear no man living under the sun. But,
no; it will not be thus. I shall die without vindication, in the
depths of some obscure prison, some noisome dungeon! Not a friend has
remained faithful; not a single voice has been raised in my defence!”
“Friendship,” replied Northumberland, “is but a vain word, a beautiful
sound that dissolves in the air, a shifting sand requiring the one who
reposes on it always to remain on his guard, to beware; for one-half
of the world is too frivolous and the other half too selfish for any
confidence ever to be placed in them.”
“Therefore you yourself feel no compassion for me?” said Wolsey,
looking at him.
“You are unjust!” replied Lord Percy. “God is my judge how deeply I
have suffered in being forced before you in my present capacity. But
tell me, how am I to arrest the destroying tempest or turn aside the
falling thunderbolt? Have they not crushed me also?”
* * * * *
After two long days had passed, during which the archbishop was
entirely deprived of all communication with those around him,
Northumberland came to inform him that everything was arranged for the
journey and it was time to depart.
“Alas! where are you going to take me?” cried Wolsey, to whom this
departure seemed the first step toward condemnation and death.
In that fatal moment he felt an attachment for every stone and every
spot connected with the abode which, until this time, he had regarded
as the most gloomy place of exile.
“Not to be able to die in peace!” he mournfully exclaimed. “Where are
you going to take me, Lord Percy?”
“I cannot accompany you,” sadly replied Northumberland, who had
endeavored during the preceding days to make him regard his condition
with less terror; “but I know that Sir Walsh has orders to deliver you
at Sheffield Park, and place you in the hands of my father-in-law, the
Earl of Shrewsbury; and you need suffer no anxiety, nor doubt but that
he will gladly exert himself to have you well treated as far as
depends on him. To-night you will sleep at Pomfret.”
“At the castle?” demanded Wolsey.
“No, no,” replied Lord Percy: “at the abbey. I am certain of it. I
swear it! I have myself sent the order for you to be received there. O
my father!” continued Percy, who felt more and more deeply grieved, “I
must now leave you.” (And he fell on his knees before the archbishop.)
“May God be with you! But first give me your blessing. I indeed have
need of it! I have never forgotten the care you bestowed on me in my
childhood.”
“My dear son,” said the archbishop, “may the Lord Almighty, the God of
Israel and of Jacob, for ever bless you! We shall meet no more but in
him.”
As the archbishop extended his hands and laid them on the head of
Percy, and while he bent affectionately over him, Walsh entered,
followed by a number of armed men; and the sound of smothered sighs
and stifled cries was heard.
“What is that?” exclaimed Wolsey in alarm.
“Nothing, my lord,” answered Walsh in an imperious tone. “As you could
only take four of your men with you, I feared the others would make
too much disturbance at your departure; consequently, I had them shut
up in the chapel.”
“Sir,” cried Wolsey indignantly, “I will not leave this place until I
have seen and bade farewell to all my servants. You cannot have been
authorized to treat me with such a degree of cruelty. My Lord
Northumberland, since you have seized for the king’s benefit the
little money I possessed, and have left me nothing to give them, at
least permit me to thank them for their services and mingle my tears
with theirs.”
“We thought it would be painful for you to witness their grief,”
replied Northumberland, “and wished to spare you the infliction. But
they shall be summoned.”
As soon as the door of the chapel was opened they gathered in a crowd
around Wolsey, kissing his hands and his vestments. “My children,” he
said to them, “weep not; we shall meet again very soon, I hope. My
Lord Northumberland, I recommend them to you! You will take care of
them—I feel assured of it.”
He then hastened to depart, feeling his courage ready to desert him.
At every step he took his anguish redoubled; and when he reached the
great courtyard, he turned his eyes for a moment toward the high,
black walls of the castle he was leaving, then glanced at the mule
assigned him to ride. Cavendish followed with his almoner and two of
his valets. But a new grief awaited Wolsey, already overwhelmed with
sorrow. Scarcely had they opened the outer gate of the castle, when
they perceived without a crowd of gentlemen of the province, whom
Walsh had summoned, in the king’s name, to come and secure the arrest
of the archbishop; because the whole country was in a state of
commotion, and more than three thousand men had gathered along the
route, in the plain, and as far as the moats of the castle, around
which they assembled as soon as they were informed of his arrest. They
were powerless to oppose his departure, but followed him for several
miles, shouting incessantly: “God save his grace, and perish his
enemies who have forced him from us!” They regarded the noblemen who
surrounded him with wrathful scowls, without reflecting that, while
feeling it necessary to obey the king, the lords were as deeply
disaffected as themselves, and in their turn accused the Earl of
Northumberland of having seconded Walsh in this enterprise.
During the journey they unceasingly manifested the greatest regard for
the archbishop, and only left him after seeing him committed into the
hands of the Earl of Shrewsbury, whose castle was situated near the
confines of Yorkshire, a short distance from the town of Doncaster.
TO BE CONTINUED.
[77] The son has now ceased to invoke in this once
hallowed spot the divine mercy on the souls of his
fathers; the bells no more announce the vows nor the
regrets of the heart; the august Sacrifice is never
offered up but in the gloomy silence imposed by
persecution.
SENNUCCIO MIO, BENCHE DOGLIOSO E SOLO.
FROM PETRARCH.
My own Sennuccio, though bereft of thee,
Weeping and lonely, me this thought sustains:
That from this breathing tomb, these fleshly chains,
Thy soaring spirit nobly set thee free.
Now the twin poles by thee discovered are,
The wheeling lights, and all the starry ways:
Thou seest our seeing falter from afar;
So thy delight the pain of loss allays.
But I beseech thee in that far third sphere
Greet Franceshino and the bard divine,
Cino, Guitton, and all thy comrades there;
And tell my Love, tell her what tears are mine,
And what dark moods of wilder sorrow breeds
The thought of her sweet face and saintly deeds.
SCANDERBEG.
“Oh! how comely it is, and how reviving
To the spirits of just men long oppressed,
When God into the hands of their deliverer
Puts invincible might
To quell the mighty of the earth, th’ oppressor,
The brute and boist’rous force of violent men,
Hardy and industrious to support
Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue
The righteous and all such as honor Truth.”
—_Samson Agonistes._
The Turks, from their first appearance upon European soil, have been a
danger to the peace and civilization of Christendom. When their fierce
hordes crossed the Bosporus, bearing aloft the standard of the
crescent, it was a boast among them that the sign was but a temporary
emblem of their power, and that when she had waxed to the fulness of
her orb—_donec Lunæ totus impleatur orbis_, as was insolently said to
an ambassador of the West—her silvery sheen would change to the golden
glory of the sun, and blaze from an eastern sky over prostrate and
Mohammedan Europe.
With one foot upon Constantinople and the other on Rome,[78] the
colossus of Islam would have projected an awful shadow over the
Christian world. Efforts tremendous and long sustained were made to
lift itself up; but this it could never do, and it has fallen and is
broken, but in its fall covers fair provinces and crushes a multitude
of unfortunate Christians. If the Turks have ceased to be a stirring
menace to the nations, we must ascribe the curbing of their power to
divine Providence, which brought forward at critical times a number of
men mighty by the sword or through the word—Huniades, Matthias
Corvinus, Ladislas of Hungary, St. John Capistran, Cardinal Julian
Cesarini, Scanderbeg, St. Pius V., Don John of Austria, Mark Anthony
Colonna, Sobieski, and others—who fought their advance towards the
Adriatic and along the Danube. As this great Ottoman inundation rose
higher and higher, until it seemed as though the work of the church
for a thousand years would be swept away in fewer days, God spoke: “I
set my bounds around it, and made it bars and doors; and I said:
Hitherto thou shalt come, and shalt go no further: and here thou shalt
break thy swelling waves.” (Job xxxviii.)
In the fifteenth century several independent princelings, called
_despots_ by the Greeks, were in possession of the rich and populous
district of Albania, which stretches along the coast of the Adriatic
and Mediterranean Seas, and corresponds geographically to the Epirus
of the ancients. One of the noblest of these chiefs was John Castriot,
who came of an ancient family in Lower Macedonia. His wife, Woïzava,
presented him with nine children, and among them that George, born in
1404, who was destined to become the defender of his persecuted race,
the Christian Gideon, as he was hailed by Pope Paul II., and the hero
of his native country against the Turks. Several omens are reported to
have accompanied his birth and signified his future greatness. Without
denying that these may have been something more than mere accidents or
freaks of the imagination, we only certify that as the child grew up
he developed a strength of character and an aptitude for arms which
his after-successes amply justified and the inherent nobility of his
parents had prepared.
“_Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis;
… nec imbellem feroces
Progenerant aquilæ cotlumbam._”[79]
—_Horace._
Sultan Mohammed I. had invaded Albania in 1413, and obliged John
Castriot to deliver up his four young sons to him as hostages. He
immediately, and against the solemn promise made to their father,
caused them to be circumcised and educated in the Mussulman religion.
George, our hero, was the youngest. He was endowed with a prodigious
memory, and soon learned to speak the Greek, Turkish, Arab, Illyrian,
and Italian languages. A handsome person, unusual bodily strength, and
vigorous mental qualities won for him the warm affection of the
next sovereign, Amurath II., who changed George’s name to
_Scanderbeg_—_i.e._, Beg or Lord Alexander—and at the early age of
eighteen gave him the rank of sangiac and command of five thousand
horsemen on the confines of Anatolia. His personal prowess and
military skill in Asia Minor brought him into considerable notice, and
he was given a command in the European provinces of the empire. This
was a difficult position to be placed in; for he had not forgotten
that he was born a Christian and had been impressed into his present
service. He felt a great dislike to turn his arms against
co-religionists and countrymen. His brothers were dead, and now his
father died in 1432. At this juncture the sultan very unjustly took
possession of his hereditary dominion, and, sending his mother and
sister Mamisa into exile, put a pasha over the country. Scanderbeg did
not immediately pronounce himself against this act of treacherous
spoliation, although several Albanian noblemen, proud of his renown
and convinced that he was not at heart attached to his new creed,
corresponded with him secretly, urging him to come and put himself at
the head of the Christian population to free the country from the
infidel. The Albanians have always been distinguished for their spirit
of nationality, and, like the inhabitants of all mountainous regions
are remarkable for independence and love of home.
The favorable moment to declare himself had not arrived but his plans
were maturing. At last, after a great battle lost by the Turks at
Morava on the 10th of November, 1443, he concerted with his nephew
Hamza and a few trusty friends of Christian origin, forced, like
himself, to serve the foreign tyrant, and by a skilful ruse and very
sudden irruption at the head of six hundred Albanians, who hastened to
join him as soon as his defection was known, he obtained possession of
Croia, the capital of his paternal dominions. The Turkish garrison,
not so much by his orders as from an uncontrollable impulse of
outraged feelings in the populace, was put to the sword. Scanderbeg
was just twenty-nine years old. He publicly renounced Mohammedanism
and renewed his profession of the Catholic faith. The chiefs of
Albania were then invited to meet him. When they came together at
Croia, they called him their deliverer, unanimously proclaimed him
Prince of Epirus, and soon collected an army of about twelve thousand
men. While the troops were being raised, the civil service and
revenues of the state were reorganized. Besides a large immediate
contribution from his own countrymen, he obtained two hundred thousand
ducats from his neighbors, the Venetians, and had a large source of
income in the salt-mines near Durazzo.
Petralba was next taken, and this success brought new accessions of
men and means to prosecute the war. Within a month after the first
blow had been struck every fortress except one was captured, and every
Turk either killed, a prisoner, or in flight. Sfetigrad could not be
surprised, and, leaving a force of three thousand men to watch it and
cut off supplies, Scanderbeg retired with the rest of the army to
Croia for the winter, and occupied himself in making an alliance with
the republic of Venice, which held several towns along the coast of
Dalmatia, and in preparing for the inevitable struggle the sultan
would make to recover the country. Amurath did not dissemble his anger
at the revolt of one whom he had treated, he said, with so much
kindness and taught the use of the arms he was now turning against
him. Being engaged at the time against the Hungarians, he put off
revenge until the spring, thinking that he could at any moment easily
subdue the undisciplined bands of Albania; but when a truce was
concluded and spring opened with fair weather for an imposing
campaign, he sent Ali Pasha in command of forty thousand men, his
orders being to crush the insurrection at a single blow. Scanderbeg
had by this time reduced Sfetigrad and strongly fortified and
garrisoned the more important towns. He now took the field with only
fifteen thousand troops, knowing that in such a country as the one he
was to defend a very large force would be difficult to handle and
impossible to feed. His tactics were generally those of partisan
warfare. His little army was composed partly of cavalry from the
northern, and partly of a hardy and active infantry from the southern
section of the country. His object was to wear out the enemy by a
stout resistance at every point, and harass the retreats which the
very vastness of the Turkish armies would necessitate by the
impossibility, if for no other reason, of providing for so many
mouths. Only occasional raids were made in force upon the fertile
plains of Thessaly and Macedonia to capture horses, cattle, sheep, and
to gather in grain to be stored in the fortified towns. During the war
of Albanian independence, which lasted a quarter of a century, the
Turks always, except towards the end, repeated the fatal blunder of
sending immense armies, consisting in some cases of two hundred
thousand men, into a country where they could be maintained only for a
single and brief campaign, and to fight a general who was sure, from
his bravery, skill, and thorough knowledge of every torrent, mountain
pass, road, and valley, to turn defeat into overwhelming disaster. It
was thus that the army of Ali Pasha was drawn by wily manœuvres into a
narrow district only ninety miles from Croia and opening into the very
heart of Albania. The upper end was very contracted, and here
Scanderbeg drew up his main body of troops, to the number of ten
thousand, which were posted in three divisions _en échelon_. As soon
as the enemy was well engaged in the valley three thousand horsemen,
who had been watching their slow advance, came down at its lower end,
which had been left quite unguarded, while fifteen hundred irregular
infantry lay in ambush on either side amidst the woody acclivities. As
soon as the Turks came up to the Albanians they halted, tried to
deploy, but could not, repeatedly charged and swept up in heavy
columns against the small but solid masses who evenly filled the gap
and made it impossible to flank them. The Turks after a while began to
waver and fall into still greater disorder. Ali Pasha had blundered.
The Albanians now took the offensive. The signal-clarions sounded,
and, while the Turks were attacked in front, the cavalry from the
lower end of the valley charged them in the rear, and the infantry
that lay in ambush came rushing down on both sides with terrific cries
and sword in hand to complete their discomfiture. It was now a
slaughter; and although the battle lasted only four hours altogether,
over twenty thousand infidels were killed or wounded. Few
prisoners—not more than two thousand—were taken. The rest of the
enemy, under cover of darkness and from sheer exhaustion on the part
of the victors, escaped through the now open passage at the lower end
of the valley.
When Scanderbeg had entered Croia in triumph, he announced the victory
by letters to Pope Eugenius IV. and several Christian princes; and
while some of the twenty-five captured battle-flags were distributed
among the confederate chiefs, others were suspended in the principal
church of the capital.
Amurath was so alarmed by this defeat—not, perhaps, so much from what
he had to fear on the side of the immediate victors, but from the
encouraging effects it might have in leaguing the Christian princes
against him—that he wrote a letter from Adrianople, offering
Scanderbeg peace on certain conditions. But when these were discussed
in the council at Croia, they were declared unjust and humiliating,
and Scanderbeg was advised to reject every sort of condition and
insist on the complete independence of Albania. The answer to this
letter announced his intention of holding out to the last extremity,
and began with these valiant words: “From our camp near Croia, August
12, 1445. George Castriot, surnamed Scanderbeg, soldier of Jesus
Christ and Prince of the Epirotes, to Othman, Prince of the Turks,
greeting.” A second army under Fizour, and a third and larger one
under Mustapha, were successively defeated, but not without
considerable loss in men and damage to the country. During the inroads
of these fierce barbarians into Albania they perpetrated the most
horrible massacres without regard to age or sex, and heaped the most
brutal outrages upon the inhabitants. The handsomest girls were seized
for the seraglios of the sultan and his wealthy minions, the prettiest
boys were kept to minister to their unnatural lusts, while youths of a
maturer age or less attractive appearance were circumcised, educated
in the Mohammedan religion, and drafted into the Janizaries. Others
who were not butchered on the smoking ruins of their homes were driven
in chains to the slave markets, while many were made eunuchs and set
to guard the harems of their masters in Asia Minor.
Mustapha Pasha, although he had been defeated, was entrusted with
another army, but with a similar result, and even worse; for he
himself was taken prisoner. Twenty-five thousand golden ducats were
paid for his ransom. Scanderbeg now made a _razzia_ on a large scale
into Macedonia and returned laden with an immense booty of every
description. His fame was so solidly established by these victories
that the republic of Venice sent a magnificent embassy to compliment
him and convey to him the news of his appointment as governor-general
of all the Italian possessions along the Adriatic and in the interior,
where the important cities of Scutari and Alessio were situated. His
name was enrolled in the Golden Book at the head of the list of
Venetian nobles.
The revolt of the Janizaries having obliged Amurath to leave his
luxurious retreat at Magnesia and once more resume the management of
public affairs, he determined to conduct in person the war against
Scanderbeg. He soon appeared at the head of a formidable army before
Sfetigrad, which surrendered after a gallant resistance. During the
siege the Turks lost in one of the assaults six thousand men.
Satisfied, apparently, with this single victory, the slothful sultan
retired into Macedonia after leaving a strong garrison in the captured
fortress. Scanderbeg hovered on his flanks and rear, making many
prisoners and taking a large amount of stores and war material; then,
after seeing him well out of the country, he turned towards Sfetigrad
and sat down before it on September 20, 1445, with eighteen thousand
men, among whom were adventurers from almost every country in Europe,
Germans, French, and Italians being the most numerous. For want of
artillery no regular siege could be conducted, and Scanderbeg was
repulsed with heavy loss in his attacks on the place. Hearing that
Amurath was preparing to return, he hastily concentrated his available
troops around Croia, which was provisioned for a long resistance. Some
large, unwieldy pieces of cannon, directed by Frenchmen, added to the
strength of the capital. The sultan was slow in his movements, and did
not appear as soon as was expected. In the meanwhile Scanderbeg was
encouraged by receiving congratulatory letters from Pope Nicholas V.,
which were brought to him by two Franciscans, one of whom was a
bishop. The winter of 1449-50 had been passed by him in the saddle
inspecting every fortress, going into every part of his dominions to
encourage the people and hasten the levy of troops. The coming tempest
was naturally expected to assail the capital; and to make its
neighborhood a howling wilderness, the whole country around Croia was
ravaged by his order, for a distance of from fifteen to eighteen
miles, so completely that not a house or a bridge was left standing,
and not a road passable; every growing and living thing was either
destroyed or removed. The enemy could find no shelter there.
On April 15, 1450, the sultan appeared before the city with an army of
one hundred and sixty thousand fighting men and a host of
camp-followers. Uranocontes commanded inside and repelled numerous
assaults, while Scanderbeg, with a force of five thousand picked
cavalry, hovered about the outskirts of the enemy, inflicting
considerable loss in men and stores, but above all annoying the long
line of communications by which the army drew its daily supplies.
Amurath finally tired of the siege, and, being convinced that the
mountains and valleys of Epirus were not worth his time, his trouble,
or his money while richer conquests awaited him, charged a certain
Yousouf to leave the camp and seek Scanderbeg, to try and induce him
to accept the single condition of an annual tribute of only ten
thousand ducats. After a two days’ search he was found, but instantly
rejected even this almost nominal condition attached to the
independence of his country. Knowing that he could not take Croia by
assault or maintain his army any longer in such a country, the sultan
slowly retreated and died soon afterwards at Adrianople, on February
5, 1451. He was succeeded by his son, Mohammed II., who renewed his
father’s offer, but with no better result.
The news of Amurath’s ill-success before Croia made a great noise in
Italy, and even beyond. The kings of Hungary and Aragon, and Philip,
Duke of Burgundy, sent complimentary missions to the Albanian hero,
and presents of money and provisions. King Alphonsus of Aragon, who
was also King of Sicily and Naples, sent him four hundred thousand
bushels of grain. Among other rich presents that he received from this
magnificent monarch was a helmet or casque of the finest Spanish
steel, lined on the inside with Cordovan leather and soft silk, and
covered on the outside with the purest gold artistically chased and
embossed by an Italian jeweller and studded with precious stones.
Scanderbeg was very proud of this really regal headgear, and ranked it
along with his famous sword, a veritable _Excalibur_, the blade of
which was of perfect Damascus workmanship, and the handle a blaze of
Oriental gems set with exquisite skill by a Persian lapidary. This
weapon was a present from Amurath on giving him his first command.
With it he killed at least two thousand Turks in his war of
independence, and it was looked upon by his enemies with a species of
superstitious awe. During one of the informal truces between the Turks
and Christians Sultan Mohammed begged to see the blade of which he had
heard so much. It was sent to him and tried by the best swordsmen of
his army, but not one of them could perform the feats that its owner
had been seen to do with it; and when it was returned, the sultan told
him this and asked the reason. “I sent your highness the sword,” said
Scanderbeg, “but not the limb that wields it!” When he went into
battle, it was always with his right arm bare and his shoulder
perfectly free. He was so tall and strong that a few years later, when
he went over to Italy to assist King Ferdinand, and had occasion to
meet the commander of the enemy’s troops—the famous _condottiére_
Count Piccinino, whose stature, it is true, was small, but still that
of a grown person—he took him by the belt with one hand, and, slowly
raising him up, impressed a courtly kiss upon the forehead and as
gently set him down again. He looked so brave and handsome that even
his foes applauded.
“His haughtie helmet, horrid all with gold,
Both glorious brightnesse and great terrour bredd:
For all the crest a dragon did enfold
With greedie pawes, and over all did spredd
His golden winges; his dreadfull hideous hedd,
Close couchèd on the bever, seemed to throw
From flaming mouth bright sparcles fiery redd,
That suddeine horrour to faint hartes did show;
And scaly tayle was stretcht adowne his back full low.”
—_Spenser._
In May, 1451, Scanderbeg married the Princess Donica, daughter of
Arrianites Thopia, one of the most influential lords of Albania, and
connected on his mother’s side with the imperial family of the
Comneni. He received at this time from King Alphonsus five hundred
arquebusiers, the same number of expert crossbow-men, and a few pieces
of artillery with their cannoniers. We have only space to mention the
events of the next years: how successive armies of Turks were
defeated; how Scanderbeg himself was repulsed with a loss of five
thousand men in an attack on Belgrade; and how, during a lull in the
war, he was invited over to Italy by Pope Pius II. to the assistance
of King Ferdinand, son of his old friend Alphonsus, who was hard
pressed by his rival, John of Anjou. (_Raynald. Annales Eccl. ad an._
1460, num. lx.) He contributed greatly to the victory won at Troja on
Aug. 18, 1462, and for his services was created Duke of San Pietro, in
the kingdom of Naples. He remained in Italy a little over a year.
Recalled to Albania by the appearance of the Turks, he repulsed Sultan
Mohammed from Croia; but his own losses and the new plans of the
enemy, which consisted in sending only small armies under experienced
generals—one of whom, Balaban Badera, was an Albanian renegade—with
orders to avoid battle if possible, but to remain in the country at
all hazards, made him feel that his cause was failing, and that,
unless relieved from the west, he must sooner or later succumb. In
this emergency he went to Rome and appealed to the pope and cardinals
to preach a new crusade. The example of the broken-hearted Pius II.
showed how fruitless it would have been for them to do so. Paul,
indeed, wrote to all the Christian princes, but he got nothing but
fair words in return. The great schism had lamentably diminished the
prestige of the Papacy, and a multitude of heretics more or less
openly preluded that Reformation which would soon divide Christendom
itself into hostile camps. The pope gave him three thousand golden
florins and conferred upon him the insignia of the cap and sword which
is annually blessed by the pontiff on the vigil of Christmas for
presentation to the prince who has deserved best of the church.
Scanderbeg lodged while in Rome in a house which, although rebuilt in
1843, still retains over the door his portrait in fresco and the
laudatory inscription set up soon after his death. The street and an
adjoining little _piazza_ under the Quirinal gardens have long
perpetuated his name as the _Via di Scanderbeg_. He left Rome in
disappointment and sorrow.
“Ah! what though no succor advances,
Nor Christendom’s chivalrous lances
Are stretched in our aid? Be the combat our own!
And we’ll perish or conquer more proudly alone;
For we’ve sworn by our country’s assaulters,
By the virgins they’ve dragged from our altars,
By our massacred patriots, our children in chains,
By our heroes of old, and their blood in our veins,
That, living, we shall be victorious,
Or that, dying, our deaths shall be glorious.”
—_Campbell._
On his way back to Albania he was allowed to recruit in the Venetian
territories a force of thirteen thousand men, which he commanded in
person. His former little army in the field was captained by his
faithful friend Tanusios, and after planning together the two generals
attacked the Turks around Croia on two different points, while a
vigorous sortie was made by the besieged, during which Balaban, the
Turkish commander, was killed. His death and the suddenness and vigor
of the triple attack threw the enemy into confusion, and they were
completely routed. We pass over other battles and victories, by which
Scanderbeg’s resources were finally exhausted. The end had come.
During the winter of 1466-7 he was making a tour of inspection, and
while in the city of Alessio, or Lissa, as it is sometimes called,
where the ambassador of Venice and the confederate chiefs of Albania
had convened to meet him and combine for one last and desperate
effort, he was seized by a fever which proved fatal. After addressing
a solemn and pathetic discourse to his principal officers, he embraced
them one by one, and gave orders to his only son John to cross over to
his Neapolitan fiefs with his mother, and there wait until some
favorable occasion might present itself to return and put himself at
the head of his countrymen as his father had done. He died during the
night of January 17, 1467, after having received the Viaticum and
Extreme Unction, and was buried in the cathedral church of Alessio.
His death caused a profound sensation throughout Europe. Mohammed
exulted over the loss of one whom he called the sword and buckler of
the Christians, and immediately poured his troops into Albania; but it
was not until the year 1478, when Croia surrendered on conditions
which were afterwards basely violated, that the war ended. Since that
time the infamous Turks have lorded it over the land made glorious in
legendary lore by the son of Achilles, in history by King Pyrrhus, and
in modern times by Scanderbeg. The presence of those barbarous
Asiatics in any part of Europe is one of the foulest stains upon the
moral sense and the politics of Christian governments.
When Alessio was captured the infidels dug up the remains of the great
warrior and divided his bones among the soldiers, to be worn in rich
reliquaries as amulets of courage. His countrymen still sing of him as
their national hero, and the Turks frighten naughty children with his
terrible name.
After Scanderbeg’s death many Albanians emigrated to Italy, either in
the suite of his son or independently. The most remarkable colony was
in Calabria, where as late as 1780 their descendants, numbering about
one hundred thousand, retained the dress, manners, and language of
their ancestors. Another colony, not so numerous, is scattered about
the Abruzzi. The last lineal descendant of the hero was the Marquis of
Sant’Angelo, who was killed at the battle of Pavia by the hand (as
Paulus Jovius says) of Francis I.
Most of the Albanians remained Christians until the middle of the
seventeenth century, when the majority conformed, outwardly at least,
to the Mohammedan religion. The popes have tried hard to keep alive
the Catholic faith among the population, and, under the circumstances,
with considerable success. Pope Clement XI., of the (now) princely
family of Albani which emigrated from Albania in the sixteenth
century, and settled at Urbino, established a purse of four thousand
scudi in 1708 for the support of three students from that country in
the Propaganda College. The Catholics there do not now number more
than ninety thousand. There are two archbishoprics, Antivari united
with Scutari, and Durazzo, and three bishoprics, Alessio, Pulati, and
Sappa. These sees are usually filled by Franciscans, who, with a few
Propagandists (with one of whom, now bishop of Alessio, we have the
honor of being acquainted), are the only missionaries in the country.
We conclude our article with a bibliographical notice of the subject,
because, as Dr. Johnson used to say, a great part of knowledge
consists in knowing _where_ knowledge is to be found.
The original source of information upon which all subsequent writers,
whether with or without acknowledgment, have drawn is a work by Marino
Barlezio, a priest of Scutari, who, besides being a native of the
country about which he wrote, was an almost constant companion of
Scanderbeg and an eye-witness of most of the events which he relates.
He was a scholar and penned very excellent Latin, which greatly adds
to the charm of his narrative. We give the full title: _De Vita et
Moribus ac Rebus præcipuè adversus Turcas gestis Georgii Castrioti
clarissimi Epirotarum Principis, qui propter celeberrima facinora
Scanderbegus, hoc est Alexander Magnus, cognominatus fuit. Libri
xiii._ It is not certain where this curious book was first published.
Some say at Rome as early as 1506, but this is extremely doubtful;
others at Frankfort in 1537 (in folio). A German translation by
Pinicianus was published in 1561 in 4to, with woodcuts; and a French
one, the language of which is quaint and racy, by Jacques de Lavardin,
in 1597. Independent biographies have been written in Latin by an
anonymous author at Rome in 1537 or earlier, in folio; in Italian by
T. M. Monardo, Venice, 1591, and almost immediately translated into
Spanish and Portuguese; in French by Du Poncet (Paris, 1709, in 12mo),
a Jesuit, who took upon himself to refute the calumny of Machiavelli
and Helvetius, that Christian principles and practices can never
develop the qualities of a perfect soldier, a hero. Other French
biographies are those of Chevilly (Paris, 1732, 2 vols. 12mo), and
Camille Paganel (_ibid._ 1855, 1 vol. 8vo), which is the best we have
read. In English there is one by Clement C. Moore, an American (New
York, 1850), and another by Robert Bigsby, an Englishman (London,
1866); while we have also, from the graceful pen of Benjamin Disraeli,
_The Rise of Iskander_, a tale founded on Scanderbeg’s revolt against
the Turks (London, 1833). A _Summarium_ or epitome of his life is
preserved among the MSS. of the Royal Library at Turin; and the Grand
Ducal one at Weimar treasures among its rarities a MS. parchment
called _The Book of Scanderbeg_, composed of three hundred and
twenty-five leaves, each of which is beautifully illustrated with
figures in india-ink representing scenes from civil and military life
in the fifteenth century. It was a present to the Albanian hero from
Ferdinand of Aragon. Two Latin poems have been published about him,
one by a German named Kökert at Lubec, 1643, and the other by a French
Jesuit, Jean de Bussières, at Lyons, 1662, in eight books; finally,
one in Italian, called _La Scanderbeide_, by a lady named Margherita
Sarrocchi, without date or place of publication; but it sometimes
turns up in book-sales at Rome.
Scanderbeg’s large gilt cuirass, damaskeened with designs of Eastern
pattern, is found in the Belvedere collection at Vienna. It is
supposed to have been one of his trophies captured in Anatolia.
[78] It was a common boast of the more ambitious
sultans that they would some day feed their horses at
the tomb of St. Peter.
[79]
The good and brave beget the brave;
… Fierce eagles breed not harmless doves.
The family standard of the Castriots, which Scanderbeg
carried in his battles, was a black, double-headed eagle
on a red field.
THE CHURCH AND LIBERTY.
Men are governed more by their sympathies than by reason. Weak
arguments are strong enough when supported by prejudice which is able
to withstand even the most conclusive proofs. We do not pretend to say
that this is wholly wrong. Our feelings are in general sincerer than
our thoughts; spring more truly from our real selves; are less the
product of artificial culture and more of those common principles of
our nature which make the whole world akin. But since in rational
beings the feelings cannot be purely instinctive, it follows that they
are more or less modifiable by the action of the intellect, which in
turn is also subject to their influence. Prejudice, therefore, may be
either intellectual or moral, or the one and the other; the most
obstinate, however, is that which is enrooted in feeling and springs
from sympathies and antipathies; and this is usually the character of
religious prejudice. The tendency to make religion national, which is
a remarkable feature in the history of mankind, together with the fact
that states have always been founded and peoples welded into unity by
a common faith, has as a rule thrown upon the side of religion the
whole force of national prejudice, which, though it does not touch the
deep fountains of immortal life and of the infinite, revealed by
faith, is yet an immense power, more than any other aggressive and
defiant. As the Catholic Church is non-national, it is not surprising
that she should often be brought into conflict with the spirit of
nationalism.
Christ was himself opposed by this spirit; on the one side he was
attacked by the religious nationalism of the Jews, and on the other by
that of the Romans. These enemies surrounded the early church. There
was the internal struggle to free herself from the bonds of Judaism, a
purely national faith; and there was the open battle with the Roman
Empire for the liberty of the soul and her right to exist as a
Catholic and non-national religion. Heresies and schisms have
invariably been successful in proportion as they have been able to
rouse national prejudice against the universal church. To pass over
those of more ancient date, we may safely affirm that but for this
Luther’s quarrel with Tetzel would never have given birth to
Protestantism. The conflicts during the middle ages between popes and
emperors and kings, together with schisms and scandals, had accustomed
the public mind, especially in Germany and England, to look upon the
successor of St. Peter as a foreign potentate; nor was it easy, in the
state of things which then existed, to draw the line between his
spiritual and his temporal authority. He came more and more to be
considered an Italian sovereign who had usurped undue power, and thus
in Germany and England Italians grew to be both hated and despised;
and this more, probably, than kings and parliaments helped on the
cause of Protestantism.
The Catholic faith was made to appear, not as the religion of Christ,
but as popery, a foreign idolatrous superstition, which had by artful
means insinuated itself amongst the various nations of German blood;
and to throw off the yoke of Italian despotism was held to be both
political and religious disenthralment. The specific doctrines of
Luther and the other heresiarchs had merely an incidental influence.
In England, where the separation from the church was more complete
than elsewhere, there was the least doctrinal departure from Catholic
teaching; which is of itself proof how little any desire for a
so-called purer faith had to do with the movement. The appeal to the
Scriptures was popular because it was an appeal from the pope. That
the Reformation was not an intellectual revolt, at least primarily,
there is abundant evidence in the indisputable fact that the most
enlightened and learned people of that age—the Italians—remained firm
in their attachment to the old faith; and even in Germany, which was
comparatively rude and barbarous, the cultivators of the new classical
learning, which had been revived in Italy, were for the most part
repelled by the coarseness and ignorance of the preachers of
Protestantism, who in England found no favor with men like More and
Wolsey, scholars, both of them, and patrons of letters.
As Protestantism did not spring from intellectual convictions, but
from passion and prejudice—national antagonisms, which had been
intensified by ages of conflict and strife, and which became the
potent allies of the ambition and rapacity of kings and princes—it is
but natural that Protestants, continuing the traditions of their
fathers, should still be influenced in their opinions of the Catholic
Church more by their antipathies than by reason, and that these
antipathies should invariably run with the current of national
prejudice. Hence the objections to the church which really influence
men are not religious but social. A Protestant who accepts the Bible
as the word of God, and receives in the literal sense all that is
there narrated, could not with any show of reason make difficulty
about believing the teachings of the church; nor can one who trusts to
himself alone for his creed feel great confidence that those who are
supported by the almost unanimous consent of all Christians for
fifteen hundred years, and of the great majority even down to the
present day, are less certain of salvation than himself. But when he
comes to consider the social influence of the church, he finds it less
difficult to justify his dislike of Catholic institutions; for in this
direction he is upheld most strongly by traditional prejudice. That
the church fosters ignorance and immorality is to his mind axiomatic.
He still thinks that the darkness, the scandals, and crimes of the
middle ages, which he always exaggerates, are to be ascribed to her
and not to the barbarians. The labors of the learned have long since
shown the old Protestant theory, that the church sought to keep the
people in ignorance, to be not only groundless, but the reverse to be
true; and that not less false is the charge that she encouraged
immorality, however corrupt some who have held high ecclesiastical
positions may have been. But as we have quite recently discussed these
questions,[80] we turn to the subject of the relative influence of the
church and of Protestantism upon civil liberty. Discussions of this
kind, though not new, are nevertheless full of actual interest. The
subject of social liberty profoundly influences the practical
controversies of the age, and bids fair to become of still more vital
moment in the future. The adversaries of the Catholic Church never
feel so secure as when they attack her in the name of freedom. She is
supposed to be the fatal foe of all liberty, intellectual, religious,
and social.
For the present we shall put aside the controversies concerning
liberty of thought and discussion, and confine ourselves to the
examination of the relation of the church to social freedom. And it
will be necessary, in order to institute a comparison between her
action and that of Protestantism, to go back to the first ages to
study her early efforts in behalf of human rights.
Those great battles for human liberty were fought, not by
Christianity, but by the Christian Church. The religion of Christ was
from the beginning corporate and organized; and it was through its
organization that it exerted its influence upon individuals and upon
society. To understand, therefore, the true relation of the church to
liberty, we must study her history in the past as well as in the
present. In fact, it is only in the light of the past that the present
can be understood. The clear perception of her spirit and action
during the centuries which preceded the advent of Protestantism will
enable us to see how far and in what respect the politico-religious
revolution of the sixteenth century was favorable to social freedom.
Human society, like the heavenly bodies, is guided by two forces, the
natural tendencies of which are antagonistic, but whose combined
action, when properly harmonized, produces order. Authority and
Liberty are the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the social
world; but, unlike those which govern the motions of the planets, they
are indefinitely modifiable by free human agency. To regulate these
two powers is the eternal political problem, which is never solved
because the factors of the equation are ever varying and consequently
never known. The exaggeration of the principle of authority is
tyranny; of that of liberty, anarchy; and the excess of the one is
followed by a reaction of the other, so that, whichever preponderates,
the resulting evils are substantially the same. Tyranny is anarchical,
and anarchy is tyrannical; and both are equally destructive of
authority and liberty.
Though authority and liberty, as applied to human society, are
relative terms, they presuppose the absolute, and therefore have as
their only rational basis the existence of a personal God; and hence
the social order is, in its very constitutive elements, religious. In
view of this fact it is not surprising that the state, which is the
symbol of secular society, should be drawn to usurp the functions of
the church, the symbol of the spiritual order. As a result of this
tendency, pre-christian history shows us a universal subordination of
religion to the temporal government, or, what is practically the same,
the identification of the two powers; since, where both are united,
that which regards man’s present, visible, and urgent wants will
always preponderate.
The direct consequence of this was the destruction of liberty;
indirectly it also undermined authority. The state was absolute, and
under the most favorable circumstances, as in the Græco-Roman
civilization, recognized the rights of the citizen, but not those of
man; and even the citizen had rights only in so far as the state saw
fit to grant them. The logical development of the absorption of all
power by the state may be seen in imperial Rome, in which the ruler
was at once emperor, supreme pontiff, and God.
When the Christian, though willing to obey Cæsar in temporal matters,
reserved to himself a whole world upon which he would permit no human
authority to trespass, he asserted, together with the supremacy of his
spiritual nature, the principle to which modern nations owe their
liberties. It would indeed be difficult to exaggerate the influence of
this assertion of the sovereign rights of the individual conscience.
It contains the principles of all rights and the essential elements of
progress and civilization; it is the necessary preamble to every
declaration of human liberties; the logical justification of all
resistance to tyranny, and of every reaction against brute force and
consecrated wrong. It is the impregnable stronghold of freedom,
without which the sentiment of personal independence which the
barbarians brought with them into European life would have been
powerless to found free institutions. That sentiment was as strong in
the North American Indians; in the Tartar and Turkish hordes which
swept down from the table-lands of Asia upon fairer and more fertile
regions; and yet with them it only subserved the cause of despotism.
It is, indeed, inherent in human nature. To be self-conscious is to
wish to be free and to take delight in the possession of liberty. This
feeling finds a sanctuary in the heart of every boy who roams the
forest, or plunges through the stream, or beholds the eagle cleave the
blue heavens. It was as active in the breasts of the early Greeks and
Romans as in the barbarians who rushed headlong upon a falling empire.
The love of liberty was, in fact, with them a sublime passion, and yet
they were unable to found free institutions because the state,
absorbing the whole man, made itself absolute.
They lacked, moreover, that of which the barbarians were also
deprived—the knowledge of the worth and dignity of human nature. Man,
as man, was not honored; to have any rights did not come of our common
nature, but of the accident of citizenship. Slavery was consecrated as
being not only just but necessary; and the slave was outside the pale
of the law. Woman was degraded and infant life was not held sacred. In
nothing is the contrast between modern and ancient civilizations more
striking than in their manner of regarding human life. With us the
life of the unborn child is under the protection of conscience, of
public opinion, and of the law equally with that of the highest and
noblest. Its value to the state, to society, to the world, is not
considered; we think of it only as a creature of God, endowed by him
with rights which men may not violate. But this doctrine is unknown to
paganism. In Rome the father was free either to bring up his child or
to murder it; even the laws of Romulus grant him this privilege, with
the nominal restriction of obtaining the consent of the nearest of
kin; but under the empire his right to kill his newly-born infant was
fully recognized. The abandonment of children by their parents was a
universal custom, and one of which the Emperor Augustus approved in
the case of the infant of his niece Julia. If child-murder was not a
crime, abortion, of course, was no offence at all, and was universally
practised, especially among the rich. The contempt in which human life
was held is seen also in the public games—in which hundreds of men
were made to butcher one another merely for the amusement of the
spectators—as well as in the power of life and death of the master
over his slave.
It has been maintained quite recently that those who gave their
approval and lent the countenance of their presence to these
inhumanities were not therefore cruel; that, on the contrary, many of
them were kind-hearted and benevolent; but this, if we grant it, makes
our argument all the stronger, since it proves that the system was
more vicious than the men. A social state which does not respect life
is incompatible with liberty. It would be vain to seek for the origin
of our free institutions in any supposed peculiarities of our
barbarous ancestors. Nothing short of a radical revolution of thought
as to what man is could have made civil liberty possible. It was
necessary to re-endow the individual with absolute and inviolable
rights in the presence of the state. Man had to be taught that he is
more than the state; that to be man is godlike, to be a citizen is
human; but this he could not learn so long as he remained helplessly
under the absolute power of the state; nor could he, with the
conviction that the state is the highest and that he exists for it,
make any effort to break the bonds of his servitude. Before this could
be possible he had to be received into a society distinct from, and
independent of, the state; he had to be made fully conscious that he
is a child of God, in whose sight slaves have equal rights with kings.
It was necessary to bring out man’s personal destiny in strong
contrast to the pagan view, which took in only his social mission, and
this narrowly and imperfectly.
This is what the Christian religion did: it created a personal
self-consciousness which made heroes of the commonest natures. The
Roman died for his country; the Christian died for God and for his own
soul’s sake. He was not led to brave death by the majesty of the city,
of the empire, or by the memory of the victories which had borne his
country’s arms in triumph through the world, but by his own individual
faith and duty as a man with a personal and immortal destiny. When the
Christian appealed from emperors and senates and armies, from the
power and force of the whole world, to God, it was the single human
soul asserting itself as something above and beyond this visible
universe. Never before had the eternal and the infinite come so near
to man; never before had he so felt his own immortal strength. He was
lifted up into the heaven of heavens, stood face to face with the
everlasting verities of God, became a dweller in the world that is,
and the garments of space and time fell from his new-born soul. He was
free; strong in the liberty with which Christ had clothed him, he
defied all tyrannies. “As we have not placed our hope,” said Justin to
the Emperor Antoninus, “on things which are seen, we fear not those
who take away our lives; death being, moreover, unavoidable.” The
pagan Roman knew, indeed, how to die; but his death, though full of
grandeur and dignity, was sombre and hopeless; he died as the victim
of fate. To the Christian death came as the messenger of life; he died
as one who is certain of eternity, as one whose soul is free and
belongs to himself and God. This sense of a personal destiny which is
eternal, of infinite responsibility, gave to the individual a strength
and independence of character for which we will seek in vain among the
religions of paganism. It is a feeling wholly distinct from the
barbarian’s dislike of restraint. The love of wild and adventurous
life neither fits men for the enjoyment of liberty nor predisposes
them to grant it to others.
The more we study the history of Christian nations, the more profound
is our conviction that without their religion they could never have
won their liberties, which even now without this divine support could
not be maintained. It is to our religion that we are indebted for the
creation of popular free speech. Before Christ gave the divine
commission to the apostles, philosophers had discoursed to their
chosen disciples, and orators had declaimed to citizens, on the
interests of the state; but no one had spoken to the people as moral
beings with duties and responsibilities which lift them into the world
of the infinite and eternal. There were priesthoods, but they were
mute before the people, intent upon hiding from them all knowledge of
their mysteries. Religious eloquence did not exist; it first received
a voice on the shores of the Lake of Genesareth and on the hills of
Judea, in the preaching of Jesus, who remains for ever its highest
exponent, speaking as one who had authority with godlike liberty on
whatever most nearly touches the dearest interests of men; speaking
chiefly to the people, bringing back to their minds the long-forgotten
truths which prove them the royal race of God. The preaching of God’s
word with the liberty of Heaven, which no earthly authority might
lessen, became the great school of the human race; it was the first
popular teaching, and like an electric thrill it ran through the
earth. It belongs exclusively to the religion of Christ. Mahomet, who
sought to borrow it, was able to catch only its feeble echo. This free
Christian public speech is unlike all other oratory; it possesses an
incommunicable characteristic, through which it has exercised the most
beneficent influence upon the destinies of mankind. It is essentially
spiritual, lifts the soul above the flesh, and creates new ideals of
life; inspiring contempt for whatever is low and passing, it begets
enthusiasm for the divine and eternal. It is a voice whose soul-thrill
is love, the boundless love of God and of men, who are the children of
this love, and therefore brothers. This voice cannot be bought, it
cannot be silenced. _Currit verbum_, said St. Paul, and again from his
prison-cell: “But the word of God is not fettered.” On innumerable
lips it is born ever anew; and always and everywhere it is a protest
against the brutality of power, an appeal in the name of God, our
Father in heaven, in behalf of the poor, the oppressed, the
disinherited of humanity. Men may still be tyrants, may still crush
the weak and sacrifice truth and justice to their lustful appetites;
but the voice of God, threatening, commanding, rebuking, shall be
silent nevermore.
Festus will tremble before Paul; at the bidding of Ambrose Theodosius
will repent; and before Hildebrand the brutal Henry will bow his head.
At the sound of this voice all Europe shall rouse itself, shall rush,
impelled by some divine instinct, into the heart of Asia, to strike
the mighty power which threatened to blight the budding hope of the
world. If we would understand the relations of the church to liberty,
we must consider the influence of this free speech, which, without
asking the permission of king or people, impelled by a divine
necessity, made itself heard of the whole earth. Over the door of his
Academy Plato had inscribed: “None but geometers enter here”; over the
portals of the church was written the word of Christ: “Come to me, all
ye who labor and are heavy laden.” “All you,” exclaimed St. Augustine,
“who labor, who dig the earth, who fish in the sea, who carry burdens,
or slowly and painfully construct the barks in which your brothers
will dare the waves—all enter here, and I will explain to you not only
the γνῶθι σεαυτόν of Socrates, but the most hidden of mysteries—the
Trinity.” This new eloquence was as large as the human race; it was
for all, and first of all for the poor and the oppressed. It was not
artistic, in the technical meaning; it did not captivate the senses;
it was not polished. There was no showy marshalling of words and
phrases, no sweet and varied modulation of voice, no graceful and
commanding gesture. Around the altar were gathered the slave, the
beggar, the halt, and the blind—the oppressed and suffering race of
men. If with them were found the rich and high-born, they were there
as brothers—their wealth and noble birth entered not into the church
of Christ. Here there was neither freeman nor slave—all were one. Thus
in every Christian assembly was typed the humanity which was to be
when all men would be brothers and free. To this new race the apostle
of Christ spoke: “My brothers,” he said, or “My children”; and though
all history and all society shrieked out against him, his hearers felt
and knew that his words were God’s truth. The heart is not deceived in
love. “I seek not yours,” he said, “but you; for God is my witness how
I long after you all in the heart of Jesus Christ.… I could wish that
myself were accursed, if only my brethren be saved.” And then, with
the liberty which love alone can inspire, he threatened, rebuked,
implored, laid bare the hidden wounds of the soul, nor feared to
become an enemy for speaking the truth. To the great and rich he spoke
in the plainest and strongest manner, reminding them of their duties,
denouncing their indifference, their cruelty, their injustice; and
then, in words soft as oil, he breathed hope and courage into the
hearts of those who suffer, showing them beyond this short and
delusive life the certain reward of their struggles and sorrows. He
taught them that the soul is the highest, that purity is the best,
that only the clean of heart see God; that man’s chief worth lies in
that which is common to all, derived from God and for him created.
Human life was perishing, wastefully poured through the senses on
every carnal thing. No love of beauty or truth or justice was left.
The mind was darkened, the heart was paralyzed. The great, strong
human passions that bore the people of Rome in triumph through the
earth were dead; everywhere, in religion, in art, in manners, was the
deadly blight of materialism; a kind of delirium hurried all men into
animal indulgences fatal alike to soul and body. To a race thus glued
to the earth by carnal appetites came the voice of the apostle,
preaching Christ and him crucified; telling of the divine love that
had bowed the heavens and brought down to men God’s own Son to suffer,
to labor, to die for them. He was poor, he was meek and humble, he
fasted, he prayed; he comforted the sorrowful, gave hope to the
despairing; he offered up his life for men. Such as he was those who
believe in him must be. To serve the lusts of the flesh, to be
heartless, to be cruel, to be unjust, is to have no part with him. The
greed of gold and of pleasure had reduced the masses of men to slavery
and beggary; those who would follow God’s Son in the perfect way were
to sell what they had, to give to the poor. The whole race of men was
fallen, sunk in sin; the disciples of Christ were bidden to separate
themselves from a world which had denied God, that, having received
faith, hope, and love through union with him, they might bring to the
dying peoples a new life.
The Christian religion turned the mind’s eye from the contemplation of
beauty of form to the inner life of the soul; from thoughts of power
and success to principles of right and justice. All the forces of
society had been brought together to develop in its highest potency
the passion of patriotism, which, bending to its purpose all the
powers of individual life, had created mighty states, embellished them
with art, crowned them with victory, made them eternal in literature
that cannot die; but on the altar of all this glory man had been
sacrificed. Patriotism had failed, hopelessly failed, to satisfy the
unutterable longings of an immortal race. It was based upon false
principles and perverted instincts. Man’s end is not more fulfilled in
citizenship in a great and prosperous state than in the possession of
vast wealth. The religion of patriotism was a low and material creed
without eternal verities upon which to rest. Power was its divinity,
and it was therefore without mercy; success was its justification, and
it consequently trampled upon right. It is not surprising that such
principles should have created states whose chief business was to prey
upon the human race, and which, when conquest was no longer possible,
were brought to ruin by the viciousness of their essential
constitutions. In fact, patriotism, as understood by the pre-christian
states, was a denial of the principles out of which the common law of
Christendom has grown. It placed the interests of the nation above
those of the race, and thereby justified all inhumanity if only it
tended to the particular good of the state.
In contradiction of this unjust and narrow spirit, the Christian
preacher declared that man’s first duty is to God, as his first aim
should be to seek God’s kingdom by purifying and developing his own
moral nature. He declared that man is more than the state, as God is
more than the world; inspiring in another form those views of the
paramount worth of the individual soul without which there could be no
successful reaction against the slavery and degradation of paganism.
“The world,” said Tertullian, “is the common country and republic of
all men.”
These principles gradually worked their way, through “the foolishness
of preaching,” into the minds and hearts of the masses and became the
leaven of a new society. Let us examine their action more specially.
In the church the brotherhood of the race was from the earliest day
not only taught but recognized as a fact. “There is neither Jew nor
Greek,” said St. Paul, “neither bond nor free, neither male nor
female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This doctrine is stated
in various places in the New Testament with such emphasis as to leave
no doubt of its true meaning. It is equally certain, however, that the
apostles did not proclaim the emancipation of the slaves. “Let those
who are servants under the yoke,” said the same apostle who declared
that in Christ there was neither bond nor free, “count their masters
worthy of all honor, lest the name of the Lord and his doctrines be
blasphemed.”
It was not the spirit of the Christian faith to encourage visionary
schemes or to awaken wild dreams of liberty; but rather to subdue and
chasten the heart, to make men content to bear worthily the ills of
life by giving to suffering a meaning and a blessing.
The misery of the pagan slave was extreme, but it was also hopeless.
He believed himself the victim of relentless fate, from whose power
death was the only deliverance, and he therefore rushed wildly into
all excess, giving little thought to whether he should live to see the
morrow. Suffering for him was without meaning—a remediless evil, a
blind punishment inflicted by remorseless destiny. For this reason
also his wretchedness excited no pity. Even as late as the time of St.
Ambrose the pagans were accustomed to say: “We care not to give to
people whom the gods must have cursed, since they have left them in
sorrow and want.”
But with the preaching of Christ, and him crucified, came the divine
doctrine of expiatory suffering—of suffering that purifies,
regenerates, ennobles, begets the unselfish temper and the heroic
mood. When the Christian suffered he was but filling up the measure of
the sufferings of Christ. The slave, laboring for his master, was not
seeking to please men; he was “the servant of Christ, doing the will
of God from the heart”; “knowing that whatsoever good any man shall
do, the same shall he receive from the Lord, whether he be bond or
free.” Masters in turn were taught to treat their slaves kindly and
gently, even as brothers; “knowing that the Lord both of them and of
you is in heaven, and with him there is no respect of persons.”
Thus, without attempting to destroy slavery by schemes that must have
been premature, the Christian religion changed its nature by diffusing
correct notions concerning the mutual rights and duties implied in the
relations of master and slave. The slave as a brother in Christ is
separated by a whole world from the slave who is a tool or chattel.
Who can read St. Paul’s Epistle to Philemon, written in behalf of the
fugitive slave Onesimus, without perceiving the radical revolution
which Christianity was destined to make in regard to slavery? “I
beseech thee for my son, Onesimus: … receive him as my own heart; no
longer as a slave, but as a most dear brother. If he hath wronged thee
in anything, or is in thy debt, put it to my account.”
This is after all but the application of the teaching of Christ: I was
hungry, I was thirsty, I was sick, I was a captive, and ye fed me, ye
gave me to drink, ye visited me; for inasmuch as ye have done this for
the least of my brethren, ye have done it for me. In every suffering
and wronged human being there is the Christ to be honored, to be
loved, to be served. Whosoever refuses to take part in this ministry
places himself outside the kingdom of God.
Slavery, from the Christian point of view, is but one of the thousand
ills entailed upon the human race by the transgression of Adam; it is
enrooted, not in nature, but in sin; and as Christ died to destroy
sin, his religion must tend to diminish and gradually abolish its
moral results. The freedom of all men in Christ which the great
apostle so boldly proclaims must in time find its counterpart in the
equality of all men before the law. Indeed, the admission of the slave
into the Christian brotherhood logically implied the abolition of
slavery. It so raised the individual by giving him the knowledge of
his true dignity, and so softened the master’s treatment, that the
moral elevation of the whole class was the inevitable result. In this
way the church made the slave worthy to be free, and from this to
liberty there is but a step. “We teach the slaves,” said Origen, “how
they may beget in themselves a noble spirit, and so become free”; and
it need not surprise us, therefore, when Lactantius testifies that
among Christians already in his day the difference between master and
slave was but formal; in spirit both were brothers and fellow-servants
of Christ. Nor is it remarkable that as evidence of this moral
regeneration we should find the slaves among the early martyrs. There
is an example of the sentiments which Christians entertained for their
slaves in the self-reproaches of St. Paulinus in his letter to
Sulpicius Severus: “He has served me,” he wrote; “he has been my
slave. Woe to me, who have suffered that he who has never been a slave
to sin should serve a sinner. Every day he washed my feet, and, had I
permitted it, would have cleansed my sandals; eager to render every
service to the body, that he might gain dominion over the soul. It is
Jesus Christ himself whom I venerate in this youth; for every faithful
soul comes from God, and every one who is humble of heart proceeds
from the very heart of Christ.” Men who felt so lovingly and so deeply
for their fellows could not long consent to hold them in bondage. “We
have known,” wrote Pope Clement to the Corinthians, “many of the
faithful to become bondsmen that they might ransom their brethren.”
Pagan masters, such as Hermes and Chromatius, on the occasion of their
baptism gave freedom to their slaves; and holy women, like St.
Melania, induced their husbands to follow this example. “Every day,”
wrote Salvian in the fifth century, “slaves receive the right of
citizenship and are permitted to carry with them whatever they have
saved in the house of their master.” And we know, upon the authority
of St. Gregory of Nyssa, that these manumissions frequently took place
at Easter and other solemn festivals of the church. After the
conversion of Constantine the influence of the church induced the
civil authority to relax the severity of its legal enactments
concerning slaves. Their manumission, especially from religious
motives, was facilitated and the cruelty of masters was restrained.
The successors of Constantine, particularly Justinian, continued to
act in the same generous spirit, until finally, in the sixth century,
all the harsher pagan laws were abolished, and men who had been slaves
were even admitted to holy orders. This wonderful change in the policy
of the Roman state had been wrought by the pressure of Christian
influences. The voices of the great preachers, St. Chrysostom, St.
Ambrose, St. Augustine, never wearied in pleading the cause of the
slave; the councils of the church placed them under the protection of
the ecclesiastical law; the bishops and priests defended them against
the cruelty of their masters; and when once they were free, the church
clothed their liberty with an inviolable sanctity. In other ways, too,
religious influences were at work to destroy slavery. The universal
custom of the ancient pagan nations, which deprived captives of war of
their freedom, was an unfailing source of supply to the slave markets.
Though the church was unable at once to erase from the battle-flags of
the ancient world the _Væ victis_, she found means to alleviate the
lot of the captive.
We have quoted the words of St. Clement to show that in his day
already Christians not unfrequently took upon themselves voluntary
servitude in order to redeem their brethren. The property of the
church was considered best employed when used for the redemption of
captives. For this purpose the bishops were permitted to sell even the
sacred vessels of the altar. “Since our Redeemer, the Creator of all
things,” wrote Pope St. Gregory, “has vouchsafed in his goodness to
become man, in order to restore to us our first liberty by breaking,
through his divine grace, the bonds of servitude by which we were held
captive, it is a holy deed to give to men, by enfranchisement, their
native freedom; for in the beginning nature made them all free, and
they have been subjected to the yoke of slavery only by the law of
nations.”
A council held at Rome under this great pope (A.D. 595) decreed that
slaves who wished to enter the monastic life should receive their
liberty; and so great was the number of those who availed themselves
of this privilege that the masters on all sides loudly complained of
it as an intolerable abuse. The church of the middle ages went still
further in the warfare for human liberty. Slavery existed among the
Germanic races which overran the Roman Empire and took possession of
its territory; and with them, too, the slave was the property of the
master, who had the right to exchange, to sell, or even to put him to
death.
The struggle which had been but begun amidst the corruptions of
ancient Rome with an effete and dying race was renewed with the wild
and rugged children of the forest. In this great battle for the rights
of man the monks came forward as the leaders. In many convents it was
forbidden to have slaves, and when the wealthy took the monastic habit
they were required to emancipate their slaves.
A council held in England in 816 ordained that at the death of a
bishop all his English slaves should be given their freedom; and at
the Council of Armagh, in 1172, all English slaves in Ireland were
emancipated. The Council of Coblentz, held in 922, declares that he
who sells a Christian into slavery is guilty of murder.
Numerous decrees of ecclesiastical synods condemned the slave-trade,
and with such efficacy that by the end of the tenth century slaves
were no longer sold in the kingdom of the Franks.
In the British Islands this abuse was not eradicated till towards the
close of the twelfth century. In Bohemia it was abolished in the
tenth, and in Sweden in the thirteenth century. The church continued
to buy slaves in order to give them their liberty. The right of asylum
was given to those who fled from the cruelty of their masters. The
historical records of manumission in the middle ages, as preserved in
testamentary acts, almost universally assign religious motives for the
emancipation of slaves.
The efforts of the church in the first centuries of Christianity, and
later too, in behalf of the weak and the oppressed—woman, the child,
and the slave—are intimately connected with the progress of civil
liberty. It is impossible for us, who are the children of two thousand
years of Christian influences, to realize the full significance of her
enthusiastic devotion to the people, poor, suffering, and degraded, in
an age in which no other voice than hers pleaded for them. In order to
do this we should be able to place ourselves in the midst of the old
pagan world, so as to contemplate the abject condition to which the
masses of men had been reduced—a state so pitiable that possibly
nothing short of the appearance of God himself, in poverty and sorrow,
could have inspired the courage even to hope for better things.
The history of heathenism, in the past as in the present, is marked by
contempt for man, by the degradation of the multitude. In this respect
the civilization of Greece and Rome was not different from that of
India and China in our own day. If in Christian nations, after long
struggles and terrible conflicts, a better state of social existence
has been brought about, we owe it to Christ working in and through his
church. To render liberty possible an intellectual and moral
revolution had to take place. New ideas as to what man is in himself
simply, new sentiments as to what is due him by virtue of his very
nature, new doctrines as to what all men owe to all men, had to be
preached and accepted before there could be any question of civil
reform in the direction of larger and more universal liberty.
Institutions, laws, constitutions are mechanical, the surfaces of
things, social garments which, unless they cover and protect some
inner life and divine truth, are merely useless forms. Liberty,
individual and social, is inseparable from self-control, which is born
of self-denial. Good men cannot be made by good laws any more than by
good clothes. Man, of course, is influenced, in part educated, by what
he wears as by what he eats; but it does not follow that the wisest
course would be to hand over the children, body and soul, to cooks and
tailors. Not less unreasonable is it to surrender them to politicians
to be drilled and fashioned by the mechanical appliances of
government.
Liberty is of the soul; it is from this sanctuary that it passes into
the laws and customs of society. Men who are slaves in heart cannot be
made free by legislative enactments. The church of Christ taught men
how to be worthy to be free by showing them liberty’s great
law—self-denial; by restoring to the soul the sovereignty of which it
had been deprived since the gates of Paradise were barred; by clothing
human nature with inviolable sacredness and inalienable rights; by
proclaiming that man, for being simply man, is worthy of all love and
respect.
When Christ came, the slave, without honor and without hope, was
everywhere. The master was like his slave. Surrounded by human herds,
to whom vice in its most degrading forms had become a necessity, he
breathed in an atmosphere of corruption against whose deadly poison he
was powerless to contend. His life was a fever alternating between
lust and blood. The debauched are always cruel, and as men sank deeper
into the slough of sensual indulgence the cry for carnage grew
fiercer. Nothing but the hacking and mangling of human bodies could
rouse the senses, deadened by the gratification of brutish passions.
Here and there a stray voice protested, but only in the sad tones of
despair. Hope had fled; the world was prostrate; in the mephitic air
of sensuous indulgence the soul was stifled; the poor were starving
and the rich were glutted; a thousand slaves could hardly feed the
stomach of Dives; and Jesus Christ took Lazarus in his arms, and in a
voice from heaven called upon all who believed in God and in man to
follow him in the service of outraged humanity; and his voice was
re-echoed through the earth and through the ages. At its sound the
despairing took heart, the dead lived, the poor heard the new gospel
of glad tidings, and the slave, crushed and ignored by human society,
found citizenship and liberty in the kingdom of God.
[80] “A Sequel of the Gladstone Controversy.” THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, February, March, and April.
EASTER IN ST. PETER’S, ROME, 1875.
The glorious sun of Easter morning, 1875, arose in splendor, gilding
the domes and turrets of the Eternal City with burnished gold,
picturing to the mind the gates of Paradise this day opened by the Sun
of Righteousness. The Roman people were early astir, though no cannon
sounded from Mount St. Angelo to usher in the great festival, nor
papal banner flung its folds to the breeze from that old citadel this
bright spring day to speak to Christians of him whom our Lord
appointed to watch over his sheep.
After early Masses at the church of Sant Andrea delle Fratte, so much
beloved and sought after by English and American Catholics in Rome as
the place where Ratisbon the Jew received the great gift of faith, we
took our way to the Basilica of St. Peter. Multitudes filled the
streets, men and women in holiday attire, but not with the old-time
life and exhilaration of a great _festa_. Loss does not sit lightly on
the Roman; and everywhere there seemed to be something wanting to make
this day what it should have been; no grand processions, no public
solemn High Mass celebrated with august ceremonies by his Holiness, no
precious benedictions from his paternal hand. A veil hung over the
face of our Easter joys; for the Bride of Christ sat in sackcloth.
When we entered on the pavement of St. Peter’s, far-off sounds of
joyous music came from the canon’s chapel, scarcely reaching the
hallowed arches without; but a wail of sadness, a chord of grief, ran
through it all, for wicked men had made it impossible that our Holy
Father should present himself at the altar where he alone officiates,
lest his presence should excite tumult and bloodshed among his dear
children. High Mass was being celebrated in the canon’s chapel, which
contains one of the forty or more altars of St. Peter’s, and is shut
off from the aisle by a glass partition. Crowds had pressed in among
the dignitaries of the church, and far out into the nave hundreds were
uniting themselves to the Holy Sacrifice there offered.
There is perhaps no place on earth where a person can be so entirely
alone among a multitude as at St. Peter’s. Each one seems bent upon
the particular purpose that brought him there. The church on this day
contained twelve thousand people at least (we heard the number rated
much higher), but no noise was heard save the constant footfall on the
marble pavement and the faint echo of the voices from the choir, while
of room there was no lack. Low Masses were being celebrated at many of
the altars, around which gathered groups of attentive worshippers; and
when the tinkling of the small bell hung at the door of the sacristy
gave notice of another Mass, from every quarter persons were seen
moving rapidly forward following the priest to the altar where he was
to celebrate.
Many there were in that privileged place on that holy day who had come
from motives of curiosity, to see what it was all like—gazers who
looked upon Catholics with cool contempt as but a step removed from
the heathen to whom they send missionaries; the industrious
sight-seeker, the tourist, whom no solemn function can hold more than
a few minutes, coming even on Easter day with their red-covered
‘Bädeker,’ and sometimes with their opera-glasses levelled at the
altar where the priest was saying Mass, and walking with perfect
nonchalance over and among the people kneeling in devotion. They spoke
to each other in undertones (intelligible to one of their own tongue),
and with visible sneers, of the subjection and superstition of “these
Romanists.” A few of them were Americans, while more were English;
but, it is needless to say, none of them persons of good breeding.
Long lines of students from the various colleges in Rome passed and
repassed, each in their distinctive color, pausing a moment on bended
knee to speak to our dear Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, then going
onward toward the hundred lamps that burn continually before the tomb
of the Prince of the Apostles, and passing quietly out again to visit
some other temple. There were schools of boys and schools of girls in
picturesque costumes, charity children and children of princes, all
kneeling together before their common Lord, all seeking their share in
his Easter benedictions. Streams of people flowed in from the
Campagna, often rough, ragged, unkempt—the women in their harlequin
holiday clothes, the men in goat-skin breeches and brilliant vests.
These, like the others, had come _home_; for St. Peter’s is a home for
all, and the poorest beggar feels that he has a right within those
consecrated walls. Soldiers and officers in the varied uniform of the
Italian army walked about listlessly, sometimes haughtily, only a few
bending their knee as they recognized the divine Presence. We pitied
them greatly; to be an earnest Catholic in Victor Emanuel’s army must
be a great trial to one’s faith.
The numerous confessionals, for many different languages, were the
resort of wayfarers that day, while the confessors sat quietly at
their posts hour after hour listening to the tale of sin and
repentance. Almost every Catholic paused to touch and kiss the foot of
the bronze statue of St. Peter, worn by centuries of devout kisses.
The statue had this day a new attraction; for over it was hung a
gorgeous drapery of scarlet and gold. We found that these rich
hangings, so graceful and beautiful, were in mosaic from the famous
workshop of the Vatican. A fine portrait of the Holy Father crowned
the whole, wrought from the same material, and a very satisfactory
likeness.
This calls to mind an incident which took place in the Vatican
Basilica a short time before the Easter day of which we are writing.
We had gone to St. Peter’s for Lenten rest and refreshment, and,
having visited the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, were directing our
steps to the altar of our Blessed Mother, when a sacristan politely
requested us to leave the church. We were inclined to rebel for a
moment, till we observed the whole assembly, priests as well as
people, moving towards the entrance; we followed, of course, and the
doors were closed. So surprising a movement in the middle of the day
was the cause of much questioning, and it was discovered that his
Holiness wished to see the decorations put over the statue of St.
Peter by his orders. He could not appear before the congregation, lest
the zeal of his Catholic children might get the better of their
prudence, and cries of _Viva il Papa!_ might bring upon innocent
friends the indignation of the Italian government, as they had done on
a former occasion.
This day we were to see no illuminations of the grand façade and the
broad portico; no brilliantly-lighted cupola, visible to the furthest
corner of Rome; none of the imposing ceremonies that have been so much
sought after and admired by Protestants. These latter go away from the
Easter celebrations dissatisfied, sometimes annoyed and angry, that
they should be deprived of the fine sights “just for a whim of the
Pope.” We heard them utter these words as we passed down the massive
steps leading to the piazza. They seemed to forget that holy church
puts not forth her beauties solely for the delectation of Protestants
who come to Rome at Christmas and Easter “to see sights.” They might
know that when her Head is bowed with sorrow, all true children of the
church carry the same cross, the whole body suffering with the head.
There was joy tempered with much sadness in our hearts as we went from
the noble basilica and wandered away to the Coliseum, fit emblem of
the church in the Rome of to-day. Ruthless hands—hands of those who
would make Rome like any modern city—have shorn this sacred spot of
half its beauties; hard hearts have stripped it of its hallowed
stations and forbidden the people to pray where the martyrs shed their
blood.
THE ETERNAL YEARS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”
IV
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOD’S GOVERNMENT—LONGANIMITY
As a lavish and yet unwasteful abundance was the first condition and
eminent characteristic of the creation, so is longanimity, or
patience, the special quality which marks the dealings of God with his
creatures, in the gradual and long-enduring developments of his
government. It is the quality to which we are most indebted, and yet
which, as regards the history of mankind, we value and understand the
least. Possibly the fact of our own brevity of life, as compared with
the multitude of thoughts, efforts, and emotions which the immortality
of our being crowds across the narrow limit of time, leaving an
impression of breathlessness and haste, may put it almost out of our
power—save as all things are possible by the grace of God—to raise
ourselves to any approximate appreciation of God’s long-enduring
patience. And this is increased in the minds of those who are zealous
for God’s glory. They chafe at the outrages committed against his law;
they sicken before the long, dreary aspect of man’s incredulity and
hardness of heart; and the rise of a new heresy, the advent of an
antipope, or the horrors of a French Revolution lead them hastily to
conclude, and impatiently to wish, that the last day may be at hand.
Experience is a slow process. At fifty a man only begins to learn the
great value of life and to look back with marvel at the lavish waste
of his earlier years. But if to the individual the convictions
resulting from experience are of slow and laborious growth, they are
still more so to the multitude. Consequently, though more than
eighteen hundred years have come and gone since St. John wrote to his
disciples, “Little children, it is the last hour,” nevertheless the
pious of all shades of opinion in all ages have not been afraid to
utter random guesses that the end of the world cannot be far off
because of the wickedness of men. It is indeed true, as the Holy Ghost
spoke by St. John, that it is the “last hour.” But what does that
“last hour” mean? Not surely a literal last hour or last day, but a
last epoch. The epoch in the history of the cosmos before the coming
of the Redeemer—that is, before the hypostatic union in a visible,
tangible, and real human body of the second Person of the Triune
Godhead—was the first hour, or the first epoch. The period since the
Incarnation is the last hour, or the last epoch; because nothing
mightier or greater can take place than the fact of God taking flesh
in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. It is the consummation; it is the
one great end of all creation. This last epoch will have its eras,
evolving themselves within the bosom of the Catholic Church, just as
the first epoch had its eras in the diverse revelations which God made
of himself to man; and which were, if we may use the term without
seeming to derogate from their unspeakable importance and their divine
origin, of a more desultory nature than those which are, and shall be,
accorded to God’s spouse, the infallible church. What is this but to
say again what we are endeavoring to express in every page, namely,
that “He who sitteth on the white horse went forth conquering, that he
_might conquer_”;[81] and that God’s work ever has been, is now, and
ever will be a progressive work. “Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O
Thou most mighty. With thy comeliness and thy beauty set out,
_proceed_ prosperously and reign.”[82] When the whole of Scripture is
teeming with promises of future more glorious eras of which we now
only see the germ, developed here and there in some favored soul, in
some special corner of God’s vast vineyard, the church (for the saints
have always been men of the future, in advance of their own time), is
it not a marvel to hear desponding men talking as though there were
nothing better to be hoped for than the end of the world, coming, as
they seem to expect it, like a terrific frost which shall nip in the
bud all the, as yet, unfulfilled promises, and drown the wicked in a
deluge of flame! And this we expect and almost desire, hoping we
ourselves may be saved, but without a second thought for God’s
beautiful earth, which he has blessed a thousand fold by his own
divine footprints on its surface; and where he now makes his
tabernacle in ten thousand churches, waiting, nay watching, with that
ineffable patience of his, whose cycles of longanimity we are
incapable of appreciating!
But it is cruel to speak harshly of a few words of discouragement
falling from the lips of those who are weary with vigils waiting for
new daylight. Only let us learn that the Sun of Righteousness to our
perceptions, as it were, sets and rises again. We are like children
who think when the glorious golden disc has sunk beneath the horizon
that it is utterly gone and is perhaps extinct, while on the contrary
the children of another hemisphere are playing in the warmth of its
beams; so we see the dark clouds of evil hiding from us the light of
grace, first in one spot, then in another, and we grow downcast and
impatient. We forget that “not one jot or one tittle shall pass of the
law till all be fulfilled”;[83] and that our Lord tells us he “did not
come to destroy either the law or the prophets, but to fulfil them.”
Bearing this in mind, let our readers take up the Psalms and the
Prophets, and study, with a deliberate faith in the inspired words,
the promises which concern the future of the world under the tent of
the church, the place of which tent shall be enlarged that she may
“pass on to the right hand and to the left; and inhabit the [now]
desolate cities.”[84]
It is a want of hope—and let us ever remember that hope is a virtue,
and not a mere quality or faculty of the mind—which leads us to read
the stupendously sublime promises of God to the whole earth in the
future of the church, as so much beautiful imagery of which a limited
application manifests itself, from time to time, in the partial
conversion of some thousands here and there over the vast face of the
semi-civilized world, while millions upon millions remain heathens,
Hindoos, Jews, and Mussulmans. We read these glorious utterances of
the Scriptures with the restrained admiration of one who, while
admiring a poem, makes allowances for the “fine frenzy” of the poet.
We take it _cum grano salis_, and forget that it is the trumpet voice
of absolute truth; and that whether or no it point to a millennium
upon earth—a question left open by the church, and so little discussed
as yet by her modern theologians that we will not dwell upon it—it
must mean all it says; and, after the fashion of God’s gifts, more
than we can conceive. This, then, is what the patience and longanimity
of God is leading us to. These glories, which have exhausted the
tenderest as well as the most powerful utterance of language to
depict, are the future of the church, when the spouse of Christ shall
be the mistress of the world. St. Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews,
quoting the eighth Psalm on the high destinies of man, says, “Thou
hast subjected all things under his feet,” and adds, “but we see not
as yet all things subject to him.” Nevertheless the delay gave no
place for doubt that the promise should have an ultimate and complete
fulfilment; while he unfolds to us the wherefore of these sublime
predictions, the only adequate reason why the human race should be
crowned with glory and honor—the one, sole emphatic cause, namely,
that all creation is in and for the Incarnation; that the Incarnation
is the basement, and the sublime architrave and final coping-stone of
the whole edifice; that the creation is for him as entirely as it is
by him, and that man is the younger brother of his Redeemer, and
shares in his inheritance.
We have already spoken of the indirect and adaptive government of God;
of “the government which he condescends to administer in his world
through the moral and physical activity with which he has endowed
mankind.” We have shown that the representative law of creation is
“increase and multiply.” We now come to the fact that since the fall
the corollary of that law is labor and toil. The earth from
henceforward brought forth thorns and thistles; in other words, on all
sides obstacles and difficulties met the advancing steps of the
discrowned lord of creation. Speaking according to the eternal decrees
of God, and not according to their manifestation through time, we
should say that the younger and fallen sons of God had to reconquer
the world they were given to reign over, as the elder Son of God, he
who is from all eternity, has, in consequence of the same fall, to
reconquer the reign of grace in the souls of men, step by step,
vanquishing the thorns and thistles with which our unbelief and
iniquity tear and rend his bleeding feet! There is God’s work going on
in the material world, and there is God’s work going on in the
spiritual world. And what we want to do is to persuade our readers not
so constantly to put the two in opposition, as though, while the
progress of grace is exclusively God’s work, material progress were
quite as exclusively man’s work—to say nothing of those who hold it to
be the devil’s work.
When the three Persons of the ever blessed Trinity said, “Let us make
man,” it was with the expressed intention that he should have dominion
over the whole earth—“_universæ terræ_.” That constitution of man as
the lord of creation was not annulled when man fell. It is true that
it became a dominion he had to contest with the beasts of the forest,
who were originally to have been his willing slaves; with the thorns
and thistles that ever since bar his passage; and with the convulsions
of nature, to the secret harmonies of which he had lost the key; while
the angelic guardians of the cosmos could not hold intercourse with
him in his degraded state, who, although they be “ministering
spirits,” are so in secret only, until the time shall come for their
promised mission upon earth. Nevertheless man was a monarch still,
though a fallen monarch. Or rather we should say that, as redeemed
man, he is God’s viceroy; and in that character is reconquering the
material world, that as the ages roll on the church, the spouse of
Jesus, may “lengthen her cords and strengthen her stakes.”[85]
Materialism is no necessary consequence of material progress.
Scientific discovery, whether as regards the solar system, the dynamic
forces, chemical affinities, or the properties of the world’s flora,
the habits of its fauna and the uses to which all these may be put,
is—next to the development of theological truth, of which in a certain
sense, as will one day be proved, it is the correlative—the highest
gift of God. It is simply man’s fulfilment of his second and inferior
mission upon earth. His first mission, or rather his vocation, is to
save his soul from sin, and to live in union with his God. His second
is to fill the one spot, be it wide or narrow, which God has assigned
him in the creation with all the faculties of his mind and intellect.
It may be a very small, a scarcely discernible spot that he occupies;
but in his degree he too has to conquer his territorial inch and
govern in the creation, though he do so but as a shepherd or a
ploughman. We are conscious as we write this of all that may be said
in detriment of material progress, of the luxury it leads to, of the
rapid propagation of false opinions, evil literature, and irreligious
thought; or of the increased facilities for the wholesale slaughter of
mankind in modern warfare. No wonder the pure-minded shrink in dismay
from much that material progress appears to be producing in the world,
and that timid souls are led to believe that such progress not only is
not God’s work, but (if we may make this distinction) is also not his
intention. We would entreat all such to take courage from a few
considerations which will lay before them their error in principle,
and also give them a wider view of God’s merciful designs in his own
creation.
First, it may be assumed that, as the Almighty has not abdicated his
providential government of the world in favor of the powers of
darkness, therefore no great and wide-spread movement takes place
amongst the children of men without its having an ultimate end for
good. We do not believe that evil is to win the day. We utterly refuse
to give credit to those who look upon the Lord of Hosts as vanquished
in the end, and upon the personal Lucifer, and the principle of evil
which he embodies and represents, as going off the field with a crowd
of prisoners who will far outnumber the armies of the Lord. This
desponding about the triumphs of grace is the residuum of
Protestantism. It is the melancholy of sectarianism. It is not in
accordance with the teaching of the church; she who is forever lifting
up her eyes unto the hills from whence cometh her help. The church
which is built on the Incarnation, which is fed with the Eucharistic
Sacrifice, and which owns as her queen the woman “clothed with the
sun,” “terrible as an army with banners,” does not limit her hopes to
a few sheep scattered in the wilderness, but knows that the “cattle on
a thousand hills” also belong to her Lord and Master.
We have no wish to palliate the evil which dogs the footsteps of
modern progress. We see that, like the huge behemoth, it tears down
many a sacred barrier, many a hallowed landmark, with its gigantic
strides, and we mourn with our mother the church, and with all the
body of the faithful, over the souls that perish in the fray. But not
even for this is it possible to doubt the ultimate designs of God’s
providence in making all work together for good.
Good works through evil, not as its instrument but as its vanquished
enemy; and material and scientific progress is so certainly a good in
itself that it arises from and forms part of the development of man’s
original destination, as being lord over the creation. It is the
necessary result of that; consequently it is a fulfilment of God’s
will. As to its fatal, or at least deleterious, moral effects on
individuals, or even for a time on the multitude, this is but the
weaving of the dark woof into the web of man’s existence, which is the
result of man’s estrangement from God, but which, neither in this nor
in any other form, will be allowed ultimately to defraud the Almighty
of his glory, by turning a relative, and much less a positive, good
into positive evil. We see the beginning; we do not see the end, save
by the eyes of faith, and trust in the goodness of God. We are looking
out on the world through the small aperture of time, our own limited
time, our own individual brief life, and thus we see all the present
evil, and but little, and occasionally nothing, of the future good.
But surely as Christians we are bound to believe that no waves of
thought or sentiment, and no sustained and wide-spread effort of _any
kind_, take possession of mankind without a special beneficial
intention of God’s providence, and without a distinct and absolute
good being their ultimate result. We bow our heads to the storm of the
elements; we accept the flood and the hurricane, and even the
pestilence, as coming by the permission of our heavenly Father, and as
in some way working for good. And shall we behold the moral and
intellectual activity of man scanning the high heavens, searching the
deep bosom of the earth, snatching from nature her most hidden
secrets; seeking the principles of life, and the occult laws of
development and progression; shall we watch wonderingly the strange,
new, and pathetic tenderness with which men are beginning to
appreciate and investigate the whole world of creation inferior to
themselves, but holding perchance in its silent and patient existence
secrets important to us—shall we behold all this, while our hearts
burn within us, and not intimately and intently believe that God is
carrying on his work, while man seems only to be following his own
free will in the exercise of his intellect? Let us be larger hearted
and more trusting with our God; nor for a moment suppose that the
reins of government have fallen from his hands, or that passing evil
will not terminate in greater good. The darkest hour is ever the one
before the dawn. Doubtless when the eagles of Rome sped victorious
over the vast and crowded plains of the Gaul and the Frank there were
gentle spirits left at home who, having kept themselves pure by the
undiscerned aid of the grace which our heavenly Father never refuses
to men of good will, grieved that the corruption of Roman luxury
should infiltrate its poison into the simple lives of the
semi-barbarous and valorous nations. And yet, but for these victorious
eagles what would the world be now?
God brings good out of evil; and though material progress is seldom a
real advantage at its first advent, yet when the moral excitement of
its early possession has subsided, when the ever living, ever
penetrating spirit of God has gradually, through the poor human
instruments he condescends to use, claimed all that man can know, do,
or acquire, as belonging to himself in the great scheme of creation
and redemption, then, by slow degrees perhaps, but by sure ones, the
evil gives way to good. It rests with us to hasten the appropriation
of all that men call progress, gathering into Peter’s net the large
and the small fishes; for it is all ours. As children of the church,
to us alone does the world belong in the ultimate and supreme sense.
It is our fault if we are not more rapidly converting the raw material
which is swept to our feet into increments of God’s glory. It rests
with the church in her children to make what the world calls progress
become a real progress.
There is no real progress without a fixed principle as its basis and
starting point. And that Christianity alone can give; and chiefly
Christianity in its only full and perfect form, the Catholic Church.
By Christianity we mean the fear and the love of God, with all the
pure moral results which flow therefrom. The moral law is the first
law, and material progress is not a real gain until it is married to
the moral law. The immediate consequence of material progress is to
increase wealth; and the immediate result of increased wealth is a
doubtful benefit. While the wealth remains in the hands of the few,
the gulf between rich and poor is widened and animosities increased.
When first it percolates into the lower strata of society, for the
time it exercises thereon a demoralizing effect; for the tendency of a
vast deal of material progress, and of its resulting modern
institutions and modern customs, is to sap real happiness, and
substitute a fictitious excitement based on wealth and luxury. We are
thus forever eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. The bitter and the sweet will grow together till God shall part
them. But the evolutions of the eternal years gradually reconquer the
crude materials to the cause which must ultimately triumph; and as the
spirit of God moves over the face of the troubled waters the
discordant social elements fall into place, and a further degree of
the real, true, moral progress of mankind is found to harmonize with
the material progress that man was so proud to have gained, and which
when he did so was but the coarse though precious ore which waited to
be purified in the crucible of the divine law.
Is there any sane man now living who really regrets the invention of
printing? We have heard the project of a railroad in China deprecated
by a zealous friend to truth. It will carry our merchandise; but will
it not also carry our priests? We remember when men said murders would
increase because London was to be lit with gas! Do these
sincere-hearted men really think that man is working out solely his
own will, and that an evil will, in all this heavy tramp of material
progress through God’s world? Is not man fulfilling his destiny of
conquering the world; and when he has done his part, albeit done too
often in blind and arrogant ignorance, will not the rightful owner of
the vineyard come and claim the whole?
It is impossible for us to be slack in the exercise of any one virtue
without the omission affecting the whole of our inner and spiritual
life. If we allow our hopes to sink low it is certain to affect our
faith; and if our faith, then also our love. Nor should we forget that
it is “_according_ to our faith that it shall be done unto us.” We are
not seconding God’s precious intentions towards us so long as we are
taking a desponding, narrow, and unaspiring view of what are likely to
be his intentions as regards the future of his creation; and all
despising of that creation, all holding cheap the law, the order, the
beauty, and the uses of the material creation, arises from an
inadequate sense of the mystery of the incarnation, of the _Verbum
caro factum est_ which is the one sole efficient reason of all we see
and of all that exists. Once raise the inferior questions of nature,
of science, and of art up to that level, and we shall find that it
imparts a certain balance to all our thoughts, and diffuses a peaceful
looking forward and a calm endurance of present ills which are morally
what the even pulse and the vigorous strength are physically to the
man in perfect health. He is as free from the excitability of fever as
from the lassitude of debility; he is a sane man.
There is another point from which we can view the material progress of
the world with hopefulness, as helping to work out the future in a
sense favorable to the church; and this point comes under the head of
what we have called God’s adaptive government of his creation. It is
the fact that the progress of civilization develops the natural
characteristics of the various races of mankind, and that the history
of the church reveals how the providence of God makes use of the
characteristics of race—as he does of everything else—for the building
up and development of the church, and of truth by her. The life and
death of our Lord having been accomplished in the chosen land, among
the chosen people, the infant church was speedily transplanted from
the shadow of Mount Calvary to the City on the Seven Hills. Judea was
her cradle, but Rome was to witness her adolescence. The two leading
characteristics of the Latin race were necessary to her growth; for
the Latins were the conquerors and the lawgivers of the world, and the
pioneers of the future. She was borne on the wings of the Roman
eagles. She followed in the footsteps of the victorious legions, and
as Rome and time went on with devouring steps, she caught the
conqueror and the conquered both in her mystic net, and reigned among
the Latin-Celtic races. Rome was the world’s lawgiver. The Latin
genius is essentially legislative and authoritative. Subtlety,
accuracy, and lucidity were the necessary human elements for the
outward expression of the divine truth which the church carried in her
bosom; for Catholic theology is a _certain_ science, admitting of
fuller developments as “things new and old” are brought forth from her
treasured store, but never making one step too far in advance of
another throughout her rhythmical progress. These human elements
resided essentially in the Latin mind; and in the Latin tongue, which
has ever been the language of the church, and which, the church having
consecrated it to her own purposes, became what we popularly call a
dead language so far as concerns the shifting scenes and fluid states
of man’s mortal life; she laid her hand upon it, and it sublimated
beneath her touch, and was consecrated to her use, beyond all changing
fashion or wavering sense. The dying Roman Empire involuntarily
bequeathed it to her; and the language of the great lawgivers of the
world became that of the church, and only on her lips is a living
language to this hour. The Latin people were the fountain of law;
their code to the present day forms the common law, or the base of the
common law, of all Christian nations except where the retrogradations
of the Napoleonic code have been flung in the face of humanity and the
church as an insult to both. The principle of law, the love of law,
lay in them as an hereditary gift. Thus were they as a race specially
adapted to become the framers of the church’s canon law, of her
discipline, and of her glorious ritual, each phrase of which is the
crystallization of a theological truth, a fragment from the Rock of
Peter, but perfect in itself and concomitant with all the rest.
Thus also she wrote in letters of red and gold her marvellous ritual,
the least part of which embodies a symbolic act relating to the things
that are eternal. There is not a touch that is not significative,
there is not a line that does not seem caught from the traditions of
the nine choirs of angelic ministers. As full of mystery as of
practicality, beautiful, graceful, and complete, it runs through all
the life of the church like the veins through the living body, and
carries order and harmony through every low Mass in the village
church, through high pontifical ceremonials and within the silent
gates of cloistered orders where men and women daily and hourly enact
and represent the drama of the church.
The same genus runs through all the component parts; and that genus
belonged to the race to whom was consigned the laying of the church’s
foundations, and the raising of the edifice. And thus there exists,
besides the divine integrity of the whole, a certain human consistency
which, humanly speaking, is the consequence of the work having been
put into the hands of the race that was naturally adapted to effect
it. Now, as the ways of God are necessarily always consequent—that is,
consistent with each other, moving in harmony and working through
law—it is not a vain presumption to imagine that as he has constituted
different races with different characteristics, so it is his intention
to make use of each and all in the fuller developments of his church.
“Other sheep I have that are not of this fold; them also must I
bring.” The words were spoken in Jerusalem while the Latin race was
lying in the blind pride of paganism, and the Celtic races were only
recently being hewn out of the darkness of their far-off life by the
swords of the conquering nation. Surely it is one of those words the
fulfilment of which is not complete. There are other races waiting to
bring into the vineyard the tools that their native genius has put
into their hands. As the church through the Latin race has formed her
external, congregational, hierarchical, and authoritative condition,
and has crowned the whole in the last Vatican Council by the dogma of
the infallibility, laying thereby the keystone that locks the perfect
arch, so now the Teutonic Saxon races, the people of individuality, of
complete inner life, combined with vast exterior activity and
resistless energy, will be brought forth in God’s providence to carry
out the law of liberty which is the correlative of the law of
individuality.
God speaks to the individual soul through his organ the church,
through her sacraments, down to her least ceremony, and through her
authority. Nor have we any absolute test and security that it is his
voice we hear and no delusion of our own, _except as we are in harmony
with her authority_. All may be a mistake save what is in accordance
with the one infallible voice. But nevertheless it is to the
_individual_ soul that God speaks, and not to the masses as such. God
leads each soul separately, and individually apart, and there is no
real religion that is not the secret intercourse, the hidden
communion, of the solitary soul, alone with God. Every human soul has
its secret with God, a secret of love, or a secret of hatred, or of
avoidance. God penetrates our souls through the sacraments of the
church; but past the sacraments, and as the result of the sacraments,
there must grow up the continued, sustained, and ever more and more
habitual presence of God in the soul, before we arrive at that state
for which the church and the sacraments are but the means to an
end—though a divine means. “We will come to him and make our abode
with him.”[86]
Nothing less than this is the promise of God, and should be the object
of man. The church in her sacraments and ordinances is the one
authorized and infallible way to bring about this blessed union. But
unless that be accomplished, all the outward devotions that saints, or
confraternities, that individuals or congregations, ever devised and
poured into the church’s lap like handfuls of flowers, will be to
those who rest in them as fading as flowers, and as sure to be swept
away and burned when the fire shall try of what sort the work is. The
dying to self—not as man’s restrictions can produce its outward
semblance, but as God’s working in the soul joined to our good will
can alone effect it—and the consequent union with him whose divine
spirit rushes in wherever we make room for him to come, is the one
sole object of all that the church gives us and does for us; of all
the barriers she erects, of all the gardens she plants, of all her
discipline and her ceremonial. It is the only living reality. It was
so with the saints of all ages and nations. They valued all in
proportion as by its use they killed self and put the living God
instead; and they valued it no more. Low down in the soul the deep
pulsation of the thought of God, ruling all our actions from the least
to the greatest, this is what our dear Lord demands of us in every
communion we make; this is what his church intends in all her
teaching. This alone will hasten the reign of the Holy Ghost, when God
“will pour his spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men
shall see visions.”[87] In other words, the gates of the supernatural
world shall be thrown open, not to a rare and scanty few, but to all
to whom “it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God.”[88]
We seem to have wandered from our subject; but it is not so. We were
writing of the future development of the church through the different
characteristics of different races, as instruments in God’s hands in
the working of his adaptive government; and this has led us to
describe the necessity of the inner life of the soul with God, because
the Teutonic and Saxon races are the people with whom the tendency to
a deep inner life is a natural peculiarity. They are more
self-contained, self-reliant, reserved, and recollected than the
versatile Latin races; and though none of these characteristics
necessarily lead to a spiritual inner life of any form—that being a
free grace from God—they are the apt instruments for grace to make use
of in producing a certain form. They are, therefore, those to whom we
may look for the next important era in the church’s history; when all
the vast and complicated edifice of her hierarchy being complete she
has now to expand the fuller development and deeper utterance of her
inner life in individual souls; and that no longer as an occasional
glorious phenomenon of grace, but as spread over a vast area, as
influencing whole peoples, and as becoming the sustained life of
Christianity. Law and liberty in one; the “freedom wherewith Christ
hath made us free.”
We were also speaking of material progress; and these same Teutonic
Saxon races are the races who are specially extending it throughout
the world. We have endeavored to show that in material progress man is
achieving his secondary mission of exercising dominion over the whole
creation. Thus we find that, having in his wonderful providence united
the two characteristics of strong individuality and vehement activity
in certain races, God has prepared for the future of the church, when
inner spiritual life shall be more diffused, an era when the spirit of
God will take possession of all that man can know, do, or acquire as
belonging to himself, “and through him to his church, in the great
scheme of creation and redemption.” And thus material progress will be
assimilated to the welfare of the church; and the stones will be
turned into bread—not in the sense of the arch deceiver, who claims
all material progress as his own region, but united with “the word
that proceedeth from the mouth of God”;[89] the material sanctified by
the spiritual, when all shall be “holy to the Lord.”
The inaccuracy of the popular, as distinguished equally from the
Catholic and the rationalistic view of the importance of matter, and
of material progress which is the march of man’s conquest over matter,
arises chiefly from the imperfect manner in which we realize the
universal presence of God. Many among us can look back with a distinct
recollection to the time when a mother first announced to us the great
truth that God is everywhere. With the unfailing practical sense of
children, we probably began to individualize certain familiar objects
with the query was he there—in this table, in that flower, in my
living hand, in the pen I hold? And the bewilderment of immensity
crept over us as we tried to grasp the thought of the great universal
presence.
As in later years theological questions opened upon us—the mysteries
of our faith, the angelic choirs, the army of saints and martyrs, the
Incarnation, and the localization of the eucharistic presence in the
Blessed Sacrament—many of us have gradually dropped the more intense
sense of God’s omnipresence. It probably was more accurately felt by
the Old Testament saints than by any, except saints, under the new
law. It is not that we have lost sight of the truth that he sees,
hears, and knows each one of us, always and everywhere; but we forget
that he fills all space, and that he is in all things. It is a
remarkable fact that the very lowest, the least theological and
dogmatic, of all heathen beliefs, where all are a jargon of error, is
nevertheless the faint reflection of this truth. We allude once more
to the animism of the lower savage races, which lends a spiritual
presence even to inanimate and inorganic matter. To them God is
everywhere and in every thing; so that to them no _thing_ exists
disconnected from a spiritual presence as abiding in it, and that not
in the pantheistic form of many gods, but as all matter holding an
occult spirit, which is the same spirit in each substance. But there
it ends; a blind creed, which does not even go the length of
acknowledging a personal deity or a divine providence. None the less
is it founded on a truth which often slips out of our consciousness,
while we are occupied with the more familiar articles of our faith.
Let us examine how this great truth, as we hold it in its fulness and
completeness, may be brought to bear on the question now before us of
the value of the cosmos, of the status of matter, and of the fact that
it is the indirect revelation, even as the Incarnation is the direct
revelation of God—Jesus Christ the God-Man being the mediator between
the creature and his creator.
First let us bear in mind that no cause can act where it is not
virtually present by its power, even if not actually present by its
matter. And this law has its correlative in the spiritual world. I
influence you only so far as I touch you. I shall have written in vain
unless these pages touch your sight. If I were speaking to you with my
living voice I could only reach the hearts of those who heard me. To
all the rest I am dead; and they are dead to me. This is the moral
side of the question, as between man and man. As regards the material
side, let us suppose I push forward a ball. It is force emanating from
my touch which sets it in motion; but my force has not ceased with my
direct touch. It is still my force propelling it as absolutely, though
not so powerfully, as at the moment I touched it; and the ball only
stops when my force is expended, or when a counter force arrests it.
But whence comes my force? Solely from him in “whom we live, and move,
and are.” He is our motive power; every act of ours is formed out of
his force, equally whether we are acting according to his will or
against it.
We have said that causes can only act where they are actually or
virtually present. But it is a great fact in the material world that
there is no such thing as material contact. No matter what substance
or what fluid we select, the limpid air or the hard iron, in all each
infinitesimal molecule dwells solitary and apart, and crush them
together as we may there is still a space between.
Now, theology teaches us that God is nearer to us than we are to
ourselves. His divine contact with us is closer on our bodies and our
souls than the molecules of our bodies are to each other. The only
real contact is the presence of God; whether through ourselves or in
the vast cosmos around us, the action of forces is God making himself
felt. Force is the contact of God, the touch of the divine being on
the material world. He is not in us, nor in the worlds around us, as
he is in his own essential essence, as he is in himself; but he is
there in the effects of his concurrence, and the moment he were to
cease to be there (were such a thing possible) in all, or in any one
part, the whole or the part would fall away into chaos, quite as
certainly as the ball which I have set in motion will cease to roll
the instant my force has exhausted itself and ceases to act on the
ball. My force diminishes gradually; it is a limited and a borrowed
force. The ball goes slower and slower; but so long as it moves, my
force is upon it in a stronger or weaker degree. But the force of the
divine Being is almighty, is always absolute, is always infinite, is
always under his own control; and consequently it never fails, it
never waxes less at any one moment, in any one direction.
In every act of our existence we are using God’s force, for him or
against him. The whole universe is doing the same. His presence is the
sole real contact; the contact of the _Qui Est_, of pure absolute
being with his own creation.
And all around us we hear a vain clamor about an immutable law that
governs nature, while the great primary cause has withdrawn himself
from all interference.
We hear of blind forces which spring from nowhere, and hurry us on
without any guide save themselves. We repeat it—Law and force are not
God; but God is both law and force. There is no motion without a
motive power; and there is no motive power at an actual distance from
the object set in motion. And thus God, who is law and force, is upon
us, within us, around us; and within all, always, and throughout
space. There are mutations and diversities in the exhibitions of God’s
force, according to his divine will; but there is never anywhere any
cessation of it. And there never will be; for if there were, he would
contradict himself, and that is impossible.
This, then, is what matter is. It is the exponent of the being of God
to the angels and to us. It is not the exponent of himself to himself.
_That_ is the eternal generation of the Son in his own bosom; the
second person of the Trinity, the divine Logos. And the Incarnation of
the eternally-begotten Son in the womb of the ever blessed Virgin
Mother is the blending of this double exponent of his being; for it is
the Word made flesh; it is God clothing himself in the matter of his
own creation, and dwelling amongst men.
Could matter be more beautiful than this? Can we say more in its
praise? And could any reflections lead us further from the notions of
materialism, or draw us nearer to God?
[81] Apocalypse vi. 2.
[82] Psalm xliv.
[83] Luke v. 18.
[84] See the whole of the 54th chapter of Isaias, as
well as numerous other passages.
[85] Isaias liv. 2.
[86] John xiv. 23.
[87] Joel ii. 28.
[88] Mark iv. 11.
[89] Matt. iv. 3, 4.
SACRED EPIGRAPHY AND THE INVOCATION OF THE MARTYRS IN BEHALF OF THE
DEAD.
The church is once more in the Catacombs. She has not fled thither
from persecution, albeit she is suffering sorely at present; but she
has gone down there to live over again the memories of the past. With
the lamp of research held aloft, she paces reverently through those
dark and tortuous passage-ways where erst she lived in her saints and
martyrs. Many a precious relic of her primitive existence is delved
out of the accumulated masses of tufa and _débris_, all more or less
showing forth the usages of the early times, and she experiences no
small consolation in beholding that what she was then, in all those
usages which are founded in dogma, she is now. She has not changed.
She is consistent throughout—the beautiful Spouse of Christ,
yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Every new discovery in those
limitless necropolises is a vindication of the maxim of St. Augustine:
_Ecclesia orat, ergo credit_—The church prays, therefore she believes.
The chapels, the altars, the rude frescos, the sarcophagi, the very
inscriptions on the tombs, bear evidence to the great truth couched in
the words of the inspired Doctor of Hippo. To prove, therefore, that
the church prays is identical with proving that she believes; and what
she believes must be true, else she is no church, not the spouse of
Christ, but an unworthy and intruding handmaid. But we are not going
to dogmatize. We would only show on archæological authority, that, as
the church, in her liturgy, at this day commends the dead and the
dying to the intercessory influence of the saints, so did she in the
beginning, when not her dogmas, but her very existence, was called in
question; when, had she been a human institution, she must have made a
false step, for then there were no critical rationalists or fribbling
logicians to take her to task. Sophists there were many, even in those
days. But they had good faith enough to acknowledge that, if she were
a church at all, she could not err; so they consistently confined
themselves to an attack upon her existence.
Among the many important discoveries made of late in the cemetery of
St. Domitilla, outside of the gate of St. Sebastian at Rome, by the
illustrious Chevalier de Rossi (to whose _Bulletin_ we are indebted
for the inscriptions given below), that of the tomb of Veneranda, a
Roman matron, is not the least important, since it constitutes a
strong link in the chain of archæological evidence on the antiquity of
intercessory prayers for the dead. The tomb lies in a chamber which
branches off from one of the subterraneous galleries, entered from the
apsis of the old basilica. On the wall over the sarcophagus is a
fresco in a good state of preservation and of a style anterior to the
Byzantine. It represents a matron in the act of praying in the garden
of Paradise, which is symbolized by a flower plant springing up at her
feet. She is dressed in a loose dalmatic, and veiled like other
Christian matrons who are represented as praying in various cemeterial
pictures of the third and fourth centuries. There is none of that
stiffness in the style and coloring which indicates the graceless
Byzantine school, but such an ease and elegance mark the figure as
have induced De Rossi to compare it with that of the “Five Saints”
(St. Dionysias and her companions) in the crypt of St. Eusebius in the
adjoining catacombs of St. Calixtus. Over the right arm is the
inscription, VENERANDA DET. VII. IDVS IANVARIAS. On the left is the
figure of a maiden, without any veil, dressed in a long double tunic
and pallium. The right hand of the figure is extended as if in the act
of welcoming or receiving Veneranda. She points with the left to an
open box or casket full of volumes, a symbol of the salutary faith
contained in the Holy Scriptures. An open volume is suspended on the
wall, and on the pages are the names of the four Evangelists. Beside
this figure are the words PETRONELLA MARTyr. Of the title of martyr
applied to St. Petronilla we will say a few words presently. On the
whole, the style of the fresco, the fashion of the dress, the form of
the letters, and the ancient laconism “Petronella Martyr,” without the
epithet saint, pronounce the picture to be as ancient as the middle of
the fourth century. The purpose of the picture is unmistakable, being
in form like many which represent some of the characters in an
attitude of prayer, while others are in the act of receiving them into
heaven or inviting them to go in as they draw aside the curtains. This
picture, however, has the additional worth of declaring explicitly the
names of the intercessor and the advocate. The prayers used by the
church from time immemorial in behalf of the dying invite the saints
and martyrs to come and meet the departing soul and conduct her to a
“place of refreshment, light, and peace.” In the same manner the
acclamations which we read in the epitaphs of the early ages call upon
the spirits of the blessed to receive the soul of the departed. Here
is a beautiful epitaph, discovered in one of the cemeteries of Rome
towards the end of the last century:
PAVLOFILIO MERENTI IN PA
CEM TE SVSCIPIAN OMNIVM ISPIRI
TA SANCTORVM.
The acclamation reads: _Paulo Filio merenti_: _in pacem te
suscipian_(t) _omnium ispirita sanctorum_—To the worthy son Paul: May
the spirits of all the saints receive thee in peace. The strange
plural form, _ispirita_ or _spirita_, need not be wondered at. The
Catacombs abound in similar inscriptions. Here are a few of the most
noteworthy: _Leopardum cum spirita sancta_ [that is, _Cum spiritibus
sanctis_] _acceptum_—Leopard received with the blessed spirits.
Another inscription, bearing the date 291, reads: _Refrigera cum
spirita sancta_—Grant him refreshment with the blessed spirits. From
what has been said a clue may be had to the understanding of many more
or less laconic acclamations which the visitor meets with in the Roman
Catacombs; such as, CVM SANCTIS—INTER SANCTOS. They are to be taken in
the sense explained above, because they allude clearly to the soul of
the departed, and not to the body, which is buried close to the tomb
of the saint appealed to. The prayers and acclamations of the faithful
to the saints in behalf of the dead were not simply the outpourings of
tender hearts moved by a pious fancy, but the result of a strong
belief, confirmed by the authority of the church speaking in her
liturgies. In an ancient Sacramentary of Gaul we read, in the Mass of
a martyr: _Tribue (Domine) tuorum intercessione sanctorum martyrum
caris nostris, qui in Christo dormiunt, refrigerium in regione
vivorum_—Grant, O Lord! through the intercession of thy holy martyrs,
to our beloved who sleep in Christ, refreshment in the land of the
living; and in the Mass of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian: _Beatorum
martyrum, Cornili_ [_sic_] _et Cypriani … nos tibi Domine commendet
oratio, ut caris nostris, qui in Christo dormiunt, refrigeria æterna
concedas_—Let the prayer of thy blessed martyrs, Cornelius and
Cyprian, commend us to thee, O Lord! that thou grant eternal
refreshment to our beloved who sleep in Christ.[90] In an ancient
Mass, discovered by More, express mention is made of the times of
persecution—a proof that the invocation of the saints for the repose
of the faithful departed was an established usage in the very earliest
days of the church. Before the reading of the diptychs the priest
prayed in these words: _Deus, præsta, si quies adridat te colere, si
temptatio ingruat, non negare_—God, grant that if peace smile upon us,
we may continue to worship thee; if temptation assail us, we may not
deny thee. Here there is an evident allusion to the intervals of peace
which the early Christians enjoyed between different persecutions.
After the recitation of the diptychs the priest continued: _Sanctorum
tuorum nos gloriosa merita, ne in pœna_(m) _veniamus, excusent;
defunctorum fidelium animæ, quæ beatitudinem_ [_sic_] _gaudent nobis
opitulentur; quæ consolatione indigent ecclesiæ precibus
absolvantur_—May the glorious merits of thy saints excuse us, that we
may not be brought to punishment; may the souls of the faithful
departed that enjoy blessedness assist us; may those [souls] that need
consolation be pardoned through the prayers of the church. The
distinction in this prayer between the commemoration of the living, of
the blessed, and of those souls that have need of the prayers of the
church could not be more evident.
The faith of the early Christians in the efficacy of the prayers of
the martyrs especially, was the reason why they had such a strong
desire, and regarded it as a great privilege, to be buried near the
tombs of the martyrs. St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his funeral epigrams,
makes frequent allusions to proximity with the tombs of the martyrs,
and takes occasion thence to apostrophize them in behalf of the dead.
In an epigram which he wrote on the death of his mother, Nonna, whose
body was laid close to the martyrs, he says: “Receive, O martyrs! this
great victim, this mortified flesh, joined to your blood.” The words
“joined to your blood” have a spiritual signification. By her life of
mortification and sacrifice she had assimilated herself to the
martyrs; but they have also a literal meaning, and allude to the
material contiguity of her tomb with that of the martyrs; for he
premises with the words, “Her body we have placed near the martyrs.”
The idea that the blood of the martyrs penetrated into the neighboring
tombs, and its spiritual signification, that the merits of their
sufferings, and their intercession, invoked by the living, would be
salutary to the dead, are beautifully shown forth in the epigram of
St. Ambrose on the tomb of his brother Satirus, who was buried in
Milan, side by side with the martyr St. Victor:
“Hæc meriti merces ut sacri sanguinis humor
Finitimas penetrans abluat exuvias.”[91]
This distich was quoted by the Irish monk Dungal, in the eighth
century, as a powerful argument in favor of intercessory prayer,
against Claudius of Turin, who was opposed to the invocation of the
saints in behalf of the dead. The same thought is expressed in the
touching verses of Paulinus of Nola, wherein he narrates the sepulture
of his little child near the last resting-place of the martyrs. And as
the little innocent (he died at the age of eight days) had no
short-comings of his own to atone for, the father beseeches him, and
his cousin Celsus, who died at the age of eight years, that the
intercession of the martyrs, near whose holy remains they slept, might
be turned to the benefit of their parents.
“Innocuisque pares meritis, peccata parentum
Infantes castis vincite suffragiis.”[92]
This was in the time of St. Augustine. We find him interrogated by the
same Paulinus, who had granted permission to a widow to bury her son,
Cynesius, near the tomb of St. Felix of Nola: _Utrum prosit cuique
post mortem quod corpus ejus apud sancti alicujus memoriam
sepeliatur_—Whether it might benefit one after death to have his body
buried near the tomb of some saint. The answer was St. Augustine’s
celebrated work entitled _De cura pro mortuis_. The ultimate
conclusion of the book is this: that being buried in proximity to the
tomb of the martyrs is beneficial to the dead in this much only: that
the remembrance of the place invites the living to commend them to the
intercession of the martyrs whose holy remains repose near by. It is
in this sense that we must understand Maximus of Turin when he writes:
_Fratres, veneremur eos [martyres] in sæculo, quos defensores habere
possumus in futuro; et sicut eis ossibus parentum nostrorum jungimur,
ita et eis fidei imitatione jungamur; … sociemur illis tam religione
quam corpore_—Brethren, let us venerate them [the martyrs] in this
life, that we may have them as our defenders in the next; and as we
are united with them through the bones of our parents, so also let us
be joined to them by imitating their faith; let us be associated with
them in religion as well as in the body. Nor did the archdeacon
Sabinus depart from the spirit of the church and the old fathers when
he censured the indiscreet desire and the material devotion of many of
the faithful, in wishing to be buried near the tombs of the martyrs.
He himself chose the last place, near the door, in the Church of St.
Lawrence outside the walls of Rome, and on his tomb is the following
inscription, written at his own dictation:
“Nil juvat, immo gravat, tumulis hærere piorum;
Sanctorum meritis optima vita prope est.
Corpore non opus est, anima tendamus ad illos,
Quæ bene salva potest corporis esse salus.”[93]
In the first part of the epitaph he
alludes to the difficulty of finding a
place vacant near the tombs of the
martyrs, and in the end he writes that
the efficacy is not in being joined to
them in body, but in the soul, which,
being saved, will ensure the salvation
of the body. Maximus, whose
words we cited above, and who
was bishop of Turin after the year
412, insinuates the same when he
says: _Et sic ut eis ossibus parentum_
_nostrorum jungimur_. Hence we conclude
that the usage of burying
the dead near the bodies of the
martyrs was regarded as an ancient
tradition even in the fifth century.
It is not the fact of the material
burying-place to which we would
invite the reader’s attention, but to
the spirit of faith in the efficacy
of the martyrs’ intercession. The
chamber which contains the tomb
of Veneranda is filled with _loculi_,
most of which date back as far as
the year 356. A Roman epitaph of
the year 382 testifies that even at
that date they were very few who
obtained the privilege of being buried
_intra limina sanctorum_—within
the threshold of the saints. The
privilege was only granted to those
whose merits during life had been
eminent, and who had signalized
themselves in the service of God,
and especially in their charity towards
the poor. Thus we read of
a Roman by the name of Verus,
_qui post mortem meruit in Petri limina
sancta jacere_—who after his death
merited that he should repose within
the sacred threshold of Peter.
We are far, however, from asserting
that the formula _sociatus sanctis_ always
alludes to the proximity of a
martyr’s tomb. Very often the formula
refers to the soul, which is already
supposed to be in Paradise.
Here is a fragment of a beautiful
epitaph found in the cemetery of
St. Commodilla:
_BIVS INFANS PER AETATEM SENE PECCA
EDENS AD SANCTORVM LOCVM IN PA
ESCVT_ [Illustration]
The ingenious De Rossi makes of this fragment the following
inscription: (Euse)_bius_ _infans per ætatem sene_ (sine) _pecca_(to)
(acc)_edens_ _ad sanctorum locum in_ _pa_(ce) (qui)_escit_—The infant
Eusebius, going to the place [abode] of the saints without sin,
because of his age, rests in peace.
To remove all doubt regarding the spirit which prompted the early
Christians to desire burial near the tombs of the martyrs, we will
cite a passage from one of the homilies of Maximus, Bishop of Turin:
“Therefore the martyrs are to be honored most devoutly; but we must
venerate those especially whose relics we possess. With these we have
_familiarity_; … they receive us when we go out from this body.” This
special devotion of _familiarity_ with the martyrs, whose relics the
faithful possessed, as it inspired the pious trust that the spirits of
the martyrs would welcome them into the realms of bliss, so did it
induce the faithful living to invoke the intercession of the martyrs
for those who were already gone from this life. But we have yet some
of the most beautiful epigraphs to cite—those touching, deprecatory
appeals to the saint or martyr by name, near whose tomb the remains of
the departed are placed: SANCTE LAVRENTI, SVSCEPA(m) (h)ABETO ANIMA(m)
(ejus)[94]—St. Lawrence, receive his soul!
In the cemetery of St. Hippolytus Bosius read the following:
REFRIGERI TIBI DOMNVS IPOLITVS _refriger_(et) _tibi dom_(i)_nus_
_Hippolytus_—May the lord Hippolytus refresh thee. Here is an
invocation, in a fragmentary state, of St. Basilla: SERENVS FLENS
DEPRECOR IPSE deum…ET BEATA(m) BASILLA(m) VT VOBIS PRO M(eritis).
Another appeal to St. Basilla may be seen in an epigraph now exposed
in the Lateran museum. It is that of a bereaved father and mother who
commend their departed daughter to the protection of the saint:
_Domina Basilla, commandamus tibi Crescentinus et Micina Filia_(m)
_nostra_(m) _Crescen_(tiam)—St. Basilla, we, Crescentius and Micina,
recommend our daughter Crescentia to thee. Side by side with this is
the epitaph of Aurelius Gemelli, a child of four years of age. It was
written by his mother, of whose tender affection a more moving
expression cannot be found than those four words: _Commando Basilla
Innocentia_(m) _Gemelli_—Basilla, I recommend [to thee] Innocence
Gemelli. She calls him not only _innocent_, but innocence itself.
Since we have mentioned the above as a specimen of the tender
affection of the Romans for their dead, and how they gave expression
to it in their epitaphs, it may not be out of place to mention
another, to be seen to-day in the _hypogeum_ of the Church of St.
Praxedes. It is in this form: _Sancti Petre, Marcelline, suscipite
vostrum alumnum!_—Sts. Peter and Marcellinus, receive your pupil. The
Chevalier de Rossi is of the opinion that this inscription belongs to
the cemetery of St. Helen, on the Labican Way. As a sort of
counterpart to it he gives another, of the same tenderness of tone,
which he read in Carpentras: MARTER BAVDELI S PER PASSIONIS DIE DNO
DVLCEM SVVM COMMENDAT ALMVNVM—_Martyr Baudelius per passionis_ [_suæ_]
_die_(m) _Domino dulcem suum commendat alumnum_—The martyr Baudelius,
through the day of his passion, commends his sweet pupil to the Lord.
Hence we may conclude with the illustrious archæologist, whose
erudition has borne us out so far, that the custom of burying the dead
near the tombs of the martyrs, and of asking, as it were, their local
protection for the dead, was universal in the first five or six
centuries. He cites the only exception to this usage that has come
within his extensive observation. It is a Greek epitaph, in which the
three divine Persons, the archangels Michael and Gabriel, the prophets
Jeremias and Henoch, the Blessed Virgin, and, finally, the sibyl are
besought in behalf of the departed.
Thus far we have appealed almost exclusively to the testimony afforded
us by inscriptions discovered in the Roman Catacombs. In conclusion we
would transcribe entire two epitaphs which, though not Roman, are of
the greatest importance in the matter we have been treating. One is
the epitaph on the tomb of Cynesius, in the Church of St. Felix of
Nola, the same of whom Paulinus wrote to St. Augustine, asking
“whether it were efficacious to bury the dead near the tomb of the
martyrs.” The inscription was probably dictated by Paulinus himself.
We give it with the restorations:
ilium nuNC FELICIS HABET DOMVS ALMA BEATI
atque ita per loNGOS SVSCEPTVM POSSIDET ANNOS
patronus plACITO LAETATVR IN HOSPITE FELIX
sic protectVS ERIT IVVENIS SVB IVDICE CHRISTO
cum tuba terriBILIS SONITV CONCVSSERIT ORBEM
excitæque aniMAE RVRSVM IN SVA VASA REDIBVNT
Felici merito HIC SOCIABITVR ANTE TRIRVNAL[95]
Here there is a thought expressed rarely to be met with in sacred
epigraphy—that the martyr Felix will, on the day of general
resurrection, accompany his “guest” before the tribunal of the Great
Judge, and that “the youth shall be protected before the judge,
Christ.” As a general rule the patronage of the martyrs is invoked for
the souls of the faithful departed as they are now. We will give
another epigraph in conclusion which confirms the conception we have
just been speaking of. It is read upon the tombstone of a priest in
Vercelli, by name Sarmata. It is metrical, and the illustrious Father
Bruzzi is inclined to attribute its authorship to St. Flavian, the
poet, who was bishop of Vercelli about the end of the fifth century.
This is the Flavian who was styled by his contemporaries the “Damasus
of Liguria.” Sarmata was buried in the _loculi_ between the martyrs
Nazarius and Victor. The chronicles speak of this privilege in the
following terms: _Sedes proxima sanctis martyribus concessa est ad
mercedem meritis_—The nearest place to the martyrs was given as a
reward of his merits. Here is the epitaph:
NAZARIVS NAMQVE PARITER VICTORQVE BEATI
LATERIBVS TVTVM REDDVNT MERITISQ CORONANT
O FELIX GEMINO MERVIT QVI MARTYRE DVCI
AD DOMINVM MELIORE VIA REQVIEMQVE MERERI.[96]
Nazarius and Victor are here spoken of as the ushers of Sarmata into
the presence of the Lord—_ad Dominum_—and to eternal rest. In the same
manner St. Petronilla is represented, in the fresco of which we spoke
in the beginning, as introducing the matron Veneranda into Paradise.
The epigraphical, liturgical, and patristic testimonies hitherto
quoted place in a clear and unmistakable light the deep religious
significance and the topographical worth of the representation on the
tomb of Veneranda. St. Petronilla, the patroness of the departed, and
whose holy ashes reposed not far distant, _familiarly_ (the expression
of Maximus of Turin) receives her into heaven, and the painter gave
expression to the holy trust of her relatives that St. Petronilla
would intercede for her, while the picture itself would invite them to
pray more fervently to the saint whose holy “memories” (St. Augustine)
were near at hand.
Now that the signification of the picture has been fairly determined,
it may not be an unfitting conclusion to our paper to inquire into the
accuracy of the title of _martyr_ applied to St. Petronilla in this
fresco. In the first place, it is certain that no other saint or
martyr is alluded to but the veritable St. Petronilla whose remains
reposed in the _hypogeum_ of the basilica of SS. Nereus and Achilleus.
Still, it is also certain from the Acts of the two martyrs, in which
mention is made of St. Petronilla, that she was not a martyr in any
sense whatever. The martyrology of Ado speaks of her thus: “When
Flaccus, a knight, desired to be united with her in marriage, she
asked for a delay of three days, and, together with her foster-sister,
Felicula, giving herself up to continual fasting and prayer, and the
divine Mysteries being celebrated on the third day, as soon as she had
received the Sacrament of Christ she lay down upon her bed and gave up
the ghost.” In other codices of her life the opening chapter is
entitled, _De obitu Petronillæ et passione Feliculæ_—On the death of
Petronilla and the martyrdom of Felicula. Hence there is a formal
contradiction between her Acts and this fresco. Without entering into
a critical examination of the authenticity of the Acts of Nereus and
Achilleus—which, by the way, receive new confirmation from every fresh
discovery in the cemetery—we will merely say that, were they
apocryphal, the supposition would be that they would rather magnify
her glory, by giving her the title of martyr, than diminish it.
Setting aside the inscription, the appearance of the picture confirms
her Acts. She is said to have been a virgin of extraordinary beauty,
and that she belonged to a noble family. The picture coincides
perfectly with this belief; for she is represented as being beautiful;
she wears her hair in plaited tresses, wound into a knot on the top of
the head, according to the custom of virgins in those days; while the
make of her dress proclaims her as belonging to noble rank. For the
rest, there is not a single authentic document which gives her the
title of martyr, but all speak of her as _Sancta Petronilla_, or
simply _Virgo Petronilla_. Hence there is no reason in the world why
we should give credence to the inscription of the painter. The title
of _martyr_ accorded to her by him does not become an inexplicable
mystery to us when we recall to mind the many and obvious examples of
the title of _martyr_ being given, especially by private individuals,
without due regard for historical facts. For instance, St. Pudentiana,
St. Cyriaca, and others have been styled martyrs, when we have
positive evidence that they were not. Thus popes who lived after the
persecutions—Mark, Julius, and Damasus—are called martyrs. Nay,
Petronilla herself is named _martyr_ in the _Liber Pontificalis_, at
the life of Leo III. (816), when the history of her life, as given by
Ado, was universally accepted. However, if we recall to mind what has
already been said on the special confidence of the primitive
Christians in the intercession of the martyrs for the dead; if we
reflect that they were regarded as the principal citizens in the
kingdom of God, to whom the heavens were opened, as St. Stephen said
(_martyribus patent cœli_), and hence that to them was attributed,
equally with the angels, the office of introducing departed souls into
the divine Presence, it is easy to understand why the artist, in
portraying Petronilla as receiving Veneranda into Paradise, either
believed her a martyr or deliberately wished to make her equal to one.
_Pictoribus atque poetis æqua est licentia._
But in this matter we must not observe the material form as it is
presented to us, accurately or inaccurately as the case may be. That
is merely relative and secondary. It is the spirit of the work which
we must contemplate—that great faith in the intercessory prayers of
those who had fought the good fight, and whose happiness was complete
in the Beatific Vision. Some of the epigraphs may be very inaccurate,
even exaggerated; yet they bear, in their way, testimony to a sublime
dogma of the church—the communion of saints, not only for the good of
the living, but for the happy repose of the dead. In fine, they are
the embodiment of the loving counsel: “It is a holy and a wholesome
thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins.”
[90] Mabillon, _Liturgia Gallicana vetus_, pp. 278, 289.
[91] Such the reward of his merit that his sacred blood
should penetrate and lave [spiritually] adjacent
remains.
[92] And being alike in the merits of innocence, children,
cover the sins of your parents by your pure
Intercession.
[93] It availeth nothing, nay it oppresseth rather, to
lie near the tombs of the blessed. The best life
approacheth the merits of the saints. In body it is not
necessary; let us cleave to them in soul, which, being
saved, can be the salvation of the body.
[94] The inscription is one carried from Rome to
the museum in Naples.
[95] The holy house of Blessed Felix now holds him,
and so possesses him for long years. Felix his patron
is glad in his happy guest; thus when the awful trumpet
shall shake the world with its sound, and resuscitated
souls shall return to their bodies, the youth shall be
protected before Christ, the Judge; he will stand near
Felix before the tribunal.
[96] For Blessed Nazarius and Victor alike protect
him at their side and crown him with merits. Oh! happy
he who was worthy to be led to the Lord through a
happier path by the two martyrs, and to obtain repose.
SUNSHINE.
Over the glad earth, with her robe of beauty,
Glideth the Spring;
Pouring out perfume from a thousand censers
The peach-wands swing.
Down through the sunny vista of the orchard
Tender green glows,
Gnarled apple-boughs arrayed in robes of splendor
Pearl tint and rose.
Out from the dead leaves and the soft green mosses,
Like joy from pain,
Trailing arbutus, the sweet May evangel,
Bloometh again.
Who can remember, in this wealth of beauty,
How April came?
Crowned with a frost wreath on her pallid forehead,
And snow-star rain.
Yet ‘neath the shadow of the wing of winter
Nature’s heart beat,
Golden wine surging through each rugged column
Like dancing feet.
Thus, my belovèd! though upon us shadows
Coldly may fall,
God worketh slowly with the germs of beauty
Given to all.
Out from the shadow of our solemn parting
Shall sweet hope spring;
Faith, to an altar where the fire is hallowed,
Her gifts will bring.
Grace hath not left thee; it but sleeps, belovèd.
Through wintry hours,
Waiting the footsteps of the soul’s glad spring-time
To wake the flow’rs.
What though the sadness of an earthly parting
On us be laid?
In the bright sunshine of the blest hereafter
Shadows shall fade.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
ALZOG’S UNIVERSAL CHURCH HISTORY. Pabisch and Byrne. Vol. II.
Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. 1876. (For sale by The
Catholic Publication Society.)
The time included in this second volume of the great work edited by
Dr. Pabisch and Father Byrne extends from the beginning of the fourth
century to the beginning of the sixteenth. We have already said all
that is requisite on the excellence of the work in general in our
notice of the first volume. At present we have no criticisms to make,
except on a very few special points. A condensed summary of this kind
is always liable to the fault of ambiguity in some of its general
statements from the very fact of its extreme conciseness, and thus may
give occasion to false impressions on the mind of an ordinary reader.
There is a notable instance of this on page 22, where a short notice
is given of the famous Ulfila. He was, as is well known, an Arian. The
historian tells us that he “accepted it [viz., Christianity] with
simple and earnest faith, just as he found it, putting aside all the
idle and speculative questions that distracted the religious mind of
the age.” We are inclined to agree with the opinion, which the author
evidently intended to express, that Ulfila was not culpably in error
respecting the faith, and that to his simple, untutored mind the
disputes between Catholics and Arians were unintelligible.
Nevertheless, the language we have quoted, taken in connection with a
previous sentence in which the Gothic bishop is called a “great
apostle and bishop,” and another in which it is curtly stated that the
Christianity to which the Goths were converted “meant simply the
_Arian heresy_,” is so extremely awkward and inaccurate that one would
naturally understand it to imply that Catholic faith only differed
from Arian heresy in respect to _idle and speculative questions_. A
careful and instructed reader would, of course, judge that Dr. Alzog
could not have intended such a grossly absurd and heterodox sense;
nevertheless, his translators would have done well to add an
explanatory note showing what he really did intend, but signally
failed to express in a suitable way.
On page 972 the author speaks of the “pantheistic language of
_Tauler_.” In this instance he seems to have followed closely the
opinion of Dr. Stöckl, an author for whom we have a sincere respect,
but whose estimate of Tauler we regard as altogether wrong. We have no
fault to find with the censure pronounced upon the _Theologia
Germanica_, and pass over what is said of the writings of Master
Eckhart, since, although we incline to the opinion that his subjective
sense was orthodox, the objective sense of many of his propositions is
pantheistic and deserved the condemnation of the Holy See. In regard
to Tauler, however, of whom the author speaks in another place in the
highest terms, Dr. Alzog has made, as it seems to us, an inconsiderate
statement by a blind following of Stöckl and other authors who condemn
all the German mystics without discrimination. We have never observed
a single expression in Tauler which has any more semblance of
pantheism than the language of St. Bonaventure or any other approved
mystical writer. We cannot perceive any difference between the
doctrine of Tauler and that of St. John of the Cross, except that the
latter states more distinctly the precise theological and
philosophical sense of several important propositions.
The learned editor-in-chief of the present translation, Dr. Pabisch,
sustains his reputation as a scholar who has a vast knowledge _de
omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_, perhaps on a par with that of Dr.
Alzog himself. With the exception of occasional infelicities of
diction of not much importance, and the frequent use of italics, which
gives us the sensation of jouncing on a road with many ruts in it, the
style and manner of the translation, which are chiefly due to the
diligent care of the Rev. Mr. Byrne, are satisfactory, and the various
tables at the end are extremely serviceable to the student. One more
volume will complete this exceedingly valuable compendium of the
history of the church.
BURNING QUESTIONS. By William Molitor. London: Burns &
Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Burning pretty briskly they have been, these questions, for some time
past; the fire seems to be spreading, and not a very speedy prospect
of putting it out! Mr. Molitor has a very agreeable and skilful way of
handling this kind of fire. A gentleman once went to lecture on
nitro-glycerine. Proceeding coolly and with an unembarrassed air to
the platform, one of the committee who surrounded him and were
pleasantly chatting on the subject of the lecture having casually
asked him if he would exhibit any specimens, he replied: “Oh!
certainly; my pockets are full of them.” Several gentlemen of the
committee retired to the back seats on hearing this announcement,
awaiting in fear and trembling the dreaded explosion in the safest
place they could find. The application of Catholic principles to
politics has long and widely been dreaded as explosive and incendiary.
Of late politics have been brought into pretty smart collision with
Catholic principles. Of course it makes no particular difference
whether you throw nitro-glycerine on a rock or throw a rock on
nitro-glycerine. An explosion has certainly resulted in Europe which
is likely to be followed by more explosions. If any damage is done, it
will not be suffered by the church. The anticipated destruction of
Hell Gate by General Newton next July is a figure of what must take
place in that quarter after which a certain locality in the East River
was facetiously named by our Dutch ancestors. We have said that Mr.
Molitor, although in a similar position with the gentleman who
lectured on nitro-glycerine, handles his themes very agreeably and
pleasantly. He is not only good-tempered and humorous, but he makes
his somewhat abstruse topics quite intelligible and interesting. The
form adopted by the author, who is a German priest of high rank in the
church and of considerable note as a writer, is that of a series of
conversational discussions. The interlocutors are educated men of
several nationalities, one of them an American, who are passing a
vacation together on the borders of Lake Como. Several little episodes
and descriptions of scenery are introduced, making a pretty and
enlivening _mise en scène_ for the talkers and their very intelligent
and learned talk. We have not seen the book in its original language,
which is German, but the English translation reads well, and the book
is a masterpiece in its way, both in respect to its matter and form.
The intelligent reader will already have perceived that its subject is
the relation of the church to the state. In substance it is a popular
exposition of one part of ethics which is treated of scientifically in
every Catholic text-book or treatise on morals—such, for instance, as
Liberatore’s _Philosophical Prelections_. We cannot too strongly
recommend its careful perusal to all those of our readers who wish to
understand what Catholic principles and doctrines really are, in
opposition to the popular errors condemned in the Syllabus. We are
glad to see that a more extensive and formal treatise on the same
topics by Hergenröther has been translated and is advertised in the
English papers, although we have not yet received a copy.
CATECHISM FOR CONFESSION AND FIRST COMMUNION. By a Priest of
the Diocese of Springfield. Springfield: Philip J. Ryan.
1876.
We never take up a new catechism without distrust. It is easy to find
objections, real or imaginary, to any and every abridgment of the
Christian doctrine, and consequently there is little difficulty in
coming to the conclusion that a new catechism is needed; but it is
rare that even tolerable success rewards the compilers of text-books
of this kind. We are of the opinion that it is not so important that
we should have the best possible catechism as that one which is good
should be adopted throughout the whole country. Many of our wisest and
most learned prelates have insisted upon this point, and in the first
Plenary Council of Baltimore (1852) a catechism was approved of and
recommended to the clergy of the United States; and this is still
to-day, we think, the best to be found in this country.
The catechism by a priest of the Diocese of Springfield, which we have
carefully examined, has not changed our opinion upon this subject. It
is not free from errors and inaccuracies which are of themselves
sufficient to deprive it of any value as a text-book of religious
instruction. In the “Act of Hope,” p. 4, we come upon the following
ungrammatical sentence: “O my God! who _has_ promised every blessing.”
“What is God?” is asked at the very outset, and the answer given is:
“God is a spirit.” This is no more a definition of God than it is of
an angel or a soul. “What was the Garden of Paradise? Answer—A place
of pleasure.” This is a poor, not to say false, rendering of the
Scriptural phrase. “Who is the devil? Answer—One of the fallen
angels.” Is he not the prince of fallen angels? “Who are the angels?
Answer—Pure spirits without a body.” Is it, then, possible for pure
spirits to have a body? Hell, we are informed, is “a place of eternal
torments, where there is all evil and no good.” This is theologically
inaccurate. It is impossible that a place where there is _no_ good
should exist, since existence itself is a good.
“What are the chief things we must believe? Answer—The chief things we
must believe are contained in the Apostles’ Creed.” Question and
answer do not agree. The one is _what_ and the other is _where_.
“Why did he establish but _one_ church? Answer—Because God being
_one_, he could have but _one_ church.” To affirm that God’s nature
renders more than one church impossible is, we think, unwarranted.
“Can the church err? Answer—She cannot.” The catechism approved by the
First Plenary Council says: “She cannot err in matters of faith.” The
priest of the Diocese of Springfield fails to give the four marks of
the church; and this is certainly a very grave omission. He, moreover,
says not a word about the infallibility of the pope, which is equally
inexcusable.
“How many kinds of sin are there? Answer—Two kinds: original sin and
actual sin.” We were under the impression that the kinds of sin were
very numerous.
“What sins are mortal? Answer—Grievous sins.” And what sins, then, are
grievous? Mortal sins, we suppose.
“Is tale bearing a great sin? Answer—Yes; supported by a text of
Scripture.” Now, we cannot think that tale-bearing is necessarily a
great sin, or even that it is generally so.
“What is the Eucharist made from? Answer—From wheaten bread and the
wine of the grape.” This, in our eyes, as a matter of taste, if for no
other reason, is very objectionable.
We confess that much of what we have found fault with is not of great
moment, but in a work of this kind we have the right to demand the
strictest care and accuracy. We have no desire to be severe in our
criticism, and gladly bear testimony to evidences of talent in the
author, who, with greater pains, would have given us, we doubt not, a
very excellent catechetical text-book.
OUTLINES OF THE RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF SWEDENBORG. By
Theophilus Parsons. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1876.
Philosophy of Swedenborg! That is a desideratum which we have looked
for in vain some twenty years or more. We have read a considerable
number of volumes of the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and much that
has been written on their contents, conversed with not a few of his
prominent followers, and yet we have failed to obtain from them all a
clear and philosophical statement of the doctrines which he taught.
Here, however, is a volume written expressly to give to the world such
a statement.
But, alas! we are again doomed to disappointment; for nowhere do we
find in it, in precise terms, the nature of this new revelation. The
nearest we come to it is in the following passage: “If a new
revelation was to be made through him, if it was to be made by his
statement of spiritual truths, they should be not merely new, but so
entirely distinct from all that was ever before known, so well adapted
to send the mind forward on a new path and from a new beginning, so
able to supply new motives and incentives to a new moral and
affectional as well as intellectual progress, and new instruction to
guide this progress, as to justify and authorize this large claim.”
The first pretension made in this paragraph for the new church is “new
motives and incentives to a new moral and affectional progress.”
Neither Swedenborg in his life nor his followers in theirs have yet
made this title good. Nowhere have they shown the signs of a higher
spiritual life or of a greater self-sacrifice. When they shall have
given us a St. Charles Borromeo, or a St. Vincent de Paul, or the
heroism displayed by a Sister of Charity, then, and not till then,
will there be reason to investigate their claim of a revelation which
is superior to that given by Christ himself.
The next assertion in this paragraph is that this “new revelation” is
a source of “new intellectual progress.” Swedenborg revolted at some
of the grossest errors of Protestantism, and, in repudiating them,
seems to have been entirely ignorant of Catholic theology. The author
supposes Swedenborg’s opposition to the errors of Calvinism is the
cause of its decline; seemingly, he is unaware of its refutation
centuries before Swedenborg lived, and the statements of the truths
opposed to it, by the Council of Trent. What is true in
Swedenborgianism is not new, and what is new is not true.
As a specimen of “intellectual progress” we take the very first
sentence of this book: “A church,” the author says, “may be defined as
the collective body of those who agree together in faith and in
worship.” This is the same as if he had said: “A man may be defined as
the collective body of those members which agree together in physical
action.” This is the play of _Hamlet_ with Hamlet left out. Had Mr.
Parsons the true conception of the church, this would have started the
question of the mission of his master!—a point upon which his evidence
would have proven very unsatisfactory.
Again he says “that it is of the very essence of this revelation that
it is given to man’s reason” (page 22).
Is the author ignorant of the fact that Christianity from the
beginning made, and has always made, appeal to man’s reason? By
Christianity we mean the Catholic, the Roman Catholic, Church, outside
of which Christianity never had, and has not now, a real, separate
existence. Have we to tell Mr. Parsons that the Catholic Church has
always upheld the value of human reason and defended its rights? Has
he ever looked into any work of Catholic theology? Has he ever opened
the _Summa_ of St. Thomas, or his volume _Contra Gentiles_? Does the
author not know that it was Martin Luther who asserted against the
church that “a man becomes all the better a Christian by throttling
his reason”? It seems that this new revelation, instead of being an
incentive to intellectual progress, acts upon the intellectual
faculties like a poison, leaving them without tone, vigor, or logical
perception, rapt in a dreamy self-sufficiency.
The author says “he agrees with Professor Tyndall in saying that to
yield to the religious sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the
problem of problems at the present hour,” and adds: “We believe also
that the system of thought and belief introduced by Swedenborg will
lead to the solution of this ‘problem of problems’” (page 30). This is
equivalent to saying that the Creator has made man for a destiny which
he has carefully concealed from him these six thousand years or more!
The same Creator did not fail to satisfy every appetite with its
proper food, except the highest of all—the thirst of the soul to know
its true destiny and the means of attaining it. This he allowed to
tantalize man up to the date of this new revelation! Pity poor
Professor Tyndall could not be made to see it! Happy Professor
Theophilus Parsons, who has found it at the feet of Emanuel
Swedenborg, whose words, he tells us, “were not God’s words, but his
own; full, as we believe, of truth and wisdom, but limited in their
scope and _liable to error_” (page 31).
Swedenborgianism is a product of a mind given to the pursuit of
natural sciences, ignorant of theology, and transported into the
dream-world—a sublimated materialism. There runs through all the
writings of the followers of Swedenborg the assumption of a superior
knowledge of spiritual truths, which allies it closely to the old
heresy of Gnosticism. In kind, Swedenborgianism does not differ from
modern Spiritism, only it assumes an air of greater respectability.
HYMNS. By Frederick William Faber, D.D. New York: E. P.
Dutton & Co. 1876.
The title “Faber’s Hymns” gleams in golden letters from the back of
this handsome little volume, “Hymns by Frederick Wm. Faber, D.D.” (in
choice mediæval characters) on either cover. “Faber’s Hymns”
consequently they must be. It is impossible to doubt their
authenticity, surrounded as they are by all that wealth of adornment
in which our ritualistic friends delight. Here are the thorns, and the
hammer and nails, and a chaste border of what may be taken at will for
the passion flower or forget-me-not, and over the title a gorgeous
cross and beneath it I. H. S. One would be shocked not to meet with
the softest-toned paper inside—paper full almost of that “dim
religious light” that Milton sang. He lingers over these externals,
for they are very lovely, and very characteristic; so lovely that a
sentimental person would weep to find they are only the adornments of
a wilful and systematic mutilation of the hymns of the gentle and
saintly man whose name the volume bears.
A complete collection of Father Faber’s Hymns was published in London
in 1861 with the approval of the author and under his direct
supervision. He wrote a preface to it in which he complained of the
liberties that had been taken with his hymns. He added that “he was
only too glad that his compositions should be of any service, and he
has in no instance refused either to Catholics or Protestants the free
use of them: _only in the case of Protestants he has made it a title
to stipulate, wherever an opportunity has been given him, that, while
omissions might be made, no direct alterations should be attempted_.
Hence he wishes to say that he is not responsible for any of the Hymns
in any other form, literary or doctrinal, than that in which they
appear in this edition.”
That edition bore and bears the same title as the one now under
notice. The difference in size, however, between the two volumes is
rather startling. This difference is accounted for by the fact that in
the ritualistic version fifty-eight hymns have disappeared. There are
one hundred and fifty in the original, there are ninety-two in the
new, and what the editor and publishers would doubtless consider
improved edition. Nor is the list of omissions complete even with
these fifty-eight absent.
But, to do what justice may be done to the ritualistic editor and
publishers—we should be delighted to give the editor’s name as well as
the publishers’, only that a judicious modesty has concealed it from
us—we quote from the preface: “This book of selections from Faber’s
Hymns contains all of the Author’s latest revised edition, except the
Hymns written for the use of Roman Catholics, such as those for the
festivals of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and the Holy Family, and for
the Devotions in honor of them, and the Hymns addressed to the Angels
and Saints.”
In other words, it contains “_all_ of the author’s latest revised
edition” with the insignificant omission of very nearly one-half. How
many hymns “of the author’s latest revised edition” were _not_
“written for the use of Roman Catholics” were an investigation worth
making, which the reader may take up at his choice. Leaving those
points, however, it is to be supposed that so honest a confession
amply atones for everything, especially after Father Faber’s
permission to Protestants to use his hymns. But there was a solemn
stipulation attached to that permission, and to inquire into how far
that stipulation has been observed is the purpose of the present
notice.
From the hymn entitled “God,” which is only the fourth in the volume,
verses 7 and 9 are left out. Those verses have the name of Mary in
them and sing of her beauty. The beauty of the angels and saints,
which is sung in the same hymn, is allowed to pass, but for the queen
of angels and saints of course there is no room.
In the hymn “My Father,” a few pages on, the same thing is observable.
The tender conscience of the editor revolted from and consequently
struck out such a verse as this:
“Mary, herself a sea of grace,
Hath all been drawn from Thine;
And thou couldst fill a thousand more
From out those depths divine.”
In the rendering of the _Veni Sancte Spiritus_ the last verse, which
prays for the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, is struck out, the editor
probably objecting to those gifts for some reason of his own. In
“Christmas Night” the pretty chorus is mutilated for the purpose of
throwing out the name of Mary. The original reads:
“All hail, Eternal Child!
Dear Mary’s little Flower
God hardly born an hour,
Sweet Babe of Bethlehem!
Hail Mary’s Little One,
Hail God’s Eternal Son,
Sweet Babe of Bethlehem,
Sweet Babe of Bethlehem!”
This the critical editor improves as
follows:
“All hail, Eternal Child!
Sweet Babe of Bethlehem!
Hail God’s Eternal Son,
Sweet Babe of Bethlehem!”
The fine hymn “The Three Kings” is shortened by two verses—4 and 12.
To be sure those two verses bear rather hardly on Protestants, but in
that case, and in many others, why not leave the hymn out altogether?
In the hymn immediately following it, “The Purification,” the last
verse, which claims “all rightful worship” for the Mother of Christ,
is thrown out—of course by Father Faber’s express desire. In “Lent,”
on the very next page, verse 3, which celebrates “the feast of
penance,” does not appear. Two pages on, in that most touching of
plaints, “Jesus Crucified,” such verses as these are found unworthy a
place:
“His mother cannot reach His face;
She stands in helplessness beside;
Her heart is martyred with her Son’s;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified!
* * * * *
“Death came, and Jesus meekly bowed;
His failing eyes He strove to guide
With mindful love to Mary’s face;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified!”
What a starved religion it must be that cannot stomach such lines as
those! And what justice to Father Faber! Yet the editor allows the
next hymn to open with the lines:
“Hail, Jesus! hail! who for my sake
Sweet blood from Mary’s veins didst take.”
It is to be supposed that he could not well deny the physical fact,
though he would seem to have strong doubts about it, for presently we
find him in “We come to thee, Sweet Saviour,” changing the last line
of the chorus,
“O blood of Mary’s son,”
to
“O blood of God’s dear son.”
Just one-half the hymn to “Jesus Risen” is thrown out, from verses 2
to 6 inclusively. These verses treat of the sacred humanity. “The
Apparition of Jesus to Our Blessed Lady,” “The Ascension,” and
“Pentecost,” which immediately follow, are among those struck out, as
are also the first eight verses of “The Descent of the Holy Ghost.”
The reason of course is that they eulogize the Mother of God. For the
same reason verses 13 and 14 are omitted. Indeed this hymn alone must
have caused the pious soul of the editor much trouble; for we find in
his fourth verse (the twelfth in the original) the lines:
“One moment—and the Spirit hung
O’er _them_ with dread desire”;
“O’er _her_ with dread desire”
is the original. Again in his sixth verse, which in the original reads:
“Those tongues still speak within the Church,
That Fire is undecayed;
Its well-spring was that Upper Room
Where Mary sat and prayed.”
Of course Mary cannot be tolerated in such company. Her name is
accordingly stricken from the roll and “the disciples” substituted for
it, so that the last line reads:
“Where the disciples sat and prayed.”
It is too much to look to this man for respect for the Mother of God;
but at least he might have some respect for Father Faber, and at the
very least for the laws of rhythm.
It is useless to multiply instances of this kind. They run through the
book. A few other gross liberties taken with the text cannot pass
unnoticed.
In “The Wages of Sin” the second verse of the author reads:
“We gave away all things for him,
And in truth it was much that was given—
The love of the angels and saints,
And the chance of our getting to heaven.”
The Protestant editor objects to
“The love of the angels and saints,”
for which he substitutes
“We gave away Jesus and God,”
a line that belongs to the third verse. This third verse of course
disappears, because it sings of “Mary and grace” and “prayer and
confession and Mass.”
Why the last verse of “Conversion” is condemned, even by so tender a
conscience as that of our editor, it is impossible to conceive.
“Jesus, Mary, love, and peace”
sang Father Faber in “The Work of Grace”;
“Jesus, _mercy_, love, and peace”
sings his self-appointed editor.
In “Forgiveness of Injuries,” the very title of which might have
caused him to pause, a happy specimen of his peculiar art and animus
is given. Father Faber’s first verse read
“Oh! do you hear that voice from heaven—
Forgive and you shall be forgiven?
No angel hath a voice like this;
Not even Mary’s song of bliss
From off her throne can waft to earth
A promise of such priceless worth.”
In the Protestant version only the first two lines appear; the other
four are taken from the second verse; the remainder of which, with the
rejected four of the first verse, are thrown away altogether.
Here an examination which might be prolonged indefinitely may as well
end. The reader may judge for himself whether the word “mutilation”—a
grave word to use—is misapplied in this instance. Selections, of
course, may be taken from a man’s works in these days, though we
should say not without permission from the author or from those
empowered to grant it. But that such permission should be extended to
hacking a man right and left, distorting his words, spoiling his
verses, studiously making him say just what he does not say,
persistently making him dishonor those whom he most honors—strange
indeed must be the conscience which can interpret the widest
permission thus! We need not refer to the glowing love of Father Faber
for the Blessed Virgin. It was no vague aspiration after some ideal
being, existing or not existing in a remote state. It was a vital
reality to him. The Blessed Virgin was near him always. To her he
turned with the love and confidence of a child, as to no imaginary
mother, at all times. Her name was ever on his lips, as her love was
in his heart. It was natural, then, that all his writings, but above
all his hymns, should bubble over with the love that was ever welling
upwards from the very depths of his being. Yet this man, pursued
apparently by hatred of the Mother of Jesus, and thinking to honor the
Son by dishonoring the Mother, follows her up and hunts her from the
pages of one so devoted to her, wherever it was possible to do so.
Further comment on a man who can commit so dishonest an act, in the
name too of religion, is unnecessary. As for the publishers who can
lend themselves to such unworthy work, we leave them to their own
reflections.
We have no desire to take this as characteristic of our Protestant
friends generally, particularly of the Protestant Episcopal section of
them. But there is too much of such dishonest practice. _The Following
of Christ_; the _Devout Life_, by St. Francis de Sales; the _Memorial
of a Christian Life_, by Father Lewis of Granada; the _Spiritual
Combat_, and all Father Avrillon’s works, have been tampered with in
the same manner and by the same set of zealous Christians. Is it too
much to detect in this the old spirit that gave us what is known as
the King James version of the Bible, and that is content to let
centuries of great Christian faith go by, for the purpose of claiming
a fancied union with that of the earlier centuries, basing the claim
on distorted extracts from the works of a few great writers?
GERTRUDE MANNERING: A Tale of Sacrifice. By Frances Noble.
London: Burns & Oates. 1875. (For sale by The Catholic
Publication Society.)
One begins to grow shy of “tales of sacrifice” written by Catholic
authors. They are so very like one another that the maxim _Ex uno
disce omnes_ is nowhere more applicable than to them. Given the
characters and their relations one to another, and a very limited
amount of experience will enable the reader to sketch out the story
faithfully enough for himself without going to the trouble of reading
the book. _Gertrude Mannering_, though bearing a strong family
likeness to her sisters, and beginning in the orthodox fashion—in the
convent, of course—improves upon acquaintance, and leaves the reader
with the impression that the hand which fashioned her is capable of
much better work. It is useless to sketch the story, which is a short
one and of simple enough construction. Its defects are of the usual
order, though in a less degree than ordinarily. There is too much
pious “talk,” in season and out of season. When will our Catholic
story-writers learn this first lesson of fiction: that a little of
such talk goes a very long way? Even inquiring Protestants are not
likely to be moved profoundly by the tremendous arguments of a girl of
sixteen or seventeen just out of a convent, while Catholics yawn as
soon as they appear, and either skip the pages that contain them or
close the book. Then, again, Gerty blushes a little too often, even
for a convent girl. The color rises in her cheeks more or less deeply
at almost every other page. One grows rather tired, too, of the
frequent mention of “the pale, proud face” of the “haughty Stanley”
and his “splendid intellect.” These, to be sure, are the ordinary
attributes of lady novelists’ heroes, but, at least, the last quality
might be judiciously omitted, unless excellent grounds are given for
it. A “splendid intellect” is no doubt a very good thing to have, as
is also a “pale, proud face” in its way; but when the “splendid
intellect” only shows itself in rather commonplace observations, such
as persons with no pretension at all to so rare a gift would use, the
effect is not quite satisfactory.
One more objection we must make, and a serious one. The sacrifice
around which the story turns is by no means to be commended and would
have been better omitted. Young ladies, even young ladies whose love
has been crossed, can easily find something far better to do with
their lives than to offer them to God for the soul of some young
gentleman whom they are particularly anxious to convert. Martyrdom for
the faith is one thing; but the picture of a young lady, who cannot
conscientiously marry a young infidel, offering her life to God for
his conversion, is quite another thing. One is tempted to ask how much
the “pale, proud face” and the “splendid intellect” of the “haughty
Stanley” had to do with so tremendous a sacrifice in the present
instance. Gerty might have done him, and herself, and her reader much
more good by living than by dying for him, as did that practical
patriot when the cause of his country seemed lost.
We have noticed this story at some length because the writer, whose
name meets us for the first time, seems, as already hinted, to give
promise of much better work. Lady Hunter is a well-drawn character.
So, apart from the excessive tendency to blush and “talk pious,” is
Gerty. The “haughty Stanley” is rather a conventional hero, which,
perhaps, is only natural in days when so many young men lay claim to
“splendid intellects.” The scene between Gerty and Stanley, where love
and duty on the one side, and love and pride on the other, contend for
mastery, is drawn with genuine power, while the end is indeed touching.
THE SCHOOL QUESTION: CATHOLICS AND EDUCATION. 1 vol. 8vo,
pp. 200. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
The republication of the various essays on education which have from
time to time appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, treating this
all-important subject from widely different points of view, presenting
a great variety of style and method as well as of authorship, will, we
are confident, be welcomed by the reading Catholic public as
especially opportune at the present moment, when the questions here
discussed enter so largely into all our social, theological, and
political controversies.
Though the subject of education is much talked of and written about,
it is rarely carefully examined or seriously studied. We have
ourselves been made to blush more than once by the ignorance on this
point of even intelligent Catholics. Self-respect, one would think,
should suffice to make us acquaint ourselves with the arguments upon
which our dissent from the theories of education commonly received in
this country is based. At the expense of very little time and labor
any ordinarily intelligent Catholic might be in a position to defend
himself against the attacks of the advocates of a purely secular
school system. To those who feel the need of informing themselves more
thoroughly on this subject we heartily commend these essays. The
questions with which they deal have been discussed, not without
ability and sound reason, in pamphlets and lectures; but before the
publication of this volume we should have been unable to refer to any
one book as giving a fair and satisfactory statement of Catholic
principles on the subject of education. This collection supplies a
want which many besides ourselves must have felt.
THE ACOLYTE; OR, A CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. A story for Catholic
youth. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham & Son. 1876.
Stories for Catholic youth, which are at once interesting and safe,
are greatly to be desired. Every honest attempt to satisfy this want
is consequently to be, in a certain sense, commended. Our boys,
however, fare rather badly at the hands of writers. The books written
for them are, as a class, either slow and uninteresting or so
goody-goody that a boy yawns before he has finished half a dozen
pages. The author of _The Acolyte_, though animated with the best
intentions, has fallen into the common mistake. His book is too
“good.” His hero, whom he evidently looks upon as the beau-ideal of a
Catholic student, is, it must be confessed, rather a tiresome young
person, having a dreadful propensity to indulge in disquisitions of
classroom philosophy with his young sister and others. In fact, the
atmosphere of the classroom pervades the book, and the result is not
agreeable. When boys read a story, they want to be out of school.
There are excellent things in this book, but such as would appear to
better advantage in one of a purely spiritual character, where they
would probably find more readers, even among boys, than they are
likely to do in their present form. The volume is dedicated to the
“Acolythical Society” of a church in Cincinnati. If such a society
exist, we recommend it to change its name. “Acolythical” is a
barbarism which should not be tolerated.
LITERATURE FOR LITTLE FOLKS. SELECTIONS FROM STANDARD
AUTHORS, AND EASY LESSONS IN COMPOSITION. By Elizabeth
Lloyd. Philadelphia: Sower, Potts & Co. 1876.
The object of this little book is to make even the “Little Folks” so
familiar with good English as habitually to speak and write it
correctly. They will, it is claimed by the author, thus acquire a
knowledge of correct English without going through the regular but
slow process of first committing the rules of syntax to memory. The
object is praiseworthy, and the plan of the work seems well adapted to
make it easy of accomplishment.
HOW TO WRITE LETTERS. A Manual of Correspondence, etc. By J.
Willis Westlake, A.M. 1 vol. 16mo, pp. 264. Philadelphia:
Sower, Potts & Co. 1876.
This is no mere compilation in the usual style of manuals, but an
elaborate and interesting little work, showing the proper structure,
composition, punctuation, formalities, and uses of the various kinds
of letters, notes, and cards. It also contains a considerable amount
of miscellaneous information about _epistolography_ in general, and an
article on “Roman Catholic Titles and Forms,” with particular
reference to this country. The appearance of such a complete work of
this nature is a proof of that more careful attention now paid by
Americans to the written forms and etiquette of social intercourse,
which, whatever may be ranted about republicanism and democratic
habits, are as necessary, or at least as desirable, in the United
States as in Europe. We would say of them, as of the devices of
heraldry, if used at all, they should be used correctly; and this book
will show people how to use them.
EXPLANATIO PSALMORUM. Studio F. X. Schouppe, S.J.
Prolegomena in S Scripturam. Auctore F. X. Schouppe, S.J.
Bruxellis. 1875. Benziger Brothers, New York.
These two treatises from the pen of Father Schouppe, the learned
Belgian Jesuit, who has labored so indefatigably to enrich Catholic
literature, form part of the author’s “Course of Sacred Scripture,”
but have been published separately in order to give them a wider
circulation. In the “Explanatio Psalmorum” Father Schouppe has chosen
for elucidation the psalms which are appointed to be recited in the
common offices of the Roman Breviary and his commentaries are made
with special reference to this official devotion of the priesthood.
Each psalm is accompanied by a paraphrase; a short but satisfactory
commentary follows; and, finally, the _sensus liturgus_ is given,
showing its special appropriateness to the various offices of the
Breviary in which it is found.
The “Prolegomena” is a brief introduction to the study of Holy
Scripture, in which the various subjects comprised under the head of
hermeneutics are discussed.
Both these treatises are characterized by the solid learning and lucid
style which distinguish all the works of Father Schouppe.
LES PRINCIPES DE LA SAGESSE. Par François de Salazar, S.J.
Traduits de l’Espagnol. Gand. Benziger Brothers, New York.
This work of Father Salazar, a Spanish Jesuit, was discovered in 1628
by Dom Geronimo Perez, a doctor of the University of Alcala, who, in
his _Summa_ _Theologiæ_, speaks of it in the following terms: “I have
read with attention all that the most weighty authors have written on
subjects proper to effect the conversion of the soul; but I have met
with no one who has treated these matters with a force equal to that
which is found in a manuscript of Francis de Salazar, a religious of
the Society of Jesus.”
The success of the book has more than justified this estimate of Dr.
Perez. It has passed through innumerable editions in the original
Spanish, and has been translated into nearly all the languages of
Europe. The French translation now before us has reached a fifteenth
edition.
BREVIARIUM ROMANUM, CUM OFFICIIS SANCTORUM NOVISSIME PER
SUMMOS PONTIFICES USQUE AD HANC DIEM CONCESSIS. Turonibus,
1875. Benziger Brothers, New York and Cincinnati.
This is a new and elegant edition of the Roman Breviary, to which have
been added the offices of St. Boniface and St. Paul of the Cross, the
recitation of which has recently been made obligatory upon all priests
by a decree of the Holy Father. It is printed in large and clear type
on delicately-tinted paper of a shade peculiarly grateful to the eye,
strongly bound in morocco, and of convenient size. We have rarely seen
a finer edition of the Breviary.
PIUS IX. AND HIS TIMES. By Thomas O’Dwyer, M.D., M.R.C.S.
(late English Physician at Rome). London: Burns, Oates & Co.
1876.
This volume is made up of a series of entertaining sketches of travel
and letters from Rome, where the author resided many years, during
which he was correspondent to the London _Weekly Register_. His
letters to that journal make up the bulk of the book. At a time when
so much that is false issues from the capital of Christendom and finds
a welcome place in the columns of non-Catholic journals, the letters
from the same city of an observant and intelligent Catholic would
possess a special value quite apart from their intrinsic literary
merit.
AUTHORITY AND ANARCHY; OR, THE BIBLE ON THE CHURCH. London:
Burns & Oates. 1876.
The author of this pamphlet presents the argument for the church from
the Scriptures with very considerable skill and ability.
CHARACTERISTICS FROM THE WRITINGS OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.
Being Selections, Personal, Historical, Philosophical, and
Religious, from his Various Works. Arranged by William
Samuel Lilly, of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. With
the author’s approval. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1876.
This is an American reprint of the London edition. The latter has
already been noticed in THE CATHOLIC WORLD. The praise given to the
original edition cannot be accorded to the present volume. The type is
too small for general use, and the book lacks what we characterized at
the time as “one of the best portraits of Dr. Newman which we have
seen.”
THE LITTLE BOOK OF THE HOLY CHILD JESUS: A Prayer-Book for
His Children. By Canon Warmoll. London: Burns & Oates.
This useful little book is intended for very young children. It
contains short prayers, acts, meditations, and instructions for Mass,
confession, communion, and daily conduct. The meditations are
admirable, being just adapted to catch the attention of children. The
instructions also are excellent. Only here and there are to be found
passages that strike us as a little too ponderous for very young
children.
* * * * *
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.
Lives of the Saints. Rev. F. X. Weninger, D.D. Part VI. P. O’Shea.
“Messenger Series.” No. 6. The Acts of the Early Martyrs. By J. A. M.
Fastré, S.J. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham & Son. 1876.
A Study of Freemasonry. Translated from the French of Monseigneur
Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.
Pax Animæ: A Short Treatise declaring how necessary the tranquillity
and peace of the soul is, and how it may be obtained. By St. Peter of
Alcantara. From an old English translation of 1665. Edited by Canon
Vaughan. London: Burns & Oates. 1876.
Major John Andre: An Historical Drama in Five Acts. By P. Leo Haid,
OSB. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. New York: The Cathol. Publication
Society. 1876.
The Martyrdom of St. Cecily: A Drama in Three Acts. By the Rev. Albany
Christie, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1876.
Christianity the Law of the Land. A discourse delivered in the Church
of the Saviour, Brooklyn, N. Y. By the Pastor. A. P. Putnam. With an
Appendix; or, Voices of American History. Brooklyn, N. Y.
Report of the Xavier Union of the City of New York. 1875.
Report of the City Superintendent of Schools to the Board of Education
of the City of New York, for the Year ending December 31, 1875.
Addresses at the Inauguration of Daniel C. Gilman, as President of the
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, February 22, 1876.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIII., No. 135.—JUNE, 1876.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1876.
GERMAN JOURNALISM.[97]
The universal hymn of journalistic praise, sung throughout the
civilized world with hardly a discordant note, is of itself no mean
evidence of the power of the press. “Great is journalism,” says
Carlyle. “Is not every able editor a ruler of the world, being a
persuader of it?” From France M. Thiers declares that the liberty of
the press is theoretically and practically the most necessary of all;
and was it not our own Jefferson who solemnly affirmed that he would
rather live in a country with newspapers and without a government than
in a country with a government but without newspapers? Did not the
great Napoleon himself stand in greater awe of a newspaper than of a
hundred thousand bayonets? “Give me but the liberty of the press,”
cried Sheridan, “and I will give to the minister a venal House of
Peers; I will give him a corrupt and servile House of Commons; I will
give him the full sway of the patronage of office; I will give him the
whole host of ministerial influence; I will give him all the power
that place can confer upon him to purchase up submission and overcome
resistance; and yet, armed with the liberty of the press, I will go
forth to meet him undismayed; I will attack the mighty fabric he has
reared with that mightier engine; I will shake down from its height
corruption and bury it amidst the ruins of the abuses it was meant to
shelter.”
But we do not propose to treat our readers to a dissertation written
in the style of him who declared that, were the starry heavens
deficient of one constellation, the vacuum could not be better
supplied than by the introduction of a printing-press. We fully
recognize, however, the very great power of the press which controls
public opinion, and indeed often makes it. Nothing is unimportant
which throws light upon the constitution and workings of this “Fourth
Estate,” into whose hands the destinies of modern nations and
civilization seem to have been delivered; and it is for this reason
that we take pleasure in bringing to the notice of the readers of THE
CATHOLIC WORLD the work of Professor Wuttke on _German Journalism and
the Origin of Public Opinion_.
It would be difficult to find a more curious or instructive book. For
years connected with the press himself, a leader of the “great German
party,” and the author of several valuable historical and
philosophical works, Herr Wuttke has brought to his present task the
thoroughgoing and painstaking conscientiousness of a German professor.
He is wholly in earnest; neither smiles nor laughs; does not even stop
to give smoothness and polish to his phrase, but without remorse or
fear invades the editorial sanctum, and pours upon its most hidden
mysteries the profane light; holds them up before vulgar eyes, and
leaves not the suspicion of a doubt but that he is resolved to tell
all he knows. His courage no one can deny. The enterprise to which he
has devoted himself was full of perils, none of which were hidden from
him.
German newspapers before the revolution of 1848 were chiefly of a
literary character. Their columns were filled with criticisms of
books, philosophical and theological discussions, æsthetic treatises,
accounts of travel, entertaining stories, and theatrical notices.
Scarcely any attention was paid to events of the day, and least of all
to those of a political character. The explanation of this anomaly is
simple. The governments of Germany exercised a rigorous censorship
over the press, and allowed nothing to be published which might set
people to thinking about what their rulers were doing. But the storm
of 1848 blew the pen from the hand of the official censor, and opened
the columns of the newspaper to all kinds of political theories and
discussions. The governments were at sea, borne helpless by the
popular wave which had broken them loose from their ancient moorings
and was carrying them they knew not whither. Their official organs,
with unlimited financial support from the state, were powerless,
because people refused to read them whilst independent journals were
within their reach. The revolutionary outburst was soon followed by a
reaction, partly brought on by its own excesses; and with the aid of
the military the former governments were restored. Restrictions were
again placed upon the liberty of the press; but so universal had the
political agitation been that to think of carrying through a policy of
rigorous repression was manifestly out of the question. It became
necessary, therefore, to devise some expedient by which the press
might be controlled without being muzzled.
With this view Von Manteuffel, the Prussian minister, established in
Berlin a “Central Bureau of the Press,” which stood in intimate
relations with the government and received from the “Secret Fund” a
yearly support of from forty to fifty thousand thalers. With this
money the pens of a crowd of needy scribes were bought, who for twenty
or thirty thalers a month agreed to write articles in support of the
views which the director of the Bureau should inspire. The next step
was to make an opening for these articles in the columns of journals
in different parts of the kingdom. This was not difficult, as the
contributions were well written, by persons evidently thoroughly
informed, and were offered at a nominal price, or even without pay. On
the 9th of March, 1851, the director of the Bureau sent a circular to
“those editors and publishers of the conservative party with whom he
has not at present the honor of holding personal relations,” in which
he promised, with special reference to his connection with the
Ministry of State, to send them from time to time communications
concerning the real condition of political affairs, in order to
furnish them indispensable materials for the successful prosecution of
their labors. This assistance was to be given free of cost, and many
editors were eager to avail themselves of it without inquiring with
much care into its special significance. In this way the “Central
Press-Bureau” wove a network of lines of communication over the whole
kingdom, which, however, was carefully hidden from public view. It
also kept up constant intercourse with the representatives of Prussia
at the various European courts, which enabled it to give tone to
public opinion on foreign affairs as well as on matters at home.
Through the influence of the government, and by spending money, the
Bureau gradually succeeded in introducing its agents into the offices
of many newspapers, and occasionally in getting entire control of this
or that journal. By this cunning policy the Prussian government was
able to lead the unsuspecting public by the nose.
Whilst confiding readers throughout the land were receiving the views
of their favorite journals as the honest expression of public opinion,
these newspapers were in fact only the whispering-galleries of the
Berlin ministry. The editors themselves were often ignorant of the
fact that the pens of their co-laborers had been bought and sold. Even
foreign journals, in England and France, did not escape the meshes of
the “Press-Bureau,” but were entrapped and made to do service for
Prussia.
Another contrivance for working up public opinion was the
“Lithographic Correspondence-Bureau,” which is a French invention.
This is an agency for the manufacture of correspondence from all parts
of the world, at home and abroad, which is lithographed and sent to
journals that are willing to pay for it; and nearly all of them find
this the cheapest and easiest method of keeping abreast of the times.
As the men who found these Bureaus are chiefly intent upon making
money, and live, moreover, in salutary awe of the government, they
generally find it advisable to place themselves at its disposition.
The correspondence-agency of Havas-Büllier in Paris was Orleanistic
under Louis Philippe, and Napoleonic under the Empire. In return it
obtained the monopoly of “lithographic correspondence”; so that,
during the reign of Louis Napoleon, France received its knowledge of
the foreign world through the single channel of this Bureau, which was
carefully supervised by the government. This was too excellent a
device not to find ready acceptance in Berlin, and in the most natural
way in the world the “Lithographic Correspondence-Bureau” was placed
alongside the “Press-Bureau”; the journals which had already fallen
under the influence of the latter yielded without resistance to the
seductions of the new ally, and thus became to a still greater extent
the tools of the government. In this way the “eunuchs of the court and
press” were in position deliberately and with malice to falsify and
pervert public opinion, which soon came to mean the utterances of the
herd of venal scribes in Berlin who had sold themselves, body and
soul, to the “Press-Bureau.” One of the five sins which, according to
Confucius, is unpardonable, is from under the mantle of truth to
scatter broadcast lies which are hurtful to the people; and this is
the charge which Professor Wuttke brings against the crowd of German
newspaper-writers.
Telegraphy, which was first introduced into Germany in 1849, led to
further improvements in the art of manipulating the press. The
“Correspondence-Bureau” of Havas-Büllier became a telegraphic agency
and furnished despatches free of charge to the Parisian journals, in
order to prevent the starting of a rival business; and when,
notwithstanding, the _Agence Continentale_ was organized, it was
suppressed by Persigny, the Minister of State, who by this means was
enabled to control the publication of telegrams in all the leading
journals of France. In Italy the Stefani Agency, at Turin, rendered
similar services to the government of Victor Emanuel; sending out the
most shameless falsehoods to the four corners of the earth, and
carefully suppressing whatever the authorities wished to conceal from
the public. These despatches were printed in the leading journals of
Europe and America as coming from unsuspected sources, when they were
in fact the “cooked” telegrams of the secret agents of Cavour and the
Revolution.
In 1850 Reuter established his telegraphic Agency in Aix-la-Chapelle,
but removed it in the following year to Berlin; and a few months
later, when the cable between Calais and Dover was laid, he made
London the central point of his operations. In Berlin a similar
business was opened by Dr. Wolf, a Jew. In 1855 he sold out
to a number of capitalists, who organized the _Continentale
Telegrafenkompagnie_, and then entered into a combination with Reuter
and Havas, through which they controlled the telegraphic despatches
furnished to the press of all Europe. To have the latest news was a
journalistic necessity; and yet to maintain special agents in the
great centres, and to pay the high rates for sending special
telegrams, would have been too heavy a burden. Nothing remained,
therefore, but to take the despatches of the Agencies which were now
in league with one another.
In Prussia nearly all the telegraphic lines, most of which were put up
during the reaction after the revolution of 1848, were in the hands of
the government; and this, of itself, was sufficient to place the
Agencies at its disposal. And in point of fact, it is no secret that
in Prussia there exists a censorship of the telegraph, and that the
government decides as to the despatches which the newspapers shall
receive. Whoever will take the trouble to weigh this matter will see
what a terrible instrument for the perversion of public opinion is
thus placed in the hands of the state. A despatch has always in its
favor the force of first impressions. When, after days or weeks,
explanations follow, they are passed over, new events having already
preoccupied public attention. All the world reads the telegram;
comparatively few pay any attention to the later-coming corrections of
inaccurate or false statements.
Prussia, then, through her “Central Press-Bureau,” her
“Correspondence-Bureau,” and her “Telegram-Bureau,” succeeded in
getting control of the leading German journals, which, while keeping
up the appearance of independence and honesty, were either in her pay
or under the influence of her agents. Public opinion in Germany was at
her mercy; so that, after she had made the most thorough preparations
for the war of 1866, she found no difficulty in having it proclaimed
throughout the fatherland that Austria had been arming and was ready
to fall upon her in order to rob her of Silesia. The newspapers even
lent themselves, when the war had begun, to the publication of a
spurious address to the army by Benedek, the Austrian leader, in which
there was not one word of truth, but in which he was made to speak in
a way that could not fail to arouse the indignation of the Prussian
soldiers. This forged document was circulated by the press and read by
the captains to their men as soon as they had entered Bohemia.
The creation of the new empire has not improved German journalism. The
“Press-Bureau” has enlarged the circle of its activity, while the
government has invented other means not less effective for controlling
the newspapers. “We care not for public opinion,” said a high official
in Berlin some months ago; “for the entire press belongs to us.”
Prussia has German public opinion, in so far as it is allowed to find
expression, in her keeping. After the war with Austria the annual
secret fund of the “Press-Bureau” was increased to 70,000 thalers; but
this is in reality a very inconsiderable portion of the money at its
disposition. The incorporation of Hanover and Hesse with Prussia threw
into the hands of the government very large resources. From George of
Hanover King William exacted 19,000,000 thalers, and from the Prince
Elector of Hesse property with an annual rental of 400,000 thalers.
Both these sums were placed at the disposal of Bismarck by the
Landtag, that he might use them to defeat the “intrigues” of the
enemies of Prussia. It was on the occasion of this grant that Bismarck
used the words which have given to the “Press-Bureau” fund a name
which it can never lose. “I follow,” he said, “malignant reptiles into
their very holes, in order to watch their doings.” The money which he
received to carry on this dark underground business was appropriately
designated by the Berlin wits the “Reptile-fund” (_Reptilienfond_). A
vocabulary of slang has been invented to designate the hired scribes
of the Bureau and their operations. Bismarck calls them “my
swine-herds” (_meine Sauhirten_). To write for the “Press-Bureau” is
to take mud-baths (_Schlammbäder nehmen_); and the writers themselves,
who are classified as “officious,” “high-officious,” “half-officious,”
and “over-officious,” are called “mud-bathers” (_Schlammbäder_), and
they devour the “Reptile-fund.” The instructions issued by the
directors for the preparation of articles for the different journals
are styled “wash-tickets” (_Waschzettel_). The directors who are not
immediately connected with the Bureau are known by the name of “Piper”
(_Pfeifer_), which, in the jargon of Berlin, has a peculiar and by no
means flattering signification.
As the buzzards fly to the carcass, so gathered the hungry German
scribes around the “Reptile-fund”; but their pens were cheap and the
“Press-Bureau” was able to feed a whole army of them, and yet have
abundant means to devote to other methods for influencing public
opinion. Its machinations are, of course, conducted with the greatest
secrecy. All manner of blinds are used. Its agents assume in their
articles a style of great independence, deal largely in loud and
captious epithets, occasionally even criticise this or that measure of
the government, and ape the ways of honest and patriotic men. The
“Central Press-Bureau” itself is pushed as far out of sight as
possible; stalking horses and scarecrows are put forward; and the
institution is made to appear as only a myth. But the Cave of Æolus is
in Berlin, and the winds which are let loose there blow to and fro,
hither and yon, through all Germany, starting currents in other parts
of the world. In this cave the old snake-worship of so many ages and
peoples still exists, and the god is the “Reptile-fund.” Out of this
cavern are blown the double-leaded leaders which fall thick all over
the land, and always, as if by magic, just in the right place. False
reports eddy through the air; stubborn facts are pulled and bent and
beaten until they get into the proper shape. The light which is
permitted to fall upon them is managed as skilfully as in an
art-gallery or a lady’s drawing-room. With the aid of the
“Reptile-fund” the “Press-Bureau” found little difficulty in extending
its business of buying up journals, paying sometimes as high as a
hundred thousand thalers for a single newspaper; and where this could
not be done money was freely spent to start an opposition sheet.
Whenever a journal was found to be growing weak, aid was proffered on
condition that it should open its columns to the “Press-Bureau”;
sometimes with the understanding that one of its agents should be
placed in the editorial chair. So thoroughly has this system of
bribery taken possession of Prussian journalism that the court decided
(October, 1873), in a suit against the _Germania_ newspaper, that to
accuse an editor of being in the pay of the “Press-Bureau” is not a
criminal offence, since it does not in the public estimation tend to
lower his character.
Occasionally, in spite of the greatest care, the secrets of the Bureau
are betrayed. Thus in February, 1874, a circular was sent to various
journals, and amongst others to the _Neue Wormser-Zeitung_, with the
offer to furnish from the capital, first, a tri-weekly original
article on the political situation; second, original political and
diplomatic advice from all the departments of the government, also
three times a week; third, a short but exhaustive parliamentary
report; fourth, special correspondence from other capitals (written in
Berlin); fifth, original accounts of foreign affairs, drawn from the
special sources of the Bureau; and, sixth, a short daily, as well as a
more lengthy weekly, exhibit of the Berlin Bourse. For these services
nothing was demanded; but, that the thing might not appear too bald,
it was stated that the editor should fix his own price. Now, it so
happened that when this circular was received by the _Neue
Wormser-Zeitung_ that paper was in the hands of Herr Westerburg, a
Social Democrat, who straightway took the public into his confidence.
The newly-acquired provinces of Prussia were a favorite field for the
operations of the Berlin Bureau. General Manteuffel, in 1866,
suppressed the _Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung_, and handed the
country over to the reptile-press. In Alsace and Lorraine also
journals were suppressed, and others established, by the government.
In these provinces the independent press has wholly disappeared, with
the exception of two tame and unimportant sheets. In fact, if we
except the Catholic and a few Social Democratic newspapers, there is
hardly a journal of any weight in the German Empire in which the
press-reptile is not found. “I know,” wrote to Professor Wuttke an
author well acquainted with the circumstances—“I know few German
newspapers in which there is not a mud-bather.” For even passing
services the Bureau is ready to pay cash. Chaplain Miarka, the editor
of the _Katholik_, has declared publicly that he was offered 7,500
thalers on condition of consenting to write in a milder manner during
the elections.
The working up of public opinion through the press extends far beyond
the boundaries of the German Empire. The proceedings of the court in
the trial of Von Arnim in 1874 developed the fact that he, whilst
representing Prussia at the Tuileries, had entered into relations with
various journals of Paris, Vienna, and Brussels; and it is generally
understood that 50,000 thalers were placed at the disposition of Herr
Rudolf Lindau for the purpose of manipulating the Parisian press.
Through these and similar means an opening for the articles of the
“Press-Bureau” was made in English, French, and Belgian newspapers;
and these articles, which had been first written in German, were
translated back into German and published by the reptile-press as the
expression of public opinion in foreign countries on Prussian affairs.
“I could give the names,” says Professor Wuttke, “of the
press-reptiles who write for the _Indépendance Belge_, of those who
take care of the _Hour_, and of others whose duty it is to furnish
articles to the Italian and Scandinavian newspapers.”[98] To hold the
English in leading strings, Berlin had, in 1869, a _North Germany
Correspondence_, and then, under the supervision of Aegidi, the
director of the “Press-Bureau,” a _Norddeutsche Correspondenz_, which
is still the chief source from which both English and American
journals draw their information on German affairs. The attempt made
from Berlin to buy Katkoff’s _Journal of Moscow_ was defeated by the
incorruptibility of the proprietor.
The reptile-press, of course, ignores and strives to hush whatever may
throw light upon the dark workings and intrigues of the “Press
Bureau”; and no better instance of its power in this respect can be
given than the history of Professor Wuttke’s book on German
journalism. Its existence was not recognized by the press-reptiles;
its startling revelations were ignored or received in profound
silence; and so successful was this policy that a year after the
publication of the work only three hundred copies had been sold; and
it is chiefly through the efforts of a Catholic newspaper—the
_Germania_—and of Windthorst, a leader of the party of the _Centrum_,
that it has finally been brought to public notice and has now reached
a third edition. In the German Parliament, on the 18th of December,
1874, Windthorst took Professor Wuttke’s book with him to the
speaker’s stand, and, in a powerful address against any further grant
of the “Secret Fund” (_Reptilien-fond_), made special reference to
this work, which he characterized as “conscientious” and full of
startling revelations which leave room to suspect even worse things. A
year before (December 3, 1873) the same speaker declared in the
Prussian Landtag that in Germany the government had nearly succeeded
in getting entire control of the press; that the influence of the
“Reptile-fund” was already noticeable in foreign countries,
particularly in the newspapers of Vienna; and that the attempt had
been made to establish a “Reptile-Bureau” in connection with the
London embassy; and when this was found not to work well, a
“Press-Bureau” for England, France, and Italy was organized in Berlin.
These charges, made in public parliamentary debate, were allowed to
pass without contradiction, although Aegidi, the director of the
Central Bureau, was a member of the Assembly and present during the
discussion.
Eugen Richter, the member for Hagen, brought forward other accusations
of like import on the 20th of January, 1874. We have already given an
example of the uses to which the Prussian government puts the
reptile-press, in the instance of the forged army address attributed
to Benedek, and published throughout Germany at the outbreak of the
war with Austria in 1866.[99] Similar services were rendered by the
“mud-bathers” at the time of the crisis with France in 1870. A false
telegram, purporting to come from Ems, dated July 13, 1870, in which
the French minister, Count Benedetti, was said to have grossly
insulted King William, was eagerly taken up by the venal press and
commented upon in a way which excited the greatest indignation in the
minds of the Germans against Napoleon, who, they firmly believed, was
bent upon humiliating Prussia. In this way public feeling in both
countries was fanned into a heat which could be cooled only by blood.
The account of the interview at Ems was a fabrication, as Benedetti
has since clearly shown; but Bismarck’s “swineherds” had faithfully
done their unholy work.[100]
When, just at the beginning of the war, the French army made an attack
on Saarbrücken, the reptile-press spread the report that they had
reduced the city to ashes; and this infamous falsehood made a deep
impression throughout Germany. A similar lie had been propagated at
the commencement of the Austrian war. On the 27th of June, 1866, the
Prussians were driven from Trautenau by General Gablenz, and forthwith
the reptile-press raised the cry that the citizens of Trautenau had
poured from their houses hot water and boiling oil on the retreating
soldiers; and the government lent itself to the spreading of this
detestable calumny by dragging off the mayor of Trautenau, Dr. Roth,
to prison, where he was detained in close confinement nearly three
months.[101]
There is no subject on which the organs of the “Press-Bureau” are more
united or more eloquent than the necessity of keeping up the full
strength of the standing army; nay, they have gone so far as to demand
that the Reichstag shall consent to take from the representatives of
the people the right to legislate on military affairs during the next
seven years. But before taking this step, hitherto unheard of in the
history of constitutional government, it was necessary to manipulate
public opinion, so that the members of parliament might seem to be
compelled to this decision by the will of the people themselves. With
this view packed meetings were gotten up in various parts of the
empire which the telegraph lyingly announced to the world as very
numerously attended and unanimous in demanding the seven-year
enactment; but the popular gatherings which were held to protest
against this violation of constitutional rights were passed over in
dead silence, and their action, consequently, did not become known
outside of their own immediate neighborhood. The reptile-press acted
in full harmony with the “Telegraph-Bureau.” The _Spener’sche
Zeitung_, in Berlin, went so far as to declare that no protests had
been heard, whereupon the _Provinzial-korrespondenz_ exclaimed that
the movement, which had proceeded from the depths of the nation’s
heart with unexpected power, should force the Reichstag to yield to
the demand of the government.
As a part of the same programme, the “Press-Bureau” just a year ago
raised the cry that France was buying horses, and that in less than
three months she would declare war on Germany. On the same day and at
the same hour this startling announcement was made in Frankfort, in
Leipzig, in Stuttgart, and other cities. The following day hundreds of
newspapers throughout the fatherland took up the chorus and began to
shout that the empire was threatened. Now, all the world knows that
France at that time was as little thinking of making war on Germany as
of tunnelling the Atlantic Ocean; but this piece of journalistic
legerdemain roused the Teutonic mind to the necessity of strengthening
the army and increasing the military resources of a country which was
already a camp of soldiers.
No figure of rhetoric is more forcible than repetition, and we may
calculate with mathematical precision just how many leading articles,
all saying the same thing in fifty different localities, are required
in order to fabricate a public opinion on a given subject.
Another trick of the reptile-press is employed to prevent the people
from getting a knowledge of the speeches of the opposition in
parliament. The arguments of these orators are either excluded from
its columns or caricatured so as to appear childish or ridiculous.
When, for instance, Sonnemann, the member for Frankfort, made an
appeal in behalf of the Alsacians, who had themselves been reduced to
dead silence, and showed from authentic documents the pitiable
condition to which that province had been brought, the organs of the
“Press-Bureau” declared that “to answer such utterances would be
beneath the dignity of a chancellor of the empire; such want of
political honor had no claim to pass as the honest views of an
individual”; and when Mallinckrodt placed his hand on Lamarmora’s book
to prove his charges against Bismarck, the _Spener’sche Zeitung_
announced that “the national parties were filled with deepest disgust
at the conduct of the _Centrum’s_ faction, and were not able to
conceal their regret that Prince Bismarck should deign to answer these
Ultramontane brawlers, since, by consenting to notice the tricks of
Windthorst, Mallinckrodt, and Schorlemer, he was giving prominence to
what ought to be completely ignored”; and then closed with the phrase
of Frederick the Great, “Shall we play at fisticuffs with the rabble?”
The _Norddeutsche Allgemeine_ and _National Zeitung_ indulged in
similar strains, and these articles were then republished by nearly
the entire German press. When an opponent is especially troublesome
the press-reptiles raise the cry that he has been bought up by foreign
gold; and in this they are probably sincere, since it must be
difficult for them to understand how any man could refuse to sell
himself for a proper consideration.
For five years now Bismarck’s venal press has poured the full tide of
its wrath upon the bishops and priests of Germany. Here was a subject
upon which the reptiles could distil their venom to their hearts’
content. What magnificent opportunities were here offered to the
“mud-bathers” to hunt through the sewers of the centuries and to
wallow in the mire of the ages; to revive Luther’s vocabulary and
refurbish the rusty weapons that for hundreds of years had lain idle
and hurtless! What an open field was here in which to ventilate
historical calumnies, to produce startling effects by the dramatic
grouping of striking figures; to bring out the light of the golden
present by causing it to fall upon the dark and bloody background of
the past! And what divine occasions for indignation, wrath, horror,
word-painting to cause the hair to stand on end and the eyes to start!
Here was place for withering scorn, patriotic thunder, lurid lightning
to sear the Jesuitic head bent upon the ruin of the new empire. And
with what demoniac delight the hired crew ring the changes on each
popular catch-word—progress, liberty, culture, free thought; and how
they foam and rage when a bishop or a priest has the “boundless
impudence” to speak in defence of the church! “It has come to this,”
says the _Dresdener Volksbote_ (April 17, 1873): “Minorities must keep
silence.”
“Gone,” exclaims a former German Minister of State,—“gone is the reign
of noble ideas; the power of the love of country and of freedom; the
worth and honor of the national character! Money alone is loved, and
all means by which it is acquired seem natural and praiseworthy.” The
very foundations of the moral order are attacked by this vile press.
The events of 1866 and 1870 are now spoken of as “an historical
phenomenon, which cannot be judged by the current notions of morality,
but in accordance with which these moral principles themselves must be
widened and corrected.” This is the low and degrading philosophy to
which the idolatry of success fatally leads.
But, for the honor of journalism, a portion of the German press has
remained closed against the insidious power of the “Reptile-fund.” No
Catholic newspaper has lent itself even covertly to this conspiracy
against truth and liberty; and it must be admitted, too, that the
socialistic journals have refused the government bribes; their
circulation, however, which is not large, is confined almost
exclusively to the laboring classes, and their influence is but little
felt. The power of the Catholic press in Germany is of recent growth.
In the early part of the present century the only periodical of any
weight devoted to the defence of the interests of the church in
Germany was the _Theologische Quartalschrift_, founded in 1819 as the
organ of the Tübingen professors. Twenty years later Joseph Görres
established in Munich the _Historisch-politischen Blätter_, which soon
caused the influence of his powerful mind to be felt throughout the
fatherland, and which, under the editorial management of the historian
Jörg, is still to-day one of the ablest reviews in Germany. The
censorship of the press which, prior to the revolution of 1848, was
maintained in all the German governments, was exercised in a way that
rendered Catholic journalism impossible. No sooner, however, had the
Parliament of Frankfort proclaimed the liberty of the press than the
Catholics hastened to take advantage of it by creating newspapers to
advocate their religious interests. The bishops and priests, in
obedience to the earnest exhortations of Pius IX., threw themselves
into the work with a will; the people followed their example;
press-unions were formed and a large number of Catholic newspapers
sprang into life. Bismarck’s persecution of the church gave yet
greater force to this movement and increased both the number and the
circulation of Catholic journals. In the new German Empire there are
to-day two hundred and thirty newspapers devoted to the interests of
the church. The _Augsburger Wochenblatt_ has a subscription list of
thirty-two thousand; the _Mainzer Volksblatt_, one of thirty thousand.
Twelve thousand copies of the _Germania_ (in Berlin) are sold daily,
and many other Catholic journals have a circulation of from five to
ten thousand copies. As this powerful Catholic press could not be
bought, nothing remained to be done but to silence it.
At the close of the year 1872 all Prussian journals were warned, under
pain of confiscation, not to publish the Christmas Allocution of Pope
Pius IX. Mallinckrodt, the vigilant Catholic leader, raised his voice
in protest against this attempt upon the liberty of the press; but the
Reichstag was silent, and the newspapers which had not heeded the
warning were seized. The _Mainzer Journal_ was brought into court for
having presumed to print an open letter to the emperor, in which was
found the following sentence: “The emperor is bound by the laws of the
moral order just like the least of his subjects.” The government
procurator (Schön, in Mainz, on the 19th of December, 1873) declared
that the emperor is a “sanctified” person, whose majesty is “above the
laws of the state,” and the bare address “to the emperor” is a
punishable offence. For republishing this open letter the editors of
the _Kölner Volkszeitung_ and the _Mühlheimer Anzeiger_ were condemned
to prison for two months. Siegbert, the managing editor of the
_Deutscher Reichszeitung_ (Catholic), was called upon to give the name
of the writer of a certain article which he had published; and upon
his declaration that this would be a breach of honor he was thrown
into prison.
On the 1st of July, 1874, a new law came into force, by which still
further restrictions were placed upon the liberty of the press; and on
the 15th of the same month the Minister of Justice enjoined upon the
government officials to keep sharp watch upon the newspapers. Within
six months from this date the _Germania_ newspaper in Berlin had been
condemned thirty-nine times; and there were besides twenty-four
untried charges against it in court. In January, February, March, and
April, 1875—four months—one hundred and thirty-six editors were
condemned either to prison or to pay a fine. The most of these were
Catholics, though some of them belonged to the democratic and
socialistic press. It is not necessary to say that the “press-reptiles”
were not represented among them. These editors were thrust into the
cells of common criminals, were refused books and writing material,
and were forced to live upon “prison fare,” which many found so
unpalatable that they could eat nothing but rye-bread.
The reptile-press alone is tolerated. If a man wishes to be honest,
and has, notwithstanding, no desire to go to jail, the most unwise
thing which he could do would be to become a journalist in the new
German Empire. To refuse to eat of the “Reptile-fund” is to condemn
one’s self to Bismarck’s “prison fare” of beans and cold water.
To poison the wells is not held to be lawful, even in war; but to
taint the fountain-sources of knowledge, and to corrupt the channels
through which alone the public receives its general information, is
not thought to be unworthy of a great hero, if we may judge from the
Prussian chancellor’s popularity with Englishmen and Americans, which
is not diminished even by his determined efforts to crush all who
refuse to sell their souls or renounce their manhood.
“The only man,” said Carlyle of Bismarck—“the only man appointed by
God to be his vicegerent here on earth in these days, and knowing he
was so appointed, and bent with his whole soul on doing and able to do
God’s work.” And our great centennial celebration of the reign of
popular government is to be desecrated by a colossal statue of the man
who is its deadliest enemy.
We have not, in this country, wholly escaped the evil effects of the
vast European conspiracy against truth and honor which is carried on
through the agency of “Press-Bureaus,” “Telegram-Bureaus,”
“Correspondence-Bureaus,” and “Reptile-funds.” One may, for instance,
readily detect the “trail of the serpent” in many of the cable
despatches to the Associated Press, and not less evidently in the
European correspondence of some of our leading journals. Is it not
worthy of remark that so few of our great newspapers should have taken
up the defence of the persecuted and imprisoned German editors? The
American press, which can, upon such slight compulsion, be blatant and
loud-mouthed, has been most reserved in its treatment of Bismarck;
has, indeed, hardly attempted to veil its sympathy with his despotic
and arbitrary measures. If this approval of tyranny went merely the
length of applauding his persecution of the Catholic Church, it might
be explained by the desire to pander to popular Protestant prejudice.
But how shall we account for it when there is question of the
degradation and enslavement of the press itself; of the violation of
every principle of liberty; and of the systematic consolidation of the
most complete military despotism which the world has ever seen? Might
it not be possible, even, to trace to the _Reptilien-fond_ the recent
attempts to rekindle in the United States the flame of religious hate
and fanaticism? However this may be, it is unfortunately true that
money is the controlling power in American as in German journalism.
Its influence is as discernible in the columns of our own
“independent” press as in a genuine Berlin “mud-bather’s”
double-leaded leader.
“How can we help it?” said a well-known editor of Vienna. “A newspaper
office is a shop where publicity is bought and sold.” “I will be
frank,” said another journalist. “I am like a woman of the town (_Ich
bin die Hure von Berlin_): if you wish to have this and that written,
pay your money.” Praise and blame, approval and condemnation, are the
articles of merchandise of the press, and they are offered to the
highest bidder.
“When the proprietor of a journal,” says Sacher-Mosach, a widely-known
and conscientious writer, who was for some time connected with the
Vienna newspaper, the _Presse_, and afterwards with the _Neue Freie
Presse_—“when the proprietor of a journal has entered into lucrative
relations with a bank, he is not content with placing his sheet at its
disposition in whatever relates to financial matters; but if the
director of the bank, as sometimes happens, is a man of fancy who
patronizes an actress who has beauty but not talent, he will order his
theatrical critic to praise this lady without stint; and the critic
will reserve all his squibs for some old _comédienne_ who is not
protected by a bank director or by any one else. If a great publisher
has all the works which appear in his house advertised in the journal,
the proprietor will direct his book critic to find them all admirably
written, profound, and full of the freshest and most delightful
thoughts; and the author is just as certain to be praised in this
sheet as he is to be torn to pieces by the newspapers in which his
book has not been advertised. The first principle of journalistic
industry and of the criticism at its command is to recognize merit
only when and so far as it is financially profitable to do so.”[102]
It is far from our thought to wish to deny the vast power for good
exercised by the press; but this is its own constant theme, and we
have deemed it a more worthy, even though a less pleasant, task to
point out at least some of the ways in which its power may be turned
against the highest interests of truth and the dearest liberties of
the people. A thoughtful and fearless work on the influence of
journalism on our American civilization would be a fitting
contribution to the centennial literature, and at the same time a most
instructive chapter in the history of the country. The only attempt of
this kind which so far has been made does not rise above the dignity
of a compilation, and is without value as a philosophical discussion
of the subject.
[97] _Die deutsche Zeitschriften und die Entstehung
der öffentlichen Meinung. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte
des Zeitungswesens._ Von Heinrich Wuttke.—The German
newspapers and the origin of public opinion: a
contribution to the history of journalism. Leipzig:
1875.
[98] _Die deutsche Zeitschriften_, p. 309.
[99] This spurious document has got into many
books; _e.g._, into Hahn’s _Geschichte des preussischen
Vaterlandes_.
[100] See _Ma Mission en Prusse_, by Benedetti, Paris,
1871, p. 372 et seq.
[101] Roth, _Achtzig Tage in preussischen Gefangenschaft_,
p. 13.
[102] Sacher-Mosach, _Ueber den Werth der Kritik_,
Leipzig, 1873, p. 55.
SOME FORGOTTEN CATHOLIC POETS.
“… Illacrimabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longa
Nocte carent quia vate sacro.”
When we speak of Catholic poets, three of the foremost names in
English literature come up at once—Dryden, Pope, and Moore. The two
latter are more eminent, perhaps, as poets than as Catholics, but of
Dryden’s sincerity and steadfastness in the change of faith which
“moralized his song” and gave a masterpiece to English poetry there
is, happily, no doubt. Many later names are familiar to the general
reader as those of Catholics whose genius has lent lustre to our own
epoch. Some, like Newman, Faber, De Vere, and Adelaide Procter, claim
fellowship with the most famous and are known wherever English poetry
is read. Others, like Caswall, Coventry Patmore, and D. F. MacCarthy,
are favorites of a narrower circle. All are known as Catholic poets to
many by no means intimate with their works. Even poor Clarence Mangan
has not been denied his place and his crust of praise on the doorsteps
of the “Victorian Era”—he was never a very importunate suppliant: no
act of Parliament could have made that minstrel a “sturdye begger”—and
is scarcely yet forgotten, although he added to the (æsthetic) crime
of being a Catholic and the weakness of being an Irishman the
unpardonable sin of living and dying in utter poverty and
wretchedness.
Our present business, however, is not with these or with any who,
being dead, have friends and followers to sound their praises, or,
living, whose books may still be read and admired, if only by
themselves. We shall take leave to introduce the reader into an
obscurer company, where he will yet, we are assured, find those who
are not unworthy of his friendship and esteem. They themselves and
their memories even are ghosts; but they will gladly take form and
substance to receive our sympathetic greeting and unbosom themselves
of their sorrows. Fate has pressed hardly on them; they have felt the
“iniquity of oblivion”; forgetfulness has been for most of them their
only mourner; upon their trembling little rushlight of glory that each
fondly hoped was to be a beacon for eternity that sardonic jester,
Time, has clapped his grim extinguisher and they are incontinently
snuffed out. Posterity, their court of last appeal, is bribed to cast
them, and their scanty heritage of immortality is parcelled out among
a younger and greedier generation. Instead of the trophies and
mausoleums they looked to so confidently, the monuments more lasting
than brass, they are fain to put up with a broken urn in an
antiquarian’s cabinet, a half-obliterated headstone in Sexton
Allibone’s deserted graveyard.
We own to a weakness for neglected poets. The reigning favorite of
that whimsical tyrant, Fame, ruffling in all the bravery of new
editions and costly bindings, worldly-minded critics may cringe to and
flatter; we shall seek him out when he is humbled and in disgrace,
very likely out at elbows and banished to the Tomos of the bookstall
or the Siberia of the auction-room. We are shy indeed of those great
personages who throng the council-chambers of King Apollo, and are ill
at ease in their society. A bowing acquaintance with them we crave at
most, to brag of among our friends, and, for the rest, are much more
at home with the little poets who cool their heels in the gracious
sovereign’s anteroom. These we can take to our bosoms and our
firesides; but imagine having Dante every day to dinner, leaving hope
at the door as he comes scowling in, or Milton for ever discoursing
“man’s first disobedience” over the tea and muffins! Don Juan’s
Commander were a more cheerful guest.
It is pleasant, we take it, to turn aside now and then from the
crowded highway where these great folks air their splendors, and lose
ourselves in the dewy woods where the lesser muses hide, tracing some
slender by-path where few have strayed.—_secretum iter et fallentes
semita vitæ_. The flowers that grow by the roadside may be more
radiant or of rarer scent; but what delight to explore for ourselves
the shy violet hidden from other eyes, to stumble by untrodden ways
upon the freshness of secret springs, and perhaps of a sudden to
emerge in the graveyard aforesaid, where the air is full of elegies
more touching than Gray’s, and our good sexton is at hand to wipe the
dust from this or the other sunken tombstone of some world-famous bard
and help us to decipher his meagre record. The tombstone is the folio
containing his immortal works; it is heavier than most tombstones, and
his world-famous memory moulders quietly beneath it. Surely there is
something pathetic in such a destiny; something which touches a human
chord. We may pity the fate of many a forgotten poet whose poems we
should not greatly care to read. With their keen self-consciousness,
which is not vanity, and their sensitiveness to outward impressions,
poets more than most men cling to that hollow semblance of earthly
life beyond the grave, that mirage of true immortality, we call
posthumous fame. More than most they dread and shrink from the callous
indifference, the cynical disrespect, of the mighty _sans-culotte_,
Death. To die is little; but to die and be forgotten, to vanish from
the scene of one’s daily walks and talks and countless cheerful
activities, as utterly and as silently as a snow-flake melts in the
sea; to be blotted out of the book of life as carelessly as a
schoolboy would sponge a cipher from his slate—this jars upon us, this
makes us wince. From that fate, at least, the poet feels himself
secure; he leaves behind him the Beloved Book. With that faithful
henchman to guard it, the pale phantom of his fame cannot be jostled
aside from the places that knew him by the hurrying, selfish crowds.
It will remain, the better part of himself, “the heir of his
invention,” but kinder than most heirs, to jog the world’s elbow from
time to time and buy him a brief furlough from oblivion. Through that
loyal interpreter he may still hold converse with his fellows, who
might ill understand the speech of that remote, mysterious realm
wherein he has been naturalized a citizen; he will keep up a certain
shadowy correspondence with the cosey firesides, the merry gatherings,
he has left that may serve to warm and cheer him in the chilly company
of ghosts; perhaps—who knows?—may even lend him dignity and
consequence among that thin fraternity. He will not wholly have
resigned his voice in mundane matters; his memory, as it were a
spiritual shadow, will continue to fall across the familiar ways; he
will have his portion still, a place reserved for him, in the
bustling, merry world. Very likely at this stage of his reflections he
will whisper to himself, _Non omnis moriar_; in his enthusiasm he may
go further, and with gay, vain, prattling Herrick share immortality,
as though it were a school-boy’s plum-cake, among his friends. Hugging
this smiling illusion, he resigns himself to the grave, and the
daisies have not had time to bloom thereon before the Beloved Book,
the loyal interpreter, the faithful henchman, the wonder-worker of his
dream, is as dead and utterly forgotten as—well, let us say as the
promises our friend the new Congressman made us when he expressed such
friendly anxiety about our health just previous to the late election.
So utter, even ludicrous, a _bouleversement_ of hopes so
passionate—and there is nothing a poet longs for so passionately as
remembrance after death, unless it be recognition in life—may touch
the sourest cynic. It may be as Milton says in his proudly conscious
way: _Si quid meremur, sana posteritas sciet_. But what comfort is it
to our undeserving to know that a sane posterity is justified in
forgetting it? Good poetry, like virtue, is its own reward. But the
bad poet, outcast of gods and men, and of every bookseller who owns
not and publishes a popular magazine; the Pariah of Parnassus, the
Ishmael of letters, with every critic’s hand against him, haunted
through life by the dim, appalling spectre of his own badness,
helplessly prescient in lucid intervals of the quaintly cruel doom
which is to consign him after death to the paper-mill, there to be
made over—_heu! fides mutatosque deos!_—for the base uses of other bad
poets, his rivals—if to this martyr we cannot give consolation, we
surely need not grudge compassion.
The discerning reader may have gathered from these remarks that the
bards we are about to usher back from endless night into his
worshipful presence are not all of the first order, or indeed of any
uniform order, of excellence. They are not all Miltons or Shaksperes:
_si quid meremur_ would be for some of them an idle boast, and their
posterity can hardly be convicted of insanity for having sedulously
let them be. But neither must we argue rashly from this neglect of
them that they deserved to be neglected. Neglect was for a time the
portion of the greatest names in English letters. Up to the middle of
the last century it was practically the common lot of all the writers
who came before the Restoration. Literary gentlemen, the wits of the
coffee-house, the Aristarchuses of Dick’s or Button’s, knew about them
in a vague way as a set of queer old fellows who wrote uncouth verses
in an outlandish dialect about the time of Shakspere and Milton. The
more enterprising poets stole from them; but English literature as a
living body knew them not. They were no longer members of the guild or
made free of its mysteries; they were foreigners among their own
people, speaking a strange tongue, shrewdly suspected of unwholesome
dealings in such forbidden practices as fancy and imagination, and on
the whole best excluded from the commonwealth of letters. Even
Shakspere and Milton were little more than names. To the patched and
periwigged taste of Queen Anne’s and the Georgian era they made no
appeal; the critics of the quadrille-table and the tea-gardens, the
“pretty fellows” of the Wells, voted them low and insipid. Milton was
a wild fanatic with heterodox notions of regicide, who wrote a dull
epic which the ingenious Mr. Addison saw fit to praise in his
_Spectator_ for a novelty, of course, though his papers upon it were
certainly far less amusing than those devoted to Sir Roger and his
widow or the diversions of the Amorous Club; while Shakspere was a
curious old playwright whom the great Mr. Pope stooped to admire with
qualifications, and even to edit—with notes, and some of whose rude
productions, notably _King Lear_, when polished and made presentable
by the elegant Mr. Tate, were really not so bad, though of course not
for a moment to be compared to such superlative flights of genius as
_The Distressed Mother_ or _The Mourning Bride_. Does anybody nowadays
read the elegant Mr. Tate, King William’s laureate of pious and
immortal memory? Besides his labors in civilizing _King Lear_ and his
celebrated _Poems upon Tea_, perhaps also upon toast, a grateful
country owed to him, in conjunction with Dr. Brady, its rescue from
Sternhold and Hopkins, “arch-botchers of a psalm or prayer,” of whom
we read, with a subdued but mighty joy, that they
“… had great qualms
When they translated David’s Psalms,”
as well they might. Yet, despite this notable achievement, Nahum
(Nahum, O Phœbus! was his name) has long since ceased to fill the
speaking trump. But for his impertinences to the “poor despised” Lear
he would be quite forgotten. He is a fly like many another preserved
in Shakspere’s amber.
One reads with a sort of dumb rage of these essays of smirking
mediocrity to “improve on” that colossal genius. It was Gulliver
tricked out by the Liliputians. Tate was not the only ‘prentice hand
that tried its skill at “painting the lily.” Cibber and Shadwell were
industrious at it, and to this day many of us know Shakspere’s
“refined gold” only as it comes to us electroplated from the Cibberian
crucible. Lord Lansdowne prepared a _Jew of Venice_, which was acted
with a prologue by Mr. Bevill Higgins—another Phœbean title which the
great trumpeter has unaccountably dropped. Mr. Higgins brings forward
Shakspere telling Dryden:
“These scenes in their rough native dress weremine,
But now, improved, with nobler lustre shine;
The first rude sketches Shakspere’s pencil drew,
But all the shining master-strokes are new.
This play, ye critics, shall your fury stand,
Adorn’d and rescuéd by a faultless hand.”
Here are two of the shining master-strokes:
“As who should say, I am, sir, _an_ oracle”;
“Still quiring to the _blue-eyed_ cherubim”!
And this was Pope’s “Granville the polite,” the “Muses’ glory and
delight” of Young, who informs us, moreover—he had certainly a very
pretty taste and boundless generosity in praising a person of
quality—that, though long may we hope brave Talbot’s blood will run In
great descendants, Shakspere has but one, And him my Lord (he begs
will) permit him not to name, But in kind silence spare his rival’s
shame. The generous reserve is vain, however. Each reader will defeat
his useless aim, And to himself great Agamemnon name. Great Agamemnon
is Granville:
“Europe sheathed the sword
When this great man was first saluted lord,”
apparently that he might give his whole time to filling Shakspere with
shining new master-strokes like those above.
All this sounds ridiculous enough. But even genius was bitten by the
same tarantula. We all know how Johnson treated _Lycidas_. Dryden
found the rhyme in Milton’s juvenile poems “strained and forced” (this
of _L’Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, for example!), and confessed that
Shakspere’s diction was almost as difficult to him as Chaucer. How
difficult Chaucer was much nearer his own time may be inferred from
the leonine Latin version of the _Troilus and Cresscide_ which Francis
Kinaston, an Oxford scholar, published in 1635, with the avowed object
of rescuing Chaucer “from the neglect to which his obsolete language
had condemned him by rendering him generally intelligible.” And
Cartwright, “the florid and seraphicall preacher,” approves his pious
labor, telling him:
“‘Tis to your happy cares we owe that we
Read Chaucer now without a dictionary.”
What a commentary on the educational system of the time that in
England such English as this—
“This Troilus, as he was wont to guide
His yonge knights, he lad hem up and doune
In thilke large temple, on every side
Beholding aie the ladies of the toune,”
should be less generally intelligible than such Latin as this:
“Hic Troilus pro more (ut solebat)
Juveniles equites pone se sequentes
Per fani spatia ampla perducebat
Assidue urbis dominas intuentes.”
But so it was, and so it was to be long after. In 1718 Bysshe, in his
_Art of Poetry_, “passed by Spenser and the poets of his age, because
their language has become so obsolete that most readers of our age
have no ear for them, and therefore Shakspere is quoted so rarely in
this collection.” And Thomas Warton says of Pope’s obligations to
Milton, “It is strange that Pope, by no means of a congenial spirit,
should be the first who copied _Comus_ or _Il Penseroso_. But Pope was
a gleaner of the old English poets; and he was here pilfering from
obsolete English poetry without the least fear or danger of being
detected.” Pope certainly was a proficient in his own “art of stealing
wisely.” “Who now reads Cowley?” he asks, and answers his own question
in the lines he borrowed from him.
What an anomalous period in our literature was this!—polished, witty,
brilliant to the highest degree, displaying in its own productions
incomparable taste and art, yet so incapable, seemingly, of “tasting”
the great writers who had gone before it! Fancy a time when people
went about—people of cultivation, too—asking who was that fellow
Shakspere! To us he seems as real and as large a figure in his dim
perspective as the largest and most alive that swaggers in the
foreground of to-day. Do we not feel something weird and uncanny,
something ghostly, on opening the _Retrospective Review_ so late as
1825, and finding Robert Herrick gravely paraded as a new discovery?
Fifty years ago that was by the dates; as we read it seems five
hundred. The critic antedates by centuries his subject—like his own
god Lyæus, “ever fresh and ever young”—and is infinitely older,
quainter, more remote from us. Is it our turn next to be forgotten?
Shall we not all be asking at our next Centennial if Tennyson ever
lived, debating whether Master Farquhar was really the author of the
poems attributed to Browning, finding Longfellow difficult and
obscure, and wondering in our antiquarian societies if Thackeray was a
religious symbol or something to eat? Shall we—but if we keep on in
this wise, one thing plainly we shall not do, and that is get back to
our neglected Catholic poets—now twice neglected. Let us leave our
future to bury its own dead, and betake ourselves once more to the
poetic past.
We have seen that our Catholic poets, if forgotten, were at least
forgotten in good company; in the ample recognition which came at last
to the latter they did not so fully share. In that Renaissance of our
early literature which marked the close of the last century, and
which, pioneered by Percy, Ritson, Wright, Nichols, Warton, Brydges,
and others, restored to the Elizabethan poets, with Chaucer and
Milton, their “comates in exile,” a pre-eminence from which they will
scarcely be dislodged, many of our particular friends came to the
surface. But most of them did not long remain there, dropping quickly
out of sight, either from intrinsic weight or the indifference of the
literary fishers who had netted them. How far any such indifference
may have been due to their faith we will not venture to say. We should
be sorry to believe that the hateful spirit of religious bigotry had
invaded the muse’s peaceful realm, scaring nymph and faun from the
sides of Helicon with strange and hideous clamor. For our own part, we
like a poet none the worse for being a Protestant, though we may like
him a trifle the better for being a Catholic. We have a vague notion
that all good poets ought to be Catholics, and a secret persuasion
that some day they will be; that the Tennysons, the Holmeses, the
Longfellows and Lowells and Brownings of the future will be gathered
into the fold, and only the ——s or the ——s (the reader will kindly
fill up these blank spaces with his pet poetical aversions) be left to
raise the hymns of heterodoxy on the outside in melancholy and
discordant chorus,
“Their lean and flashy songs
Grating on scrannel pipes of wretched straw.”
Awaiting that blissful time, however, we are content to enjoy the
“music of Apollo’s lute” as it comes to us, without inspecting too
curiously the fingers that touch it, so long as they be clean. And we
are willing to believe that if our Catholic poets have had less than
their fair share of attention, it has been their misfortune or their
fault, and not because of any sectarian cabal to crowd them from the
thrones which may belong to them of right among “the inheritors of
unfulfilled renown.”
To tell the truth, indeed, such of them as we find prior to the time
of Elizabeth have few claims on our regret. We count, of course, from
the Reformation; when all poets were Catholics, there was nothing
peculiarly distinctive in being a _Catholic_ poet. _The Shyp of Folys
of the Worlde, translated out of Latin, Frenche and Doche into
Englyshe tonge by Alexander Barclay, preste_, is too well known to
come fairly into our category. But the _Shyp of Folys_ belongs, after
all, at least as much to Sylvester Brandt as to Barclay, and the more
original works of the good monk of Ely—his _Eglogues_ (though these,
too, were based on Mantuanus and Æneas Sylvius, afterwards pope), his
_Figure of our Mother_ _Holy Church oppressed by the French King_—even
those trenchant satires, in which he demolished Master Skelton, the
heretical champion, are sufficiently forgotten to be his passport.
Another of his translations, _The Castle of Labour_, from the French,
may have suggested to Thomson his _Castle of Indolence_—to the latter
bard a more congenial mansion.
The “mad, mery wit” which won for Heywood, the epigrammatist, the
favor of Henry VIII. and his daughter Mary seems vapid enough to us.
Perhaps it was like champagne, which must be drunk at once, and, being
kept for a century or two, grows flat and insipid. _The Play called
the four P’s, being a new and merry Enterlude of a Palmer, Pardoner,
Poticary, and Pedlar_, would scarcely run for a hundred nights on the
metropolitan stage. His _Epigrams, six hundred in Number_, which were
thought uproariously funny by his own generation, ours finds rather
dismal reading. We somehow miss the snap of even that wonderful
design, his _Dialogue containing in effect the number of al the
Proverbes in the English tongue_, which all England was shaking its
sides over long after Shakspere had flung his rarest pearls at its
feet. Heywood’s great work is an allegory entitled, _The Spider and
the Flie_, “wherein,” says a polite contemporary, “he dealeth so
profoundly and beyond all measure of skill that neither he himself
that made it, neither any one that readeth it, can reach to the
meaning thereof.” It is a sort of religious parable, the flies
representing the Catholics, and the spiders the Protestants, to whom
enter presently, _dea ex machinâ_, Queen Mary with a broom. Heywood
“was inflexibly attached to the Catholic cause,” and when, the
broom-wielder having gone to another sphere, the spiders got the
ascendant, he betook himself to Mechlin, where he died in exile for
conscience’ sake. Therein Chaucer could have done no better.
Can we enroll Sir Thomas More among our tuneful company? Brave old Sir
Thomas was a Catholic certainly—a Catholic of the Catholics—and he
wrote poetry, too, or what passed for such. It is one of the many
heinous charges brought against him by worthy Master Skelton in his
_Pithie, Pleasaunt and Profitable Workes_—his going about
“With his poetry
And his sophistry
To mock and make a lie.”
But if poetry were a crime, and no other had been laid to his charge,
the good chancellor might have stood his trial freely on such evidence
as is found in his works. His _Mery Jest, how a Sergeant would learn
to play the Freere_, is thought by Ellis to have furnished the hint
for Cowper’s _John Gilpin_. _A Rufull Lamentation on the death of
Queen Elizabeth_, Henry VIII.’s mother, has touches of pathos. The
dying queen soliloquizes:
“Where are our castels now, where are our towers?
Godely Rychemonde, sone art thou gone from me!
At Westminster that costly worke of yours,[103]
Myne owne dere Lorde, now shall I never see!
Almighty God vouchsafe to grant that ye
For you and your children well may edify;
My palace byldyd is, and lo! now here I ly.”
These, however, were the pastimes of his early youth, and even so were
greatly, and doubtless justly, esteemed in his own time for their
purity and elegance of style. For this reason also they are freely
quoted by Dr. Johnson in the preface to his dictionary. More’s fame
does not rest on these achievements, but on the greatness of mind
which baffled the tyrant, and “the erudition which overthrew the
fabric of false learning and civilized his country.” If not a poet, he
was better than a poet, a great and good man, and his memory not
Catholics only, but all good men, must ever hold in affectionate
reverence.
Surrey, the gallant and the ill-fated, exactly reverses our doubt
about Sir Thomas. A poet beyond question, is he to be reckoned a
Catholic? His father was, and his son would have been had he had the
courage of his opinions. The former, imprisoned at the same time with
Surrey, “though a strong Papist,” says Lord Herbert, “pretended to ask
for Sabellicus as the most vehement detecter of the usurpations of the
Bishop of Rome.” And Surrey’s sister, the Duchess of Richmond, who
swore away his life, “inclined to the Protestants,” says Walpole, “and
hated her brother.” We need not dwell upon the doubt, however, since
Surrey is otherwise ruled out of our small society. A poet included in
all the regular collections, called by his admirers the first of
English classics, and by Pope accorded the final glory of being “the
Granville (!) of a former age,” can scarcely be held one of the
neglected to whom alone our suffrages are due. There, too, is Nicholas
Grimoald, also of dubious orthodoxy, though undoubted genius. Nicholas
was Ridley’s chaplain and suspected of being tainted with his patron’s
heresy, but cleared himself by a formal recantation. Let us trust it
was sincere. Grimoald’s verses are often of remarkable elegance, and
to the “strange metre” or blank verse, which he adopted from Lord
Surrey, he lent renewed grace and vigor.
“Right over stood in snow-white armour brave
The Memphite Zoroas, a cunning clerk,
To whom the heavens lay open as his book,
And in celestial bodies he could tell
The moving, meeting, light, aspect, eclipse,
And influence and constellations all.”
The eighteenth century might own these lines, the product of the first
half of the sixteenth.
Edward Parker, Lord Morley, was a “rigid Catholic” and a prodigious
author. He lived to be near a hundred, and left at least as many
volumes as he had years. Besides translations of countless Latin and
Greek authors from Plutarch and Seneca to St. Thomas Aquinas and
Erasmus, he wrote “several tragedies and comedies the very titles of
which are lost,” and “certain rhimes,” says Bale with a sniff of
disdain. All alike are “dark oblivion’s prey,” but history has
preserved the important fact that “this lord having a quarrel for
precedence with the Lord Dacre of Gillesland, he had his pretensions
confirmed by Parliament.” What a sermon on human ambition! Genius
toils incessantly for a century or so, turning off tragedies and
comedies, rhymes and commentaries, without number, to be its monument
through all time, and presently along comes that uncivil master of
ceremonies, that insufferable flunky, Fame, kicks these immortal works
without ceremony into the dust-heap, and introduces Genius to
posterity as the person who “had the quarrel for precedence with my
Lord Dacre of Gillesland.” No distinction here, you see; not even a
decent observance of those pretensions which Parliament confirmed.
Lord Dacre, who never wrote, perhaps never knew how to write, a line,
has his name bawled as loudly to the company as the author of all
these tragedies and comedies and rhymes. Poor Lord Morley! may he rest
as soundly as his books! His pretensions to oblivion, at least, no one
is likely to dispute.
Another poet and scholar not less scurvily treated, and to whom we
have somehow taken a wonderful fancy, was George Etheridge, a fellow
of Oxford and Regius Professor of Greek there under Mary. Persecuted
for Popery by Queen Elizabeth, he lost his university preferments, but
“established a private seminary at Oxford for the instruction of
Catholic youth in the classics, music, and logic.” He also “practised
physic with much reputation,” greatly, no doubt, to the joy of his
pupils. A friend of Leland, the antiquarian, his accomplishments were
varied and his learning profound. “He was an able mathematician,” says
a contemporary, “and one of the most excellent vocal and instrumental
musicians in England, but he chiefly delighted in the lute and lyre; a
most elegant poet, and a most exact composer of English, Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew verses, which he used to set to the harp with the greatest
skill.” Of all these elegant productions one only survives—a Greek
encomium, we are sorry to say, on that royal reprobate, Henry VIII.;
and the memory of this pious scholar of the sixteenth century has
suffered the slight of being confounded with the graceless dramatist
of the seventeenth.
A cockle-shell weathers the storm that wrecks a frigate, and a nursery
rhyme has outlived Etheridge’s poetry and Morley’s erudition. If
widespread renown be a test of merit, _The Merry Tales of the Madman
of Gotham_ must be a work of genius. “Scholars and gentlemen” _temp._
Henry VIII. “accounted it a book full of wit and mirth,” and the
scholars and babies of three centuries later approve that judgment.
The author of this famous poem was Dr. Andrew Borde, or Andreas
Perforatus, as he preferred to call himself, “esteemed in his time a
noted poet, a witty and ingenious person, and an excellent physician,”
serving in the latter capacity, it is said, to Henry VIII. He was the
original of the stage Merry-andrew, “going to fairs and the like,
where he would gather a crowd, to whom he prescribed by humorous
speeches couched in such language as caused mirth and wonderfully
propagated his fame.” He wrote, besides the _Merry Tales_, _The Mylner
of Abington_, a satire called the _Introduction of Knowledge_, and
various medical works giving curious details of the domestic life of
the time.
Many others we might catalogue who were better churchmen
than poets—William Forrest, Queen Mary’s chaplain, whose
gorgeously-illuminated MSS. show that he, at least, had a due
appreciation of his _Saincted Griseilde_ and his _Blessed Joseph_; or
Richard Stonyhurst, who, like Heywood, died in exile for his faith,
and who merits immortality for having written probably the worst
translation of Virgil ever achieved by mortal man. It was in the
amazing hexameter of the time, that “foul, lumbering, boisterous,
wallowing measure,” as Nashe calls it, which represented to Sir Philip
Sidney and his coterie the grace and melody of Virgil’s line. The wits
laughed it to death, and we read its epitaph in Hall’s parody:
“_Manhood and Garboiles shall he chaunt_ with changed feet.”
On names like these, however, we have not space to dwell. Not even
neglect can sanctify them. We are at the dawning of that glorious
outburst of creative genius which made the Elizabethan era a splendor
to all times and lands, and worthier subjects await us.
At the outset we must prepare for something like a disappointment in
the scanty list of Catholic poets which even this prolific period
could furnish. Looking back on it, all England seems to have been
furiously bent on making poetry enough to last it for all years to
come. Englishmen, we know, in those days did other things—circumnavigated
the globe once or twice, and conquered a continent or so—in the
intervals of rhyming; but the wonder is how they found leisure for
such trifles from the absorbing business of the hour. Poetry, in that
electric century of song, appears to have been the Englishman’s
birthright; Apollo possessed the nation. The judge scribbled odes upon
the bench; the soldier turned a sonnet and a battery together; the
sailor made a song as he brought his ship into action; the bishop
preached indifferently in sermons and satires—it was hard at times to
tell which; the office-seeker preferred his claims in rhyme, and his
complaints were “married to immortal verse”—it is lucky our own age is
more given to office-seeking than to poetry; the bricklayer dropped
his trowel and was a mighty dramatist; the condemned, like André
Chénier at a later day—“the ruling passion strong in death”—strung
couplets on the very steps of the scaffold. Even princes were smitten
with the general madness, and, catching something of the general
inspiration, made verses which were no worse than a prince’s verses
ought to be, and were often better than their laws. Were we
poet-haters like Carlyle, we should have ample food for disgust in
exploring that fiddling age. At every step in the most unlikely
corners we stumble upon the inevitable rhymer.
In the Mermaid, where we drop in for a quiet cup of canary, and
perhaps a glimpse of that rising dramatist, William Shakspere, we find
him bawling madrigals over his sack; we overhear him muttering of
“hearts” and “darts” as we take our constitutional in Powle’s Walk;
the very boatman who wherries us across the Thames is a Water-Poet, as
though poets were classified like rats, and will importune us before
we land to buy one of his four-score volumes; like black care, Rhyme
sits behind the horseman and climbs the brazen galley. We fly from him
to the camp; and there is that terrible fellow, Walter Devereux, Earl
of Essex, whom we heard of anon slaughtering “vulgar Irishry,” men,
women, and children, like so many rabbits—there is that martial hero,
fresh from his last battue of unarmed peasants, simpering over the
composition of “godly and virtuous hymns.” We ship with Drake for a
trip to the Azores “to do God’s work,” and incidentally to fill our
pockets, perhaps, as somehow or other “God’s work” usually did for
that pious and lucky mariner. _Scandit æratas vitiosa naves_—the rogue
Apollo is there before us. We have scarce got over our sea-sickness
before our ingenuous skipper will be asking our opinion of the
commendatory verses which “he hath writ,” he explains—a fine blush
mantling under his bronze—“for his very good friend, Sir Gervase
Peckham’s _Report of the Late Discoveries_.” We peep over my Lord of
Pembroke’s shoulder as he sits writing in his cabinet—it is a liberty
that by virtue of his privilege a well-bred chronicler may take. By
his knit brows and preoccupied air it is some weighty state paper he
is drafting—a minute, perhaps, of her majesty’s revenues from fines of
popish recusants, and how the same may be increased.
“Dry those fair, those crystal eyes,”
the state paper begins, and it is a minute of the perfections of the
Lady Christiana Bruce.
Even the queen’s majesty, between hangings of priests and virginal
coquettings with princely wooers, finds time for the making of royal
“ditties passing sweet and harmonicall.” When next we seek her
beauteous presence, worthy Master Puttenham will buttonhole us in the
ante-chamber and launch out into loyal praises of her “learned,
delicate, and noble muse.” “Of any in our time that I know of,” he
asseverates, “she is the most excellent poet, easily surmounting all
the rest that have written, before or since, for sense, sweetness, or
subtilltie, be it in Ode, Elegie, Epigram, or any other kinde of
Poeme, Heroick or Lyrick.” Master Puttenham is known to be writing a
book on the _Arte of Poesie_. We think as we listen to him of another
Royal Poet singing yonder at Fotheringay behind prison-bars, whose
strains sound sweeter to us, though we shall do well to hide our
preference here—sweeter, but infinitely sad:
“O Domine Deus, speravi in te!
O care mi Jesu, nunc libera me!
In dura catena, in misera pœna, desidero te!
Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendo,
Adoro, imploro, ut liberes me!”
Liberty is the burden of this captive’s song, and her royal sister
lends a gracious ear to her prayer. The headsman is already sharpening
his axe to break her fetters. And still another princely genius up
there in Edinburgh is so busy with his Divine Sonnets, and his _Rules
and Cautelis_ for the fashioning of the same, he has no time to
observe that his mother is being led to death. But what is a mother’s
life to those imperishable works?
“How, best of poets, dost thou laurel wear!”
roars lusty Ben Jonson, brimful of sack and loyalty.
“Thou best of poets more than man dost prove,”
echoes the faithful Stirling. Yet, strange as it may seem, we can
never read these superhuman productions with any comfort. The Divine
Sonnets fade, and instead we see the gloomy stage at Fotheringay, the
hapless but heroic victim, the frowning earls, the gleaming axe, the
fair head dabbled with gore. Let us turn to merely human geniuses.
In this time of inspiration, with all England, from prince to peasant,
bursting into song and three-fourths Catholic, we find from Spenser to
Cowley a scant dozen, or, counting Shakspere, at most a baker’s dozen,
of Catholic poets worth naming. And Shakspere, in spite of Charles
Butler’s ingenious theory and its spirited revival by Mr. George
Wilkes, we can scarcely claim. That great poet’s religious creed, like
other important features of his life, must no doubt remain always
matter of conjecture. If he was a Catholic, his creed was probably no
more than a tradition, strong enough to keep his pages free from the
pictures of dissolute monks and nuns in which most of his contemporary
playwrights delighted, but far from the fervor which sent Southwell to
the scaffold, or the sincerity which, in a milder age, made Sherburne
welcome poverty and disgrace. Omitting Shakspere, then, our
muster-roll is but short. For this there were many reasons. In those
days there was other work for Catholics than verse-making; the church
needed martyrs, not minstrels, and the blood-stained record of the
English mission tells how intrepidly the need was met. Southwell and
Campian are only two of a brilliant band almost equally gifted,
equally heroic. The life they led promised little for polite letters.
Hunted like wild beasts, in hourly danger of the most cruel and
ignominious death; sleeping, when they slept, in hayricks or the open
fields; studying, when they caught a breathing-spell for study, in
caves and thickets—many of these noble youths have left behind them
proofs of a genius which, under happier auspices, would have borne
abundant fruit. Southwell’s poems, composed in the intervals of
thirteen rackings, reveal a spirit of uncommon force and beauty.
Campian is known to have written at least one tragedy, _Nectar and
Ambrosia_, performed at Vienna before the Emperor Rodolph. It must be
remembered, too, that both of these dauntless missionaries were cut
off in the very flower of their age, Southwell being thirty-two and
Campian forty when executed. Francis Beaumont, cousin and namesake of
the dramatist, was a Jesuit and a poet. So was Jasper Heywood, son of
the epigrammatist. He translated several tragedies of Seneca, and is
said by some to have been one of the one hundred and twenty-eight
priests executed by the clement Elizabeth. He is one of Cibber’s
Poets. Ellis Heywood, his brother, also a Jesuit, though he left
behind him a prose work in Italian, is not known to have written in
verse. Of Crashaw, whose fortune it was to live at a time when the
storm of persecution had spent its fiercest fury, when Catholics were
subject no longer to be murdered, but only to be robbed—of Crashaw,
whose “power and opulence of invention” Coleridge has remarked,
another critic has said that, with more taste and judgment,” he would
have outstripped most of his contemporaries, even Cowley.”
These were all priests. But outside of the priesthood Catholics found
work in other directions which left little leisure for literary
pursuits. Chidiock Titchbourne, whose talents and unhappy fate the
elder Disraeli has feelingly commemorated, was one of “an association
in London of young Catholic gentlemen of family who met at the house
of Mr. Gilbert, in Fetter Lane, and took care of Jesuits.” Thomas
Habington, an associate of Titchbourne in this enterprise, and who, if
not a poet himself, was at least the father of a poet, narrowly
escaped hanging for concealing in his house the Jesuits Garnett and
Oldcome, accused of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. Dymoke, the
champion of England, apparently the same who translated _Il Pastor
Fido_, won the title to a more glorious championship by dying (1610)
in the Tower, where he had been imprisoned for his resolute refusal to
conform. Dr. Lodge, a most charming poet as well as an eminent
physician, we find in “the list of popish recusants indicted at the
sessions holden for London and Middlesex, February 15, 1604.” It is of
interest to note _en passant_ that with Dr. Lodge was indicted for the
same cause “Ambrose Rookwood, of the army.” Twenty months later
Ambrose Rookwood, of the army, expressed his opinion of this treatment
by engaging in the Gunpowder Treason. At a later period we have Sir
Edward Sherburne, a scholar and poet of no mean pretensions, resigning
offices of large emolument rather than betray his faith. Certainly,
under the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts a Catholic
poet may be said to have cultivated his art under difficulties.
The obstacles in the way of Catholics, then and long after, not only
for obtaining culture but the rudiments of learning, were indeed
enormous. Classed by legislative enactment with “forgers, perjurers,
and outlaws,” they were denied education for themselves or their
children, except at the cost of conscience or of ruinous penalties.
Their liberty they held at twenty days’ notice; their lives at a
moment’s purchase. At any hour of the day or night their houses were
open to the invasion of ruffianly pursuivants, searching ostensibly
for “Mass-books” and other “popish mummeries,” but prone to confound
recusant jewels or broad gold pieces with the relics of superstition;
and for such robberies they had absolutely no redress. In the courts
of justice they found not only no protection, but renewed oppression.
To use a phrase often misused, they had really no rights which a
conforming subject was bound to respect, and their freedom, their
fortunes, nay, their lives, were at the mercy of the rapacity or the
malice of their Protestant neighbors. Much of their time they spent in
going to and from prison; they crowded the common jails in such
multitudes that many new ones had to be opened for the sole
accommodation of these hardened malefactors; and their estates were
impoverished to pay for the privilege, not of going to their own
church—that was denied them in any event—but of staying away from one
they could not conscientiously enter. Men so occupied doubtless found
ample employment for their leisure without making acrostics to
Elizabeth Regina or panegyrics on the “best of poets.”
Yet even this untoward time and chilling air yielded blossoms of
Catholic poetry which we need not disdain to gather. Some of the
daintiest of them have been culled by careful gleaners like Headley
and Ellis and Southey, and a stray flower here and there salutes us in
the more tasteful modern collections, such as Mr. De Vere’s
_Selections_, Mr. Palgrave’s _Golden Treasury_, or Mr. Stoddard’s
_Melodies and Madrigals_, the latter a gem among its kind. But the
bulk of the Catholic poetry of this period is practically unknown.
Massinger, luckier than any of his great rivals (for Shakspere was
above rivalry), still keeps the stage with a single comedy, _A New Way
to pay Old Debts_. But Shirley, little his inferior in dramatic
ability, is, in spite of Dyce’s elegant edition, utterly neglected. He
may be said to owe his rescue from oblivion to that one noble song in
_The Contention of Achilles and Agamemnon_, “The Glories of our Blood
and State”—a song which alone is worth a library of modern ballads,
and which might be called truly Horatian but for a moral elevation
which Horace never reached. And even this song, almost his sole
slender hold on immortality, Shirley came near losing; for in a
spurious compilation of Butler’s posthumous works it is given to the
author of _Hudibras_, and there entitled _A Thought upon Death upon
hearing of the Murder of Charles I._, though anything further from
Butler’s style can scarcely be imagined. Ben Jonson—if, in virtue of
his twelve years spent in the church and the period of his best work,
he may be considered as a Catholic poet at all—“rare old Ben,” in
spite of his weighty thought, his pungent humor, his fertile fancy,
remains among the authors who are widely talked of and little read.
Lodge again, who may dispute with Bishop Hall the honor of being the
earliest English satirist, and who, “though subject to a critic’s
marginal,” gives evidence of a glow and richness of imagination not
common even in that opulent time—Lodge has no literary existence
except as one of the wistful shades that flit through the Hades of the
cyclopædias. Sir William Davenant has from Southey the distinguished
compliment that, avoiding equally the opposite faults of too
artificial and too careless a style, he wrote in numbers which, for
precision and clearness and felicity and strength, have never been
surpassed. Yet who now reads _Gondibert_, or its notable preface,
which inspired Dryden with the germ of dramatic criticism? Sir Edward
Sherburne, whom Mr. Dyce calls “an accomplished versifier,” whose
translations may even now be read with pleasure, and whose learning
was above the average of his learned time, is equally forgotten.
Crashaw is remembered less for himself than as the friend of Cowley,
whose monody on his death, in Johnson’s opinion, has “beauties which
common authors may justly think not only above their attainments, but
above their ambition.” Southwell we think of as the martyr rather than
as the poet. The verses of Sir Aston Cokayn and his friend Sir Kenelm
Digby are not, perhaps, of the sort which the world does not willingly
let die; yet the plays of the former are not without merit, especially
_Frappolin creduto principe_, an adaptation of the same Italian
original whence Shakspere took the hint for his prologue to the
_Taming of the Shrew_. His minor poems, too, if they have no other
merit, throw some curious side lights on the literary history of the
time. The life of Sir Kenelm Digby, “of whose acquaintance,” says
Dryden, “all his contemporaries seem to have been proud,” was itself a
poem, and certainly one more worthy of being told than that of many of
the gentlemen whom Johnson’s vigorous pen has thrust into uneasy and
unnatural immortality.
“Sweet Constable, who takes the wond’ring ear
And lays it up in willing prisonment,”
who was rated as the first sonneteer of his time, is as little known
as the pure and pensive Habington, the only love-poet of the reign of
Charles I. whose pages are without stain. The two last-named writers,
however, we may expect to see more noticed, both having been lately
reprinted—Constable’s _Diana_ by Pickering, and Habington’s _Castara_
being included in the admirable and wonderfully cheap series of
English reprints edited by Mr. Edward Arber.
We had thought to give a few specimens of at least the more obscure of
the writers last mentioned. But we have already overstepped our limits
and must bring this ramble to an end. The reader who may be tempted
for himself to loiter in these unfamiliar ways will meet with much to
reward him. “Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good” he will find in
abundance:
“… rich in fit epithets,
Blest in the lovely marriage of pure words.”
[103] Henry VII.’s chapel.
ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS
VI.,” ETC.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE END.
The admiral telegraphed at once to Sir Simon, informing him of what
had happened. It was no surprise, therefore, when, on the morning of
the funeral, the baronet walked into Clide’s room. The meeting was
affectionate but sad. Clide had no heart to give a joyous welcome to
his old friend. Even Franceline for the time was forgotten. The shock
of the tragic death he had just witnessed had shattered his airy
castles to pieces. He was, as yet, too much under the solemn spell of
that event to turn his mind to the brightness that it might have made
an opening for in the future.
Mrs. de Winton had come up from Wales, and was for taking Clide with
her to a more suitable residence than his dingy lodgings; but he
refused to stir until all was over, and she knew, as did all who knew
Clide, that when he made up his mind to do or not to do a thing, he
was immovable as fate. When the little band who had followed Isabel to
the grave returned, they went by appointment to see the medical man
under whose care she had spent the last months of her life. Mr.
Percival, who, strangely enough, had not been at the funeral, was to
be there to meet them. He was in the room when they entered. Sir Simon
Harness started on perceiving him. “Mr. Plover! I hardly expected to
meet you here.”
“Plover!” echoed Clide and Mr. Simpson.
“The same, at your service,” replied the other with cool effrontery.
Then, turning to Clide, he said:
“Can I see you alone? What we have got to say had better be said
privately.”
Clide made a gesture of assent, and the doctor showed them into an
adjoining room.
The outline of Mr. Prendergast’s confession is already known; it is
only necessary to fill it up with a few details of interest. Isabel
was not his own niece, but the step-niece of his wife by her first
husband, an Italian singer, from whom the girl inherited her gift of
song. She was thrown on the care of Mr. Prendergast when quite a
child. He was a needy adventurer, and determined to make her voice
useful; for this end he cultivated it to the highest degree. But there
was madness in her family. Just as her musical education was complete,
and she was preparing to come out on a provincial stage in Italy, her
mind became deranged, and he was obliged to place her in an obscure
lunatic asylum near Milan. Meanwhile, he travelled as agent to a large
London firm, and saw a great deal of life, chiefly in the West Indies.
On his return he found Isabel recovered and in splendid voice.
Complete change and travelling were advised as the best means of
strengthening her against the danger of a relapse. He took her to
America; then followed her marriage and her flight. Whether the fraud
that she had practised on Clide was entirely a deliberate falsehood,
prompted by that strange cunning which is one of the characteristics
of madness, or whether it was the delusion of a disordered brain, it
signified little now to him; it was certain that she had become fully
alive to the fact that she had grossly deceived her husband, and that
discovery would ruin her. Rather than face it, she fled and threw
herself on her uncle for pity and protection. Then followed the
checkered life: now the glare of the footlights, now the obscurity of
a lunatic asylum. It had been her own passionate desire to go on the
stage—so Mr. Prendergast said—and he had only yielded to it because he
saw there was no other course open to her. Her terror of her husband’s
anger was so great that the idea of being discovered by him threw her
into a state of despair which threatened to unsettle her brain beyond
all chance of recovery. She had caught a glimpse of him from her
window at Dieppe, and insisted on her uncle’s carrying her off that
very night, or else she would commit suicide. The excitement of the
stage soon brought on a return of madness. Prendergast locked her up
and went abroad again on a commission; fell in with Russian Jews on
the borders of China, bought valuable stones from them, and returned
to fulfil the dream of his life: to buy a country place and live “like
a gentleman.” He found Isabel again recovered, and with her voice in
greater power than ever. The offer of a fabulous sum for one season
from a manager who had long had his eye on the beautiful young soprano
tempted her uncle; he accepted an engagement for her at St.
Petersburg. A London milliner who knew her slightly and had business
of her own there accompanied them as a sort of chaperon for Isabel.
Stanton had recognized her at the hotel, and she him. The rest of the
story was already known to Clide. Mr. Prendergast was very emphatic,
however, in declaring that he never intended to keep the poor child on
the stage; this one season was so magnificently paid for that the sum,
added to his own means, would make them both wealthy for the remainder
of their lives.
“And now I have made a clean breast of it; you know everything,” he
said, bringing his narrative to a close.
“No, not everything,” replied Mr. de Winton, fixing a searching look
on him. “You have not explained the motives of your own conduct
throughout. You changed your name twice; you persistently avoided me;
you had recourse to unworthy subterfuges to escape detection.
Admitting that my poor wife was, as you say, too frightened to trust
me or to let me know what she was doing, it was your duty to
communicate with me, and to give me at least the option of providing
for her, instead of compelling her to foster the disease that was
destroying her by adopting the career of an actress. What motive had
you for not doing this? I give you the choice of telling the truth
yourself; if you refuse, I must take other means of finding it out.”
Mr. Prendergast hesitated. There was evidently something yet to be
told which he shrank from avowing; but, as Clide intimated, he must
either confess it of his own accord or be driven to do so.
“You are right,” he said. “I had a motive in avoiding you; in keeping
out of the way, not only of you, but of everybody. You may have heard
of a great speculation started ten years ago in Canada, called the
Ramason Company?”
“I remember hearing of it; it was a disreputable affair. My uncle,
Admiral de Winton, took shares in it and lost heavily by the
transaction.”
“I was the man who started that company, and I ruined many by inducing
them to take shares in it. I was obliged to keep out of the way for
several years, lest I should be seized and made amenable for felony.
About a year ago the one man who swore to bring me to the hulks for it
died. I don’t think there is any one now who would be at the trouble
of prosecuting me; but I am in your power. You can hand me over to the
law, if you choose; vengeance is sweet and it is within your grasp.
Only remember,” he cried, with a sudden change from dogged
indifference to a more appealing tone—“remember that as we judge we
shall be judged; remember that we are standing both of us by a
new-made grave, and that, if I have sinned, I have already eaten the
bitter fruit of my misdoing. I was a poor man, struggling to live;
fighting for the bread I ate. If I had been born to estates and a
fortune, I should have been no worse than others who have done no evil
because they have never been tempted. Think of this, Mr. de Winton,
and for the sake of her who bore your name, and who, in the midst of
her poor mad wanderings, brought no dishonor on it, be merciful!”
There was nothing abject in the way the wretched man thus threw
himself on Clide’s clemency. He did not cringe or whine; he threw down
his arms and appealed to the generosity of his conqueror. Clide was
generous, and a generous nature is easily moved to pardon.
“What mercy is it that you ask of me?” he answered. “The mercy that
you need most it is in no man’s power to give or to withhold. You have
lent yourself for years to a course of cruelty and falsehood—cruelty
to the unhappy child whose friendlessness and terrible misfortune
should have claimed your pity and protecting care; falsehood to me,
whom you well-nigh led into committing a great crime and involuntarily
causing the shame and ruin of another. But I will take no vengeance on
you. Go and ask for mercy where you have most sinned.”
* * * * *
Sir Simon had started without an hour’s delay on receiving the
admiral’s telegram announcing Isabel’s death. If he had waited for the
first post, it would have brought him a line from Ponsonby Anwyll to
say that he was setting off the next day, and hoped to be at the Villa
des Olives nearly as soon as his letter. Roxham would join him at
Marseilles, and thence they would go on together.
So while Simon was rushing to London Ponsonby was rushing out of it;
he presented himself with Lord Roxham at the villa the day after his
host’s departure. Their surprise was very great when they were
informed that Sir Simon was not there, and that M. de la Bourbonais
and his daughter were the only occupants of the house. They asked to
see them, and were very cordially received, but it was quite clear
they were not expected. All the explanation Raymond could give of Sir
Simon’s extraordinary conduct was that he had received a telegram the
day before which obliged him to set out for London immediately; he had
not entered into any explanation, but the intelligence was apparently
rather exciting than painful, for he had gone away in very good
spirits. The travellers looked at each other in perplexity. What were
they to do? To come and install themselves at the villa was
impossible, not so much on account of the host’s absence as because of
Franceline’s presence. Raymond was discussing the same difficulty in
his own mind, and was sorely puzzled as to what he was expected to do.
Lord Roxham came to his assistance:
“The fact is, we have been too precipitate; we ought to have waited
for another letter from Harness. However, it really does not much
matter as far as the journey is concerned. I was on my way to these
parts, and Anwyll is very lucky in getting a month’s leave and the
chance of exploring this pretty place with a cicerone like myself. We
shall have no difficulty, I dare say, in getting some tolerably
comfortable quarters at a hotel in the town. You, count, will perhaps
kindly put us in the way of that. What is the best hotel here?”
Giacomo, the odd man and general out-door factotum, runner-of-errands,
and finder-out-of-everything, was called and despatched to the hotel
with the gentlemen’s luggage and proper instructions about their
requirements. This essential point once settled, all restraint was at
an end. M. de la Bourbonais felt free to allow his courtesy full play
and to offer all the hospitality that he wished to the two Englishmen.
He insisted on their remaining to dinner; they had just half an hour
to refresh themselves before it would be ready. Franceline joined her
father so graciously in urging the request that they yielded a not
unwilling assent.
Raymond had never met with Lord Roxham or Ponsonby since that
memorable dinner at the Court, but he had received letters from both
immediately on Sir Simon’s return and discovery of the ring. These
letters were written in a frank, manly tone that it would have been
difficult to resist if Raymond had been far more deeply incensed
against the writers than he was. Both assured him of their unshaken
esteem and their conviction all along that the mistake—for mistake
they felt certain it was—would sooner or later be cleared up; if they
had given any pain by not sooner expressing this opinion to M. de la
Bourbonais himself, they sincerely regretted and apologized for it.
Raymond had replied graciously to both, and so the old kind feeling
was restored. He retained a grateful recollection, too, of Ponsonby’s
prompt though formal salutation when Mr. Charlton had passed on,
cutting him dead.
The evening passed pleasantly as the party sat chatting away on the
terrace, with the young May moon shining down on the blue waves that
beat against the pebbly beach with a murmurous plash. Franceline had
all sorts of questions to ask about Dullerton after nearly three
months’ absence—a long time at her age. She seemed astonished that
there was nothing remarkable to tell about the place and the people
during that interval, and I am afraid that Sir Ponsonby Anwyll drew on
his imagination now and then, rather than acknowledge the humiliating
fact that he knew nothing concerning the thing he was catechised
about. He talked of probable plans and contemplated movements of the
various persons, as if plans and movements entered into the lives of
the homespun natives of Dullerton at all.
It was late when the two young men took leave, with the promise to
return early next morning for a drive by the sea. Sir Simon had
contrived a wonderful nondescript vehicle, a cross between a
_char-à-banc_ and a wagonette, with an awning supported by iron rods,
so as to obviate the necessity for umbrellas or parasols. Franceline
was to do the honors of this and show them the beauties of the coast.
They were punctual to their appointment, and everybody enjoyed the
drive exceedingly. They dined at the Villa des Olives again that day,
and there was more sitting out on the terrace and endless
conversations.
* * * * *
Clide, meantime, was waking up as from a bad dream. As soon as the
cloud of those few hurried days was dispelled, he seemed suddenly to
cast off the chill of awe that had fallen on him by his wife’s
dying-bed, and clung to him until the grave had closed on her and shut
out that chapter of his life for ever. Then youth vindicated itself,
the elastic spring rebounded, and the future that yesterday was out of
sight began to dawn brightly on him once more. The yearning to see
Franceline, to claim her for his own, asserted itself with a force
that was only the greater for being so long repressed. But now that
all obstacles were removed on his side, it remained to be seen whether
she was still free—free at heart, and willing to be his; it was
possible—nay, did not his better sense add probable—that the seed of
love he had sown in her heart had perished there before this, chilled
by his neglect, crushed to death by his seeming faithlessness and
desertion.
He must know first from Sir Simon how matters stood between her and
Anwyll. Sir Simon told him the truth. He had left Franceline
heart-whole, as far as he knew; but here was the irrepressible
Ponsonby as good as installed under the same roof with her, walking,
riding, making _parties_ by sunrise and conversations by moonlight;
passionately in love with her, and Raymond most anxious for the
success of his suit. Sir Simon had sounded him before he invited
Anwyll to Nice. Was Franceline made of different stuff from every
other woman in every other country that she could remain proof to all
this, and not ignite at the contact of this faithful flame, not yield
to this unyielding perseverance? Sir Simon thought not. Clide thought
differently; but the wish, with him, might too easily engender the
belief.
Strange to say, neither he nor Sir Simon felt the least alarm
concerning Lord Roxham. Yet there could be no doubt as to which would
be pronounced the more dangerous rival of the two by any competent
jury of young ladies. He was far better-looking than Ponsonby Anwyll,
more intelligent and agreeable, and he was the son of a peer to boot.
This last attraction would no doubt constitute a much less dangerous
man a formidable rival in the eyes of most English young ladies. But
Franceline de la Bourbonais was not English, nor endowed with that
fine native faculty which enables a woman to look at a man through the
crystallizing medium of a peerage and discern its magically
beautifying power. Still, considering that she did not love Ponsonby
Anwyll when he presented himself at the Villa des Olives, there is no
denying that Lord Roxham was a rival of whom the young squire of Rydal
might justly have been afraid. Sir Simon had no deeply-laid plot or
counterplot in his mind when he asked him; he did not mean to play him
off against Ponsonby, as he had once played him off against Clide; he
merely thought it would make it pleasanter to have him. It would throw
Franceline more off her guard, too, perhaps. He was roving about the
Pyrenees, and he might just as well come on and spend a little while
with them at Nice.
Clide said very little while Sir Simon ran on about the contents of
Franceline’s letter, and proceeded to expound his views on the
possible state of affairs at the villa since he had left.
“Yes; I see the danger,” he said at length: “Anwyll has had the field
so far to himself with all odds on his side; her father, who could
make her do almost anything short of a sin to please him, is backing
him up. Well, _à la grâce de Dieu_! I will start with you for Nice by
this night’s mail.”
* * * * *
It was an hour after sunrise—the sweetest hour of the day. Franceline
was an early riser, and seldom missed the enjoyment of a short walk by
the sea in the freshness of the early morning. To-day, however, she
was not walking; she was sitting on the beach at the foot of the
garden that sloped down to the water’s edge, sitting with her
milk-white hands in her lap, without book or work, gazing vacantly at
the advancing tide and at the sunlight dancing on the waves. She was
tired; she had slept badly—hardly slept at all, indeed—and she wanted
the fresh sea-breeze to revive her, and the solitude of the silent
beach to help her to come to a decision that she had spent the night
vainly trying to arrive at. After a while she drew a letter from her
pocket, opened it, and spread it on her knee. She had read it so often
already that she might have repeated it word for word by heart; but
she read it again, as if expecting to find some new light in it now.
Things look different sometimes by daylight, just as faces do, and she
had only read this letter by the light of her bedroom candle. But the
sunbeams did not alter one line or modify the force of one word in the
four pages covered with a large, straggling, but bold, legible
handwriting. The letter was from Ponsonby Anwyll, asking her to be his
wife. Her father had put it into her hand last evening when he kissed
her and bade her good-night.
“My child, here is a message that I have been charged with for thee;
thou wilt read it alone and give me thy answer to-morrow.”
He did not add one word as to what he hoped the answer might be, but
the sigh, the close embrace with which he held her to him, told
Franceline plainly enough what his longing desire was. She returned
his embrace in silence and carried the letter to her room. She had
thought over it all night; but the night had brought her no counsel.
She was still hesitating, undecided. Yet she must make up her mind one
way or the other within a very short time—oh! how short a time. Why
could she not yield? Her father desired this marriage ardently, and
there was everything to recommend it. Ponsonby loved her so sincerely,
with such a humble, honest, manly love. It was no light thing to fling
away such a gift as this. A faithful heart is not an offering to be
cast aside as if it were a “common thing with more behind,” to be
picked up at any moment. It was in all probability the turning point
of her life that she was now called upon to decide; if she let the
tide go by, it might never flow towards her again. Franceline would
have made small account of this if she had had only herself to
consider. She was happy as she was, and would gladly have renounced
all hope or chance of changing her present lot; she had no ambition,
and she did not realize the future keenly enough to forecast
probabilities and take precautions against them. She knew her father
was an old man, but she never let her mind dwell on the consequences
of that fact. If he were taken away first, it seemed as if life must
come to an end for her; she did not want to look beyond so remote and
dreaded a possibility. But she knew that he looked beyond it, during
his illness especially he had said things occasionally that showed he
was painfully preoccupied about her future, about what was to become
of her if he went and left her alone in the world with no one to love
her or take care of her. She knew that nothing could sweeten his
remaining years more than to see her happily married; that, in fact,
such an event would, humanly speaking, be very likely to prolong his
life. This it was that kept her trembling on the verge of surrender
and pleaded loudly in favor of Ponsonby’s suit. Why was it so hard to
yield? There was nothing to hinder her now. If she had cared for any
one else.… A bright crimson suffused her cheeks; she covered her face
with her hands with an involuntary movement, as if to hide that blush
of exquisite shame from the roses that were its only witnesses.
But this emotion passed away and sober reflections presented
themselves. The idea, once so firmly rejected as a presumptuous
temptation, that she might convert Ponsonby by marrying him, appealed
to her suddenly with a force altogether new. It would be no doubt a
glorious thing to sacrifice her own personal feelings and wishes for
such an object, and it seemed to Franceline, as she contemplated it
for the first time calmly, that the generosity of the motive must
ensure the reward of the sacrifice. If she could but consult Father
Henwick! But that was impossible. The distance was too great. In those
days railroads were few and far between. It took four days for a
letter to reach Dullerton, and as many for the answer to return; and
it was imperative that she should make up her mind at once. She drew
from her pocket a little book in which she had written down some
striking passages from various authors, and some words of advice that
Father Henwick had given her from time to time. The words that had
sounded so sustaining when uttered spoke to her now with even a more
pointed significance: “Be sure of one thing: so long as we are
sincerely seeking to do what is right God will guide us to it.… The
danger is that sometimes we are all the time hankering after our own
will when we say, and even fancy, that we are seeking the will of
God.” Then later, in answer to some question about the mode of
discerning between these two wills, the writer said: “Things that are
not of our seeking or wishing are mostly of his ordering.… Obedience
and circumstances are our safest guides.” Here Franceline closed the
little book, murmuring to herself: “It is quite certain that this
marriage is not of my seeking—nor of my inclination; if that be a
sign, I am safe in doing God’s will in consenting to it.” Then she
remembered how she had read somewhere that God would send an angel
from heaven rather than let a faithful soul go astray when striving to
do his will. No angel had come to forbid her yielding, and the time
pressed for her decision. Franceline buried her face in her hands, and
for the next few minutes a fierce struggle went on within her. She
trembled from head to foot, her pulses beat fast, a sharp pang shot
through her whole being and seemed to tear it asunder for one moment,
then gradually recoiled upon her will, stimulating it to a firm,
irrevocable impulse. All that she had hitherto known of energy or
courage was as nothing compared to what she was feeling now. She
looked up and pushed back her hair, as if to see a vision more
clearly. A light had gathered in her eye, a high resolve shone upon
her brow. The vision was vanishing, but she saw it still: angels were
beckoning. The spirit of Renunciation pointed with golden palm-branch
to that hour when every sacrifice receives its crown, when every
selfish denial is avenged. She stood by her father’s death-bed; life
was fading away like a dream; the hour of real awakening was at hand.
Conscience spoke out: “Prove thy love,” said the clear, stern voice,
“accept the reality which the kind will of Heaven has appointed for
you, and cast from your heart once and for ever the vain dream that it
has cherished too long. Make your father happy; become the wife of
this good and faithful man who loves you. Go forth, immolate yourself,
and lead him to the light of truth.”
When Franceline rose to her feet, Ponsonby’s cause was won. She folded
his letter, and went in and sat down at once and answered it. Her hand
did not falter; there was no trace of reluctance or hesitation visible
in her countenance. As soon as the letter was finished she went
down-stairs to meet her father, and handed it to him open.
“Am I to read it?”
“Yes, father; it is you who have written it,” she said, kissing him.
Before M. de la Bourbonais could reply, Angélique and the major-domo
came in with the breakfast, and kept fussing in and out of the room
while it lasted; so it was some little time before he was able to go
out on the terrace and read the letter alone.
Franceline did not wait to see its effect upon him. She escaped to her
room, and sat there until he should call for her; but instead of this
Raymond took up his straw hat and went straight out of the house. She
saw him walk with a quick, buoyant step down the garden and disappear
into the road. He was gone with her answer to Ponsonby, guessing
rightly that until he received it the young man would not venture to
return to the villa, and that her father was impatient to make the
lover happy. Franceline saw him go forth bearing the _fiat_ that
decided her destiny, that placed a stranger henceforth between them,
dividing with another the duty and the life that had hitherto been all
his own. Oh! if she had but loved the other as it was in her to love
the man who was to be her husband. A cry that was almost a shriek
escaped from her, and she threw herself upon the ground in a paroxysm
of tears. But this weakness was soon over; she arose and hurried out
of the house, so as to avoid meeting Angélique or any of the servants,
and went down to the beach.
The tide was in; she seated herself in the crevice of a rock—a
favorite seat, where she was sheltered from the sun and surrounded by
the beautiful blue sea on every side. She had taken a book with her,
dutifully opened it where the marker was, and then leaned her head
against the side of the rock and began to dream. How pleasant it would
be if she could drift away in one of those white fishing-boats,
herself and her father, to some “fair isle of the blest” where there
is no marrying or giving in marriage, where no winged angels come with
cruel messages of duty to weak, reluctant hearts! Was that steamer
whose smoke was curling like a dark snake in the pure blue atmosphere
bound for one of these happy isles? Oh! would that she were on it and
making for that haven of rest. She must have sat a long time dreaming
her dreams, for the steamer was a long while out of sight and the
water had risen almost to her feet, when she heard Angélique’s voice
calling her up and down the garden. She did not move. It was Ponsonby
come back with her father, no doubt, to salute her as his bride. Let
him wait; there was time enough. Angélique went on calling for some
minutes, and then ceased. Franceline thought she had given it up, and
was congratulating herself on the reprieve, when she heard the sound
of footsteps falling heavily on the pebbles close behind the rock.
There was no use resisting; she must go to this impatient lover at
once, it seemed. She rose with a weary, resigned sigh, and was
stepping over the ledge of the rock to gain the terrace, when, looking
up, she beheld, not Angélique, but Clide de Winton. Franceline
screamed as if a sword had been driven through her heart, fell
forward, and was caught in Clide’s arms.
“Franceline! my darling! my own!” he murmured, straining her
passionately to him.
She had not fainted; she was only stunned. Rallying in an instant, she
struggled to free herself, and looking at him with a frightened,
bewildered glance, “How is this? What do you mean? Are you free?” she
exclaimed.
“Should I dare to come to you, to speak to you thus, to clasp you to
my heart, if I were not free? O Franceline, Franceline! have you known
me so little all this time?”
Her head drooped upon his shoulder, and she struggled no more; he
gathered her to his heart, and she did not draw away her face from the
warm kisses that he pressed on it.
Angélique’s voice breaking in upon this moment of rapture roused her
to the remembrance of other things: her father’s errand, the letter,
she had written engaging herself as Ponsonby Anwyll’s wife.
“O Clide, Clide!” she cried, putting her hand to her forehead with a
look of agonized distress.
“My darling! what is it?”
But Angélique was down on them now, and began to scold the young girl
for letting her shout herself hoarse calling to her this hour past
without an answer, until she thought Mam’selle must have fallen asleep
and dropped into the sea; that’s what would happen some of these days,
and then her body would be carried off by the tide to the north pole,
and M. le Comte would die of grief, and the only thing for Angélique
to do would be to drown herself. Clide tried to divert the vials of
the old woman’s wrath towards him, and so cut her short in this dismal
horoscopic view of the family history. M. de la Bourbonais, meanwhile,
was hastening to meet them; the sight of his smiling countenance sent
a dagger through Franceline. She embraced Sir Simon, hurriedly, and
then ran to her father.
“You went with that letter?” she whispered.
“Yes, my little one; I went straight off with it.”
“Ha! Then he knows already? You have given it to him?”
“No; unluckily, he was not at home. They had just gone out when I got
to the hotel.”
“O father! thank God! Then give it to me quick!” She flung her arms
round his neck, and kissed him with an energy that nearly sent his
spectacles flying into the Mediterranean.
“Eh, eh? What is the matter? What is this?” said Raymond, rescuing the
precious _lunettes_ and refixing them on his nose.
“Father, I will not marry him. I am engaged to Clide de Winton!”
* * * * *
The sun was not long risen—for the dew was still glistening on the
deep-bladed grass, and the birds were babbling in their nests as they
do in the fresh dawn before men are astir to drown the delicious
concert—when three figures might be seen wending towards the little
gray church, where Father Henwick was awaiting them. They found the
door open and the candles lighted on the altar, although there was not
a soul in the church but themselves.
I dare say you recognize the three at a glance, though it may surprise
you to see Clide de Winton there and at so unwonted an hour.
The church was beautifully arrayed in flowers and evergreens and
banners of every hue. For this is to be Franceline’s wedding-day, and
she has come with her _fiancé_ and her father to ask a blessing on it.
There was something peculiarly sweet and thrilling in the sound of the
bell through the almost empty church, and the voice of the priest
reverberating in the solemn silence, tender and tremulous as a throb
that broke from his inmost heart.
The walk home was silent; only, when they entered the park, M. de la
Bourbonais stood a moment and, looking down on the little cottage
where he and his child had suffered so much and known so many happy
days, he said with an emotion which he made no effort to conceal: “My
children, God has been very good to us; to me especially—for I have
deserved it least. I shall not live long to prove that I am grateful;
but you who are young—you will both of you love him and thank him for
me all your lives.”
Clide’s only answer was a silent pressure of the hand, while
Franceline fell upon her father’s breast and wept a few sweet tears.
* * * * *
Yes, the wedding-day had arrived; the sun shone brightly, everything
was bright, everybody seemed happy. Miss Merrywig sported a splendid
new gown for the occasion—pale blue silk, with rosebuds and
forget-me-nots on a broad, white satin stripe, most appropriate for a
wedding; and _such_ a bargain! She was entreating Lady Anwyll to make
a guess—just one guess—at what it had cost; but Lady Anwyll fought
off, declaring it would only make her envious if she knew, and,
besides, she wanted Miss Merrywig to keep her bargain as fresh as
possible for another episode like the present which would be taking
place soon, she hoped, in the neighborhood. She would not say more; it
was rash to speak of these matters until everything was _quite_
settled; but it had long been suspected by the whole county that that
sweet little Lady Lucy B—— and Ponce were planning some mischief
together. Then followed whisperings and squeezing of hands between the
two old ladies, which were presently interrupted by a loud,
premonitory buzz through the great Gothic hall where the guests were
fast assembling from the adjoining rooms. Sir Simon appeared,
marshalling the twelve pink and white bridemaids into ranks on the
broad landing at the top of the stairs. Down they came gliding as
softly as a sunset cloud, and stood below awaiting the bride.
Everybody whose acquaintance you have made ever so slightly at
Dullerton is present, I think—everybody except Sir Ponsonby Anwyll,
who sent his good wishes and regrets by his mother, explaining that he
had not been able to get home just at present.
And now a murmur, deep and prolonged, runs through the gay crowd. The
bride is coming; stately she steps down the grand oak stairs, leaning
on her father’s arm. To my mind, she is the sweetest, loveliest bride
that ever “the sun shone on.” But then, to be sure, I may be
prejudiced. I wish I could describe her dress to you; but it would be
very much like trying to describe the texture of a moonbeam. I can
only certify that it was white, diaphanous, and fleecy as a cloud, and
that, in some mysterious way, eucharista lilies floated here and there
over the soft, snowy foam. The graceful head, too, bowed modestly
under its golden weight of hair, was crowned by the same lovely
flowers, and a cloud-like veil of gossamer tissue encircled her like a
morning mist.
M. de la Bourbonais looked very happy as he passed through the
sympathetic groups with his clair-de-lune on his arm; there was
subdued joy on his venerable face that smoothed away all painful
traces of his late illness, and almost obliterated the lines of age
and the deeper furrows of care on his thoughtful brow.
As to Clide de Winton, everybody declared that he bore himself
admirably on this most trying occasion, presenting a model of what a
bridegroom ought to be—manly, dignified, and simple; he made a speech
at the wedding breakfast, and it was pronounced capital. I don’t think
the effort proved such a very severe trial to him, either, as he had
once expected, for when Mrs. de Winton, who had expanded like a
sunflower in cordiality that day, asked him with an arch smile whether
he found the ordeal very dreadful, Clide answered frankly that it was
not so trying as he had anticipated, and that, even when the worst was
said, a wedding ceremony, with all its fuss, was not an unmitigated
evil.
THOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY.[104]
There is some evidence of the undue conceit which the present age has
of its learning and culture in the fact that the works of the great
writers of the middle ages indefinitely surpass our best literary
productions in intellectual acumen and in the depth and width of real
philosophical science. St. Thomas commences his _Summa Theologica_ by
telling us that it is to be an elementary work for the use of
beginners in the study of sacred doctrine, according as the apostle
says, _Tam parvulis in Christo, lac vobis potum dedi, non escam_. This
book for junior students, this “milk for babes” of the mediæval times,
is nowadays somewhat strong for the mental digestion of full-grown
men, not excepting those whose minds have been carefully trained under
the tuition of judicious preceptors. It was no doubt the modesty of
the saint which prompted him to speak in this manner of that most
wonderful work. Had he lived in such days as ours, so remarkable for
feebleness of intellect, so conspicuous for contemptuousness, for
self-confidence and self-sufficiency, such language would not have
been possible with him; for he could only have used it in the
bitterest sarcasm, which is utterly foreign to his meek and gentle
character.
Since the days of the Angelic Doctor, it has become necessary to
dispose the minds of those who would drink of this source of science
by previous instruction in the first elements of his philosophy. Of
all the elementary philosophies of the strictly Thomistic school, the
most universally esteemed has been that of Father Goudin, who gave
lectures in the Dominican College of Paris towards the end of the
seventeenth century. The great aim of this faithful professor of
Thomism is to be true to his master in every point, not only in the
higher principles of philosophy, but even in the details of physics.
He wrote at a time when a great revolution was taking place in men’s
minds with regard to science, and he saw with concern that the new
doctrines would prove in their results subversive of all that was
Christian. He therefore set about opposing the doctrinal novelties of
Descartes and his school by an uncompromising reassertion of the
teaching of St. Thomas. In the judgment of posterity Goudin has erred
somewhat, but not so much, certainly, as the school which he opposed;
for the Cartesian doctrines have proved the source of many subsequent
errors, as scepticism, rationalism, pantheism, atheism. The mistakes
of Goudin simply regard some of the details of physical science which,
whether correctly or erroneously explained, tend little to the benefit
of our fellow-beings, although interesting enough to the minds of the
well educated.
We are assured that the strictest Thomists are not bound to adhere to
the details of the physics of their master. The Angelic Doctor, in
matters of this kind (which, we submit, concern little the theologian,
or the metaphysician, or the moralist), adopted the prevailing
opinions of the time. We do not read that he ever showed much
enthusiasm for natural or experimental science, and in this respect he
differed from his friend and quondam preceptor, Albertus Magnus. But
in those fundamental questions of philosophy which are intimately
connected with our moral conduct and with natural or positive
religion, and indeed in all questions where St. Thomas is bound to
think for himself, we do not find that he simply endorses the teaching
of another. When it is objected by knowing people that Aquinas teaches
doctrines which are exploded or puerile—as, for instance, that the
earth is stationary, or that the east is the right hand of the
heavens—it would be well for them to reflect that these are rather the
doctrines of the universally-admired Aristotle than of his Christian
disciple.[105]
Father Gonzales (since created Bishop of Cordova) has given to the
church an excellent manual of Thomistic doctrine. At the outset, he
seeks to determine the sense of the word _philosophy_. This is no easy
matter, as the definitions given by different authors are many and
various. Cousin declares it to be—_reflection completely emancipated
and freed from the trammels of authority, so that reason depends
solely upon itself for the acquisition of truth_. By the subjectivists
of Germany it is defined—_the Ego as it places and offers itself by
thesis and antithesis_. According to Kant, it is _the necessary
science of the laws and causes of spontaneous reason_. Cicero says
that philosophy is _rerum divinarum et humanarum causarumque, quibus
hæ res continentur, scientia_; and this is, perhaps, the popular
notion of the word, so that all scientific studies are included in the
general term of philosophy. Thus we speak of the philosophy of
history, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of manufactures,
of laws, and so forth. A writer of the name of Mr. Robert Hooke tries
to impress upon his readers the vast extent of philosophy in the
following curious dissertation:
“The history of potters, tobacco-pipe makers,
glass-grinders, looking-glass makers or foilers,
spectacle-makers and optic-glass makers, makers of
counterfeit pearl and precious stones, bugle-makers,
lamp-blowers, color-makers, color-grinders, glass-painters,
enamellers, varnishers, color-sellers, painters, limners,
picture-drawers, makers of babies’ heads, of little bowling
stones or marbles, fustian-makers, music-masters, tinsey
makers and taggers; the history of school-masters,
writing-masters, printers, bookbinders, stage-players,
dancing masters and vaulters, apothecaries, chirurgeons,
seamsters, butchers, barbers, laundresses, and cosmetics,
etc., etc. (the true nature of each of which being exactly
determined), will hugely facilitate our inquiries in
philosophy.”
By most scholastics philosophy is defined as a _cognitio certa et
evidens_. These are the words of Goudin, and we observe that they are
adopted by Father Lepidi in the first volume of his new work.
Gonzales, however, demurs to assent to this, for the reason that in
philosophy many questions are discussed of which we have neither
evidence nor certainty. The objection is inserted and responded to in
Father Lepidi’s book, and also in the works of Goudin. The proper and
primary object of philosophy is certain and evident; it treats of
questions that are obscure only secondarily and _consequenter_.
Nevertheless, Gonzales prefers to define philosophy as _cognitio
scientifica et rationalis Dei, mundi et hominis, quo viribus
naturalibus per altiores causas seu principia habetur_. In the latter
words of the definition he is in conformity with the rest of his
school, but in the first part—that is, in the genus of the
definition—he differs from them.
The essence of philosophy being determined, at least in the sense in
which the author is going to treat of it, we are next invited to
decide upon a suitable division. The older scholastics had divided it
into four parts: logic; physics, whose object was _ens mobile_, or all
changeable nature; metaphysics, which treated of being in the
abstract, and all concrete objects which transcend the powers of the
senses; and ethics. Some added a fifth part—namely, mathematics.
Goudin’s definition of philosophy seems capable of embracing this
science also; however, he disposes of it, whether consistently or not
we need not stop to inquire.
Later Christian writers, who have adhered in the main to the doctrines
of the scholastics, have somewhat varied their division. Physics in
its details is excluded from philosophy strictly so called, while in
its more universal relations it is considered as belonging to
metaphysics. Thus the science of the laws of the world is called
cosmology, and the science of the soul, its essence, its faculties,
and its operations, is called psychology. Cosmology and psychology,
together with theodicy or natural theology, are the subdivisions of
_special_ metaphysics, while the science of being is called ontology
or _general_ metaphysics.
However, Gonzales refuses to grant that psychology belongs properly to
metaphysics, because, although the soul of which it treats is beyond
the ken of the senses, yet the operations of the soul depend upon them
and are recognized by them. He determines, therefore, that this
science belongs as much to ethics and to logic as to metaphysics: to
metaphysics, inasmuch as it treats of the essence of the soul; to
logic, as it regards the faculties of cognition; to ethics, as far as
it concerns the moral power. Later on, when Gonzales comes to treat of
psychology _ex professo_, he suggests that it should be either reduced
again to physics or made a distinct and special portion of philosophy.
Such is the unsatisfactory consideration of the question by men
eminent for their science. We see in the newly-issued volume of Father
Lepidi’s philosophy that in his division he leaves out altogether the
words physics and metaphysics, and proposes the following heads:
logic, general ontology, cosmology, anthropology, natural theology,
and ethics. This mode of division seems to us, with all due deference
to Bishop Gonzales and other writers, the most satisfactory. Moreover,
it is explained by Father Lepidi in a most logical manner, based as it
is upon two incontrovertible philosophical maxims. Before we leave
this subject of the division, we will mention that proposed by the
late Canon Sanseverino in his great work, which, unfortunately, was
never completed. He considers philosophy under a twofold aspect,
subjective and objective. _Subjective_ philosophy is divided into four
branches—_logica_, _dynamilogia_, _idealogia_, and _criteriologia_.
_Objective_ philosophy has also four parts—_naturalis theologia_,
_cosmologia_, _anthropologia_, _ethica_. We observe that he is one
with Father Lepidi in discarding the use of those vague terms of which
we have spoken.
Father Gonzales has published his work in three volumes, the first of
which comprises the tractates of Logic and Psychology. In the Logic we
have noticed nothing particular to be mentioned, excepting its
completeness and the exceeding clearness with which the subjects are
treated. The treatise of Psychology, however, has greatly interested
us, and is the best we have seen. It is divided into two parts,
_empiric_ and _rational_. _Psychologia empirica_ treats of the powers
of the soul, and we notice in a few instances a deviation from the
explicit doctrine of Goudin. For instance, those _species_ or
representations of objects which are received in the cognitive senses,
are stated by Gonzales to be immaterial and spiritual, while Goudin
has said that they are material. It might, perhaps, be suggested that
these _species_ may be called _immateriales negative_. This epithet is
allowed by the author to be applied to the _anima_ of brutes; and as
the _species_ we speak of belong to animal life, they must be of the
same nature. Cognition is a vital act, and all vitality is above the
condition of that which is merely material. A very recent writer has
implied that St. Thomas distinguishes immaterial and spiritual
existences. We do not remember to have noticed such a distinction in
his works. Perhaps the writer makes allusion to the doctrine that some
operations of material beings transcend the qualities of
matter—_v.g._, sensitive cognition. Yet these operations are not
called immaterial by St. Thomas, at least not usually. This subject of
cognition is well treated of by Gonzales. In another part of this
treatise he endeavors to prove the necessity of an _intellectus agens_
as distinguished from the _intellectus possibilis_, the passive
intellect, the faculty of understanding.
In the second part of Psychology, the simplicity of the soul, its
spirituality and immateriality, are clearly demonstrated. Its unity
also is stoutly maintained, and the opposite errors, both ancient and
modern, are stated with admirable terseness and pertinence, and then
put aside as wanting in scientific consistency. With the hypothesis of
one soul, all vital operations can be accounted for; with that of more
than one principle of life, various phenomena could not be explained;
therefore the doctrine of one principle is to be admitted.
Appended to the tractate of Psychology is a special chapter on
Ideology. The various systems of Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Locke,
Leibnitz, Bonald, Malebranche, Gioberti, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, and
Cousin are set aside one after another as insufficient or absurd. Then
we have an exposition of the subject according to the principles of
the Angelic Doctor; and this portion of the work is of unusual
originality, specially interesting and instructive to many readers.
The reality of ideas, as distinct intellectual representations of
objects, it first established in opposition to the doctrines of those
philosophers who maintain that the understanding perceives objects
without the intervention of ideas or the need of an _intellectus
agens_. The doctrine of _impressed_ ideas as distinct from those that
are _expressed_ is insisted upon.
The origin of our ideas is thus explained: There are four kinds of
ideas, _ideæ primariæ abstractionis_, _ideæ pure intelligibiles_,
_ideæ pure spirituales_, and _idea entis_, and this division is
applicable to both impressed and expressed ideas. We must ask pardon
for our attempt to Anglicize the scholastic terms. Now, as to
expressed ideas, all these have their origin from the passive
intellect. The difficulty, therefore, of explaining the origin of
ideas regards only those which we call _ideæ impressæ_, and of these
only we have now to speak.
Ideas of primary abstraction, which refer to corporeal or sensible
objects—as, for instance, a man, a horse, the sun—come from the active
intellect, which draws them out of the _species_ contained in the
imagination. Ideas purely intellectual—as those of substance, cause,
effect, good, evil—have their origin from both the active and the
passive intellect: from the former, because in the ideas of primary
abstraction it discovers other more universal relations, as those of
good, bad, etc.; from the latter, as far as it works out and develops
those germs of higher knowledge imperfectly manifested by the active
intellect. As to purely spiritual ideas—those of God, of the angels,
of our own souls—these have not all the same origin. If the idea of
God is obtained by reasoning from that which is contingent to the
conclusion that a necessary being must exist, such an idea is the
product of the passive intellect, which has worked it out of
impressions previously received. But if the idea of God be conceived
as of the first cause of all things, then it is acquired in the same
way as the ideas of causes in general, and belongs in reality to that
class of ideas which are called purely intellectual. The idea of an
angel is acquired from the analogy of our own soul; hence the _idea
expressa_ of our soul may become the _idea impressa_ of an angel. As
to our own soul, there is no impressed idea of it, but its operations
are sufficient for the acquisition of an expressed idea of it, without
any need of an abstraction of the active intellect. As to the idea of
being, it is an abstraction of the active intellect, but natural and
spontaneous; indeed, it is its first perception, as the expressed idea
of being is the first conception of the passive intellect. And the
reason of this is, that our intellectual faculties are reflections of
the mind of God.
Father Gonzales next proceeds to explain in what sense scholastics
understand the axiom of the Stagirite, _Nihil est in intellectu, quin
prius fuerit in sensu_. All ideas depend upon the senses so far forth
that sensible cognition must always precede that which is
intellectual, and because all intellectual cognition requires an
accompanying exercise of the imagination. Ideas of primary abstraction
depend upon sensible representations directly and immediately; ideas
purely intellectual, remotely and inadequately; ideas purely
spiritual, especially of angels and of our own souls, depend upon the
senses only indirectly and _occasionaliter_. Hence the senses are
never the efficient causes of our intellectual ideas; the most that
can be said is, that they are the material causes of some of them. In
this sense only can we accept the maxim of the great pagan philosopher
without becoming implicated in the sensism of Locke and Condillac.
Gonzales next warns his students not to consider ideas as the object
of intellectual knowledge; an idea is not _id_ QUOD _cognoscitur_, but
_id_ QUO _cognoscitur_. These are the words of St. Thomas, and it is
of the greatest importance to realize the doctrine, if we would avoid
the Charybdis of idealism as well as the Scylla of sensism.
In the second volume we have the tractates of Ontology, Cosmology, and
Natural Theology. In ontology the real distinction of essence and
existence is affirmed and ably advocated, as, indeed, it usually is in
works emanating from the Dominican Order. We have known personally
more than one professor of that order who have differed from Gonzales
and Goudin in this point, and who have taught their doctrines in the
lecture rooms without scruple as the veritable teaching of St. Thomas.
Our province is not to attempt to decide the question, either on its
own independent merits or according to the authority of the Angelic
Doctor. There are difficulties in the subject which seem to increase
on examination. Father Liberatore, in the later editions of his
_Institutiones Philosophicæ_, has passed from the ranks of those who
deny the real distinction to join those who teach it, and he gives
weighty reasons for doing so. We do not just now remember a conversion
so conspicuous in the reverse direction; but we know of one or two
such conversions, which, however, have attracted little notice.
In the treatise of Ontology there is an interesting dissertation on
the principles of æsthetics. We are afraid to attempt a synopsis of
it, as it would not be appreciated. Gonzales’ definition of beauty is
worthy of a disciple of St. Thomas: _Splendor harmonicus veri et
infiniti_.
The doctrine of St. Thomas, according to which he explains the mystery
of the unchanged appearance of the elements of the Eucharist after
consecration, is well sustained. Gonzales argues that substance and
accidents are really distinct in essence, consequently the idea of
their real separation involves no contradiction of terms; and the
Protestant philosopher Leibnitz is quoted in support of this doctrine.
Accordingly, after the words of consecration, when the substance of
bread and wine is converted into the substance of the body and blood
of Christ, all the accidents remain unchanged, both in appearance and
in reality, except that extension subsists of itself after the manner
of a substance. Cartesians, on the contrary, deny that the accidents
of the elements really remain, and consider that the appearances of
bread and wine are only phenomenal. Many modern philosophers who are
scholastic in most points agree with the Cartesians in this; among
others, Father Tongiorgi, S.J. This subject is worthy of the attentive
study of all who believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation.
In the tractate of Cosmology the different systems of pantheism are
explained and disposed of, and the doctrine of the creation of the
world by a Being supreme, independent, and free is demonstrated. Then
follows a discourse upon that interesting subject, the principles of
bodies. Gonzales, as a staunch Thomist, upholds the doctrine of matter
and form, and insists that it is the only system which is capable of
satisfying the mind. Modern philosophers generally reject this system,
and some of them in very contemptuous language. Cudworth, for
instance, calls it _genus quoddam metaphysicæ stultitiæ_. Father
Tongiorgi does not accept this doctrine, and seems to be persuaded
that his arguments in favor of chemical atomism are unanswerable and
destructive of the ancient theory. Gonzales discusses successively the
systems of the atomists and the dynamists, and those go-betweens whom
he calls atomistico-dynamists; and they are successively dismissed as
incomplete or erroneous. Then the old scholastic or Aristotelian
system is clearly and beautifully represented. There are changes going
on in nature which are observed by all. Substances are corrupted and
substances are generated; the corruption of one is the generation of
another. These changes are called substantial mutations. And yet, in
spite of all these changes, something remains ever the same. When wood
is turned into fire, fire into ashes, these into earth, earth into
vegetable or mineral substances, there is always something that
remains unaltered in its essence. What is this thing? It is primary
matter (_materia prima_). What is it that makes the change when wood
becomes fire, or earth, or a stone? It is the new substantial form
which succeeds the one that has departed by corruption. In scholastic
language, the matter has changed its form.
As matter is something not knowable of itself, and could not exist,
even by a miracle, without being actuated or perfected by substantial
forms, it follows that its essence can be but vaguely understood. For
the same reason, a scientific definition of it is not possible. Hence
Aristotle thought it profitable to give a negative definition of it:
_Nec quid, nec quale, nec quantum, nec aliquid eorum per quæ ens
determinatur_. We have known this definition to excite the
irrepressible merriment of several. Some people have the faculty of
being able to laugh at will, even when they understand nothing of the
subject that tickles them; and such a faculty is sometimes of great
convenience. Gonzales defines primary matter as—_realitas
substantialis et incompleta, nullum actum aut formam ex se habens, sed
quæ capacitatem et potentiam habet ad universas formas substantiales_.
He defines substantial form. _Realitas substantialis et incompleta,
materiam primo actuans ac determinans ad constituendam simul cum ipsa
substantiam complete subsistentem._ Matter is the subject of the form;
form is the perfection or actuality of matter. It is worth while to
observe that Father Liberatore is a firm supporter of this theory.
To the principal objections, so cleverly put by Father Tongiorgi,
against the Peripatetic system, Gonzales has always a suitable
rejoinder. After a categoric _respondeo_ to each one severally, he
makes some general reflections upon them all which we will try to do
into English:
“Although no answer were forthcoming to the famous
objections of Tongiorgi, the scholastic system would
continue to hold its own in respect of the first principles
of bodies. Our system regards chiefly bodies which are
simple, and bodies endowed with life. Now, none of the
arguments of the Italian philosopher have any reference to
either of these kinds of bodies. Consequently, they not only
do not overturn the Peripatetic system of matter and form
and of substantial generation, but they do not even touch
the question. The most that can be inferred from his
arguments is, that substantial generation does not take
place in respect of inanimate bodies which are compound.
Now, these compound bodies can be considered merely as
bodies which are imperfect in unity of nature and substance,
and as such they belong to that class of bodies which were
styled by the old scholastics _mixta imperfecta_.”
The rest of the treatise of Ontology is well handled, especially that
which regards the principle and manifestations of life. It is here
that we observed a distinction we have before mentioned. The _anima_
of the brute creation is immaterial _negative_ and _similitudinarie_,
for its operations transcend the conditions of matter; it is material
_positive_, because it exists and acts only in dependence on matter.
The tractate of Theodicy is good, and contains in a short compass all
that is necessary for the course of the young philosopher. As was to
be expected of a Dominican author, the questions which have come to be
regarded as distinctive of the schools of the order—_v.g._, _præmotio
physica_ and predestination _ante prævisa merita_—are taught and
defended with the most able of available arguments.
In the third volume we have first of all a treatise of Ethics, which
is interesting and contains much that is of importance for our own
days. The duty of regulating our conduct according to the law of
reason and of God, by the commands of the church, of our civil rulers,
of society, is well set forth, and the superiority of Christian
morality to all others is proved. We only regret that the treatise is
not longer.
The latter part of the third volume gives an excellent epitome of the
history of philosophy. This history is divided into two periods. The
first starts with the beginnings of philosophy and continues to the
time of Christ, _in quo instaurata sunt omnia_. It is subdivided into
three epochs: the first from the beginning of philosophy to its
introduction into Greece; the second, from that time to the days of
Socrates; the third, from Socrates to Christ. The second period is
from the time of Christ to our days, and has likewise three epochs:
the first, from the early ages of Christianity to the time of
Charlemagne; the second, from Charlemagne to the Renaissance of the
fifteenth century; the third, from thence to our own time. For a
literary student this short history is very valuable. All the systems
of philosophy that can be thought of are sketched in their principal
characters, with a short notice of their originators and champions.
Father Gonzales does not weary his readers with a special refutation
of each particular system; this is unnecessary after having taught his
principles so well in the didactic essays. About fifty systems of the
period before Christ are briefly stated, and above a hundred and fifty
of those which have appeared since. This short history is evidently
the result of very extensive reading.
As a student’s manual, we know of nothing more complete than the
_Philosophia Elementaria_ of Bishop Gonzales. It is an excellent
course, both for the young cleric who is preparing for the study of
the scholastics, and for the secular youth about to take his place in
the world. The style of writing is simple, but by no means devoid of
elegance. Spanish writers who have been trained in the schools of
Melchior Cano have never been at a loss to express their thoughts in a
becoming form.
We have heard many regrets that there was no modern text-book of
philosophy of the school of Goudin. This want is now fully supplied by
Gonzales, and it will be doubly satisfied when the rest of the volumes
of Lepidi’s _Elementa Philosophiæ Christianæ_ have appeared. We do not
say that Goudin will become unnecessary; the serious student will
still continue to consult him. But there can be no doubt that
Gonzales’ work is more adapted to the times. It is also more terse,
more interesting, more suitable to captivate the minds of youthful
students. We hope that what we have said may help to make Bishop
Gonzales more known among us. He has published a remarkable work in
his own mother tongue, _Estudios sobre la Filosofia de Santo Tomas_,
which would be productive of good if it were translated into English.
[104] _Philosophia Elementaria ad usum Academicæ
ac præsertim Ecclesiasticæ Juventutis._ Opera et
studio R. P. Fr. Zephyrini Gonzales, Ordinis
Prædicatorum. Matriti apud Polycarpum Lopez,
Cava-Baja, 19. MDCCCLXVIII.
_Philosophia juxta inconcussa tutissimaque D. Thomæ
Dogmata._ Auctore P. F. Antonio Goudin, Ordinis
Prædicatorum. Editio novissima. Urbevetere: Prælis
speraindeo pompei. 1859.
[105] The writer was talking recently with a clergyman
of the Anglican Establishment, who gave it as his
opinion that the _Summa Theologica_ was not worth
studying, “because it was based on the false decretals
of Isidore.”
THE DEVOUT CHAPEL OF NOTRE DAME DE BÉTHARRAM.
“Tu mihi, Virgo parens, in carmine suggere vires
Audacesque animos et grandibus annue coeptis.”
—_Pierre de la Bastide._
_La dévote chapelle de Notre Dame de Bétharram_, about ten miles from
Lourdes on the way to Pau, has been for eight hundred years the most
renowned sanctuary in Béarn, and, to quote St. Vincent of Paul, “the
second, or at least the third, most frequented in the kingdom.”
Founded by the Crusaders, endowed by kings and nobles, favored by
supernatural graces, the favorite resort of the poor and afflicted,
sung by poets, and its history written by learned men, it has every
claim on the interest of the pious heart.
We left Lourdes one pleasant morning in September in advance of a
large pilgrimage from Marseilles, that we might have an opportunity of
examining the church of Bétharram at our leisure. The railway runs
along the valley of the Gave, leaving at the left the sacred grotto of
Massabielle and the fair church of the Immaculate Conception, which
stand in full view on the further shore. We passed the forest of
Lourdes at the right, and in fifteen minutes came to the little
village of St. Pé—_Sanctus Petrus de Generoso_, as the old chronicles
call it—on a bend of the river, shut in by the mountains. Keeping
along in sight of the clear, green current of the Gave, everywhere the
most wayward, the most picturesque, and most fascinating of rivers, we
came, in ten minutes after leaving the narrow gorge of St. Pé, to the
station of Montaut-Bétharram, where, away to the left, we could see
the cross on the Calvary, and the domes of the white oratories of the
Passion gleaming among the trees on its sides. The _Devout Chapel of
Notre Dame de Bétharram_ is at the foot of the mount, on the further
bank of the Gave, and wholly shut out of sight. A straight road leads
to it from the station, which is about half a mile distant. The bridge
that spans the river with a bold arch is extremely picturesque, the
sides of the arch being completely covered with ivy, which trails to
the very water and lines the steep banks. Nothing could be more
romantic. Trees lean pensively over the limpid stream, and flowers
bloom along the shore. The Gave, as the poet of Bétharram remarks,
after rushing through the broad valley with impetuous haste,
threatening to overflow the meadows with its swelling current,
suddenly slackens its speed as it approaches the chapel of the Virgin,
and flows gently by with a murmur of softest homage. Opposite the
bridge is a long range of monastic-looking buildings with narrow
windows and thick walls, the asylum of meditation and prayer.
Connected therewith is the church, which stands with its side to the
river, facing the west. The front, of Pyrenean marble, is adorned with
white marble statues of the Evangelists with their emblems—two each
side of the mild-eyed Virgin who stands above the open door treading
the serpent beneath her feet.
It being early in the afternoon, we found the church delightfully
quiet. There were only a few persons at prayer, and, having paid our
vows at the altar of Our Lady, we proceeded to examine the building
and recall its varied history. The interior of the church consists of
a nave and two aisles. The latter are literally lined with
confessionals. The clerestory walls are covered with paintings
supported by gigantic caryatides amid a profusion of gilding and
ornament somewhat Spanish in character. The whole effect is imposing,
and there is an impressive air of antiquity and gloom about the
church, though it was rebuilt only two centuries ago. The Madonna, a
modern production, by Renoir, a pupil of Pradier, is over the high
altar in the centre of a reredos, rich with gilding and carving, which
extends to the very arches. At the end of the right aisle is the
chapel of the _Pastoure_, so called from the bas-relief depicting the
legend of the shepherds who discovered the Virgin of Bétharram.
The devotion to _Notre Dame de Bétharram_, so popular all through the
Pyrenees, is supposed to have arisen in the eleventh century—an age of
simple faith, when God loved to manifest the wonders of his grace. The
church is fondly believed by many to have been founded by the
Crusaders, who perhaps gave it its pleasing Oriental name. Gaston IV.,
a prince of the Merovingian race, noted for his devotion to the
Blessed Virgin, then reigned in Béarn. One of the bravest warriors who
went to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, he directed the construction
of the war-machines before the walls of Jerusalem, and was one of the
first to commence the assault at the side of Godfrey of Bouillon.
We are chiefly dependent on the ancient traditions of the province for
the early history of Bétharram, as the old church was burned down by
the Huguenots. One of the legends attributes the name of Bétharram to
a miraculous occurrence. A young girl, who was one day gathering
flowers on the banks of the Gave, accidentally fell into the stream
and was carried away by the current. She instinctively cried to the
Virgin for assistance, who instantly appeared, holding out a leafy
branch, by which she was drawn to the shore. The girl gratefully
offered her celestial protectress a _beautiful branch_—or, to use the
language of Béarn, a _beth arram_—of gold.
“‘Youb’ offri dounc ma bère arrame;
Qué l’ab’ dépalisi sùs l’aüta;
Y-mey que hey bot en moun ame
Qu’aci daban bous, Nouste Dame,
Gnaüt _beth arram_ que lusira.”
That is to say, literally:
“I offer you, then, my golden bough,
Which I lay on the altar divine;
Furthermore, in my inmost soul I vow,
In this blest place, O Mother of Grace!
For ever a _beautiful branch_ shall shine.”
La Bastide, the poet-priest of Bétharram in the time of the Fronde, is
the first writer to mention this derivation, which furnishes him with
a comparison to illustrate the mysterious effects of divine grace:
“This name signifies, in the language of the country, a _beau
rameau_—a beautiful branch—planted on the shore of the Gave by the
august Virgin, yielding fruit of a delicious savor that serves for the
nourishment of souls.”[106]
The old legends say a girl of the neighboring village of Lestelle,
named Raymonde, predicted the erection of a church on this spot in
honor of _Nouste Dame_, but her prophecy was scoffed at, even by her
own parents. Not long after, some children, who were amusing
themselves at the foot of the hill of Bétharram while tending their
flocks, saw a bright flame among the sharp rocks on the banks of the
river, in the very place where now stands the high altar of the Devout
Chapel. Like the mysterious bush on Mount Horeb, it burned intensely
without consuming the thicket around. After a moment of stupefaction
the little shepherds timidly approached, and what was their
astonishment to behold in the midst of the flames a beautiful statue
of the Virgin and Child! They fell down before it in pious reverence,
and then hurried away to Lestelle to relate the wonderful event. The
inhabitants ran in crowds to the place, followed by the priest in his
white surplice, who fell on his knees amid the prostrate throng and
bent his face to the ground before the marvellous image.
As the place was rocky and apparently unsuitable for a chapel, the
people proceeded to construct a small niche at the further end of the
bridge, to which the priest carried the statue amid the joyous shouts
of the people. But it was not there that Mary chose to be honored, and
the following day the niche was discovered to be vacant, and the
miraculous Virgin standing on the rocks where she originally appeared.
She was taken back, but, mysteriously returning again and again, the
people of Lestelle concluded to transport her to their village church,
which they did with great pomp, and carefully fastened her in, that
they might ascertain whether she had been moved by human agency or
some higher power. In spite of this precaution, the statue was again
found at dawn on the rocks of Bétharram. Then Raymonde took courage
once more, and declared this was the spot the _Reyne deü Ceü_ had
chosen for her sanctuary. Again the people began to laugh at her
revelations, but she now spoke with authority, and, moved by divine
inspiration, threatened them with a terrible chastisement if they
refused to obey the command. And, as if to give force to her words,
while they stood hesitating a sudden cloud appeared in the sky, from
which fell a torrent of hailstones. The people cried to heaven for
pardon and mercy, and immediately vowed to erect the chapel.
The learned Abbé Menjoulet of Bayonne thinks the church of Bétharram
was built in the eleventh or early in the twelfth century, from the
style of the portions still to be found here and there in the modern
building. It certainly existed long before the ascendancy of the
Huguenot party in Béarn, and had been for ages regarded as the holiest
spot in the land. Pierre de Marca says its remote origin is lost in
obscurity. The distinguished Jesuit, Père Poiré, in his _Triple
Couronne de la Mère de Dieu_, thinks it of a later date, but he had
never visited it in person. His account was derived from a magistrate
of Pau. He says the ancient pilgrims, as soon as they came in sight of
the Devout Chapel, fell on their knees, and completed their pilgrimage
in this way with a lighted torch in their hands. Cures without number
were wrought, the divine anger stayed, and whole armies put to flight
at the intercession of the _Boune Bierge_ of Bétharram. The walls were
hung with the crutches of the paralytic, the chains of liberated
prisoners, and the wax limbs given by those who had been healed, many
of which offerings resisted the flames, and were found after the
destruction of the church by the emissaries of Jeanne d’Albret.
This princess cherished a lively resentment against the Holy See on
account of the alliance of Julius II. with Ferdinand the Catholic,
which she thought led to the conquest of Navarre, to the injury of the
house of Albret. After dissimulating her sentiments for some time, she
threw off the mask and subjected the Catholics of Béarn to a violent
persecution. Montgomery was the agent of her vengeance, and he was
well fitted for the work. It was in 1569 that, on his destructive
round through the country, he came to the sanctuary of Bétharram,
which he laid waste. The miraculous Virgin, however, was saved, and,
after being hidden for some time at Lestelle, was carried to Spain,
where it became an object of veneration under the name of _Nuestra
Señora la Gasconne_.
During this sad time, in which Mary’s altar lay desolate, there were
marked instances of divine manifestation. By night the ruins were
often seen lit up with a wonderful light, as of many torches, and the
sound of angelic music was heard. The crumbling walls preserved their
miraculous virtues, and unhappy mothers came with their sick children
in the night-watches to pray among the ruins, and returned joyfully in
the morning bearing the evidence of their answered petitions with
them.
As soon as it was safe to do so, the inhabitants of Lestelle, in spite
of their poverty, hastened to restore the church of their _Bonne
Vierge_, who, for more than half a century, had preserved them from
the contagion of heresy. Not a person in the place had joined the
Huguenots, and it was the only village in Béarn where Catholic
services had been maintained.
Leonard de Trappes was at this time archbishop of Auch, the
metropolitan see. He was one of the most distinguished prelates of
France, and honored with the confidence of Henry IV. A man of ardent
piety, and solicitous for the spiritual welfare of his flock, he
founded a congregation of missionaries for the wants of his diocese,
and established them at _Notre Dame de Garaison_ under the charge of
Pierre Geoffroy, who devoted his whole fortune to the work. Louis
XIII. having granted permission for rebuilding the church of
Bétharram, Geoffroy resolved to celebrate the event by a grand
pilgrimage to this ancient shrine. He had trained a choir of
mountaineers, whose superb voices greatly added to the solemnities of
Garaison. Taking these men with him, Geoffroy set out with six priests
for Béarn, in those days a fatiguing journey. Every one represented to
him the danger of venturing into a country still in a state of
agitation, but, in spite of some insults and threats on the part of
the Calvinists, he pressed on, joined here and there by a band of
Catholics, who at last numbered several thousand. Among them were the
Baron and Baroness de Miossens from the Château de Coarraze, and many
nobles.
It was a fine spring morning when this grand procession appeared on
the banks of the Gave. The valley resounded with the glad hymns of the
mountaineers of Garaison, in which the vast multitude joined with the
utmost enthusiasm. The hill of Bétharram was literally covered with
people from the neighboring towns, who, when they caught sight of the
immense procession coming to reopen the church of their beloved
Virgin, burst into tears and acclamations of joy. Geoffroy celebrated
Mass in the church, and afterwards preached to five thousand people on
the public square of Lestelle. This was forty-six years after the
destruction of the sanctuary.
The niche of the Virgin was still empty. Mgr. de Trappes resolved to
supply the deficiency, and had a new statue carved out of wood in the
style of the old one, which he took to Bétharram himself. It was in
July, 1616, he set out from Garaison with a numerous escort of
priests. Passing through Lourdes, he stopped at St. Pé, whence he
continued on foot, followed by all the monks, a vast number of priests
from Bigorre and Béarn, all the nobility of the country, and an
innumerable crowd of people with crosses and banners, carrying the new
statue of the Virgin and filling the air with their hymns in her
honor. Among them was Pierre de Marca.
The archbishop set up the votive Madonna over the high altar, and
celebrated Mass in the presence of six thousand persons.[107] He
remained several days at Bétharram, administered the sacrament of
confirmation, received several Huguenots into the fold, and erected an
immense wooden cross on the summit of the mount, as if he had a
foresight of its future consecration to the divine Passion. He always
cherished a delightful recollection of his pilgrimage, and when he
died he bequeathed to the church a silver lamp, with a fund to supply
it with oil to burn continually before the Virgin he had given to
Bétharram.
Pierre de Marca, whom we find here with the Archbishop of Auch, was
the learned author of the _Antiquities of Béarn_. He was made
counsellor of state under Richelieu, and conceived so great a devotion
to _Notre Dame de Bétharram_ that he became the historian of the
chapel. He studied its past traditions, and recorded a vast number of
miracles that occurred here, with the names, dates, and other
particulars, often taken from the lips of the persons themselves, many
of whom belonged to the nobility of Béarn, Guienne, and Languedoc, and
sworn to by reliable witnesses in the presence of the chaplains and
magistrates. He relates that not long after the visit of Mgr. de
Trappes, five villagers of Montaut, while eating their noontide meal
on a little hillock in the valley, struck by a noise, as of a furious
wind, looked towards the Mount of Bétharram, and saw the cross planted
on its summit suddenly wrenched from its place and thrown on the
ground, and then, as if by its own might, rise again to its former
position, crowned with a mysterious light.[108]
This miraculous occurrence merits the more particular attention
because it led to the construction of the famous Calvary, which
continues to attract pilgrims to this day. It happened about the time
Louis XIII. re-established the Catholic religion in Béarn, and was,
says Marca, one of the causes that determined him to go in person to
Pau, from which time he cherished a special affection for Bétharram
and became one of its benefactors.
A month after the facts of the case were established, the town of
Lestelle gave the hill of Bétharram to the church. The bishop of the
diocese now induced Hubert Charpentier to take charge of the Devout
Chapel. He was a licentiate of the Sorbonne, for some time a professor
of philosophy at Bordeaux, then a missionary at _Notre Dame de
Garaison_, where he distinguished himself by his zeal and eloquence in
the pulpit, and afterwards, devoted to charitable works, director of
the city hospital at Bordeaux. He was appointed grand chaplain of
Bétharram in 1621, and had six minor chaplains given him to aid in the
work. The first sight of the holy sanctuary and the mountain above
made a particular impression on his mind. Studying the traditions and
features of the place, he was struck with the miracle of the Cross and
the general resemblance of the neighborhood to the environs of
Jerusalem. The mountain of Bétharram was higher than that of Olives;
the valley at the foot more extensive than that of Josaphat; and the
Gave a more abundant stream than the Cedron. He conceived the idea of
building a succession of oratories along the side of the hill, in
which should be depicted the principal scenes of the Passion, and
crowning the summit with three crosses and a chapel of the Holy
Sepulchre. To every one the project seemed like a divine inspiration,
which he afterwards modestly confessed was the fact. About this time
an abbess of St. Clare related to him that, when she first entered the
convent at Mont-de-Marsan, she found an old nun of eighty years of
age, a native of the vicinity of Bétharram, who was fond of describing
the glories of the miraculous chapel before the rise of heresy in
Béarn, and said the place was called the Holy Land.
Charpentier’s proposition was received with so much enthusiasm that,
on Good Friday, 1623, a Christ on the Cross was solemnly set up,
between the two thieves, on the summit of the mount, and the oratories
of the Passion were at once begun. Louis XIII. built the Chapel of St.
Louis, with two cells and a gallery looking off over the beautiful
valley to the gorge of St. Pé. To ensure the quiet solitude of
Bétharram, he forbade the building of any inn or public-house in the
neighborhood, and at his death bequeathed three thousand livres to the
church.
Marie de Medicis and Anne of Austria also became its benefactors, as
well as Louis XIV., who took pleasure in his youth in reading Marca’s
_Traité des Merveilles opérées en la Chapelle Notre Dame du Calvaire
de Bétharram_. Charpentier himself gave all he possessed. Madame de
Gramont, Madame de Lauzun, and the Countess de Brienne also brought
their offerings. La Bastide writes: “I have seen the great ones of the
earth rivalling each other in the magnificence of their offerings to
this august sanctuary.”
It is time we should speak of the poet of Bétharram—Pierre de La
Bastide, a native of the diocese of Auch, who now became associated
with the labors of Charpentier. His poems are in Latin. He is a
graceful writer, with a pleasing cadence in his lines. His poem on
_Notre Dame de Bétharram_ is at once historic and descriptive. It is
divided into four parts, giving the history of the foundation, a
description of the Calvary and surrounding region, a _résumé_ of the
miracles in the Devout Chapel, and a picture of the life of the
chaplains. The poem is at once brilliant, pleasing, and picturesque,
and of great value to all who would study the history and spirit of
the place.
It was at Bétharram La Bastide translated into Latin verse the French
poem of Arnauld d’Andilly on the life of Christ, which was such an
event in the literary world when it first appeared in 1634. At that
time the graver part of society thought nothing serious could be
expressed in the form of French poetry, and the religious held it in
horror. D’Andilly broke loose from this prejudice, and, as he says in
his preface, “abandoned the illusory praises of profane love to use
the charms of poesy in depicting the life of Christ, in order to
attract pious hearts by placing before their eyes a picture of the
wonderful things wrought for our redemption.”[109]
La Bastide is not the only poet to sing the praises of Our Lady of the
Beautiful Branch. M. Bataille, a few years since, received from the
Archæological Society of Béarn a silver bough for his charming
poetical version of the legend in the Béarnais language, which he hung
up over the altar of the Virgin.
The Calvary of Bétharram became dear to all who loved to retrace the
overwhelming mysteries of the Redemption. The sorrowful way up the
mount’s steep sides seemed to them
“A road where aiding angels came.”
Every station was marked by some memory of God’s special grace. It was
in the dim, shadowy oratory of the Garden of Olives a merchant from
Grenade-sur-Adour was delivered from the adversary of souls. Further
on, where Christ was represented blindfolded, a poor woman recovered
her sight after seven years’ blindness. At the Holy Tomb where lay the
sacred Body embalmed
“In spices from the golden shore,”
the sick obtained renewed life and the grace to give out henceforth
the sweet odor of piety and good works. And so on. The very shadow of
Christ Suffering seemed to have power. Fifteen thousand pilgrims often
came here in a year—a great number for a remote mountain chapel, less
accessible in former days. Marca relates that M. de Gassion, a zealous
Calvinist of Pau, came to Bétharram to behold the superstitions he
supposed practised on the mount, but he was so touched by the devotion
he witnessed that he was impelled to pray at every station, and thank
God he had inspired his ministers with so pious and praiseworthy a
project.
The chaplains established a confraternity of the Holy Cross, composed
of laymen animated with a special love for our crucified Lord, which
became so numerous that Pope Urban VIII. accorded many indulgences to
all who belonged to it. Several of its members retired wholly from
secular pursuits to the solemn gloom of this Mount of the Passion as
to “a holy tower against the world,” that, by self-chastening rod,
vigil, and fast, they might subdue the baser instincts of their nature
and put on Christ and him crucified. What ineffable nights they must
have spent beneath the oaks of Bétharram watching with tearful eyes
the Divine Sufferer in the Garden or treading with bleeding feet the
rough Way of the Cross!
There were many of these hermits’ cells on the shaggy sides of the
mount. First, there was St. Bernard’s cell, built by the Baron de
Poyane, a brave soldier who was governor of Navarrenx under Louis
XIII., who had the holy life of the Abbot of Clairvaux painted on its
walls. A little higher was St. Cyprian’s cell, the favorite retreat of
La Bastide, with a little terrace and stone steps leading down to the
church. Then came the cell of St. Francis de Paul, for persons of rank
who wished to pass a limited time in solitude on the mount. It stood
below the chapel of St. Louis and commanded a lovely view of the plain
of Montaut. Its foundations are still to be seen supporting a pretty
hanging garden. St. Anthony’s cell was encrusted among the sharp rocks
that served as a foundation to the chapel of Louis XIII.—a formidable
cliff, bare in winter, but in summer covered with vines that surpassed
the most beautiful tapestry. On its top was suspended the royal chapel
among the verdant trees. Behind the church was St. Joseph’s hermitage,
for a long time the only dwelling of the chaplains, where also were
lodged the infirm who came for succor to the Virgin of Bétharram. Near
the oratory of the Garden of Olives were the cells of St. Stephen, St.
Anne, and St. Francis. A little above was the votive cell of St. Roch,
built by the citizens of Mont-de-Marsan at the time of a great plague.
Here was a little spring which still supplies the pretty fount of St.
Roch near the entrance of the church. On the summit of the mountain
was a small cell, beside the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, where for
more than two hundred years lived a succession of hermits who, buried
with their Lord, gave themselves up to a life of contemplation. The
last one died in 1857.
Louis XIII., in authorizing the Calvary of Bétharram, wished there
were many others like it in his kingdom, and requested Charpentier to
establish one on Mount Valerian, near Paris. This holy priest, whose
soul was devoured with longing to extend the devotion to the
sufferings of Christ, was struck with the grand idea of setting up the
cross over the splendors of the capital and displaying the emblems of
the Passion in sight of the gay city, as a constant reproach to its
pleasure-loving people. Charpentier tore himself away from his beloved
Bétharram. At Paris he was hospitably welcomed to the house of the
pious Countess de Brienne, who took pleasure in conversing with him on
the things of eternity, and said she had no greater enjoyment than
this holy intercourse.
The devotion to Calvary took root in Paris. Richelieu favored the
work. Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld lent his aid. Louis XIV. authorized
the consecration of the mount; and the Archbishop of Paris approved of
the congregation of the _Prêtres du Calvaire_, similar to that in
Béarn.
As soon as Charpentier arrived at Paris, in 1633, he became the object
of the most flattering attentions on the part of the Port-Royalists,
then under the direction of a priest from Bayonne—the famous Abbé St.
Cyran, a man of an ardent, austere nature, who at that time seemed
devoted to the revival of Christian and ecclesiastical discipline.
Nothing must be inferred against the orthodoxy of Charpentier or La
Bastide on account of their innocent relations with Port Royal. Not
the least suspicion ever rested on their orthodoxy. Charpentier was
occupied in good works rather than controversy. He died on Mount
Valerian, with a reputation for extraordinary sanctity, December 10,
1650, three years before the _Augustinus_ was condemned by the Holy
See. His body was found, without any trace of corruption, in 1802. His
heart, at his own request, was sent to the church of _Notre Dame de
Bétharram_, where it is enclosed in the wall on the epistle side of
the chancel. The place is marked by a tablet of black marble, on which
is the inscription: “_Ici est le cœur de Hubert Charpentier, fondateur
du Calvaire_.”
The most distinguished chaplain of Bétharram in the eighteenth century
was the Abbé Cassiet, for several years connected with the Canadian
mission. It seemed strange in this distant mountain chapel of Béarn to
come upon the traces of an old American missionary, and a natural
curiosity was felt to know something of his history. We cannot forbear
the pleasure of giving it pretty nearly as related by M. l’Abbé Sébie,
the _curé_ of Montaut, from details given by the nephews of M.
Cassiet, now living at an advanced age in that place.
M. Pierre Cassiet was born at Montaut, in the Landes, in 1727. He made
his preparatory studies at the seminary of Agen, and, feeling a strong
desire to devote himself to the work of foreign missions, entered the
_Séminaire des Missions Etrangères_ at Paris, the superior of which
was also from the diocese of Aire. He was at first destined for the
mission of Cochin China, but a few days before the time fixed for his
departure a missionary intended for Canada falling ill, it was
proposed that the Abbé Cassiet should take his place. He consented and
went to Canada, where he remained nine years, till the country was
ceded to the English by the treaty of Versailles, February, 1763. At
the time of his arrival the see of Quebec was vacant, and the diocese
was governed by M. de Lalanne, likewise a native of Montaut, who,
after sixteen years of useful labor, returned to France and died
superior of the seminary at Dax, about the year 1775, beloved and
honored by every one.[110]
In Canada M. Cassiet had charge of the parish of St. Louis, where the
festivals of the church were celebrated with as much splendor as in
Europe. He was successful in winning the confidence of his
parishioners. He mingled among them, interested himself in their
pursuits, taught the natives the culture of many useful vegetables and
the raising of domestic animals. As there was regular commercial
intercourse with Bordeaux and Bayonne, he was able to procure many
serviceable things from his native land.
When the English took possession of Canada they called together all
the French priests in the country, wishing, they said, to regulate
their relations with the new authorities. Several of them had a
presentiment of evil, among whom was Abbé Cassiet, who buried the
sacred vessels in the ground, packed his trunk, and took a faithful
servant with him. The treaty of Versailles stipulated the maintenance
and protection of the Catholic religion, that the French priests
should receive an annual salary from the English government, and be
allowed to continue the exercise of their ministry under the direction
of the bishop of Quebec. This treaty, according to the French
accounts, was kept with Punic faith, though the English deny, or at
least greatly extenuate, the atrocious _coup de main_ so contrary to
the law of nations, to say nothing of humanity and religion. One
hundred and sixty-six French priests assembled at Quebec, according to
orders. They were surrounded by troops, seized, and put on board a
ship, which was instantly ordered to set sail for Europe. Nothing
could exceed the inhumanity with which these martyr-priests were
treated during the voyage by the brutal and fanatic Englishmen who had
charge of them. Anchoring at Plymouth, England, they kept their
prisoners on board for three months. They did not massacre them, but,
with the most refined barbarism, subjected them to all the tortures of
hunger and thirst. Their rations were reduced to an insufficient
quantity to sustain life, and the distribution of water was delayed
every day, till they were extenuated by the privation. Thirst killed
more than hunger, and, when the ship at last touched at Morlaix in
Brittany, of the one hundred and sixty-six priests who left Canada,
only five remained, and these were barely alive. M. Cassiet was of the
number. He had the sorrow of losing his faithful Canadian on the way,
and was himself so low that he lost his senses and was speechless. He
was taken charge of by a lady at Morlaix, who, for some days, only
sustained his life under horrible sufferings by infusing a few drops
of honey from time to time into his mouth.
His health re-established in a measure, he proceeded to Paris to
report himself at the _Missions Etrangères_, where his condition
excited general sympathy. The government, though too weak to demand
satisfaction from the English, promised him a pension of six hundred
livres a year. Thence he went to Rome, where he was received with the
respect due to his sufferings for the faith.
After his return to Montaut, finding his pension not forthcoming, he
resolved to go to Paris again to claim it. Accordingly he bought one
of the small horses of the Landes for twenty crowns, and proceeded by
short stages to the capital. He put up at the _Missions Etrangères_ as
usual, but was disappointed to find the court at Versailles, as well
as the Abbé de Jarente, who had the portfolio of benefices and
pensions, and formed part of the king’s household. M. Cassiet,
undiscouraged, set out again the next morning on his way for
Versailles. He little suspected the dramatic manner in which he was to
present himself at the palace. Crossing a bridge, his horse,
frightened at meeting a carriage, took the bit between his teeth and
sprang forward like lightning. Our cavalier lost his hat, _calotte_,
whip, and everything not secured to his person. In short, it was a
repetition of the famous race of John Gilpin. In this way he was borne
full tilt up to the palace gates. M. l’Abbé de Jarente, by some
singular coincidence, happened to be there, and at once conceived a
lively interest in the ecclesiastic who arrived at court in so queer a
plight. M. Cassiet, as soon as his natural excitement was somewhat
over, explained the cause of his unclerical appearance, and made known
his object in coming. His pension was assured; and the Abbé de Jarente
was so taken with such a feat of horsemanship that he offered a
hundred crowns for the spirited steed. M. Cassiet, courteous and
generous by nature, at once presented him to the minister, refusing
any return.
Our Abbé was afterwards given a small benefice near Montaut, called
_Las Prabendes_, but he resigned it in favor of a young priest who
subsequently became a Carthusian at Bordeaux. He was then appointed
canon of St. Girons de Hagetmau, but he found the life too calm and
monotonous after so varied a career, and about the year 1772 he
offered his services to the community of the _Prêtres du Calvaire_ at
Bétharram. Here he so distinguished himself by his piety, zeal, and
ability that he was soon appointed superior. The house became very
prosperous under his rule. He put to account the practical knowledge
of agriculture he had gained in Canada, laid out gardens, orchards,
and vineyards on the banks of the Gave, and in the course of a few
years increased the revenues five-fold. At the same time he infused a
missionary spirit among the chaplains, and much of his own zeal in
winning souls to Christ.
About this time the Abbé de Jarente, afterwards Bishop of Orléans,
coming to the Pyrenees to breathe the mountain air and try the mineral
waters, visited the Devout Chapel of Bétharram. He was delighted to
find here the Abbé Cassiet, whom it was impossible to forget. No doubt
the story of the horse came up, and the comical way in which he
presented himself at Versailles. M. de Jarente offered M. Cassiet a
benefice of six thousand livres a year without any obligation of
residence or service. It was declined, though M. Cassiet no longer
received his pension; but he was finally prevailed upon to accept a
small benefice of one hundred and sixty livres a year in the Vicomté
of Orthez. He was glad, he said, to have wherewith to shoe and clothe
himself without being at any expense to his congregation. His brother
presented Bétharram with ten thousand livres, on condition that the
chaplains should give a mission every ten years at Montaut.
The Revolution brought mourning to this peaceful mountain chapel, and
M. Cassiet, after trying in vain to propitiate the authorities, became
for the second time a confessor of the faith and sought refuge in
Spain. Somewhere in Biscay he met the Abbé St. Marc, a young _curé_
from Grenade-sur-l’Adour, also in exile, and persuaded him to go to
the Canadian mission, where he remained several years, but finally
died in 1845, at the age of ninety-one, at Mont-de-Marsan, where his
memory is still honored.
When the Catholic religion was re-established in France, the Abbé
Cassiet returned to his homestead at Montaut, being then too old and
infirm to undertake the restoration of Bétharram. Of the twelve
priests of Calvary in 1793, only two were living, and they were
advanced in years.
M. Cassiet’s last days were quietly spent in his native place. The
bishop of Bayonne allowed him to say Mass in his own apartments, on
account of his infirmities. He died in 1809, aged eighty-two years,
surrounded with the love and veneration of all, and was buried at the
foot of the cross in the public cemetery of Montaut.
The church of _Notre Dame de Bétharram_ was saved from destruction at
the time of the Revolution by the efforts of the mayor of the faithful
town of Lestelle; but he was obliged to abandon the Calvary to its
fury. The oratories were demolished, the statues broken to pieces, the
paintings torn up, and the holy Way of the Cross rendered a _Via
Dolorosa_ indeed. When the sacred image of Christ on the Cross was
overthrown, a swarm of bees issued from the opening in the side, and
one of hornets from that of the impenitent thief. An unhappy
individual who had the audacity to knock off the head of the Virgin at
the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre became from that moment the object of
divine malediction, and some time after was beheaded.
The sacraments of the church were administered at Lestelle during this
sad period by Père Joseph, a Franciscan friar, who sought in anything
but “Franciscan weeds to pass disguised.” His various escapes from
danger have become almost legendary. Wherever there was a person in
danger of death or a child to be baptized, he suddenly made his
appearance, and then as mysteriously disappeared—concealed, no doubt,
by the good people of the village. Nine of the citizens purchased the
hill of Bétharram, and some others the church. They were redeemed by
the ecclesiastical authorities as soon as better days arrived, and a
_Petit Séminaire_ was established in the residence and hospice. Here
was educated Bertrand Lawrence, the restorer of _Notre Dame de
Garaison_, afterwards bishop of Tarbes. The devout chapel was now
reopened for public devotion; the oratories on the mount were hastily
restored and once more frequented, in spite of the rude scenes of the
Passion painted by the Père Joseph.
In 1823 the Duchess of Angoulême, accompanied by the bishop of the
diocese and a numerous procession of clergy, came here to make the Way
of the Cross and pray for a blessing on the royal army under the duke
in Spain. The duchess presented the church with a monstrance of rich
workmanship. Four years after her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Berry,
also came to Bétharram, and was received with the same demonstrations
of joy.
The most noted chaplain of Bétharram in this century was a holy Basque
priest of great austerity—the Abbé Garicoïts, a genuine Cantabrian, to
whom his fellow-priests loved to apply the words of Sidonius
Apollinaris:
“Cantaber ante omnes hiemisque, ætusque, famisque,
Invictus.…”
He founded the _Prêtres du Sacré Cœur_, who continue to serve the
church. He restored the Calvary to its ancient beauty, and repeopled
its cells. While he was superior of the house the sanctuary was
visited by the Abbé de Salinis, a distinguished Béarnais priest, who
had inherited a special devotion to _Notre Dame de Bétharram_. He
afterwards received the pallium, as archbishop of Auch, at her feet,
and thenceforth came here regularly to make his annual retreat. It was
he who sent Alexander Renoir, a Christian artist imbued with the love
and spirit of the middle ages, to design the bas-reliefs that now
adorn the Stations of the Cross. This sculptor spent five years at the
work, after passing whole days on the sacred mount looking down on the
enchanting valley of the Gave and meditating on the scenes he has so
ably depicted in the first eight oratories. His figures are dignified,
the faces full of character, and the draperies graceful. The Saviour
has everywhere the same superhuman expression. In the Garden of Olives
he is supported by an angel whose outspread wings surround him like a
glory. It is evidently by his own will he suffers himself to be
sustained. In the Flagellation his face wears a wonderful expression
of patience; in the Crowning with Thorns, of inexpressible suffering
and divine submission. He stands in all the majesty of innocence and
sorrow before Pilate, whose thoughtful, anxious face as he looks at
him reveals the struggle within. Perhaps the most touching scene is
when Christ meets his Blessed Mother. The Virgin is kneeling with arms
yearningly stretched up towards him, with a look of ineffable
tenderness and pity, and he for an instant seems to forget the weight
of the overwhelming cross in the sense of his filial love. The
Crucifixion is terribly real. The sacred Body visibly palpitates with
suffering; the feet and hands quiver with agony; the face is filled
with a divine woe. Mary, at the foot of the cross, is sustained by a
form of enchanting youth and beauty.
The fourteen oratories of the _Via Crucis_ are of various styles of
architecture, and built, with an artistic eye to effect, on admirable
points of view. Visible at a great distance, they seem to sanctify the
whole valley. Some of them are surmounted with a dome, others with
turrets. The royal chapel of St. Louis, built between two cells, has
three Oriental domes that swell out on the tops of slender,
minaret-like towers and are extremely striking from the railway.
Twenty-eight stone steps—a _Scala Santa_—lead up to the sixth oratory,
that of the _Ecce Homo_. The seventh looks like a castle with its
crenellated towers. The eighth has a hexagonal tower flanked by four
turrets. The ninth is of the Roman style.
The three crosses on the summit of the mount were cast at Paris and
exhibited with success at the _Exposition Universelle_ of 1867. In the
Doric chapel beyond is a fine painting of the Descent from the Cross,
saved from the revolutionists of ’93. It is intensely realistic. The
_Pietà_ of Carrara marble opposite is the work of M. Dumontet, of
Bourges—an _ex voto_ from the Marquis d’Angosse and his wife. Our
Saviour’s form is of marvellous beauty. The fourteenth oratory is of
the Doric style. There is a touching grief in the faces of the
disciples bearing the dead body of Christ to the tomb. Mary stands in
speechless sorrow. Magdalen is a prey to violent grief.
The top of the hill is a long plateau. The Crucifixion is at the east
end, so that the Christ, according to ancient tradition, may face the
west. At the left is the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, where lies the
holy Abbé Garicoïts, who died on the Festival of the Ascension, 1863.
At the west end of the esplanade, facing the Crucifixion, is the most
imposing of all the chapels—that of the Resurrection. Two fine towers
rise on each side of the gable on which stands the rapt form of our
Saviour ascending to heaven, the work of M. Fabisch, the sculptor who
executed the Virgin in the grotto at Lourdes.
Since the admirable restoration of the hill new devotion has sprung up
among the people. Pilgrims to the grotto of _Marie Immaculée_, in the
cliff of Massabielle, come to end their pilgrimage by weeping with
_Marie désolée_ on the solemn heights of Bétharram. On great festivals
crowds may be seen coming from all the neighboring villages in festive
array, with a joyful air, singing psalms on the way. They carry their
shoes in their hands, but put them on on their arrival at church. The
women carefully lift their dresses with characteristic eye to economy.
During Holy Week thousands often ascend the mount, group after group,
chanting old Béarnais hymns of the Passion, the men wrapped in their
mountain cloaks, and the women veiled in their long black _capuchons_,
looking like Maries at the Sepulchre.
On the 21st of October, 1870, his Holiness Pius IX. granted the
Calvary of Bétharram all the indulgences attached to the Holy Places
at Jerusalem, as well as special ones to all who visit the devout
chapel. Pope Gregory XVI. also paid his tribute of homage to Our Lady
of Bétharram.
The royal family of France seems to consider devotion to this
venerable shrine as hereditary. In 1843 the Countess of Chambord
presented her wedding-dress and veil to the Virgin of Bétharram; and
the Duchess of Angoulême, in memory of her pilgrimage here in 1823,
sent the communion-veil of her mother, the unfortunate Marie
Antoinette.
The statue of Mary by Renoir, over the high altar of the church,
represents her seated, looking at the divine Child on her knee, who
leans forward to point out the _beth arram_—the beautiful branch—of
gold at her feet. It is a statue full of grace. We were once more
praying at this favored altar when we heard the sound of a chant, and,
going to the door of the church, saw the long procession of six
hundred pilgrims from Marseilles coming with silver crosses glittering
in the sun and gay banners wrought with many a holy device. The
priests wore their surplices and stoles. The pilgrims were evidently
people of very respectable condition, and the utmost order and decorum
prevailed. They were singing the litany of the Virgin, and seemed
impressed with the religious nature of the act they were performing.
As they entered the church the organ, given by Napoleon III. and
Eugénie at their visit in 1859, solemnly joined in their salutation to
Mary, and, after a short exercise of devotion, they began the ascent
of the Calvary. We followed them up the winding path to the top of the
mount, stopping at every turn before the beautiful chapels. Nothing
could be more solemn, more affecting, and at the same time more
fatiguing than climbing this steep, rough Way of the Cross in the hot
sun and amid the dense crowd of pilgrims. We went from one oratory to
another, chanting the _Stabat Mater_, and at each station a _curé_
from Marseilles, with a powerful voice, made a short meditation on the
sufferings of Christ, every word of which could be heard far down the
hill where wound the long train. He identified these sufferings with
the actual crucifixion of the church: “To-day also there are
Pilates—sovereigns of Europe who wash their hands of the woes they
might have prevented. Herod has set a guard at the very door of the
Vatican. Rulers and learned men scoff at the church and give
perfidious counsel to its members; and Christ is again raised on the
cross in the person of his Vicar, whose heart is bleeding for the
iniquities of the world. But faithful disciples rally around him.
Devoted women pray. Yes, a sinner clings to the foot of the
cross—France, the poor Magdalen of nations, wrapped in immeasurable
woe, her head buried in her hands, bewailing her guilt, and destined
to become the invincible heroine of the church!”
Nothing could be more impressive than this long file of pilgrims
slowly winding up the sad way; the chants in the open air, the
mournful plaint of the Virgin, which always goes to the heart, the
stirring appeal of the priest calling on us to mourn over the divine
Sufferer. The woods were odorous, the ground purple with heather,
lovely ferns nodded, and harebells and herb-Robert bloomed by the
wayside, giving out sweet inspirations to those who know how to find
God in everything he has made. Clouds had gathered in the west by the
time we reached the top of this Mount of Sorrows, and the sight of the
immense cross with its pale Christ against the wild, stormy sky was
something never to be forgotten, reminding us of Guido Reni’s
Crucifixion in the church of San Lorenzo-in-Lucina at Rome. No one
could behold it without being startled. It seemed to strike terror
into the soul, and we gathered around it with tearful eyes and, let us
trust, with contrite hearts.
We could hardly give a glance at the superb view unrolled before
us—the immense plain with the beautiful Gave winding through it, the
Pyrenees lost in the clouds, white villages scattered on every side,
and Pau on a distant height.
O sacred hill of Bétharram! which has so often seen the cross
overthrown and set up again in the land; mountain of perfumes, which
so many generations have ascended on their knees with streaming eyes;
predestined land, so beloved of Mary that on the shore of the same
river, in the side of the same range of hills, she has opened two
marvellous sanctuaries, how good it is to pray, to meditate, to hope,
on thy heights!
[106] Others think it one of the numerous names left
in the country by the Moors, the Arabic word _Beit
Haram_ signifying the Sacred Abode. But the old
chroniclers of Béarn, who attribute the foundation of
the church to Gaston IV., believe the name brought
from the Holy Land, the Hebrew words _Beth Aram_
meaning the House of the Most High.
[107] The statue remained in its niche until 1841,
when it was replaced by the more beautiful one of
Renoir. The gilt Virgin of Mgr. de Trappes is still to
be seen on the wall of the left aisle near the chapel
of the _Pastoure_.
[108] Marca enters into a long dissertation to establish
the truth of this wonderful event, which may be thus
summed up: There were five persons to witness it, four
of whom were still alive when he wrote. They were
cultivators of the soil—an innocent occupation that
has often led divine Providence to make choice of
those who pursue it to publish the wonders of his
grace, as when shepherds were chosen to announce the
Nativity. They were natives of Béarn, where the people
are free from any undue credulousness, and where the
Catholic religion had been proscribed for more than
forty years, so that of course they had not been
brought up with the care that would have rendered them
particularly susceptible of religious impressions.
Moreover, they knew a statement of this kind would be
sifted to the bottom by Protestants as well as
Catholics. They could have no interest in the matter,
as Bétharram belonged to Lestelle, with which Montaut
was often at rivalry. The chaplains were absent, and
wholly ignorant of the affair. And these five men were
people of probity, who swore to the truth of their
statements on the Holy Gospels before the magistrates
of Lestelle and Montaut.
[109] Arnauld d’Andilly was the eldest son of the
Antoine Arnauld who, under Henry IV., pleaded for the
University against the Jesuits, and whose twentieth
and youngest child was the second Antoine Arnauld—the
oracle of Jansenism. D’Andilly is looked upon as
belonging to the first generation of Jansenists,
though he had nothing of the austerity and
repulsiveness of that sect. He scarcely broaches
polemics. He celebrates in elegant verse the praises
of the Blessed Virgin and the prerogatives of St.
Peter, and after translating all that is grandest and
sweetest in Christian literature—such as the works of
St. Augustine, St. John Climacus, St. Teresa,
etc.—reposed from his labors by tending the
_espaliers_ of Port Royal, of which the beautiful and
pious Anne of Austria always had the first fruits.
[110] M. de Beyries, a nephew of the Abbé de Lalanne,
and a prominent citizen of Montaut, has many precious
memorials of his uncle.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._ FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
VIII.
Meanwhile, a great agitation prevailed in the heart of the kingdom, at
the court, and in every mind. The new favor of the new favorite; the
discontent, ever growing but more and more repressed, of the queen’s
partisans; the restless and shifting humor of those who in secret held
fast to the new religious opinions; the uncertainty of events, new
fears, new hopes, seemed to have communicated to the intriguing and
ambitious of every degree a boldness and activity hitherto unknown.
Delivered from the yoke imposed on him for so long a time by a man at
once adroit and yielding, Henry VIII. had at last encountered a vile
and abject creature who would gradually encourage him to display all
the natural ferocity of his character. Already he was no longer able
to separate himself from Cromwell, who, artfully flattering each one
of his passions, constantly said to him: “To please you, to obey
you—that is the sole end toward which all should aim, or they should
fall!”
Every day, in consequence of their determined efforts, new complaints
against the clergy were reported to the House of Commons. The time had
come, they said, to distribute among the truly poor the treasures
accumulated by the priests, and to destroy the abuses they had made of
their power. These accusations, together with calumnies of a blacker
character, emanating from sources always scrupulously concealed, were
artfully disseminated among the people, circulated from mouth to
mouth, and served wonderfully to irritate the stupid and ignorant
masses; while in the House of Lords nothing was left undone to secure
the influence and suffrages of the most influential members of that
body.
Confident of success in all their designs, Henry VIII. and his
favorite decided that it was time to strike the first blow; and while
the attorney-general was in receipt of the order to carry to the
King’s Bench an accusation which included the entire clergy of the
kingdom as having become amenable to the penalties attached to the
_Præmunire_ statutes, a measure and petition were presented to
Parliament to prohibit every bishop from paying dues to the see of
Rome; secondly, that for the future their body should neither
promulgate nor execute any of its laws without the co-operation of the
royal authority; and, finally, that all those laws which had been in
force until that time should be re-examined by a committee whose
members would be named and chosen by the king, in order that he might
abolish them if he deemed expedient.
These measures at first excited universal murmurs of dissatisfaction;
but people were not slow to perceive that such expressions could not
be indulged in without danger, for it was no longer a matter of doubt
that Parliament would yield to the slightest wish of the king. The
fear inspired by this prince, together with his incessant threats and
menaces, secured him the submission of those even whom avarice had not
been able to corrupt.
Henry triumphantly congratulated himself on his success. The
courageous firmness of one single man, however, sufficed to embitter
all his pleasure; for, since the king had openly and boldly announced
his intention of compelling the divorce to be granted, no matter by
what means, More had scrupulously held himself aloof, no longer
appearing at court, except when summoned by the king or when the
duties of his office obliged him to be formally present. This was a
source of deep chagrin and displeasure to Henry VIII., and the cold
and reserved manner of the lord chancellor kept him, when in his
presence, in a state of painful restraint.
“What!” he said to himself, “everything goes according to my wishes,
and yet the silent reproaches of this man alone annoy me unceasingly.
It would be better for him to yield,” he cried in his frenzy, “or I
shall be compelled to force him into submission!”
But when More again appeared before him, he listened to the report of
affairs which he had to submit, no longer knowing what to say to him,
and he dared not even pronounce the name of Anne Boleyn in his
presence. This day, however, he had summoned Cromwell at a very early
hour, and appeared to be in an exceedingly joyful mood; he laughed
aloud, then, suddenly resuming a serious expression, he exclaimed,
slapping the head of a superb greyhound that held his black nose
extended across his knees:
“You will see, Cromwell, what a good effect this will produce on the
people; because it is useless to conceal that More is a man of such
exalted character and brilliant worth that all the eyes of my kingdom
are fixed upon his conduct.”
“Ah!” said Cromwell, whom this very just opinion of the king
displeased mightily,” I do not believe it will be thus when your
majesty has spoken.”
“Yes, yes,” replied the king; “and that is why I congratulate myself
on the expedient which suggested itself last night. How can you
imagine, after he has read in open Parliament the decisions of the
universities in my favor, that the people will believe he does not
favor the divorce? And it is most necessary to counteract by this
means the effect produced by the promulgation of the papal bull.”
“Bah! that bull,” said Cromwell, “is no more than a scrap of waste
paper. The pope forbids any of the clergy from celebrating your
marriage before the queen’s suit is decided. Now, marry Lady Anne
to-morrow!”
“To-morrow!” exclaimed the king.
At that moment the curtain of scarlet silk which hung in heavy folds
before the entrance of the royal apartment was drawn aside, and Sir
Thomas More appeared.
The king paused surprised; his fingers were entwined among the links
of the gold chain suspended around the neck of Cromwell, and he was
familiarly patting the breast of that base-born creature, now seated
close beside him.
“Ah! it is you, Sir Thomas,” said Henry, affecting an air of
unconcern; “you are always most welcome here. I believe this is one of
your friends,” he added, pointing to Cromwell.
More made no reply; he simply inclined his head in response to the
king’s salutation.
“Yes, yes, you understand each other very well,” continued the king,
without appearing to remark that More made no reply. “Is it not so,
Cromwell?”
“I hope so,” replied Cromwell, casting a furtive glance around him.
For he was not able to encounter the penetrating gaze of More, whom he
secretly feared and detested; and from the time he believed that More
could no longer be of use to him he had ceased to overwhelm him with
visits and continual solicitations, as he had formerly been in the
habit of doing.
“Well, good Sir Thomas,” continued Henry, always indulging in
badinage, “what would you have with us?”
“I would speak with your majesty alone for a few moments,” replied
More.
“A reasonable request,” answered the king; “and you know we always
grant anything you ask.”
He made a sign to Cromwell, who immediately withdrew, his heart fired
with rage at the welcome always extended by the king to More.
“If ever I come into power,” murmured he in his heart, “More, thou
shalt know me!”
“What, then, is it, More?” asked the king, and he regarded him with an
impatient expression.
“Your majesty,” replied More, “this morning sent me an order to
present myself in the House of Commons, and carry thither the
decisions of the universities. Up to this time I have been loath to
speak; but to-day, at the moment of giving such authenticity to these
documents, I consider it my duty to make known to your majesty that
they have been extorted by force and are far from being regular; a
great many of the signatures are wanting, while others are
counterfeit.”
“Counterfeit!” exclaimed the king angrily.” Who has told you that?”
“I am sure of it,” replied Sir Thomas quietly and in the calmest of
tones; “and I have thought it my duty to inform the king of the fact
before asking his permission to retire.”
“You retire!” cried Henry VIII.
“I had already requested the Duke of Norfolk,” continued More, “to
express to your majesty how painful it was to me to quit your service
and to find myself obliged to cease from fulfilling the office with
which you have honored me; but my health is so feeble as not to permit
me to hold it longer.” And he was silent.
The king sat stupefied. But surprise very soon changed into extreme
displeasure; for he saw perfectly well why More retired, and felt that
he had nothing to hope from a man so firm and as inaccessible to fear
as to self-interest. It was for this he dissembled and evinced none of
the vexation he felt.
“I am sorry,” he said coldly, “that you should leave me; because you
were that one of my servants whom I have most esteemed and loved. But,
nevertheless, since you wish it, I will not oppose your going. I shall
always remember the services you have rendered me, and be assured that
any request you may make shall certainly be granted.”
More made no reply, but the tears came into his eyes; he loved the
king sincerely, and would have made any sacrifice to have saved him
from the unhappy passion that had enchained him.
“You weep, More,” said the king. “If it gives you pain, why do you
leave me?”
“Because I cannot do otherwise.”
“As you please,” replied the king curtly. “I force nobody to remain in
my service. You will one day, perhaps, repent this step. You are rich
now, I suppose?”
“Your majesty knows very well to the contrary,” replied More. “In
losing the salary of the office I now resign, I am not sure that I
shall have sufficient means remaining to provide becomingly for the
wants of my many children. During the time I filled a lucrative
employment at the bar, I saved enough to purchase a small tract of
land which I now own; but when your majesty called me into your
service, I was naturally obliged to abandon my profession, and since
then I have saved nothing.”
“What!” said the king, “you have nothing remaining from the income of
your office?”
“Not so much as one hundred gold crowns,” replied Sir Thomas.
“More,” said the king thoughtfully, “you are an honest man.”
“I endeavor to be so, sire.”
“It grieves me that you leave me. Why approve not of my marriage?”
“Because, sire, you may not have two wives at once.”
“Begone!” said Henry VIII.…
And Cromwell found the king in a state of excitement impossible to
describe.
“I regret it! I regret it!” he exclaimed. “This will work me evil! A
man of such integrity, such worth! No one can doubt it. I have done
wrong in sending him to the Parliament; it was plain that he would
refuse me.”
“What says he?” thought Cromwell to himself, surprised and anxious.
“Cromwell,” said the king, “he leaves me!”
“Who?”
“More.”
“More!” cried Cromwell, scarcely able to conceal his delight. “Well,
is it only that that troubles you? It is a happiness rather. The
hypocrite unmasks himself at last; it has been long since the
happiness of his sovereign was that for which he cared the least.”
“You are mistaken, Cromwell; he loved me sincerely.”
“Ah!” cried Cromwell, “this is the way in which your majesty’s
goodness of heart unceasingly opposes itself to your own interests.
Sir Thomas More has never lost an occasion of sustaining the
ridiculous pretensions of Queen Catherine. I heard him myself exclaim
aloud in the presence of the legates assembled to try her: “May the
queen triumph over all her enemies!” Would he have done this had he
not presumed (if I may dare to say it) upon your majesty’s weakness?
This is the opinion expressed to me by the illustrious Machiavelli:
‘It is always safer for a prince to inspire his subjects with fear
than with love’; love holds men by that very feeble link called
gratitude, while the bond of fear it is almost impossible to sunder.”
“And where has the fuller’s son known Machiavelli?” asked Henry VIII.
disdainfully. “Truly,” he continued, with that ironical smile which
was habitual with him, and that haughty and scornful tone with which
he often chose to crush those who believed they stood high in his
favor, “I was not aware that you had studied politics under
Machiavelli.”
“I knew him in Italy,” replied Cromwell, profoundly humiliated. The
recollection of the lowliness of his origin was a continual torment to
the soul of this parvenu; nevertheless, without permitting the
slightest emotion to appear in his countenance, he continued the
conversation. “We often,” he said, “walked together in the gardens of
the Oricellari Palace, which Machiavelli was in the habit of
frequenting, and where multitudes of young men of the most
distinguished families of the city eagerly came to listen to the words
of this celebrated man. He had the kindness to notice me among them
all, and received me with particular affection. He sometimes spoke
successively of all the princes of Europe; but in mentioning the name
of your majesty he could not conceal his admiration. ‘I do not know,’
he said, ‘any prince of our day who can be compared to him, either for
courage or exalted ability.’”
“I feel flattered,” replied the king; “for he was a man of great
discernment and superior judgment.”
And Henry’s gratified vanity brought to his features an expression of
pleasure that did not escape the notice of the adroit liar. There was
no truth in the statement he had made to Henry VIII. of having met the
Florentine secretary, at least in his own society, as he wished to
insinuate to the king, but in a public drinking-house where
Machiavelli (whose tastes were not always the most elevated or
refined) went to enjoy the amusements of the common people, in order
to be relieved of the _ennui_ that devoured him when at his country
seat and not absorbed in business.
“These gardens of the Oricellari Palace have a great reputation,” said
Henry VIII. carelessly, after a considerable silence.
“Very great and very justly,” replied Cromwell with enthusiasm, “since
they have been embellished by the famous Alberti—he who introduced
again into Europe a taste for the pure and beautiful Grecian
architecture. The celebrated Bernard Rucellai, to whom they belong,
has collected there besides a great quantity of the precious fragments
of antiquity—”
Cromwell paused—he thought the king was going to speak; but, finding
he said nothing, he continued:
“Your majesty has seen, in the beginning of Machiavelli’s book on the
art of war, the portrait he has drawn and his eulogies on the young
Count Rucellai, the same to whom he has dedicated his discourse on
Livy.”
“Possibly,” said Henry VIII. He turned his head and slightly yawned.
Cromwell was silent immediately and racked his brain for another
subject of conversation, regretting that the one he had already
introduced had been so speedily exhausted.
* * * * *
After leaving the king Sir Thomas More returned to the bank of the
Thames, wishing, as soon as possible, to reach his home at Chelsea. In
going down to his barge, which awaited him above Westminster bridge,
he saw a crowd collected on the quay inspecting the boat, which,
glittering gorgeously in the rays of the sun, seemed in every respect
worthy of the exalted rank of her illustrious owner. Eight rowers
dressed in uniform managed her with great dexterity; a large pavilion
of purple silk protected the interior against injury from light and
air; the bottom was covered with a heavy tapestry carpet; and the
spacious seats, capable of accommodating a large number of persons,
were supplied with rich crimson velvet cushions. The exterior was not
less rich, and the ivory and little bands of gold with which the stern
was encrusted gave it the appearance of being enveloped in a delicate
network, each mesh of which seemed to sparkle with gems and gold. The
heavens were serene and cloudless, and a multitude of small boats,
painted green, darted rapidly over the river, propelled by their light
sails of gleaming white. It was a festival day, and they were filled
with citizens enjoying the revivifying country air, and resting from
their labors to refresh themselves on the verdant and flowery lawns of
Richmond, Twickenham, or Greenwich. Arrayed in their most elegant
robes of worsted and silk, the women waved their handkerchiefs or sang
to amuse their children, while groups of sailors in varied costumes
representing different nations were engaged in playing boisterous
games, or, gathering around one of their older companions, listened
eagerly to the stories he told of expeditions he had joined or
shipwrecks he had escaped.
“To-day these people are happy!” thought More, saddened by the
contrast presented by their joy and the interior oppression he himself
experienced. “Let me return to a life of peaceful obscurity like
theirs, find again my plain wooden boat, take my seat on the straw
matting which covers the bottom, and row in my turn without a fear of
to-morrow; always sure of seeing my Margaret and my other children
coming along the bank to give me a joyous reception, and hear them
exclaim, ‘Here is our father!’ But why all these apprehensions?” he
continued, passing his hand across his brow, as if to dispel some sad
and painful reflection. “God reigns in heaven; and have I not this day
experienced his divine protection? The king has given me a kinder
reception than I had hoped to receive; he has, at least, not permitted
his wrath to break forth in all its violence. Perhaps in the end it
will only be more terrible; but never mind, the will of the Lord be
done! Nothing can happen on the earth without his permission. I
abandon myself to him; and when man, his creature, casts himself into
his arms, he will not withdraw nor permit him to fall.”
In the meantime the tide began to rise, and the waves of the sea,
flowing into the great bed of the river, very soon extended it to the
surrounding banks. Carried along by the waves, More’s barge no longer
required other care than the slight attention necessary to guide it.
The tired sailors rested on their oars, while their eyes wandered over
the charming borders of the Thames.
“My lord,” said one of the sailors, turning towards Sir Thomas, “here
we are in front of Seat-House Gardens. We are passing the village of
Nine Elms.”
But More heard them not; he seemed entirely absorbed in his own
reflections.
The men were astonished, because ordinarily he conversed with them
when he was alone in the boat, and questioned them about such subjects
as interested them. Sir Thomas More thought it was his duty as a
master and a Christian to take especial care not only of the bodies
but also of the souls of his servants, in enlightening their minds by
good advice and wise exhortations. Consequently, they were astonished
at his silence, and, loving him as a father, they were fearful some
misfortune had befallen him of which they were not apprised.
“There is the little point of Chelsea spire,” said the pilot,
observing him with an anxious eye.
“My lord, here is Chelsea,” they exclaimed all together.
“Well, my children,” he replied, “land me at the foot of the
crossroad.”
Sir Thomas thought, as it was the hour for evening devotion, his
family would surely be at the parish church, and he would take his
children back in the boat with him. He landed, therefore, and,
ordering the sailors to wait, slowly ascended the beach by a rugged
road, beyond which he encountered a worthy old peasant woman driving a
number of cows to the river. On perceiving Sir Thomas an expression of
satisfaction overspread her features, tanned and furrowed by age and
hard labor. She stopped to salute him as usual.
“My good lord,” she exclaimed, “I am very glad to see you. We every
day pray to the Lord to preserve you. Since you have been in this
country everything has prospered with us. We have not lost a single
calf nor had a bad crop since you rebuilt our barn, which was burnt at
the same time as your own; and the other day we were talking among
ourselves, and we said that you must be very rich to be able to make
so many around you happy.”
“The barn is a strong and substantial one, at least,” said More, who
could not avoid smiling at the idea of his reputed wealth.
“Oh! as to that, yes,” replied the simple woman; “it is of good stone,
and very much stronger and better than it was before. It will outlast
us all a long time.”
Having said this, she passed on, as she saw Sir Thomas wished to be
detained no longer, and the cows had wandered from the road to graze
on the surrounding pasture.
“Here comes the good lord chancellor,” said the village children in a
suppressed tone. The crowd kneeling without on the pavement of the
church, too small to accommodate the entire congregation on festival
days, opened respectfully, and Sir Thomas proceeded down the aisle of
the church to his pew, where he found all his family seated.
He remained standing near, as the service was almost over, and he did
not wish to make any disturbance by opening the door of the pew; but
Margaret soon discovered the presence of her father, and heard his
voice mingling with those of the other faithful who sang the praises
of God. Her heart throbbed with joy, and she looked around to try and
get sight of him.
“William,” she said immediately to young Roper, “my father is here;
give him your seat.”
But Sir Thomas motioned him to sit still; and when the devotion was
ended, and the priests had left the altar, he approached, and, opening
the door of the pew where Lady More was seated, presented his hand to
lead her out, and said:
“Madam, my lord is gone.”
This woman, as disagreeable as she was coarse, raised her dull eyes to
her husband’s face.
“What do you mean?” she asked sharply.
She always received in this ungracious manner the pleasantries More
was so fond of indulging in, and it was customary for one of her
husband’s retinue to open the pew door in his absence and say: “Madam,
my lord is gone.”
“Come with me, nevertheless,” replied More, with imperturbable
gentleness; “I will explain to you now my lord is gone.”
Lady More followed him, still, however, murmuring between her teeth
because of this unusual mode of departure; and when they had passed
through the crowd, and More had returned the salutations with which
all greeted him, he called Margaret to his side.
“Listen, my child,” he said. “Your mother here cannot understand how
my lord can be absent. Explain to her that I have conducted him this
morning to London, where I have left him for ever; in a word, that I
am no longer lord chancellor, having resigned my office into the hands
of the king. Do you understand now, my good Alice?” he added, turning
toward his wife.
Margaret, on hearing this explanation, looked at her father in dismay.
She immediately understood there was something behind that she did not
know, and her penetrating mind was filled with alarm; but Lady More
flew into an ungovernable passion.
“What is this you say?” she cried,” and what have you done? More of
your scruples, I warrant me. That tender conscience of yours will land
us all in the ashes yet. Is it not better to rule than to be ruled? We
are ten times worse off now than we have ever been before, and here
are you about to strip us of everything.”
“Dear heart,” said Sir Thomas, without being moved in the least, “it
would be impossible, I think, for me to strip you of your possessions;
because, when I married you, you brought me no other dowry than your
virtues and the qualities of your heart. Of this dowry I hope, indeed,
never to see you deprived by any means in the world, much less by
myself.”
“At least,” cried Lady More between her sobs and tears, “I was
beautiful and young, and certain it is I might have easily found a
husband more interested in his own affairs, and who would have
profited more by his learning and the favor of the king.”
On hearing her express herself in this manner Margaret was unable to
restrain a gesture of indignation; she idolized her father, and could
not tolerate the coarse manners and selfish motives of her
step-mother. This woman, narrow of mind and filled with vanity, had
succeeded, singularly enough, by manœuvring and flattery, in winning
the esteem of More at a time when, having had the misfortune to lose
his wife, he saw with great sorrow his daughters deprived of the good
example and tender care of a mother. It then seemed to him he could
not better replace her than by selecting a widow lady of mature age
whose beauty, if it had ever existed, was more than faded, and could
no longer be (so, at least, he supposed) a subject of pretension or
distraction. But, unfortunately, Lady More, he found, was one of those
indifferent, selfish beings who only feel what touches themselves, who
consider nothing but their own interests, and fear nothing but what
may deprive them of the high social position to which they have been
fortunate enough to attain. She could not endure, therefore, the
thought of being deprived of the honor she was accustomed to receive
as the wife of the lord chancellor. She never for an instant reflected
on the possible difficulties experienced by her husband, or the
reasons that might have determined him to resign his office. She at
once divined, from the knowledge she possessed of his extreme
scrupulousness, that his conscience had been the first cause of this
step, and the thought only served to irritate her more, because she
insisted that such a difficulty ought to have been avoided.
She continued to utter the most piercing cries, refusing to listen to
anything More could say. At length, despairing of bringing her to
reason, he began to ridicule her on her absurd conduct.
“My daughters,” he said, calling Elizabeth and Cecilia, “see to your
mother’s dress; something has probably stung her under her garments,
causing her to cry out in this manner.”
When the silly woman found her husband assume this tone of raillery,
she immediately became silent; but, full of anger and spite, she
seated herself in a corner of the boat and took no notice of anything
around her.
Margaret then took her place beside her father; she drew close to him,
and, seizing his hand, pressed it to her lips, without being able to
utter a word; her heart was full, and her soul alone silently
interrogated that of her father.
Endowed with an extraordinary superabundance of feeling and sentiment,
Margaret was enthusiastic in doing good, and repelled evil, when she
encountered it, with a degree of inflexibility amounting to severity.
Beautiful beyond all expression, her beauty was never for a moment
made the subject of her thoughts. Possessed by nature of a very strong
mind, she felt unceasingly, and endured with restless impatience, and
almost without being able to submit, the disadvantages which weakness
and conventionalities imposed upon her sex. She possessed all the
great qualities of her father, but none of his bright cheerfulness and
admirable resignation—fruits of the long-continued exercise of the
most exemplary virtue. The poor were always sure of finding in her an
earnest and faithful friend; the afflicted, a comforter full of
eloquence and sympathy; the vain and presumptuous man, a frigid scorn
and piquant irony which concealed from him entirely the knowledge of
her true character, replete with integrity, frankness, and simplicity.
Scarcely emerged from childhood, Margaret felt she had arrived at
mature age. The accuracy and loftiness of her judgment, united to that
delicacy and exquisite tact which belong naturally to some women,
rendered her worthy of becoming the most intimate and reliable friend
of her father, whose entire joy and happiness centred in her alone.
Educated by him with extreme care, she was familiar with all the
sciences, and several works written by her in Greek and Latin of great
purity have come down to us from that period.
“My daughter,” said More, “why distress yourself about me, since I am
to remain with you?”
“Father,” answered Margaret, fixing her beautiful dark eyes on his
face, “there is something behind all this that you have not told. Why
conceal it from me?”
“No, dear daughter, nothing. Your father is old; he desires to leave
you no more, to see you always, until the Lord shall call him to
himself.”
Seeing Margaret’s eyes fill with tears, Sir Thomas repented
immediately of what he had said, fearing to excite in her the nervous
sensibility he had always vainly attempted to moderate.
“Father,” she answered, “let it be as you wish; I ask nothing more.”
“On the contrary, you shall know everything, dear child. God has
blessed us; be assured of that. And see how green and fresh our garden
looks from here.”
They were coming in view of their house at Chelsea, and soon found
themselves opposite the small green gate opening, at the end of the
garden, upon a path descending to the river. One of the men, taking a
large silver whistle from his belt, blew several shrill notes as a
signal to those in the house to come and open the gate for their
master. Nobody appeared, however, and the family began to feel
surprised, when at length they perceived some short and deformed
creature advancing with irregular bounds, breaking the bushes and
overturning the pots of flowers that he encountered in his passage.
“Ah!” exclaimed Sir Thomas, “there is my poor jester playing his
pranks and spoiling all my garden.”
“Henry Pattison!” cried the children, laughing.
“Himself,” said Sir Thomas.
At that moment the little fool, dressed in a scarlet coat all covered
with gold lace, opened the gate, and, putting out his great, flat
head, made a thousand grimaces, accompanied by roars of laughter and
savage cries, which he endeavored to render agreeable, in order to
express the gratification he felt at the return of his master.
“Ah! well, what news do you bring us?” said More, looking at him.
“Master,” replied the fool, opening a mouth so wide that it might have
better fitted a giant than a dwarf, “father is sick.”
“What! my father sick?” cried More, greatly alarmed.
“Yes, my lord,” replied the jester.
But Sir Thomas, without awaiting his response, rushed into the house
and disappeared.
* * * * *
On learning the accusation brought against them in the court of king’s
bench, the members of the convocation were seized with consternation,
for they understood by the very mention of _Præmunire_ that the king
had resolved to make them feel the weight of his authority, and to
avenge himself for the opposition he had encountered in the affair of
the divorce. They assembled, therefore, in all haste, and from the
hour of prime[111] remained deliberating in one of the upper chambers
of Westminster Abbey. After a lengthy discussion, they had sent, with
unanimous accord, to offer the king the sum of one hundred thousand
pounds in return for the pardon they solicited, never having doubted,
they said in their petition, that Cardinal Wolsey had received the
necessary letters-patent for exercising the authority of legate in the
kingdom.
Hours passed away, and no response arrived from the king. Many became
alarmed, and the greatest excitement prevailed in that venerable
assembly, composed of all the archbishops, bishops, and abbots of the
monasteries, who formed, by right of their ecclesiastical rank, part
of the House of Lords or, by election, of the Commons.
Conspicuous in the midst of them was the learned and celebrated
Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of England. His head,
entirely bald, was bowed on his breast. He seemed to take no part or
interest in the numerous discussions which were carried on around him,
and no one knew whether a gloomy sadness had overshadowed his soul, or
if his advanced age had weakened the faculties of his mind together
with those of the body. The Bishop of Lincoln, the king’s confessor,
who sat beside him, vainly endeavored to attract his attention.
Further on, arranged around him, were the Bishops of Durham,
Worcester, Norwich, Salisbury, St. David’s, Hereford, Carlisle, Bath,
Bangor, and others; the Archbishop of Armagh, near whom was observed
the mild and noble physiognomy of the Dean of Exeter, young Reginald
Pole, born of the royal blood of the house of York, and descended by
Margaret, his mother, from the illustrious family of Plantagenets. The
king, his relative, had tried in every way to bring him to approve of
the divorce; but neither supplications nor reproaches, nor the fear
inspired by Henry VIII., could induce him to act contrary to the voice
of his conscience. Later on Henry VIII. taught him, by making the two
brothers and the aged mother of Reginald Pole mount the scaffold, how
far the excess of his revenge could carry him.
Already had the young Dean of Exeter fallen into disfavor with the
king, who closed the door of his palace against him, at the same time
that he was forced by the manifest respect of Pole, and the proofs he
gave of his devotion, to acknowledge secretly the integrity of his
heart and the rectitude of his intentions. At this moment he was
talking to a man whose character was precisely the opposite of his
own—the Abbot of Westminster, intriguing, active, and ambitious, well
known to Henry VIII., whose spy he was, and to whose will he was
entirely submissive.
With them also conversed Roland, chaplain to his majesty, and the poor
secretary, Gardiner, whose simplicity and small aptitude for business
had been alone sufficient to make his selfish master regret the
indefatigable perseverance and the strong mind of Cardinal Wolsey. At
this moment he wearied his colleagues with a lengthy recital of all
the apprehensions which the violence of the king’s character caused
him.
And now a sudden commotion made itself felt throughout the hall. They
stood up, they leaned forward; the folding doors were thrown open. “In
the name of the king!” cried the usher who guarded the entrance.
Cromwell stood on the threshold. He paused to salute the assembly.
They scarcely dared breathe!
“My lords,” he said in a loud voice, looking slowly around him, and
endeavoring to give his sardonic features an expression of benignant
persuasion, “the king, our master, always full of clemency and
benevolence toward his unworthy subjects, deigns to accept your gift.
He makes but one, and that a very slight, condition; which is, that
you acknowledge him, in the act of donation, as the supreme and only
head of the church and clergy of England.”
He paused to observe, with a malignant joy, similar to that of the
demon when he dragged the first man into sin, the effect of these
words on the assembly. But a gloomy silence was the only response they
gave him. He again looked slowly around him, and proceeded in a lower
tone:
“My lords, let not this either trouble or alarm you; the church, our
mother, has not a child more faithful or submissive than our most
gracious sovereign. Does he not prove himself such each day by the
care he takes to choke up the seeds of heresy which the malice of the
devil is trying to sow among us? You also know very well, and even
better than I, that he devotes his nights to writing in defence of our
holy faith, and nothing could ever induce him to deviate from it. Why
should you feel any scruples about honoring a prince so virtuous by
placing him at your head as your defender and most firm supporter?
Remember, moreover, honored lords, that he who should refuse this
title to the king will be regarded by him as a traitor and disloyal
subject.”
He then seated himself in their midst, in order to take in the words
of the first who should dare raise his voice in opposition to the will
of the king.
All the bishops sat in silent consternation. Several wished to speak,
but the presence of Cromwell seemed to freeze them with terror; for
they were beginning to understand the base manœuvres of this man, and
each one felt as though he was on the point of being seized by that
wicked wretch, ready to spring upon the first unhappy victim who might
present himself.
They looked from one to another, while a profound silence reigned
among them.
Archbishop Warham seemed to be seized with a lively grief, but his
voice was no more audible, and his pale lips remained silent and
motionless.
Cromwell felt his heart thrill with malicious delight; beneath the
frigid expression of a profound and calculating indifference this
obscure intriguer exulted in seeing these men, the most learned and
honored in all England, trembling and recoiling before him as before
the genius of evil.
But suddenly a man whom nothing could intimidate, a saintly man, whose
heart knew no fear except the fear of God, arose in the midst of them.
An involuntary shudder ran through the assembly. All eyes were
directed alternately toward Cromwell and him, as though to defend the
one from the malice of the other. It was the Bishop of Rochester, the
friend of Thomas More, who was about to speak; and all knew that no
cowardly consideration of prudence could stop him.
“My lords,” he cried, as he stood up in their midst, “what impious
voice is this that is raised in your presence to propose to us a thing
which has never been heard of since the foundation of human society?
What is it they wish to exact from us at this moment, if it be not to
raise ourselves to the level of God himself by conferring the
supremacy of his church on a temporal prince, a man who can have no
possible right thereto? Shall we, then, say to-day, as our Lord Jesus
Christ said to St. Peter: ‘I give you the keys of the kingdom of
heaven; and whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven’? And if we should have the pride and audacity to say it, where
would be our power to execute it? Listen,” continued the holy bishop,
inflamed with zeal, and turning toward Cromwell. “Go, and say to the
king, our master, that he has been led into error; that he should
remember the words of the Holy Scriptures: ‘As my Father hath sent me,
so I send you,’ and ask him if he has been ordained one of the pastors
of the church; if he has chosen her for his only spouse; if he is an
apostle, if he is a doctor, or if he can build up with us the body of
Christ; and say to him, moreover, that even though he should possess
all these qualifications, yet, before he could be appointed supreme
head of the Catholic Church, it would be necessary for her to
acknowledge him as such, and that we cannot—we, a feeble fraction of
the Christian world—impose a chief on the universe! Go, and let not
the king’s majesty be compromised; for he has suggested a desire that
cannot be accomplished.”
Cromwell, subdued by the power of this exhortation, arose and
immediately withdrew. The Bishop of Rochester, turning toward the
assembled prelates, continued:
“My lords, let not the fear of men blind us. Let us reflect well on
what they demand of us to-day; for we are not only called on to
renounce Clement VII., but also to cast ourselves out of Peter’s bark,
only to be submerged in the waves of these countless divisions, sects,
schisms, and heresies which it has pleased the mind of man to invent.
Yes, I hesitate not to say to you that, in order to give the king the
title he demands, it would be necessary to abandon all laws, canonical
and ecclesiastical, the authority of the holy councils, the unity of
the world and of Christian princes, the traditions of the church, by
which we would at the same time acknowledge that we have never yet
received the true faith or the veritable Gospel of Christ, since we
openly revolt against the immutable doctrine which it teaches, and
turn aside voluntarily and for ever from the one and only true way of
salvation which it has marked out for us. During the fifteen hundred
and thirty years that the Gospel has been preached throughout the
world, have we seen a single prince make such a pretension? And when,
in the fourth century, Constantine the Great assembled in his own
palace, in the city of Nice, and for the first time since the
apostles, the entire body of the universal Church, did he establish
himself in the midst of them as their head and sovereign—he who
wished, in spite of their deference and their request, to remain,
without guards and without the pomp befitting his rank, in the meanest
place of the hall wherein they were assembled? ‘No,’ said he, ‘I will
not sit in judgment where I have no authority either to absolve or to
condemn.’ … And who, my lords, were the men composing that illustrious
assembly, if not the flower of all the saintly and learned who
flourished among the nations of the earth? The patriarchs of
Constantinople, of Antioch, of Alexandria, of Jerusalem, and of
Carthage; the bishops of Africa, of Spain, of the Gauls, of the land
of the Scythians and Persians—in a word, of the East and West—who
gathered there in crowds, almost all had confessed the faith before
tyrants, and bore on their mutilated bodies the glorious marks of the
cruel tortures they had endured rather than renounce it. Well, you
behold these holy pontiffs place at their head Vincent and Vitus, two
simple priests, because they recognized them as the representatives of
their chief, the Bishop of Rome, whose advanced age prevented him from
being among them. And this regulation has been invariably followed
through all ages even until the present day, and through all the
storms and heresies which would have been sufficient to annihilate the
church had she not been born of God himself. Far from us, then, be
this culpable cowardice! To renounce his laws is to renounce Jesus
Christ. We renounce his laws? No, my lords, we cannot! Nay, we will
not.… Again, what would become of this sublime doctrine, if a temporal
prince had power to make it yield to the whim of his vices and
passions? To-day it is, to-morrow it is not; it changes with him, with
his creeds, his opinions, and his wishes. His caprices would become
our only laws, and vice and virtue be no longer but words which he
would be at liberty to change at will. No, again and again no! If we
love our king, we will never concede what he demands; because it is
for us to enlighten him with regard to his duties, and, on the
contrary, we should only be dragging him down with us in our unhappy
fall.”
A murmur of applause rose from all parts of the hall, drowning the
voice of the speaker. The Abbot of Westminster alone maintained a
silence of disapproval. Many, however, while they acknowledged the
truth of what the Bishop of Rochester had proclaimed, could not but
reflect with dread on the terrible consequences of the king’s
displeasure if they openly resisted him; while others, with less
foresight and sound judgment, thought Fisher’s zeal carried him too
far, and that it would be possible, without at all compromising their
consciences, to grant their prince something which would be sufficient
to satisfy him. Among this number was the Bishop of Bath, who
immediately arose. After rendering public testimony to the esteem and
deference due the Bishop of Rochester, he added that it appeared to
him impossible that the king could think seriously of having himself
acknowledged as the one and only head of the church “And, as for me, I
believe,” he said, at the conclusion of his discourse, “this is only a
snare that has been set in order to afford a pretext for punishing and
despoiling us of all we possess. The king is always in need of money;
his confidants have suggested this means for him to procure it, and
make him distribute the greater part of it among themselves.”
“I agree with my lord of Bath,” cried the Bishop of Bangor, “the more
especially as the king knows how absurd the accusation is of offence
against the _Præmunire_, since he has compromised himself by appearing
before the legate in the eyes of the whole kingdom. It was impossible
to have acknowledged the legate’s authority by an act more authentic,
and which surpassed in importance all the letters-patent that could
have been demanded.”
“That is just and true,” exclaimed several voices: “and yet, although
we may be able to prove it, if the king presses the accusation, we
shall be most unjustly though most certainly condemned.”
“Oh! yes, most certainly,” said Gardiner in a low voice. He was
cruelly frightened, being aware of the measures the king had taken, in
conjunction with Cromwell, to secure for himself the influence of the
judges of the court of king’s bench.
“Well, my lords,” said the Abbot of Westminster, who had used every
effort to induce them to yield to the king, “consider also if our most
gracious sovereign is wrong in making this demand, he will be
responsible before God, and I do not see in what manner we could be
considered guilty. In reality this title will be illusory, since he
cannot ordain the humblest priest. When the Roman emperors had
themselves declared gods, think you it ever entered the minds of the
people that they were such? Just the same in this case: no one will
ever consider the king as head of the church.”
“That is most sure,” exclaimed several other ecclesiastics, struck by
this reasoning, and to whom this pretension began to appear more
ridiculous than criminal.
“I assure you positively,” replied the Abbot of Westminster, “that
this is an absurd humor which will fall through of itself.”
“You deceive yourselves, my lords; you deceive yourselves,” cried the
Bishop of Rochester. “When the king shall have received from us the
title he demands, it will be confirmed by Parliament, and afterwards
he will believe himself invested with the right of deciding everything
and making any innovation. Will there then be time left us to repent
of our pusillanimous submission? Will you then command this supreme
head to be so no longer, and to obey after having been invested with
supreme authority?”
New tokens of assent were breaking out, when they were suddenly
interrupted by the entrance of Cromwell, who returned, accompanied by
Viscount Rochford and Thomas Audley.
With an air of the coolest effrontery he advanced to the centre of the
hall and stood in the midst of the bishops. He then said in a loud and
arrogant tone, pointing to the two men who followed him:
“My lords, here are the king’s commissioners; they come to hear your
reply. But the personal devotion I feel for the interest of our holy
mother church and the safety of your reverend lordships induces me to
warn you that the king has resolved to punish with all the severity of
the statutes of _Præmunire_ those among you who shall not have signed
by to-morrow the act acknowledging him as supreme head of the church.”
On hearing these last words all grew pale and consternation seized on
all hearts.
Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Canterbury seemed to be making a
desperate effort; a convulsive movement contracted the furrowed brow
of the old man. He fixed his eyes on Cromwell, and, rising, stood
before him.
“Knave!” he exclaimed.
The advanced age of Warham, and still more his learning and the high
reputation he enjoyed, surrounded him with respect and strength; but a
secret sorrow was gnawing at his heart, and hastening the destruction
of a life that time had respected. He arose fiercely, although
tottering, to his feet. “My brethren,” he cried, “my brethren!—no, I
am not worthy to be seated in the midst of you, and yet you have
accorded me the first place. I know not if the weight of years may not
have partially unsettled my reason; but I have to reproach myself with
having inclined to favor the king’s divorce. To-day I foresee all the
evils that will fall upon my country because of the discord and
heresies that will spring up and multiply among us. How far, then,
have I been from anticipating the fatal consequences of the opinion I
expressed in good faith! Meanwhile, I trust that God, before whom I
must very soon appear, will pardon me for what I have done. My dear
brethren, number me no more among you; for the anguish I feel
oppresses me to such a degree that I can no longer endure it! Alas!
why is it a man must feel his life extinguished before death has
entirely benumbed his enfeebled members? I vainly seek within my soul
the life and strength that have abandoned it; that energy I would wish
to recover, if but for a single moment, to use it in opposing the ruin
of religion, and repairing in an open and fearless manner the scandal
I have given. But the time for action has passed for me. It is to your
hands, young prelates, that the care of the flock is committed. Be
firm; die rather than let it be decimated! The most violent
persecution is about to burst upon the English Church; yes, but you
will resist it, even unto death! Death is glorious when we suffer it
for God! But, O my brethren! it is not death I fear for you; it is
falsehood and treachery, the silent and hidden influence which
undermines in the dark; far more dangerous than tortures or
imprisonment, it destroys all, even the last germ of good which might
expand in the soul! No, it is not death that kills, but sinful deeds.
My brethren, pardon me all and pray for me!” The aged prelate, as if
exhausted by the last effort he had made, fell back in his chair,
entirely deprived of consciousness. He was immediately carried out,
but the anxiety and excitement redoubled in the assembly.
“We are all lost!”… cried the Abbot of Westminster. “My lords, let us
obey the king, if we would not see all our goods confiscated!”
“What!” cried the Bishop of Rochester, with an indignation he was
unable to restrain, “is that the only argument you pretend to bring
forward? What benefit will it be to keep our houses, our cloisters and
convents—in a word, to preserve our entire possessions—if we must
sacrifice our consciences? What will it profit a man to gain the whole
world, if he lose his own soul? Yes, it is but too true: we are all
under the rod of the king, we have all need of his clemency, but he
refuses it to us! Well, then, let him strike; we shall be able to
endure it!”
Electrified by these words, and still more by the wisdom and
commanding presence of him who uttered them, the assembly arose and
unanimously exclaimed:
“No, we will not sign it. Let the king do as he will. Go, Cromwell,
say to his majesty that we are all devoted to him, but we cannot do
what he asks.”
A wrathful light gleamed in Cromwell’s eyes, the while an ironical
smile played upon his lips. Two ideas prevailed in the mind of this
man; the one encouraged and supported the other.
“My lords,” he replied in a loud voice, “just as you please. The king,
your lord and master, convokes you to-morrow at the same hour, and you
will consider the subject in a new conference.”
He then turned on his heel and hastily withdrew.
TO BE CONTINUED.
[111] Eight o’clock in the morning.
DR. BROWNSON.
Some three or four years ago a little daughter of one of Dr.
Brownson’s intimate friends, who was visiting his family, after gazing
intently at him for some minutes, exclaimed: “Is he not just like a
great lion”! Nothing could be more graphic or accurate than this
sudden and happy stroke of a child’s wit. We never saw Dr. Brownson or
read one of his great articles without thinking of the mien or the
roar of a majestic lion; we have never seen a remarkably fine old lion
without thinking of Dr. Brownson. His physique was entirely
correspondent to his intellectual and moral power, and his great head,
crowning like a dome his massive figure, and surrounded in old age
with a mass of white hair and beard like a snowy Alp, made him a grand
and reverend object to look at, such as we might picture to ourselves
Zoroaster or Plato, St. Jerome or St. Bruno. The marks of infirmity
which time had imprinted upon him, with the expression of loneliness
and childlike longing for sympathy, added a touch of the pathetic to
the picture, fitted to awaken a sentiment of compassion, tempering to
a more gentle mood the awe and admiration excited by his venerable
appearance. Mr. Healey has painted a remarkably good portrait of him
as he was at about the age of sixty, in which his full maturity of
strength is alone represented. The most perfect one, however, is a
mere photograph, taken in haste and by accident by Mr. Wallace, an
artist of great promise, who died at a very early age, leaving
unfinished a marble bust of Dr. Brownson which he had commenced. The
young artist met the doctor by chance in the studio of a photographer,
who happened at the moment to be absent. Asking him to sit down, he
placed him in position for a profile and took the photograph, one of
the most successful specimens of this kind of art we have ever seen,
and much superior to any other photographic likeness of Dr.
Brownson—indeed, as we have said, the best likeness which exists, and
the one above all others from which an engraver should copy.
The lion is dead; his thunderous voice is for ever hushed. The
farewell utterance which closed his career as an editor with so much
dignity and pathos was his valedictory to life and to the world. It is
pleasant to think that, before he died, a response full of veneration
and affection came back to him from the organs of Catholic opinion and
feeling in America and Europe, and that he has gone to his grave in
honor and peace, where his works will be his monument, and his repose
be asked for by countless prayers offered up throughout all parts of
the Catholic Church, in whose battles he had been a tried warrior and
valiant leader for thirty years.
It is not an easy task to give a perfectly just and impartial estimate
of such a man and such a career. The intimate relations between Dr.
Brownson and those who have been the chief conductors of this
magazine, together with the very active and extensive share which he
had in their efforts to establish it and raise it to its present
position, impose an obligation of personal friendship and gratitude
somewhat like that which affects the relatives and family friends of a
great man in the memorials which they prepare for the honor and fame
of one whom they regard with a veneration and affection precluding the
free exercise of critical judgment. On the other hand, the difference
of opinion which afterwards severed the connection between Dr.
Brownson and THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and the controversy we have had with
him on some important theological and philosophical questions, may
give to the expression of anything like a discriminating judgment the
appearance of an adverse plea against an opposing advocate in favor of
our own cause. Nevertheless, as the motive of our friendship was
chiefly sympathy in the great common cause of the Catholic Church,
which was not essentially altered by a disagreement that produced no
bitterness or animosity, we trust that our mood of mind is not
influenced by any partial and personal bias, so as to produce either
exaggeration or diminution of the just claims the great deceased
publicist possesses on the admiration of his fellow-men. We may fail
from want of capability, but we cannot avoid making the attempt to
satisfy in part the desire which all Catholics everywhere must feel to
know what those who have been near to Dr. Brownson during his public
life have seen, and what they think, of his character and his career,
more especially since his conversion.
Dr. Brownson has told the world a great deal about his own history in
the book which he published in 1857, entitled _The Convert_. The
salient facts of his life are generally known to the public, and have
been summarily stated in the obituary notices of the leading
newspapers, so that we have no need to take up much of our limited
space in recounting them. The principal interest they possess is in
their relation to the formation of his mind, his character, his faith,
and his opinions. He was not baptized in his infancy, but was
nevertheless brought up strictly and religiously according to the
old-fashioned Puritan method, in their simple, humble cottage at
Royalton, Vermont, by an elderly couple, distant relatives of his
family, who adopted the fatherless boy when he was six years old.[112]
A wonderful child he must have been, and we can see in his brief
narrative of his early years, as in the instances of St. Thomas of
Aquin and Chateaubriand, though under circumstances as different as
possible from theirs, a most interesting example of Wordsworth’s
aphorism, “The child is father of the man.” From the dawn of reason he
was a philosopher, never a child, thinking, dreaming in an ideal
world, reading the few books he could find—especially King James’
English Bible, which he almost learned by heart—never playing with
other children, and enjoying very scanty advantages of schooling.
After his fourteenth year he lived near Saratoga, in New York State,
and worked hard for his own maintenance. At nineteen we find him at an
academy in the town of Ballston—a privilege which we believe he
purchased with the hard earnings of his industry. At this time, from
an impulse of religious sentiment, he sought for baptism and admission
into the Presbyterian church, which he very soon found an uncongenial
home and exchanged for another sect at the opposite pole of
Protestantism, that of the Universalists, among whom he became a
preacher at the age of twenty-one. The subsequent period of his life
until he had passed somewhat beyond his fortieth year—that is, until
1844—was marked by various phases of rationalism, and filled with
active labors in preaching, lecturing, writing, and editing various
periodicals, all carried on with restless energy and untiring
industry. He was married early in life to an amiable and intelligent
lady who was a perfect wife and mother, and after her conversion a
perfect Christian; and the six children who lived to grow up, five of
whom were sons, all received an excellent education. The eldest son,
his namesake, has passed his life as a teacher and farmer in a remote
State, living the life of a good Catholic with the spirit of a
recluse, altogether uninterested in the great affairs of the world.
Two others were lawyers and died young. The fourth, after passing some
years with the Jesuits, entered the army of the United States at the
breaking out of the war as a captain of artillery, was severely
wounded, and after the close of the war was admitted to the bar,
married, and began the practice of law at Detroit. He is known to the
literary world as the translator of Balmes’ _Fundamental Philosophy_.
The youngest son also served gallantly as an officer of the army of
the republic during the civil war, and died on the field of battle in
the flower of his youth. The only daughter, who is the wife of a most
worthy and respectable gentleman, before her marriage published
several works, and particularly the _Life of Prince Gallitzin_, a
biography of very considerable merit. All the fruits of the
intellectual labors of Dr. Brownson were absorbed in the support and
education of his family and some dependent female relatives, and
beyond these simple means of keeping up his plain and unostentatious
household, the great and patriarchal philosopher received no pecuniary
recompense from his long and severe labors in the field of literature.
His true profession was that of an editor and reviewer. The exercise
of the functions of the Protestant ministry was not to his taste, and
five years before his conversion to the Catholic Church, which took
place in 1844, he founded a _Review_ at Boston, which was, with a
change of title, continued during his residence in that city, then
transferred to New York and sustained until 1864, revived once more by
a kind of dying effort in 1873, and finally closed a few months before
the end of Dr. Brownson’s mortal career. An active part in politics
was taken by Dr. Brownson during several years of his earlier public
career, but his restless, impetuous, independent spirit made it
impossible for him to remain long within the ranks of any political
party. Until his conversion he was an agitator, a reformer,
associating by turns with Fanny Wright, Robert Dale Owen, the leaders
of the working-men’s party, Channing, Parker, and the Boston clique of
world-reformers, captivated by the theories of Leroux and St. Simon,
and even fancying himself the providential precursor of a new Messias
who was to do away with all old things and renovate the world. At last
he became convinced that Jesus Christ founded the Catholic Church as
the perpetual teacher, guide, and ruler of men and nations, and
settled himself in his only true vocation as an exponent and advocate
of her doctrines and order by the means of his written works. It was
only as a Catholic publicist that he became a truly great man, and
achieved a great work for which he deserves to be held in lasting
remembrance. To this work the last thirty years of his life were
devoted with a gigantic energy, which diminished toward the end under
the influence of advancing age and enfeebled health, but never wholly
flagged until the approach of death gradually quenched and at last
extinguished the vital flame of his physical existence. During the
last seventeen years of his life his residence was at Elizabeth, New
Jersey, with the exception of a few months which he passed with his
son, Henry F. Brownson, Esq., of Detroit, in whose house he died, and
from which he was carried to his last resting-place in the Catholic
cemetery of that town. His last years were filled with sufferings from
severe physical infirmities, the sudden deaths of several of his
children, above all from the death of his tenderly-loved and devoted
wife, and from the desolation and loneliness which is usually the
cloud in which the setting sun of genius goes down, especially when
one survives the period of his great activity, and finds himself, as
it were, walking among the graves of friends and past works, drawing
always nearer to his own sepulchral resting-place. His death occurred
on the morning of Easter Monday, April 17, 1876, when he was in the
middle of his seventy-third year, and his obsequies were celebrated on
the following Wednesday. From the time of his conversion he was not
only a loyal but a pious and practical Catholic, constantly receiving
the sacraments, and making his own salvation the chief object to be
attained in life. There can be no doubt that he lived and died a just
and good man, full of merit, and sure of a high place in heaven, as
well as on the scroll of honor where the names of the great men of the
age are inscribed by the verdict of their fellows.
If we were allowed to stop here, our task would not have any of that
difficulty or delicacy which we said at the outset must necessarily
belong to an effort at estimating Dr. Brownson’s character and career
as a Catholic publicist. That he built on the true foundation as a
wise master-builder, with gold, silver, and precious stones, much
solid and fine work able to stand the fire and deserving a reward both
on earth and in heaven, we can affirm with conscientious fidelity to
our own conviction, and without fear of contradiction. That there was
no wood, hay, or stubble in the great mass of materials which he used
in his many and extensive works we dare not assert. The difficulty
lies in discrimination, and in the relative estimate of a man
certainly great and good, in comparison with other great champions of
the Catholic faith, and with the standard of perfection. It must be
remembered that Dr. Brownson was a self-made man, and, until he was
past thirty, was in circumstances most unfavorable to his intellectual
culture. He received in his youth only the rudiments of an education,
was associated during his early manhood with vulgar sectaries and
demagogues, engaged in a rude, turbulent struggle for a living and a
position as a religious and political leader, as well as in a
perpetual search after truth, without adequate means of satisfying the
cravings of his restless intellect and passionate heart. He came into
contact with intellectual and cultivated men for the first time in
Boston after he joined the Unitarians. His efforts to educate himself
were certainly strenuous. He acquired the Latin, French, German, and
Italian languages sufficiently well to read books written in all those
languages, and his knowledge of English authors was, of course, very
wide and extensive. Nevertheless, the want of a systematic education
in his early youth, and of regular, symmetrical intellectual training,
was always a great disadvantage, as it necessarily must be to every
self-made man. Moreover, the necessity of perpetually speaking and
writing on the most important subjects as a teacher and guide of
others, before he had thoroughly learned what he had to teach, made
him liable to hasty and crude statements, to inaccuracies and errors,
to changes and modifications in his views and opinions, and to a
certain tentative, erratic course of thought. He was like a great ship
making its way by waring and tacking, often changing its course, and
frequently stopping for soundings, but on the whole making steady
headway towards one definite point, escaping many dangers, and at last
arriving on open sailing ground by the genius of its pilot,
notwithstanding insufficient charts and an unknown coast. In certain
favorite branches of study—as, for instance, in history, the history
of philosophy, political ethics, and English philology—his knowledge
was not only extensive, but extremely accurate. Of scholastic
metaphysics and theology he had a considerable but by no means a
minutely precise and complete knowledge; and with the physical
sciences he was still less acquainted. In the _belles-lettres_ he was
extremely well versed, and of works of fiction he was an omnivorous
reader. For a number of years before his death he was prevented by the
weakness of his eyes from reading very much, and was therefore, in the
last series of his _Review_, thrown back on his old resources. On the
whole, the mass of knowledge acquired by study which is displayed in
his written works is more like a grand, complex structure, imposing in
magnitude of outline, sublimity of design, variety of details, yet
irregular in plan and incomplete in many of its parts, than like a
finished, scientifically-constructed, and elaborately-completed
edifice.
In his calibre of mind we think Dr. Brownson may be classed with those
men whose capacity is only exceeded by a very small number of minds of
the highest order of genius. Intellect, reason, imagination, and
memory were alike powerful faculties of his mind, and his great weight
of brain, with a corresponding nervous and muscular strength, made him
capable of the most concentrated, vigorous, and sustained intellectual
labor. Within the scope of his genius there was no work, however
colossal, which he was not naturally capable of accomplishing. His
gift of language, and ability of giving expression to his thoughts and
sentiments, whether original or borrowed, was even greater than his
power of abstraction and conception; and his style has a magnificent,
Doric beauty seldom surpassed, rarely even equalled. Although Dr.
Brownson was not an orator, and Mr. Webster was not a philosopher,
there is, nevertheless, a striking similarity in the style of the two
men, who mutually admired each other’s productions with the sympathy
of cognate minds. In argument, but especially in controversial
argument and philippics, Dr. Brownson wielded the hammer of Thor. His
defect was in subtlety of thought, fineness of discrimination,
completeness of induction, and minute, accurate analysis. In the
capacity of grasping a first principle and following it out on the
synthetic method lay his great power. Whenever he had these great
first principles and fundamental ideas, either from reason or faith,
he was unrivalled in the grand and mighty exposition of the truth,
irresistible in the demolition of sophistical, inconsequent, and false
theories and their advocates, many of whom he laid low with the ease
and force of the blow of Richard Cœur de Lion on the cheek of the
unlucky clerk of Companhurst. Humor, wit, and sarcasm were also at his
command, as well as serious argument; nor were they always sparingly
used, although generally with the good-humor of a giant conscious of
his strength.
When we consider the absolute and permanent value of Dr. Brownson’s
writings as a contribution to Catholic literature, not merely in
respect to their quality as the productions of a great mind, but as to
their substance; and estimate the effective worth of his efforts as a
publicist in the promotion of Catholic truth and law, we cannot avoid
taking into view the moral characteristics of the man and of his
career. He was a man of great passions as well as of great intellect.
He lacked a wholesome, sound moral and religious discipline during
more than half his life, and was under the influence of ideas,
associates, circumstances, most dangerous and injurious, but
especially hostile to the fundamental virtues of humility, reverence
for authority, intellectual and moral self-control, submission to a
fixed, unvarying rule of conscientious obligation. After a stormy and
turbulent life, he submitted himself to the authority of the Catholic
Church over his mind and conscience, when he was more than forty years
of age. He was always true in his allegiance, and in many respects
morally heroic in the practice of the Christian virtues. His previous
life was not wanting in nobility, and in his subsequent life as a
Catholic there is a magnanimity, a generosity, a superiority to petty,
selfish motives and considerations, such as wealth and popularity; a
patient endurance of toil, privation, and suffering; a steady loyalty
to the Holy See; a royal scorn of baseness and wrong, and sympathy
with the things which are good, just, true, and honorable, worthy of a
Catholic of the best mediæval type. He remained, however, as many of
the old, heroic Christians who were converted from heathenism did,
more or less, the lion of the forest, with many of the idiosyncrasies
and other characteristics, the product of his past history, but
partially subdued and modified. He was _sui generis_, and his works
are like himself. To describe him we ought to borrow, if we may hint
at such an impossible supposition, the pen with which Carlyle has
described his heroes. The pen being unattainable, we decline the
attempt. A few things we must say, in order to prepare the way for the
estimate we are striving to make of his career and works.
Dr. Brownson was liable to be fascinated by some great writer, and for
a time to surrender his mind almost completely to his influence with
an impetuous enthusiasm which hindered calm deliberation. When this
first fervor had passed, he would reconsider the matter, and sometimes
end by a severe castigation of his late master. Like St. Christopher,
he went in search of the strongest man to serve, whereas those whom he
successively tried and abandoned were really weaker than himself.
Cousin, Leroux, and last of all Gioberti were those to whom he was
most specially devoted, and the influence of the last-named author was
so strong over him that he never wholly freed himself from its
detrimental effects. In many other ways the judgment of Dr. Brownson
was liable to bias from prejudice, passion, and moods of feeling. In
his judgment of men, and also of books, he was hasty, partial,
capricious, swayed by accidental influences, and variable. It was the
same in regard to theories, opinions, and doctrines which he regarded
as open questions. Where his faith, his conscience, or his matured,
deliberate reason were firmly settled he was steady and immovable. If
he was thoroughly convinced that he had made a mistake or fallen into
error, he would retract. But his old habit of roving all over the
world of thought, and the lack of the regular, consistent intellectual
and moral discipline of a systematic Catholic culture and education,
made him restless of keeping steadily in one course of thought, fond
of novelty, and ready to adopt or abandon ideas without due
deliberation. This variability and want of steady balance in his
intellectual operations detracted very much from his influence as a
writer, and counteracted to a great extent the effect which his solid
and weighty arguments might have otherwise produced. He has himself
made a frank though not a contrite acknowledgment of his one great
moral fault in _The Convert_: “I am no saint, never was, and never
shall be a saint. I am not and never shall be a great man; but I
always had, and I trust I always shall have, the honor of being
regarded by my friends and associates as impolitic, as rash,
imprudent, and impracticable. I was and am in my natural disposition
frank, truthful, straightforward, and earnest, and therefore have had,
and I doubt not shall carry to the grave with me, the reputation of
being reckless, ultra, a well-meaning man, perhaps an able man, but so
fond of paradoxes and extremes that he cannot be relied on, and is
more likely to injure than serve the cause he espouses.”[113] To the
last statement we must, to a great extent, demur. It is so far true,
however, that it was extremely difficult to act in concert with Dr.
Brownson, and impossible to count with security upon his movements.
Like the lions described so vividly by Jules Gérard, who would be
heard by him roaring in the night at distant points within a circuit
of twenty miles, you could not foresee from what quarter the thunder
of his voice would be next heard, or calculate his range. Many
Catholics were alarmed at one time, lest he should stray beyond the
boundaries of the faith. He had even so far lost the confidence of the
hierarchy and the Catholic public, in the year 1864, that he was
unable to keep up his _Review_. Complaints were lodged against him
before one of the Roman tribunals, and the celebrated theologian
Cardinal Franzelin, then professor in the Roman College, was deputed
to examine his writings. The result was that they were not found
worthy of censure, and the case was dismissed with a kind admonition
to be guarded in his language on one or two points, conveyed through a
well-known priest and Roman doctor of New York, who was at the same
time directed to console him in his afflictions and encourage him to
persevere in his labors. Like Montalembert, Lacordaire, De Broglie,
and many other illustrious Catholic priests as well as laymen, and
even a few bishops, Dr. Brownson was for a time dazzled by the
specious phantom of liberalism; but he soon freed himself from this
illusion, and no one has more thoroughly and heartily defended the
decisions of the Council of the Vatican, and of the Encyclical and
Syllabus of 1864, than he has done, especially in the last series of
his _Review_. He wavered for a time respecting the necessity of an
uncompromising defence and maintenance of the temporal princedom of
the Sovereign Pontiff, and an unfortunate expression to that effect
even slipped into THE CATHOLIC WORLD from his pen through an oversight
of the editor. But in this and every other respect in which he had
been led astray for a time, he never failed in a right intention; and
for all errors into which he was misled he made full and ample amends,
even far beyond what could justly have been expected.
In regard to some points of Catholic doctrine he was rigoristic and
exaggerated, sometimes censuring the most orthodox theologians as lax
in their interpretation of dogmas. A satisfactory and systematic
exposition of the complete theology of the Catholic Church cannot,
therefore, be said to have been accomplished by Dr. Brownson. Nor,
indeed, can we award to him the meed of success in constructing a
system of metaphysics. That he made valuable contributions both to
theology and metaphysics we are very glad to admit; and, moreover, we
ascribe his imperfect achievement, not to the want of intellectual
ability, but to other causes which we have sufficiently explained
already. In point of fact, the great scheme always before his mind of
the synthetic exposition of faith and science, reason and revelation,
dogma and philosophy, was too vast even for his capacious mind and
gigantic powers, without a preparation and a possession of materials
which he did not and could not have at command. In our opinion, some
parts of this great work have been much better done in our own time by
other men than by Dr. Brownson. Whether any man will arise who will
accomplish the complete work and produce another _Summa Theologiæ_, we
cannot say; but such a man, if he appears, will be a second Angelic
Doctor. On this head Dr. Ward, in the _Dublin Review_, has already
written so well that we need not add anything more. He has also, in
the number for January, 1876, while paying a most cordial and generous
tribute to the genius and virtue of Dr. Brownson, pointed out in very
clear, explicit terms the great defect in his method of metaphysical
reasoning. This defect is traceable to the influence of Kant, and
found expression in his perpetual criticism of the analytic method of
the schoolmen, and insistance for the substitution of a synthetic
process beginning from an _à priori_ synthetic judgment. Dr.
Brownson’s great mistake lay in his attempting to reconstruct
philosophy and theology from the foundation, instead of applying
himself to learn both from the traditional scholastic system, which
needs to be reconstructed and completed only where certain portions
have been proved by real scientific discoveries to be weak or have
been left unfinished. But we will not weary our readers with any
further remarks on such abstruse topics. We have said enough to
indicate to those who are familiar with them the grounds of our
judgment on certain portions of Dr. Brownson’s writings, and for
others the requisite explanation would occupy far more space than we
are at liberty to appropriate.
While a considerable part of these writings belonging to domestic
controversy will, in our opinion, be forgotten except as literary
curiosities, there are others which deserve to remain as a portion of
our standard Catholic literature, and to be studied while the English
language itself endures. We are disposed to consider the various
essays on subjects belonging to the department of political ethics as
the most consummate productions of the great publicist. His work
entitled _The Great Republic_ is the most extensive and complete of
these essays, but there are numerous other single pieces, making
together a great collection, to be found in various parts of his own
_Review_ and of this magazine. The articles on the controversy with
Protestants and various kinds of free-thinkers, those on
transcendentalism, the autobiography entitled _The Convert_, and the
whole series of articles contributed to THE CATHOLIC WORLD, with the
exception of a few of minor importance, may be placed in the same
category of excellence and permanent value. The quantity of literary
labor accomplished by Dr. Brownson was literally astounding,
especially for our day. A great part of that which he published during
his fifty years of active life was necessarily ephemeral. But there
might be selected from his extant publications as a Catholic reviewer
a mass considerable enough to fill several volumes of the best quality
of matter in the most excellent, admirable, and enduring form. Such
competent judges as Lord Brougham, Cardinal Wiseman, Mr. Webster, Mr.
Ripley, and the editors of the principal reviews in England, France,
and Germany, have pronounced the highest eulogiums upon the
masterpieces of Dr. Brownson’s pen, either in respect to the power of
thought and beauty of style which are their characteristics, or the
intrinsic value of their argument as an exposition or defence of great
truths and principles. The terse logic of Tertullian, the polemic
crash of St. Jerome, the sublime eloquence of Bossuet, are all to be
found there in combination or alternation, with many sweet strains of
tenderness and playful flashes of humor. There are numerous passages
in his writings not to be surpassed by the finest portions of the
works of the great masters of thought and style, whether in the
English or any other language, in the present or in any past age. They
render certain and immortal the just and hard-earned fame of their
author, who labored not, however, at least not principally, for fame
and honor, but for the love of truth, the welfare of mankind, and the
approbation of heaven.
Dr. Brownson is the most remarkable of all the converts to the
Catholic Church in the United States, and among the most remarkable in
the group of illustrious men who have paid homage to her authority in
the present age. His conversion was a great event and made an epoch.
What the amount of good which has been and will be effected by his
works may be, it is utterly impossible to estimate; for such things
have no statistics, no criterion of measurement, no data for
calculation. The weight of his testimony and the conclusiveness of his
arguments have been slightingly treated, and represented as not worthy
to be considered, on the plea that he was capricious, changeable, and
possessed of a kind of marvellous art, a sort of intellectual magic,
by which he could persuade himself, and make a plausible show of
proving to others, that any theory, doctrine, or scheme which took his
fancy was solid truth; somewhat as Kant attributes an illusory power
to nature, by which all sorts of paralogisms are made to seem equally
true and real to reason, whereas they are only phenomenal forms. To a
great number of persons Dr. Brownson was an intellectual phenomenon, a
sort of philosophical comet of the most eccentric orbit, a
prestidigitator with magical formulas, a Prospero having a magic wand,
a being such as the popular superstition of old represented Albertus
Magnus. That a mind which is searching for the truth which it does not
possess, and after a supreme good which it knows not except as an
object of vague longing, should wander, is not strange. It is the
principle of Protestantism, and of the rationalistic, sceptical
philosophy which it has produced, to be always doubting, questioning;
“ever seeking and never coming to the knowledge of the truth,” unless
by the substitution of another, higher principle. That there was a law
in his mental aberrations, a progressive movement in his eccentric
orbit, a “method in his madness,” even in its utmost extravagance, a
careful perusal of his autobiography will show. It requires
intelligence and patience, however, to read that book. His intellect
was one always _quærens causas altissimas_. When he became once
convinced of the truth of the Catholic religion, and surrendered his
mind to the supernatural light of faith, although his faith was _fides
quærens intellectum_, he never changed or wavered in his belief of the
grand dogmas of Catholic Christianity. That such a mind and
disposition as his could be firmly held under the dominion of
authority with the full assent of the understanding and the joyful
submission of the will, is no weak proof that the authority is divine
which subdued so restive a spirit. Pegasus in the yoke with his wings
tied was an unruly, troublesome steed; but when Apollo mounted on his
back and cut his cords, he was docile to his rein, while with all the
joy of liberty he flew through the air, proud to obey such a master.
Dr. Brownson’s demonstration of the divine institution and authority
of the church is unanswered and unanswerable. It is childish trifling,
unworthy of rational men, to ignore his arguments and escape from his
logic by petty criticisms on his person. Reason is objective and real;
the subjective qualities of the reasoner have nothing to do with its
authority. Several years before Dr. Brownson’s conversion, the writer
heard several of the professors of Princeton express their opinion
that he was the ablest and most dangerous antagonist of Christianity
in this country. Like Saul of Tarsus, he was changed from an enemy to
a champion of the cause of Christ and his church. Though somewhat
sudden, his conversion was from rational conviction and the purest
motives. It is impossible to deprive it of its significance or deny
its importance. It is one of many instances proving that now, as ever,
the Catholic Church has power to win and master the strongest and most
fearless minds, the most generous and disinterested hearts. Dr.
Brownson was generous and disinterested. He obeyed his conscience,
devoted himself to truth and justice, served God and his fellow-men,
without price, in poverty, and with a total neglect of popularity and
worldly honor, comfort, enjoyment, and every sort of earthly pomp and
ostentation. In a merely natural point of view he was like the simple
old men of the Greek and Roman heroic age, and the early fathers of
our degenerate commonwealth. His austere figure is an example and a
reproach to a frivolous, luxurious, sceptical, perfidious generation.
What a contrast between his incorruptible integrity and unpurchasable
allegiance to truth and right, to virtue and honesty, to order and
liberty, and the venal trafficking of our so-called statesmen, who
swindle soldiers and artisans, rob the country and the poor, barter
and trade in votes and offices, renounce their faith for political
preferment, bid for honors by appeals to sectarian animosity, sell the
most sacred rights and interests for their own selfish advantage,
flaunt in a vulgar magnificence which is maintained by theft, and
abscond to escape the punishment due to their felonies! Amid this mean
crowd he stands out like Aristides among the demagogues of Athens; and
compared with that other brood which has settled down on the domain of
the press and the lecture-hall, the professors of atheistic
materialism, he is like Socrates among the sophists. Detected
swindlers, defaulters and robbers are despised and denounced,
disgraced and punished, if it is money and material goods which they
administer fraudulently or appropriate unjustly. They are the small
cattle-thieves of _Waverley_, but the great _lifters_ escape
unpunished and are honored. Tyrants who rob their subjects of their
rights or neighboring states of their possessions; defaulters to
faith, conscience, and God, who abuse their gifts and power to debauch
and degrade the minds of their fellow-men; swindlers in the priceless
goods of the soul and eternity; the prophets of falsehood and
licentiousness; are enriched and applauded. Neglect, aversion,
martyrdom, are the portion of the genuine heroes, sages, patriots,
lovers and benefactors of the race; and whatever homage they receive
is extorted, reluctant, scanty in proportion to their worth and merit.
Even when they are admired and praised, their teaching is not heeded
or their example followed by the fickle, frivolous crowd. Morally,
when not literally, exile and the cup of hemlock are their portion.
Those who literally encounter death and receive the palm of martrydom
are the happiest and most favored among them. But these are the men
who redeem the race, and are the only lasting glory of the age in
which their task of labor and suffering is fulfilled. Among these
crusaders Dr. Brownson enlisted when he abandoned the camp of
infidelity and revolution to receive the cross. The _corps d’élite_ of
Catholic laymen distinguished by their eminent superiority and
illustrious services to the church, in this century, is a
confraternity even more chivalrous and honorable than the Order of the
Temple in its purest, brightest days. Görres, O’Connell, De Gerlache,
Rossi, Lamoricière, Montalembert, Veuillot, Dechamps, Marshall, Ward,
Garcia Moreno, Mallinkrodt—these are names which represent a great
battalion of more or less renowned warriors in the sacred cause of
Christ, of his Vicar, of true religion, science, civilization, and
man’s eternal welfare. The unshaken, loyal fidelity of Abdiel among
the innumerable hosts of revolted angels shines forth, not with
solitary lustre, but like the splendor of the cohort seen in the
vision recorded in the Machabees: _Peraera equites discurrentes,
auratas stolas habentes, et aureorum splendorem armorum_. The Catholic
laity of the United States have furnished one illustrious champion to
this band. He loved the church first of all, and next his country. He
deserved well of both, for Christian and civic virtues, sacrifices on
the altar of God and the battle-field of the republic, wise and
eloquent pleadings for Catholic law in the Christian commonwealth, and
constitutional right, freedom, and order in the American state. We
trust that his instructions and example will always be a light and an
encouragement, a glory and a model, to the Catholic laymen of the
United States, and especially to the young men of education who aspire
to intellectual culture and feel the impulse to act valiantly and
usefully their part as citizens of this republic and Christian
gentlemen.
[112] It is but a few years since the death of Dr.
Brownson’s mother, and his twin-sister still survives.
[113] The Convert, p. 96
THE ASCENSION.
“Thou art gone up on high.”—Ps. lxvii. 18.
Gone up! But whither? To a star?
Some orb that seems a point of light?
Or one too infinitely far
For our fond gaze beneath the night?
Some fairer world, to which our own,
With all its vastness, is a grain?
Is’t there the God-Man sets His throne—
Fit centre of a boundless reign?
Let science coldly sweep away
A fancied Eden here and there
From out the starry space, and say
‘Tis _all_ brute matter—crude and bare
Or stern philosophy demand.
May not yon myriad orbs we ken
Be but a pinch of golden sand,
To stretch the narrow minds of men?
Yet Faith makes answer, meekly bold
Narrow to me your widest lore—
Without the blessed truth I hold
That God is man for evermore.
He came to wed our life to His:
As man was born, and died, and rose:
And in His victor Flesh it is
Our hopes of Paradise repose.
He wore it through the sweet delay
That kept him with His dear ones yet;
Nor put it from Him on the day
He passed from topmost Olivet.
Then still He wears it in the skies—
Matter in place. And when the cloud
Received Him from the gazers’ eyes—
Before their brimming hearts allowed
That they had lost Him—swift as thought,
He reached the bright Elysian home
His own primeval word had wrought—
New Eden for the race to come.
THE WILD ROSE OF ST. REGIS.
An earnest consideration of the “Indian question” must impress every
lover of our country with the most serious conviction of its
importance and the fearful accounting which awaits us before the
solemn tribunal of the future, if we follow the policy which has
unhappily been hitherto adopted in relation to it.
Leaving out all thought of the principles of eternal justice, and
consulting only the promotion of our temporal interests, the course we
have pursued could not have been more fatal if projected for the sole
purpose of defeat and ruin.
How much more wisely did France deal with the aborigines from the
start than England! With what untiring patience did her colonial
governments meet each successive savage outbreak, subduing the
ferocious foe with weapons of Christian forbearance and clemency! They
waged no war of retaliation and extermination against these “children
of larger growth,” whom they found roaming through the forests of New
France. They made no treaties with them, as we have done from the
first, with the sole purpose, as it would seem, of breaking them. In
their traffic with the Indians they forced no worthless rubbish upon
them at prices far exceeding the value of the very best, and in
exchange for their wares at a rate much below the half of their real
worth. The dealings of traders with them were not only jealously
watched and guarded by every possible check to the greed for gain, but
a breach of justice and equity in those dealings was sure to meet its
provided penalty.
France bequeathed to England with the cession of her Canadian
provinces, in 1763, the wisest system—wisest because based upon an
immutable foundation of Christian equity—which could have been adopted
in regard to her Indian tribes; and England, though not always so
scrupulously watchful of the transactions of her traders, was
sagacious enough to perceive its wisdom and to uphold and continue it,
in all its leading features, throughout her American dependencies.
Herein, as we apprehend, lies the secret of her success in this
matter, which contrasts so strikingly with our miserable
failure—herein, and not, as has been asserted, in any essential
difference between these aboriginal races; for the savage is, after
all, much the same through all his nations and tribes, and has a vast
amount of human nature in his unsubdued bosom, which is as easily
melted by kindness as exasperated by cruelty and oppression.
Circumstances recently brought to our notice have served to confirm
and illustrate convictions we had long entertained on this subject,
and we have thought the relation of them might not prove inappropriate
or without interest at this time.
In the autumn of 1874 we went with a party of friends to the railroad
depot at St. Albans, Vermont, to take leave of a portion of our number
who were about to depart for Florida to pass the winter. While we were
awaiting the arrival of the train from the north our notice was
attracted by a group of Indian children who passed among the crowd
assembled there, in quest of purchasers for their toilet articles and
Indian knick-knacks.
An old lady of our party—whose father left Vermont with his family
early in this century, when she was very young, to settle in
northwestern New York, and who was now visiting the home and friends
of her childhood for the first time—seemed to take a particular
interest in these children. Calling a little girl to her, she asked
what place they were from. “From St. Regis,” was the reply. “And did
you ever hear of Margaret La Lune?” she asked. “She is our
grandmother,” they answered, “and is in this village now.”
At that moment a very old squaw, dressed in a remarkably neat Indian
costume, with a blanket of snowy whiteness thrown loosely around her
aged form, entered the room. To our astonishment, our friend no sooner
saw her than she ran to her with open arms, embraced her, and kissed
each of her wrinkled and swarthy cheeks!
This sudden demonstration was evidently no surprise to the Indian
woman; for when, after a moment of silence, our friend asked, “Why,
Margaret! how does it happen that you remember me after so many
years?” she simply replied: “My daughter should know that our people
never forget!” finishing the sentence with some expressions in her own
language which fell upon our ears more like vibrations produced by the
wind passing over the chords of some musical instrument, than like any
articulate utterance. Our amazement was not diminished when we heard
our friend reply in the same tone and language.
Before we could express our surprise the train arrived. The bustle of
departure and last words were hardly over when we found that the
Indian party had also gone on to Burlington in the same train.
Upon our return home we beset our visitor with questions as to this
singular interview and the warm affection which seemed to exist
between her and the old squaw.
“I became acquainted with her, for a brief space, long ago, when I was
a little child,” she replied, “and, though I have never seen her
since, incidents occurred some years later which revived my
recollections of her and fixed them in my memory.”
When we insisted upon hearing all about it, she related the following
story of
THE WILD ROSE OF ST. REGIS.
When my father removed in 1815 to the new settlement at Rossie, on the
western confines of St. Lawrence County, N. Y., the forests covering
the territory lying on Black Lake, and the borders of the Indian
River—which empties into that lake a few miles below Rossie—had
scarcely yet been disturbed by the axe of the settler. Hordes of wild
beasts held almost undisputed sway over regions now occupied by
cultivated farms and smiling villages.
A place of more weird and savage aspect than Rossie presented,
situated on both sides of that dark stream, can hardly be conceived.
Rich beds of iron ore of a superior quality abounding among its rugged
hills, and extensive lead-mines, furnished material for the operation
of numerous furnaces, which, with the necessary habitations for their
operatives, formed the little village. The largest Indian encampment
in the county was also pitched upon its border, a short distance down
the river.
The young squaws of the encampment mingled with the little girls of
the settlement, and often became strongly attached to them. I was
fascinated from the first with the manner of life in a wigwam, and
soon became a special favorite with the Indian women. They frequently
persuaded my mother to let me pass day after day in their wigwams,
where I was carefully guarded and taught many of the simple arts in
which they excel, and, as an unusual mark of their high regard,
instructed in some of the secrets of those arts—such as the process
for dyeing the quills of the porcupine with brilliant, unfading colors
of every hue, in which they are so skilful; the mode of embroidering
with them; the use of the moose-hair in such embroidery, and the
manner of preparing it. I entered upon these pursuits with
enthusiastic ardor and diligence, acquiring also—as a necessary
consequence of this intercourse and training—with the facility of a
youthful tongue, a sufficient knowledge of their language to
communicate readily with them on all ordinary matters.
My mother was so fully engrossed with cares attendant upon the
management of a large household, required in my father’s extensive
business, that she had little time to devote to me beyond assuring
herself of my safety. I recall with vivid distinctness, after the
lapse of so many years, the startled surprise, not to say horror, with
which she met my triumphant exhibition of a superb pair of moccasins
for herself, lined with the soft, snow-white fur of the weasel, the
work of my own hands. I had dressed and dyed the skins of which they
were made, colored the brilliant quills and moose-hair profusely
wrought into them, and finally cut, stitched, and embroidered them,
under the direction of a pious old squaw who always watched over me
during my visits to the wigwams.
My mother examined them in great surprise, her countenance expressing
mingled pride and pity as she exclaimed: “Poor child! we _must_ send
you away somewhere to school; for I am afraid you will become a
thorough little squaw if we keep you in this wild place among such
savage companions.”
I felt deeply wounded by the want of respect for my dear friends which
her remarks implied, and insisted warmly that the squaws were better,
more gentle, and a great deal more pious than the civilized women of
the place; that they were never guilty of backbiting or quarrelling
among themselves; never raised their voices above the soft tones of
their ordinary conversation, but lived in peace and harmony, saying
their prayers devoutly morning and night, and requiring their children
to do the same. I enumerated eagerly all the good qualities for which
I admired them, to which she cordially assented, but insisted,
nevertheless, that, as I was destined to live among civilized people,
it was not desirable for me to acquire the habits and tastes of these
children of the wilderness.
One morning not long after this occurrence, as I was playing with the
Indian children near an untenanted house on the bank of the river,
they told me in their own language that we must not make much noise;
“for there was a fading flower in that house, and the medicine-women
feared it had been chilled by the breath of the destroyer.” I
understood their meaning and asked one of them to go in with me to see
the young invalid.
When we entered, an elderly squaw, the fine texture and snowy
whiteness of whose blanket marked her as one of the best of her race,
was bending over the slight form of a beautiful young girl who was
lying on a bed of hemlock boughs which had been prepared in one corner
of the room, and wrapping a blanket around her, while she lavished
upon her those tender epithets and pet names with which the Indian
dialects abound. As she turned and saw me, she said: “See, here is the
little pale-face of whom Loiska told us, come to see my Rose of the
woods! Will not the sweet flower lift its head to the sunshine of the
pale-face?”
The maiden smiled and extended her wasted hand to take mine. I
shuddered at its clammy coldness.
“See, dear mother,” she said plaintively, “the White Lily shrinks from
the touch of the dews that lie upon your Rose! You must not be false
to yourself or to me; for it is an angel who whispers to the little
one that these are the dews of death. Your best skill cannot stay
them, and they will cease only at the call of the great messenger, who
will remove your flower to the garden of that ‘Mystical Rose’ whose
fragrance we love so well.”
“Oh! let not my blossom say so. The journey was long and the bed was
hard. The rays of the sun upon the water were too strong for our
tender bud, and it wilted, but will soon revive in these pleasant
shades. The pale-face will procure from her mother, who is passing
kind to our people, strengthening food and refreshment for the Wild
Rose!”
“Yes! yes!” I cried, “she will and we will not let it droop. I will go
directly to my mother, and I know she will help you!”
I was thrilled by their look of grateful surprise when they found I
could understand their language, and their softly-ejaculated
benedictions followed me as I bounded away in quest of my mother. I
found her busily engaged in household matters, and, seizing her with
irresistible energy, literally dragged her into the presence of my new
friends, telling her what I knew of them by the way.
When we arrived she inquired tenderly as to the symptoms of the lovely
invalid. Finding they had come from St. Regis by water, and had
brought her on a bed of boughs in their canoe to Ogdensburg, thence up
the Oswegatchie to Black Lake, and thus far up the Indian River, she
also was of the opinion that the frail child was exhausted by fatigue,
and that rest would revive her.
They had undertaken the journey in the hope that a change would be a
benefit to her health. Her father came with them and was at the camp,
but the mother preferred a place where her charge could be better
sheltered than in a wigwam.
My mother went home, and, gathering comfortable furniture for their
room, despatched a man with it; then, preparing some hot wine negus
with toasted crackers, she sent them by me to refresh the sufferer
while some nourishing broth could be made ready.
From that time I forsook the wigwams and devoted myself to my Wild
Rose; who became so fond of me that she could scarcely consent to my
leaving her for the nights. Each morning found me at her bedside
before sunrise, with my own breakfast as well as hers, that we might
partake of it together, and with a profusion of fresh flowers from the
abundance of my mother’s flower-garden wherewith to adorn her room.
The Indian children had helped me to festoon it with wreaths of ground
pine and boughs, until it was an evergreen bower in which we took
great satisfaction.
My mother gathered from her her little history. She had been betrothed
to a young son of their chief, and they were to have been married the
previous fall. The time for the nuptials had been appointed and her
bridal dress prepared. The young man was sent by his father on some
business to Montreal a few days before the time thus appointed. On the
way his canoe was drawn suddenly into a whirlpool in the rapids,
dashed to fragments upon the rocks, and he perished. The shock of this
terrible calamity was fatal to her health, which had never been
robust. From that moment she drooped, and, though quite calm, even
cheerful, had been gradually wasting and sinking. They improved the
first mild days of spring to try the effect of a change of air and
scene, after she had received the last sacraments from their priest in
preparation for the worst.
For a few weeks she seemed to revive, and even walked with me once as
far as my own home. Her appetite improved, and she relished all that
my mother’s care provided for her food.
As I remember her at this distant day, I know she must have been a
being of superior beauty and loveliness; but there was nothing about
her which so fascinated and impressed my young heart as the spirit of
piety that governed all her words and actions, and seemed to flow from
the depths of her pure soul like transparent waters from a fountain,
refreshing every one who came within their influence.
One warm evening in the early summer we sat together for a long time
in silence and alone, watching a beautiful sunset over the wild
“Rossie Hills,” when her soft voice breathed in her own musical
language expressions which subsequent events fixed indelibly in my
memory.
“My sweet Lily,” she said, “will often uplift her pale face to the
smiles of the glorious sunset when the Rose, who loved to bask with
her in their golden gleam, will be blooming in gardens which need them
not; for the ‘Sun of Righteousness’ will be their light, and will fill
them with glories unknown to earthly bowers, and his Blessed Virgin
Mother will smile upon them. But the incense of prayer, like the
breath of its own perfume, will ever float from the Rose to the throne
of the Eternal that her Lily may be transplanted at last to a place by
her side in that happy home where sighing, and parting, and sorrow
shall cease for ever! Oh! will she not strive for admittance to the
garden of our Lord here, that she may rejoice in the light of his
countenance hereafter?”
In a voice broken by my sobs I promised all she asked, and I doubt not
her prayers helped me long afterwards in obtaining the grace to fulfil
the promise.
The next morning I found her much exhausted, and that she had passed a
restless night. Her mother raised her in her arms while she took the
broth I brought for her breakfast, of which she was very fond. She
seemed weary, and, as her mother lowered her gently to the pillow, she
suddenly lifted her eyes to heaven, while a smile of celestial rapture
stole over her beautiful face, and exclaimed, “Pray for me, my own
mother; for, behold! the bright angel is spreading his wings to bear
your Rose to the presence of her Redeemer!”—and was gone. The Indian
mother and myself were alone with the lifeless form of our beloved
one.
The change, the shock, was so sudden and unlooked for that I stood
horror-struck and paralyzed, for the first time, before the dread
messenger who had stolen the breath of my sweet Rose. The whole scene
was so incomprehensible to me that I could not believe the tones of
her dear voice were hushed for ever, but persuaded myself that she had
only fallen asleep.
Amazed, I watched the poor mother as she calmly recited the prayers
for the departing spirit over her child for some time, the only
outward sign of her anguish being the tears which flowed in torrents
down her cheeks, while every line of her wan features expressed
unquestioning resignation to the will of Him who had given and taken
her treasure.
The prayers concluded, she tenderly closed the dear eyes, adjusted the
slender form, folded the delicate hands over a crucifix on her breast,
and entwined the beads, which had so seldom been laid aside by them in
life, closely around them in death. When she sat down at length, and,
opening her blanket, extended her arms towards me, the first glimpse
of the dread reality burst upon me in a flood of crushing agony, and,
springing to the open arms which drew me in a close embrace to her
bosom, I wept aloud in a paroxysm of frantic, uncontrollable grief.
She fondly soothed and caressed me, bestowing upon me those
expressions of tender affection which she had been wont to pour into
the ears now closed for ever, and uttering fervent prayers to heaven
that its choicest dews might descend upon the Lily which had cheered
the last hours of her sweet Rose.
I was inconsolable, and told her vehemently that, since Heaven had
taken the Rose, the Lily would go too, and that it would never lift up
its head again; and, indeed, my grief was so violent as to injure my
health, and I was soon sent away to new scenes.
My mother assisted in preparing the frail form of the Indian maiden
for the grave. Her mother had brought with her the bridal dress of her
child, and in that they arrayed the beautiful departed for the bridal
of death. Then, enfolding her in a linen sheet, they wrapped her
blanket about her and gently laid her down upon the bed of boughs her
father had prepared in the canoe for her removal to the graves of
their kindred at St. Regis. Then followed the sad leave-taking and the
departure.
The dismal forests which clothed each margin of the Indian River
seemed to bend over that sombre stream in reverential sympathy as the
Indian father and mother, with their faded Rose, floated silently down
its dark waters and out of our sight for ever!
* * * * *
Some years had elapsed since this event, and during the interval
misfortunes had overwhelmed our family. At the very time of severe
reverses in his business my father was taken with a malignant fever
and died. My mother, my young brother, and myself were thus left in
desolate affliction to battle with adversity as best we might. Our
pleasant home was surrendered to creditors, and we sought the forests
of Upper Canada, whither a family who had long been tenants on our
farm had gone several years before. They had taken up a tract of land
under a government grant to settlers, and, when they heard of our
great calamity, wrote, urging us to do the same, as they could render
great assistance to us if we were near them.
The land we took was covered with very valuable timber, and the first
object was to get a portion of it to the Quebec market, that its
avails might pay for clearing the land and preparing our new home.
My brother—hitherto the pet of the family, and in danger of being the
spoiled child of fortune—set about the task with an energy that
surprised every one. He was greatly beloved by the Indian hunters, who
knew my father and had received many favors from him in the days of
our prosperity. They assisted us in our removal, and remained to help
and encourage my brother in the lumbering business, so new to him,
under the direction of “Captain Tom,” an old Indian who was very
skilful in such operations. We removed late in the fall, taking with
us a supply of provisions more than sufficient for the winter, and but
little else of worldly gear.
When the spring opened, thanks to our kind neighbors with their oxen,
and the good Indians, a quantity of lumber of various kinds had been
drawn to the river bank, and as soon as the ice went out they put it
into rafts for transportation. These were constructed in separate
sections, each with its rude little _caboose_ to shelter the two men
who went with it. The sections were then firmly united in one long
raft by means of strong withes, in such a manner that they could be
readily detached by cutting the withes, if necessary, in making the
dangerous descent of the rapids above Montreal.
A few days before they set out a vicious, drunken Indian called
“Malfait,” who had been loitering around all winter, quarrelling with
the men and giving no assistance, applied to Captain Tom for whiskey
and for permission to go down on the rafts, both which requests were
refused. He went away muttering threats, and the old Indian feared he
was meditating mischief.
My brother wished to go with Captain Tom on the forward section, as
was the custom for the one who conducted the navigation. We gave a
very reluctant consent, and our parting with him was saddened by many
misgivings.
They proceeded prosperously on their voyage as far as the “Long
Sault,” so called, the first dangerous rapid, the chief difficulty in
passing which, for experienced navigators, was to avoid being drawn,
by an almost irresistible current at one point, into a furious
maelstrom called the “Lost Channel,” from which few had ever escaped
who once entered it.
They reached the head of the Long Sault late in the afternoon, and
anchored there for the night, with the roar of the tumbling waters in
their ears. The moon was shining brightly, and they betook themselves
to rest early, that they might start betimes in the morning. Very late
in the night my brother was awakened from a sound sleep by the old
Indian, who laid his hand heavily upon him and told him to keep very
calm and not to struggle or make the least effort to shield himself.
“For,” said he, “we are entering the Lost Channel; our part of the
raft has been cut loose. I have bound you firmly to the same stick of
timber to which I am now binding myself. We can only leave ourselves
in the hands of the Great Spirit; for no other arm can help us.”
My brother was paralyzed with terror as the maddened waters seized the
raft as if it had been a child’s plaything, tore the heavy timbers
apart, and bent and shivered many of them like saplings. The one to
which he and the Indian were attached was often uplifted, by the force
of the raging torrent, its full length, to be thrown violently down
and swallowed in the depths of the foaming flood. The shock of these
concussions soon benumbed his faculties, and his last conscious act
was to recommend his soul to the mercy of God, before whose awful
tribunal he supposed he was about to appear.
When he began to recover his senses, it was like waking from some
frightful dream. He was too much bewildered to realize for some time
that he was in a comfortable Indian lodge, with a kind old squaw in
attendance upon him. She would not allow him to ask any questions or
agitate himself, assuring him that all was well, and he should know
the whole at a proper time. As soon as he was able to hear it she gave
him the history.
On the day before their arrival at the Long Sault her son, with a
party of Indian hunters who had been up the St. Lawrence and were
returning to St. Regis, had fallen in with Malfait, and, from
inquiries made by him, suspected that he was watching, with no good
purpose, for rafts that he expected would come down the river. He
suddenly disappeared, and they did not know in what direction. When
her son told her the circumstance and their suspicions—for the bad
character of Malfait was well known, and they had heard that Captain
Tom was coming down with rafts-she set out at once with men and canoes
up Lake St. Louis to the foot of the rapids, to give aid if it should
be needed.
They discovered the timber to which my brother and his faithful friend
were lashed, and, releasing them, brought their insensible forms as
speedily as possible to her lodge on the shore of that lake, with very
little hope that they would ever revive. The old Indian, however, soon
began to show signs of life, and, when he was able, recounted what had
happened. He had no doubt that Malfait came in the night, detached the
raft, and steered it into the rapids to satisfy his malice against
him.
As soon as he was strong enough to go, her son went with him down the
river to look after the remainder of the raft, leaving his young
friend in good hands, though still unconscious of the tender care he
was receiving.
They found the rafts in Lake St. Peter below Montreal, and her son
returned. She then sent him with some others to gather the timber of
the wrecked raft. They collected all that could be found on the shore
of the lake, to be taken when the rafts should come down next year.
“And now, my son,” she continued, when she had brought the narrative
to this point, “I am known here as Margaret La Lune, but to your
mother and sister as the mother of the Wild Rose of St. Regis. You may
have heard them speak of her, though you were too young at the time of
their acquaintance to know about it yourself. It was to her care the
Great Spirit committed you in your extremity, that she might be
allowed to make some return for their kindness to her and her sweet
child, which she has never forgotten, and has ever since endeavored to
repay by giving all the help in her power to navigators on these
perilous waters. It was in one of these attempts that my husband lost
his life some years ago. Great was my joy when I learned from your
Indian friend that I had rescued one so dear to them from a grave in
the rushing flood.”
My brother remained with her until the return of Captain Tom. He
delivered the lumber to the merchant in Quebec to whom it was
consigned—who had long known the sterling qualities of the faithful
old Indian—and informed him of the situation in which he left his
young employer. The merchant advanced money to him to pay off the men
and to bear his own and my brother’s expenses home, sending by him a
statement of the balance left and subject to my brother’s order. The
money for their expenses was all that Captain Tom or his Indians could
ever be persuaded to accept for their valuable services at that time
and in after-years. Their only reply to my brother’s persuasions was,
“We remember your father. He good to his Indian brothers.”
You may well imagine our surprise and gratitude when we heard from my
brother’s own lips the story of all that had befallen him, and of the
devotion of our excellent Margaret. She was absent when he went down
the next year for the last time, and he did not see her.
Our affairs prospered beyond our expectation. We brought willing hands
and courageous hearts to the strife with adverse fortunes, and, by the
blessing of God upon our efforts, did not fail in time to retrieve
them. My mother died a few years after my marriage with a son of our
former tenant, whose sister my brother afterwards married. She divided
her time between the two homes, tenderly beloved and cared for by her
children and grandchildren, and honored by all who knew her.
You now understand the reason for my great surprise and affectionate
meeting with Margaret at the depot, which must have seemed strange
indeed to the witnesses. In our short chat I promised to go to pass
some time with her upon my return home, and am not without hope that I
shall persuade her to go with me to see the children and grandchildren
who have often heard of her and of the fidelity with which her people
treasure up the memory of kind acts.
HAMMOND ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.[114]
The wonderful relativity of psychology to the purely somatic phenomena
comprised under the term physiology, while not having altogether
escaped the observation of earlier thinkers, did not assume the
significance it now possesses till modern science compelled mere
psychicists to recognize the invaluable services this new handmaiden
bestowed on their favorite pursuit. It had been too much the vogue to
frown down attempts at chemical explanations of vital processes as
verging towards materialism, and thus materialism was in reality
strengthened, since the opponents of modern physiology had shut their
eyes to facts as stubborn and undeniable as the soul itself whose
cause they were championing. This antagonism was unfortunate; for,
though of short duration, it gave rise to the impression in the
popular mind that the old science dreaded the new light, and that
recent discoveries tended rapidly to overthrow the time-honored belief
in the distinct substantiality of the soul. To this same arrogant
rejection by pedantic orthodoxists of facts that seemingly conflicted
with accepted views, may be ascribed the sneering and triumphant
manner of many scientists who fail to take account of the slowness
with which men reconcile themselves to truths not hitherto suspected.
Had, however, the data of modern science been at first fully
considered, it would have become evident that theories and assumptions
alone ran counter to the doctrine of a spiritual soul, and that
scientific facts, startling and numerous as they were, did not, when
viewed by the light of a just interpretation, conflict with any prior
truth. The hasty and groundless character of the assumptions which
tend to materialism may be inferred from the claim not long since put
forward in the _Ecole de Médecine_ at Paris, to the effect that the
science of physiology demands in advance the rejection of any
principle of activity in man not amenable to its methods and
instruments of research, on the ground that man in his totality is the
true objective point of this science, and the admission of aught in
him which it cannot determine is equivalent to stating that man is
more than he is. According to this authority, therefore, the notion of
a soul, viewed as a spiritual substance, distinct and different from
the body, hampers science and circumscribes the field of its inquiry.
But if the vast strides made by physiology within the last decade have
been the occasion of some pernicious speculation, and have seemed to
give countenance to materialism, this has been the case only when the
science transcended its own data and soared into the region of
conjecture. Its legitimate fruits are manifest in the flood of light
it has thrown on the most intricate questions of psychology, and the
elucidation of points which, but for it, would have remained for ever
in obscurity. Indeed, it may be said to have created a new branch of
psychical science, and to have brushed away many cobwebs that clouded
the psychology of the schools. The volume before us represents the
latest expression of the physiology and pathology of the nervous
system, and is characterized by unusual closeness of observation and
accuracy of expression, while evincing a proneness to theorize on
points concerning which the author is least at home. Dr. Hammond has
been a close student at the bedside and an indefatigable worker with
those instruments of research which have almost built up his science,
but for all an indifferent thinker, as we shall shortly endeavor to
prove. It is true that no authority is more frequently invoked, and
with good reason, to determine questions relative to mental aberration
and unusual conditions of the nervous system; but when he abandons the
ophthalmoscope, the cephalohœmometer, the œsthesiometer, and assumes
the _abolla_ of the philosopher, he evidently misses his _rôle_. He is
undoubtedly a physiologist of the first rank and a respectable
authority on minute nervous histology, but as a theorist he is a
failure. Accustomed to dogmatize on facts coming within the scope of
the senses, he applies the same procrustean rule of reasoning to
purely intellectual processes, and speedily flounders in a quagmire.
His mind has tipped the balance in the direction of material things,
and has not been able to regain its equilibrium.
As a repertory of interesting facts, gleaned in the course of a long
and varied experience, his book is invaluable. It bristles with
information and is replete with comments which prove Dr. Hammond to be
an accurate, close, and painstaking observer, as well as an
accomplished anatomist. His chapter on Aphasia is intensely
interesting, and constitutes a valuable contribution to the theory of
localized function. Aphasia is that inability to use language which
proceeds, not from paralysis of the labial muscles, nor from hysteria,
nor from injury of the vocal chords (_aphonia_), but from a lesion of
that portion of the brain which presides over the memory of words and
the co-ordination of speech. Many instances are adduced in proof that
this inability results from the impairment of a given portion of the
cerebral substance; and from the constant recurrence of the same
effects from the same lesion the inference is drawn that a very
restricted portion of the brain is concerned in connecting thoughts
with words, co-ordinating these, and arranging them in articulate
sounds. Authorities, indeed, are not agreed as to what special brain
lobe this faculty is to be ascribed, but the fact is borne out by
unquestionable evidence that some portion of the anterior convolutions
controls and regulates the power of speech. The point of interest is
that the function is localized and depends on the minute physical
texture of the nerve substance through which it is carried on. Dr.
Hammond justly claims the credit of having first observed that the
form of aphasia called amnesic (forgetfulness of words) depends on
some lesion of the vesicular or gray matter of the brain, since it is
unaccompanied by paralysis, while the form called ataxic (inability to
co-ordinate articulate sounds) is connected with the _corpus striatum_
which presides over motion, and so we find this latter form always
associated with paralysis.
No summary of this chapter can do it justice, so pregnant is it with
facts and abounding with varied suggestion. We would remark, however,
that Dr. Hammond has failed to call attention to the remarkable
confirmation which the condition of amnesic aphasia offers in support
of the inseparable connection between thought and some symbol of
expression—a circumstance which Trousseau, in his learned work on
_Clinical Medicine_, has noted at length. Trousseau says: “A great
thinker as well as a great mathematician cannot devote himself to
transcendental speculations unless he uses formulæ and a thousand
material accessories which aid his mind, relieve his memory, and
impart greater strength to thought by giving it greater precision.
Now, an aphasic individual suffers from verbal amnesia so that he has
lost the formulæ of thought.” This fact of aphasia curiously coincides
with Vicomte de Bonald’s theory of the divine origin of language,
which is based on the supposed impossibility of having a purely
intellectual conception without an accompanying formula or word to
circumscribe and differentiate it, and that accordingly language, in
such relation, must have been communicated.
It is likewise corroborative of the view taken by Max Müller, who says
(_Science of Language_, 79): “Without speech, no reason; without
reason, no speech.” And again: “I therefore declare my conviction,
whether right or wrong, as explicitly as possible, that thought, in
one sense of the word—_i.e._, in the sense of reasoning—is impossible
without language.”
The latest disclosure of science, therefore, so far from conflicting
on this important point with the philosophy of the Scholastics,
endorses and sustains it, and is opposed rather to the rationalist
view of the question.
It is in the chapter on Insanity that Dr. Hammond first betrays the
crudeness and shallowness of his philosophy. On page 310 he says: “By
mind we understand a force developed by nervous action, and especially
the action of the brain.” And again: “The brain is the chief organ
from which the force called mind is evolved.”
In this definition the author is guilty of having used a term more
obscure and ambiguous than the _definiendium_ itself; for no two
scientific men agree in their view of force. Dr. Mayer, of Heilbronn,
says: “The term force conveys the idea of something unknown and
hypothetical.” “Forces are indestructible, convertible, and
imponderable objects.” Dr. Bray, in his _Anthropology_, says: “Force
is everything; it is a noumenal integer phenomenally differentiated
into the glittering universe of things.” Faraday says: “What I mean by
the term force is the cause of a physical action,” and elsewhere,
“Matter is force.” Dr. Bastian, on _Force and Matter_, declares force
to be “a mode of motion.” Herbert Spencer says of it: “Force, as we
know it, can be regarded only as a conditioned effect of the
unconditioned cause, as the relative reality, indicating to us an
absolute reality by which it is immediately produced.” Another writer
(Grove) calls forces the “affections of matter.” Now, the word mind
conveys, even to the most illiterate, a precise and definite notion.
Every one knows that it is the principle within him which thinks and
underlies all intellectual processes; but when Dr. Hammond informs him
that it is a “force,” and he finds that a bewildering confusion of
opinions, expressed in the obscurest terms, prevails concerning the
nature and essence of “force,” he finds that he has derived “_Fumum ex
fulgore_.” Even the term “evolves” is unfortunate; for the word occurs
in a great variety of connections. If force is an entity, it cannot be
evolved; it is produced. Of thought, indeed, it might be said that it
is evolved from the mind, since it represents the latter in a state of
active operation, and has no separate entity of its own; but mind,
being known to us as something in all respects distinct and diverse
from matter, cannot, except by a lapse into the grossest materialism,
be said to be evolved from the brain. Had Dr. Hammond present to his
mind a definite idea when he penned the word, he might have easily
found a clearer substitute. Carl Vogt knew well what meaning he
intended to convey when he said: “Just as the liver secretes bile, so
the brain secretes thought.” There is candor, at least, in this
statement, and none of that shuffling timorousness which shame-facedly
glozes materialism in the formula: “Mind is a force evolved from the
brain.”
Having satisfied himself that there can be no question as to the
accuracy of this definition, our author places mind in contrast with
“forces in general” by designating it a compound force. What he means
by “forces in general” it is hard to say; for if mind is a force, it
possesses the generic properties which ally it with other forces, and
must therefore be one of the “forces in general,” since that is a
veritable condition of its being a force at all. But this is a minor
error. The expression “compound force,” used as Dr. Hammond uses it,
implies a far graver mistake, and all but stultifies its author.
Either mind is a force (and be it remembered the author has not
enlightened us as to the sense in which we ought to understand the
term), having a special function to perform, from which, and from its
mode of performance, its character is inferred, in which case it is a
simple force, no matter how great may be the number and variety of the
objects on which it is expended; or, it is a combination of forces,
each proceeding from its proper source or _principium_, and each
directed to its proper object-term or class of object-terms, in which
case it is not one force merely, however much Dr. Hammond may insist
upon calling it compound, but a series of forces, each possessed of a
distinct entity and an individual identity. The doctor evidently did
not study the scope and import of the word when he thus loosely
employed it, else he would have perceived that whatever is compound is
some one and the same thing made up of parts, and not a collection of
individuals.
We will now see in what manner he distributes and assigns to duty the
_sub-forces_ comprised under the general term “compound force.” For
aught we know, Dr. Hammond may have once been familiar with the
researches of Stewart, Reid, Brown, and Hamilton, not to mention
Locke, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Malebranche; but he certainly labored
under some form of amnesia when he devised the following scheme of
psychology: He declares that the sub-forces into which the compound
force called mind is divisible are fourfold, viz.: perception,
intellect, emotion, and will. He defines perception to be “that _part_
of the mind whose office it is to place the individual in relation
with external objects.” This definition supposes that the whole mind
is not concerned in the act of perception, but that, while one part of
it is quiescent, another may be engaged in perceiving. This view of
perception has the questionable merit of originality, differing as it
does from the definition given by every author from Aristotle to Mill,
who all regard perception as an act of the mind, and the faculty of
perceiving nothing else than the mind itself viewed with reference to
its perceptive ability. Further on he says: “For the evolution of this
force [viz., part of the mind] the brain is in intimate relation with
certain special organs, which serve the purpose of receiving
impressions of objects. Thus an image is formed upon the retina, and
the optic nerve transmits the excitation to its ganglion or part of
the brain. This at once functionates [_Anglice_, acts.—C. W.], the
force called perception is evolved, and the image is perceived.”
We have quoted this passage at some length, not only for the purpose
of exhibiting Dr. Hammond’s theory of perception, but to show how
admirably the _argot_ of science serves to hide all meaning and to
leave the reader dazed and disappointed. No one yet, till Dr.
Hammond’s appearance on the psychological stage, ventured to call a
mere impression on an organ of sense perception; indeed, the whole
difficulty consists in explaining how the mind is placed in relation
with this image. It was with a view to elucidate this much-vexed
matter that the peripatetics invented their system concerning the
origin of ideas. It is all plain sailing till the image or phantasm in
the sensitive faculty is reached; so that at the point where the
Scholastics commenced their subtle and elaborate system Dr. Hammond
complacently dismisses the question by saying: “And the image is
perceived.” What need we trouble ourselves about general concepts,
reflex universal ideas, intelligible species, the acting and the
possible intellect, when there is so easy a mode of emergence from the
difficulty as Dr. Hammond suggests? No doubt he would, like hundreds
of others who do not understand Suarez or St. Thomas, regard the
writings of these doctors on this subject as a tissue of jargon,
overloading and obscuring a question which is so plain that it needs
but to be enunciated in order to be understood. Then the long and warm
conflicts which have torn the camp of philosophy, and separated her
votaries into opposite schools, would all be happily ended; it would
suffice to say: “Gentlemen, your toilsome webwork of thought is no
better than the product of Penelope’s distaff; the whole affair may be
summed up in these words: A ganglion functionates, the force called
perception is evolved, and the image is perceived.” _Mirabile dictu!_
It is not, therefore, necessary to discuss the question of ideal
intuition to find out whether the idea is a representative and
subjective form or objective and absolute; whether we are to agree
with Reid and the school of experimental psychologists, or do battle
under the colors of Gioberti and Rosmini, or the learned and lamented
Brownson? All these things are no doubt beneath the consideration of
the materialist’s psychology.
But we have still more to learn concerning perception at the feet of
this new Gamaliel. He says (page 312): “Perception may be exercised
without any superior intellectual act, without any ideation whatever.
Thus if the cerebrum of a pigeon be removed, the animal is still
capable of seeing and of hearing, but it obtains no idea from those
senses. The mind, with the exception of perception, is lost!”
Perception is not, therefore, connected with consciousness; for,
according to Dr. Hammond, we may hear and see without knowing it. We
do not deny that impressions may be made on the organs of sense
without eliciting an act of consciousness, for which reason, indeed,
ordinary language has reserved the use of words designating the
function of organs for those cases where consciousness is elicited;
for no one would dream of saying that he feels the prick of a pin or
hears another speak without knowing it. A cadaver can perceive as well
as a living subject, if we are to accept Dr. Hammond’s view; for we
know that an image may be formed and retained by the retina after
death, and this is all that is needed for perception. To explain all
intercurrent difficulties, we have but to fall back on ganglia and
evolution. At each step of the intellectual process a convenient
ganglion exists which evolves just the sort of force requisite to
produce the desired result, and thus we have a perfect system of
psychology. Of the intellect he says: “In the normal condition of the
brain the excitation of a sense, and the consequent perception, do not
stop at the special ganglion of that sense, but are transmitted to a
more complex part of the brain, where the perception is resolved into
an idea.” Thus is the brain made the sole organ of thought. We have
but to say, “A perception is resolved into an idea,” and in so many
words we bound over difficulties which made Plato, after much deep
pondering, invent a theory of thought, yet regarded as a matchless
monument of subtlety and sublimity, which taxed the subtle intellects
of St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Leibnitz, and Kant, and which will, in
all probability, continue to be an object of curious research to the
end of time. If a child, beholding the changeful images of a
kaleidoscope, should, prompted by the curiosity of youthful age,
inquire the reason of this beautiful play of colors, surely no one
would cynically answer him that one figure is resolved into another.
Dr. Hammond slurs over the difficulty; for the vexing question is, How
does the mind form an idea?—not, whether a ganglion is excited and
evolves force, but how, on the occasion of such excitation, an idea,
which is something altogether different from the excitation, is
produced in the mind.
This question he not only fails to answer, but exhibits a woeful
depreciation of its scope and gravity. He continues: “Thus the image
impressed upon the retina, the perception of which has been formed by
a sensory ganglion, ultimately causes the evolution of another force
by which all its attributes capable of being represented upon the
retina are more or less perfectly appreciated according to the
structural qualities of the ideational centre.” This sentence
furnishes the keynote to the whole theory of material psychics, and
leads us to inquire into its growth and history. When Bichat in France
and Sir Charles Bell in England simultaneously discovered that a
separate function was assignable to the anterior and posterior
nerve-fibres projected from each intervertebral foramen; that the
anterior possess the power of causing muscular contraction, the
posterior that of giving rise to sensation, they laid the foundation
of the wonderful and beautiful though much-perverted doctrine of the
localization of function. The experiments of Flourens, Claude Bernard,
Beaumont, Virchow, and Kolliker multiplied similar discoveries and
enlarged the significance of Bell’s and Bichat’s conclusions. To every
ganglion its separate function is now sought to be assigned, and we
have already alluded to the interesting facts which ataxic and amnesic
aphasia have lately developed. The intimate relation thus manifested
between particular portions of the brain-substance and the
corresponding mental function, aroused and quickened curiosity to find
out the nature and reason of this dependence. The materialist
perceived in this doctrine of the localization of function a new
weapon for attacking the spirituality of the soul, and was not slow to
bring it into requisition. It was assumed that a reason for the
difference of function in the different portions of the nervous
structure would be found in the intimate texture of the nerve-tissues
themselves; and the assumption, in so far as it is logical to suppose,
that a difference in organization can alone account for a difference
in the manifestation of power, was fair and plausible. All efforts
were now directed towards such discoveries in the minute histology of
the nervous system as would point to a connection between special
ganglia and the functions performed by them. The microscope, indeed,
brought to light many wonderful differences, but none sufficient to
justify what is, therefore, but a mere assumption—the conclusion that
the peculiar organization of certain portions of the nervous system is
as much the efficient cause of the functions with which they are
connected as the sun is the cause of heat and light, and the summer
breeze of the ripple on the harvest field. It was deemed unnecessary
to look for an explanation of intellection and volition beyond the
known or knowable properties of those portions of the nervous
substance with which the processes in question are connected. If, it
was argued, certain varying states of the inner coat of minute
blood-vessels fitted them to select, some arterial blood, and others
venous blood, and no one thought to invoke any other agency in
determining the cause of the difference or of the function, why should
we admit the existence of a distinct substance in accounting for
mental phenomena, when structural differences just as palpable and
obvious are at hand to explain them? In a word, not only difference of
function was attributed to difference of structure, but this latter
difference was held to be the sole cause and chief origin of the
function itself. Dazzled by the brilliancy of their discoveries, and
misled by a false analogy, many physiologists confounded condition
with cause, and, having perceived that the manifestations of the mind
are profoundly modified by the character of the medium through which
they are transmitted, inferred that the medium generated the function.
This confusion of condition with cause was further aided by the
current false notion of cause. Following Hume and Brown, most modern
men of science behold nothing else in the relation of cause to effect
than a mere invariable antecedence and subsequence of events, which,
of course, nullifies the distinction proper between indispensable
condition and cause. With them that is cause on the occurrence of
which something else invariably follows; nor need we look for any
other relation between the two. This doctrine, applied to the
phenomena of the mind, could not but lead the discoverers of localized
functions to downright materialism. They perceived that certain
phenomena invariably proceeded in the same manner from certain
portions of the nervous organism, and that any disturbance of the
latter was attended by a marked change in the character of the
phenomena with which it was connected. This invariability of
antecedence and fluctuating difference of effect pointed unerringly,
they thought, to structural differences in the nervous system as the
efficient cause of all its functions. Applying this doctrine of
causation to the process of intellection, we find how logically it
sustains Dr. Hammond’s assertion that mind is an evolution of force
from a special ganglion, since an excitation of the same ganglion is
always followed by the same result—viz., a mental apprehension.
The invariability of sequence is all that is needed to establish
ganglion in the category of causes, and ideation in that of effects.
We will now apply the same method of reasoning to a case in which the
obvious distinction between cause and condition cannot fail to strike
the most inattentive, and make manifest the sophistry of materialistic
physiology. Should we stray into a minster filled with a grand
religious light, and find chancel, nave, and pillar all radiant with
purple and violet, soft amber and regal red, we would naturally look
to the stained-glass window to discover the source of those warm tints
and brilliant hues, and would seek to determine what in those
party-colored panes gives rise to the effects we admire. We first
discover in each colored glass a peculiarity of structure which
especially adapts it to the emission of its proper ray, and then note
that the difference in the color of the rays depends on this same
peculiarity of structure. The problem is solved. Since a structural
peculiarity in the violet pane, for instance, fits it for the emission
of its own ray, and so on with respect to red, yellow, and purple, why
need we look for any other source of those colors? As we discover in
each party-colored pane the cause of the difference in the color of
the ray, we mistake the cause of the difference for the cause of the
ray, and assume not only the difference of the ray to depend on the
color of the transmitting medium, but deem that medium to be itself
the sole source of the light. In like manner the speculative and
transcendental physiologist finds in the adaptation of certain
portions of the nerve-tissue to the production of specific functions a
reason for referring the highest order of mental phenomena to the
nervous system as their cause, forgetting that the adaptation in
question may be but a mere condition modifying the manifesting power
of the substance which is the true source of the phenomena. The
observer who regards colored glass as the source of light, because he
has been able to trace a connection and establish a relation between
the color of the ray and the minute structure of the glass, differs in
naught from theorists of Dr. Hammond’s stripe, who make nervous
ganglia centres or sources of ideation because of the invariable
production of the latter on the occasion of some excitation in the
former. In both instances is committed the error of confounding
condition with cause, of mistaking the cause of a difference between
two occurrences for the cause of the occurrences themselves.
We have dwelt at this length on Dr. Hammond’s theory of the Intellect,
as it embodies an error so pernicious that the callow mind of the
medical student, awed by the authority of a name, is likely, on
reading this chapter, to imbibe principles which, slowly elaborated,
will lead him in process of time to the chilling tenets of
materialism.
The third sub-force enumerated by Dr. Hammond is Emotion, which, like
perception and intellect, is a force evolved on the occasion of an
excitation in some other portion of the brain. Thus the emotions of
joy, sorrow, hope, and love can be excited by making an impression on
this portion of the nervous substance, just as we elicit different
sounds from a piano by striking different keys in succession.
“‘Sblood! do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?” Yet
Dr. Hammond would of man make a _Hamlet’s_ pipe, with its ventages and
stops, to be sounded from the lowest note to the top of the compass at
the pleasure of a skilled performer. The physiological signs of
emotion he has truthfully described, such as blushing, palpitation,
increase of the salivary secretion, and other bodily changes, the
connection of which with the emotions themselves will, we fear, so far
as there is any hope of a satisfactory explanation from physiology,
remain a dead secret for ever. The fourth and last of the sub-forces
evolved by the brain is Will, with respect to which the doctor has not
much to say, though it is easy to understand that it owes its origin,
according to him, to the same ganglionic changes as the three
preceding. He has not even defined this force, but merely says that by
volition acts are performed. The ordinary idea of will exhibits it as
a power which the soul exercises at discretion, even at times in the
absence of any motive, except caprice, and often against a strong
excitement of passion, so that it can be connected with no organic
changes which are necessary and subject to law. This idea Dr.
Hammond’s doctrine entirely overthrows; for if will be the result of
ganglionic excitation, it must surely follow the latter, and can
consequently be in no manner connected with its causation. Whatever
cause, then, may have produced the excitation, it must have been
necessary—_i.e._, have necessarily produced volition. Volition,
therefore, being the result of changes necessarily produced, must
itself be necessary, and we then have the anomaly of necessary will,
which is a sheer contradiction. There is no such thing, therefore, as
volition, in the true and accepted sense of the word, and what we deem
to be the free acts of the soul are brought about as necessarily as
pain or pleasure when the exciting agents of those emotions are in
operation. It is not difficult to estimate the practical consequences
of this doctrine. Man, thus made to act by organic changes and the
necessary determination of his nature, not being answerable for these,
cannot be made answerable for their consequences; so that the good and
evil he performs resemble, the former the changes which the bodily
system undergoes in a state of health, the latter the morbid changes
of disease. The good he does is as much the necessary outcome of his
nature as the golden fruit is of the tree, while his bad actions are
as the tempest that wrecks or the breath of a pestilence.
This is the self-same doctrine of Broussais dressed in the garb which
the latest researches in neurological science have prepared for it,
and much more covertly and insidiously presented.
Broussais says: “L’ivrogne et le gourmand sont ceux dont le cerveau
obéit aux irradiations des appareils digestifs; les hommes sobres
doivent leur vertu à un encéphale dont les stimulations propres sont
supérieures à celles de ces appareils” (_Irritation et Folie_, p.
823).—“The drunkard and the glutton are those whose brain obeys the
summons issued by the digestive organs; sober men owe their virtue to
the possession of a brain which rises superior to such orders.” Surely
in this, as in countless other instances, history continues to repeat
itself.
The definition of Insanity given by Dr. Hammond surpasses in clearness
and comprehensiveness all those which he has collected from other
sources, and is such, we consider, as will with difficulty be improved
upon in the respects mentioned. He calls it “a manifestation of
disease of the brain, characterized by a general or partial
derangement of one or more faculties of the mind, and in which, while
consciousness is not abolished, mental freedom is perverted, weakened,
or destroyed.” This definition more closely applies to all occurring
cases of insanity than any hitherto given, though it is a pity the
doctor has robbed its latter portion of all meaning by having
virtually denied mental freedom in his foregoing theory of volition.
The remainder of the chapter on insanity is exceedingly instructive
and interesting. The author has clearly exhibited the difference
between illusion, hallucination, and delusion, nor has he permitted
himself once, in his application of the terms to individual cases, to
interchange or confound them. Indeed, it is a matter of regret that so
acute an observer and so diligent a collector of facts was ever
tempted to betake himself beyond their legitimate domain, and to
launch himself on the troubled sea of speculation. But it has been
ever thus:
“Laudet diversa sequentes.”
The great bulk of the work—and it is a volume of nearly nine hundred
pages—is taken up with the discussion of those nervous diseases which,
for the most part obscure in their origin and of infrequent
occurrence, have been brought to light for the first time in this
monograph, so that the medical profession owes a deep debt of
gratitude to the laborious researches of Dr. Hammond in a very
partially explored field. To the general reader the chapter on
Hydrophobia cannot fail to prove interesting, presenting as it does a
graphic description of the symptoms which usher in this terrible
disease, and suggesting remedies which are within the reach of every
one, and are calculated to avert the awful consequences of a bite by a
rabid dog, provided they be employed without delay. The interval
between the reception of the wound and the outbreak of the symptoms is
very variable, but the majority of cases occur within seven months.
This interval is called the period of incubation, and is usually not
characterized by any other signs than a certain amount of mental
depression, often the result of a nervous apprehension of
consequences. The sleep especially is apt to be disturbed by such
forebodings, so that the animal which inflicted the wound is
frequently dreamt of. The prognosis of the disease is most
discouraging, since our author says: “There is no authentic instance
on record of a cure of hydrophobia.” The _post-mortem_ signs of
disease are shrouded in obscurity; for, though Dr. Hammond details at
great length certain altered conditions of the brain and spinal cord,
as well as of the arteries supplying them, those changes are by no
means pathognomonic—_i.e._, peculiar to the disease in question. The
point of greatest practical interest to those who have so far escaped
the death-dealing fang of Blanche, Tray, or Sweetheart is that, should
so sad an occurrence befall them, they must hasten at once to a
surgeon, and see that, after having tightly bound the limb above the
injury, he use the knife with an un-sparing hand, till every part with
which the teeth of the animal may have come in contact has been
entirely removed. Cauterization, either by fire, or nitrate of silver,
or some of the mineral acids, is preferred by some physicians, and has
proved quite as successful as excision. A Mr. Youatt employed
cauterization four hundred times on persons who had been bitten by
rabid animals, and every time with success. Dr. Hammond employed
cauterization seven times—four with nitrate of silver and three with
the actual cautery—and always with success. This proceeding should be
adopted, even though several weeks, or even months, may have elapsed
since the infliction of the wound; in which case, however, excision is
deemed preferable to cauterization. The importance of this knowledge
to persons residing in a city overrun with mongrels is very great; and
while we hope our readers may never have occasion to put it into
practice, we would recommend them to treasure it up for an emergency
which, however sad, is always possible.
Following the chapter on hydrophobia are some very interesting
statements concerning Epilepsy—a disease which, in a light form,
prevails more extensively than most people imagine. The most
remarkable precursory symptom to an attack of epilepsy is what is
called an _aura_, or breeze. This usually begins in some lower part of
the body and shoots towards the head. It resembles at times an
electric shock, and again a sharp stab or blow. The strangest _auræ_
are hallucinations of vision which lead the patient to believe he sees
a rapid succession of colors. The experiments of Dr. Hughlings Jackson
with regard to those colored _auræ_ are full of interest.
He finds that a vision of red ushers in the phenomenon, and that the
whole prism is exhibited to the sight till the violet end of the
spectrum is reached. The approach of the _aura_ is often felt, and
gives admonition to the patient of the speedy approach of a seizure,
so that he is thereby enabled to seek a place of security and
retirement before the actual advent of an attack. Many interesting
cases, exhibiting the freaks and peculiarities of this strange
disease, are recorded by Dr. Hammond. Convulsion, tremor, chorea or
St. Vitus’ dance, and hysteria are next treated of in succession, and
much valuable information might be derived from a perusal of these
chapters.
Catalepsy, one of the strangest of nervous disorders, receives a due
share of attention, though much that is authoritative cannot be
affirmed concerning it, since the data of the disease are neither
numerous nor reliable. When the cataleptic seizure is at its height,
there is complete suspension of consciousness, and a muscular rigidity
supervenes, which causes the limbs to retain for a long time any
position, no matter how awkward or irksome, in which they may be
placed.
This condition so closely simulates death that in former times
mistakes were frequently made which were not discovered till life had
really become extinct in the grave. Another strange feature of this
disease is the magnetic influence a female subject exercises over her
unattainted sisters during a paroxysm. It has been observed that, if
one female in a ward fall into a cataleptic fit, those immediately
around her are seized in the same manner, the attack lasting for a
period of variable duration. The description of these nervous maladies
gradually leads to Dr. Hammond’s views on Ecstasy, which are all the
more interesting as the chapter is chiefly taken up with the
discussion of the wonderful and perplexing case of Louise Lateau. The
chapter should have followed the one on hydrophobia, and been entitled
Thaumatophobia rather than Ecstasy, since the doctor exhibits a most
contemptuous estimate of the intelligence of those who hold that there
can be anything not explicable by the known laws of physiology in the
most wonderful cases of ecstasia. He ranks among ecstatics of a former
period St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Teresa,
Joan of Arc, and Madame Guyon, all of whom, he says, “exhibited
manifestations of this disorder.” With respect to those celebrated
personages there is no sort of medical testimony giving evidence of
the existence of disease, or in any way furnishing an adequate
scientific explanation of the facts revealed by their historians. It
is as illogical and presumptuous for Dr. Hammond to qualify their
cases in the manner he does as it would be for a believer in the
supernatural to assert the miraculous character of a mere feat of
legerdemain. The only difference is that Dr. Hammond’s disregard for
the rules of evidence is applauded by the world as indicating a
vigorous and healthy intelligence, whilst the equally illogical
assertor of the supernatural character of what is not proven to be
such would be at once, and with justice indeed, put down as an
imbecile and a slave to superstition. The burden of proof is ever
thrust on other shoulders by our author, and never borne by his own.
Let but Dr. Warlomont devise a pathophysiological explanation of
Louise Lateau’s stigmata, not only gratuitous from beginning to end,
but even at variance with the facts of science, and Dr. Hammond gives
in a blind adhesion to his conclusions without a single inquiry into
the weight of proof on the other side. Even Dr. Warlomont acknowledged
the difficulties with which Dr. Lefebvre’s work bristles in the way of
a physiological explanation, and it is evident, from the
intensely-labored character of his report, that he entered into the
controversy as an _ex parte_ disputant. We do not intend to reopen the
discussion of this famous case, since enough concerning it has already
appeared in these pages.[115] It is sufficient that we note the
recusant spirit of some modern scientists whenever there is question
of the supernatural. They will not believe, no matter how overwhelming
the evidence, lest they be suspected of weakness, or of bartering
their intellectual freedom for the formulæ of an effete authority.
These gentlemen consult their prejudices rather than truth, and,
provided they tickle the ears of radicals and non-believers, they
consider themselves lifted into the proud position of supreme arbiters
between reason and authority. Dr. Hammond says ecstasy was “formerly
quite common among the inmates of convents.” We would inform him that
its frequency was never greater than now, and the widespread attention
which one or two cases have attracted is proof how rare is that
frequency. Indeed, it has been the invariable policy of the church to
discourage tendencies in this direction, and spiritual advisers often
remind their penitents that an unbidden and unwelcome guest not rarely
presents himself in the garb of an angel of light. It is related of
St. Francis of Sales that a nun having declared to him that the
Blessed Virgin had appeared to her, he inquired how much _vin
ordinaire_ she had taken that day; and, upon her answering, “One
glass,” he told her to drink two the following day, and she might have
two apparitions. In view of this disinclination of ecclesiastics to
encourage ecstasia, especially among women, whose nervous system is so
impressionable, it ill becomes Dr. Hammond, having the mass of
testimony at his command in support of the genuineness of the two
cases to which reference is made, to use the following language: “But
the effort was in vain, just as is the attempt now to convince the
credulous and ignorant of the real nature of the seizures of Louise
Lateau, Bernadette Soubirous—who evoked Our Lady of Lourdes—and of the
hundreds of mediums, ecstatics, and hysterics who pervade the world.”
The frankness with which the church authorities demanded the closest
and most searching scientific investigation of the case of Louise
Lateau, and their expressed determination to accept its legitimate
results, should be to all reasonable men a guarantee of their good
faith and of their abhorrence of impostures. It is consoling to think
that the intelligence of some scientific men is still unfettered, and
that, though in the absence of a prominent member—Dr. Lefebvre—the
friends and abettors of Dr. Warlomont endeavored to spring on the
Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine a resolution declaring the case of
Louise Lateau fully explored and closed, the Academy refused to adopt
it, thereby admitting that so far science has failed to account for
the marvellous phenomena of which this girl is the subject. The
inherent defect of Dr. Hammond’s reasoning is that it identifies cases
which are merely analogous. It is true that the majority of
pseudo-ecstasies resembling the inspired ecstasy of holy personages
are dependent on a disordered condition of the nervous system, but
this resemblance does not necessarily tend to classify the latter
under the same head. Yet this is what Dr. Hammond and his school do.
They seize general traits of resemblance, shut their eyes to essential
differences, and, finding that the greater number of cases obey
throughout certain known definite laws, they conclude that all cases
do likewise. History abounds with instances of disordered imagination
depending on a morbid condition of the nervous system, but in all the
impartial observer can discern well-marked differences, separating
them essentially from authentic cases of true ecstasy. Baron von
Feuchtersleben[116] relates many extraordinary cases of this sort.
Herodotus (ix. 33) speaks of the Argive women who, under a morbid
inspiration, rushed into the woods and murdered their own children.
Plutarch relates the story of a monomania among the Milesian girls to
hang themselves. We have all read of the _convulsionnaires_ at the
tomb of Mathieu of Paris. Dr. Maffei describes a similar epidemic,
which received the name of “Pöschlianism” from a religious, fixed
delusion which originated with one Pöschl. These cases were usually
accompanied by convulsions and terminated in suicide. Besides the
disorders alluded to, we read of sycanthropy among the natives of
Arcadia, a somewhat similar aberration among the aborigines of Brazil,
and the delusion of the Scythians that they were women. Dr. Hammond
relates a case as wonderful as any of these—viz., that of the noted
Ler, an inmate of the Salpêtrière, whose contortions and antics
resemble the hysteria of the “Jerkers” in Methodist camp-meetings. The
attempt to identify all occurring cases with these is a flagrant
violation of the inductive method by which scientific men, above all
others, claim that they are guided. If observation and experience are
to be our guides in determining the truth, then let us admit nothing
but what these criteria verify. This is precisely what these gentlemen
do not do; and because they perceive a general resemblance between a
group of facts, they identify all possessing this resemblance, and
predicate thereon a general law. We cannot hope for a discontinuance
of this baneful and short-sighted procedure until men who profess to
be votaries of science shall become truly rational, instead of making
an empty and futile boast of being rationalists.
[114] _A Treatise on the Diseases of the Nervous System._
By William A. Hammond, M.D., Professor of Diseases of
the Mind and Nervous System in the Medical Department
of the University of the City of New York, etc. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. 1876.
[115] _Vide_ THE CATHOLIC WORLD, November, 1875 - March,
1876.
[116] _The Principles of Medical Psychology._ By Baron
Ernst von Feuchtersleben, M.D., Sydenham Society, p.
252.
THE ETERNAL YEARS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOD’S GOVERNMENT—PROGRESSION.
If the preceding considerations have at all succeeded in imparting to
our minds a right view of the importance of matter, not solely in its
own nature, but in the spiritual world, and in the developments which
the spiritual world only arrives at through the medium of matter, we
shall find we hold the key to many mysteries, and are walking at
liberty in a world of marvels.
So far as we are able to judge, and aided by all that science can
discover, we have every reason to believe that the act of creation is
complete, and that no more material is needed to work out the ultimate
intentions of the divine Being. Certain races of animals have become
extinct, and all races are modified more or less by external
influences of climate and food. Probably many have all but changed
their nature since they first sprang into being; as they will do once
more when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together. But whether
or no this be so, it would be rash to imagine that new creations of
hitherto unexisting fauna or flora are ever to be given to the great
cosmos. There is nothing to prove that such is the case; and there is
a vast amount of facts pointing to the opposite conclusion. Moreover,
the completeness of creation is the grander idea of the two, and the
most like the ways of God, especially when we consider that the
existence of matter is only as a means to an end; and that end
accomplished, why should there be any further increase of what makes
up the material world? We will therefore put aside all idea of its
being subject to either increase or decrease, while we dwell upon the
fact that it is subject to mutations of the most diverse and subtle
nature. It is true we are told there shall be new heavens and a new
earth. But everything, even the preliminary fact that the “elements
will melt with heat” and all things be dissolved, points to renewal,
but not to extinction; for we know practically that dissolution,
whether by heat or any other force, is not extinction in any case, but
only change of form. The new earth is to be one in which “justice
dwelleth.”[117] But even on this earth we have evidences of the
sanctification of matter by its contact with spiritual things.
We have it first in the relics of the saints, to which not only a
sacred memory is attached, but actual supernatural gifts emanate from
them, because they have become holy to the Lord; because they had,
while still in life, so frequently, or rather so effectively, come in
direct contact with the Eucharistic Sacrifice, with the Body and Blood
of Him who, in taking flesh and feeding us thereon, brought God to us
and dwelt within us. But the saints are rare; and the example,
therefore, derived from their relics is an exceptional one. There are
other examples of the way in which the living influence of the faith
has changed mankind, through the ages of history, by hereditary
transmission.
It has been remarked that while Rome still remained pagan there
nevertheless existed other sentiments, and as it were another
atmosphere, caught from the presence of Christianity, even while
Christianity was ignored or persecuted. The pagan spirit was
essentially worldly. How could it be otherwise? Poverty made a man
ridiculous; and ridicule is the beginning of contempt. Christian
charity and compassion had no pagan counterpart until Christian
example gave rise to the notion that it was a wise and good thing to
feed the hungry and care for the orphan. Long before the reign of the
first Christian emperor the pagan Roman heart, catching some warmth
from the celestial fire which burnt unseen in the largely-extended
Christian population, began to form institutions which faintly
reproduced Christian charity; but this was the influence of mind over
mind.
What is a far more remarkable fact is the gradually-developed
influence of generations of Christian ancestors over the mere natural
instincts of humanity. How much do we not owe to the fact that we
descend from a mainly Christian stock! What sweet domestic ties, what
calm, heaven-reflecting pools of life, do we not enjoy—not owing to
our own personal graces, but because grace, in a greater or less
degree, has, though may be with grave exceptions, presided over the
rise and growth for centuries of those who have preceded us.
When St. Jerome wrote to the youthful daughter of his beloved penitent
Paola, as the former was about to dedicate herself to God in a virgin
and secluded life, a very large and most emphatic portion of his
instructions is taken up with exposing to her the difficulties she
will meet with in preserving an essential virtue, and the extreme
measures she, a maiden of seventeen, must resort to as a guarantee
against temptation. To what, save to the blessed effects of centuries
of a more or less Christian ancestry, do we owe the blessed fact that,
whereas to any young girl now entering religion her Christian parents
and her priestly adviser would fill hours with counsels about holy
poverty, obedience, and the conquest of her own will, hardly one word
would be breathed about any imminent peril to a virtue which she only
thinks of in its highest religious sense, because she has never even
dreamt that it could practically be in danger? The very flesh has been
purified and chastened by centuries of grace. The human instincts have
been almost unconsciously raised to a higher level; and, evil as the
world may yet be, we habitually entertain angels unawares. Thus does
the longanimity of God wait with ever-slackening step through the long
ages of time, while grace permeates slowly the few but ever-increasing
willing hearts, sanctifying soul and body equally and together; for
“the Lord dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should
perish.” He deals patiently with the world for the sake of the church,
patiently with the wicked for the sake of the good, and because the
good are not good for themselves alone; they yield a perfume of which
they are not conscious, but which attracts others to them; and if but
the ten righteous men can be found, the city will be spared!
* * * * *
We often hear allusions made to the destructive work of time, to the
ruin of nations, and the obliteration of vast and crowded cities; and
writers of the day indulge in sensational reflections upon the future
fate of the peoples and homes of modern days. We are all acquainted
with the New Zealander who is to sit amid the ruins of London. But
those who speak and write in this sense have in their minds the fate
of heathen nations and pagan cities in the first hour or epoch of the
world’s existence, before the accomplishment of the mystery of the
Incarnation—that is, before God dwelt upon earth to reconquer by his
precious blood and sweat of agony his kingdom among men. But as
Christians we cannot believe that Christian nations, however imperfect
in their Christian practice, will ever be cast out, root and branch,
and the ploughshare pass over their hearths and His altars as over
Ninive and Troy, as over the Etruscan cities and the pleasure-loving
Roman towns of southern Italy. The ten righteous are never wanting in
any city where the altars of Jesus are erected, and where the Mother
of fair love is named with tender and reverent confidence. The surging
tide of evil may threaten us, as in guilty Paris and brutalized
London; but though heavy chastisements may pour down on these examples
of modern vice, yet never, never will the dear Conqueror who has
deigned to plant his foot on the teeming city streets as his priests
carry the Blessed Sacrament to the dying, and who has his tabernacles
of love here and there through our crowded thoroughfares, relinquish
his recovered inheritance. Never, never will the lands where he has
dwelt be desolate like the godless lands of old.
Believe it, O ye loving hearts! who are burning in silent anguish over
the erring and the ignorant, who are pouring sad tears on the cruel
wickedness of high places, and on the degradation and depravity of the
neglected and the forgotten.
Heavy and sharp and terrible may be the punishment of our iniquities;
but even hell itself is less hell than it would be but for the
shedding of the precious Blood; and no nation where his name is
invoked, no people among whom he has his part—albeit not, alas! the
larger part—can ever perish out of sight, out of mind, as the huge
heathen nations have gone down in utter darkness in the lapse of ages,
and hardly left a stone to proclaim, “I am Babylon.”
Sweet patience of Jesus! sweet pity of Mary! we wrong you both when we
forget that where you have once entered, there you will abide; because
the few are the salvation of the many; because, though not every
door-post and lintel bears the red cross, yet those that do bear it
plead for the rest, and the angel of destruction stays his steps at
the first and drops his avenging sword; for his Lord and Master has
passed that way!
* * * * *
We have spoken of the creation as being complete. We have concluded
that, while we are incapable of measuring its extent, and can only
vainly guess at unknown worlds beyond our own system, it will never
receive one atom, one molecule, in addition to those of which it now
consists. Our reason for this belief lies deep down in the very roots
of theology, which we find a better reason than any with which mere
human science can furnish us, because the end of the latter is
contained within the end of the former, as the greater contains the
less. We have already stated our reason—namely, that the ultimate
object of the creation was the Incarnation, and, that object
accomplished, there can apparently be no need of further creation. In
saying this we are not presuming to limit the power of God or to
interpret his unrevealed will. We are, with all diffidence,
formulating a supposition which approves itself to our reason. The
creation was the expression of the goodness of God, uttered outside
himself by the Logos, God the Son. But the creation, merely as such,
merely as existence, and man, the lord of creation, merely in his
natural state, were incapable of union with God. Therefore, from the
first, man was constituted in a state of grace. Thus the second
mission, which is that of the Holy Ghost, and which is the second in
the eternal decrees, the _nunc stans_ of eternity, is the first in the
_nunc fluens_ of time. For the grace of God, which is the Holy Ghost,
was given to man in measure and degree from the first moment of his
being, four thousand years before the first mission, that of God the
Son, took place in time. Both are continuous, and both are
progressive. The mission of God the Son did not cease when he ascended
into heaven; for it is continued at the Consecration in every Mass,
and in every tabernacle where the Blessed Sacrament dwells. At each
Mass he comes and comes again! In the Blessed Sacrament he remains.
Therefore his actual presence is progressive, in proportion to the
increase of his altars where the bloodless sacrifice is offered, and
where the Bread of Life is reserved. We are ourselves entirely
persuaded (and this opinion is in harmony with that of many modern
theologians) that the Incarnation would equally have taken place had
man never fallen. It was the object of the creation. Man’s fall called
for his redemption by the death and Passion of our Lord, and, as a
loving consequence, also for the sacrifice of the Mass. But it does
not follow that, had the Redemption not come after the Incarnation,
because man had not fallen, there would have been no Blessed
Sacramental Presence. The church having nowhere defined to the
contrary, it is permitted to those whose devotion to the Blessed
Sacrament makes the whole creation a blind mystery, and even the
Incarnation appear incomplete without it, to believe that the Blessed
Sacrament would always have been, and a sinless Adam, with his sinless
offspring, have held communion with the incarnate God through and by
this divine nourishment, even as his redeemed children do now, only in
that case without the sacrifice of the Mass; for where there is no sin
there is no sacrifice.[118]
This may be but a pious thought, and we have no wish to press it upon
our readers. We leave it to their devotion to follow it out or not as
they will. All we want to prove is that, though our Blessed Lord came
once only, conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Blessed Virgin;
and once only was crucified, dead, and buried, and rose the third day,
and ascended into heaven, nevertheless his sacramental presence is a
perpetual carrying on and carrying out of this his first mission to
us, and that thus his mission bears a progressive character. He is the
conqueror “_proceeding_ to conquer.” He is still sending his
messengers before his face to prepare his way. His priests are still
going forth to all nations to preach the remission of sins, by
planting his altar, which is his earthly throne, in divers parts, till
the earth be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the covering
waters of the sea.[119] We are looking forward to the fulfilment of
that prophecy in all its plenitude; for surely no one can allege
either that this time has already come, or that because some, it may
be several, missionary priests have had a certain success among the
heathen, anything faintly resembling such a grand, lavish promise as
that, has received even an approximate fulfilment. Still less will any
one assert that such promises are vain; and if not so, then let us
look forward, and ever more and more forward, to the progression of
our dear Lord’s kingdom upon earth; himself present amongst us in the
Blessed Sacrament, coming in that meek guise to take possession of his
territories, and all but silently planting his standard first here,
then there, as new altars are raised to him, and as other souls are
brought beneath the sacraments—the oaths of allegiance to their new
Master.
We cannot disguise from ourselves that we have fallen upon evil times,
and that faith has grown dim. Nevertheless, we maintain it would be
difficult for any thoughtful and unprejudiced mind to deny the
ever-increasing evidence that the leaven is leavening the whole mass;
still less can it be affirmed that anything has ever done this in
highly-civilized countries except Christianity.
The wealth and learning of the Romans, their vast literature, their
high art, had no effect in producing either morality or mercy. There
were noble examples among them of men and women who, we may believe,
responded to the light vouchsafed them, whose names have come down to
us; and doubtless there were many, utterly unknown to history, who
obeyed the dictates of their conscience, enlightened by the divine
Spirit of whom they had never so much as heard. We do not believe that
anywhere, in any age, in any city, however given up to iniquity, there
was nothing but eternal death reigning over poor, fallen, suffering
humanity, and leaving the beneficent Creator, the dear Redeemer,
without a soul to love and serve him, albeit in a blind way. We
believe such a condition of things to be simply impossible; but
however that may be, whether more or less than we have dared to hope,
Christianity was not there, and in its absence nothing availed to
produce generally even the appreciation of purity or real charity.
As we have said, the Romans were a grand law-giving nation. Civil
rights were understood, upheld, and protected better than by the
modern Napoleonic code, and far more in harmony with Christianity,
which ultimately profited by, and copied so largely, the Roman law.
But the law did not touch the heart or enlighten the conscience; and
while the public life of Rome had much moral grandeur, the private
existence of man and woman alike was infamous; and it was so in
proportion to their advance in wealth and luxury.
We have said that only Christianity can moralize civilized nations,
and we did so advisedly; for a certain inoffensiveness, and the
practice of many natural virtues, exist among nations that have not
come within the range of so-called civilization. Where the
intellectual and reasoning powers of men are undeveloped, they retain
something like the innocence of children. But when man without
Christianity is raised to intellectual height, cultivated in mind,
refined in manner, surrounded by art, and with advanced knowledge of
physical science—when he has thus developed all his powers, without
having a corresponding force given him against the inclinations of
natural concupiscence, he is then no longer in the infancy of
humanity. It is mature, and the ripe fruit tends to rottenness.
Civilization and knowledge must go forward _pari passu_ with divine
grace to be a real benefit to mankind; for there is no good apart from
a high moral standard, whether we consider the individual or the
nation, and no moral standard will long support itself without the
concomitance of grace. We are told that the great question of the day
is the _modus vivendi_ between the church and modern progress. If this
be so, the church alone can discover and develop it; because the
church is the organ of the Holy Ghost, and when our Lord was about to
leave this earth he promised the Paraclete, who would “teach us _all
things_.” Therefore the church is the ultimate dispenser of all
science, no matter of what nature; and as the reign of the Holy Ghost
shall be more and more established in the now perfectly-defined status
of her infallibility, so will she increasingly take up unto herself,
within her own arena, all the gifts of knowledge and science which are
her essential prerogatives. Once more she will become the queen of
nations, the guide and pioneer of the world.
Hers has been a long history of struggle, and frequently of apparent
defeat; but out of it she has ever risen victorious, though her
victories are different in character from the triumphs of the world,
because they are so silent and so peaceful that they are only known by
their results. The first of these results is more liberty, a widening
of the cords of her tent; for as the church defines her own nature
with increased accuracy, so by this accuracy she leaves more freedom
to her children. Definition is also limitation; and both exclude
doubt. Doubt is slavery, while certainty is liberty. When our Lord
began to teach of the coming kingdom of God, he did so by parables,
and to his own immediate disciples alone was an explanation
vouchsafed: “To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of
God; but to the rest in parables.” He spoke of himself as “straitened”
until his work should be accomplished.
The whole history of the church has been on the same principle. Until
certain things have been accomplished her path is hemmed in, and the
accomplishment is ever effected by the means of her enemies, even as
our salvation was by the hands of those who crucified Jesus. The rise
of each heresy has produced the definition of doctrine, and each
definition has widened the horizon of our faith and flooded our life
with light. The war with evil has had no other result than to impart
spiritual strength to the spouse of Christ. And now everything points
to a great crisis, a culminating term, a springtide of the waters of
grace; for the long war with Protestantism has led up to the dogma of
the Papal Infallibility. The coping-stone is laid, and a new era is
beginning, which will be the fuller development of the individual life
of the soul in the beauty of holiness and in the indwelling of the
Holy Ghost. The external edifice is complete; the interior decoration
will hasten towards completion. Already we see the signs of those
better times approaching. We see them alike in the preternatural as in
the supernatural world. The spirits of evil are guessing at the
future, and, as is their wont, are anticipating the coming events by
parodying the divine future action. The sleepless intelligence and
never-wearying enmity of Satan pursues with relentless accuracy every
development of God’s truth in the history of the church. With the
fragments, in his fallen state, of his former untold science, combined
with his thousands of years of cumulative experience, his one desire
is to be beforehand with God. In advance of the great divine act of
the Incarnation, he instituted the horrors of possession, and
practised them in the pagan world on a scale he is but seldom allowed
to repeat where the name of Jesus is uttered. With each phase of God’s
divine action on the world, and of concomitant human necessities, he
changes his tactics. There are but few among us who remember or
realize the fact that every incident of our lives is lived in
connection with three worlds—the tangible, visible, material world,
the world of grace, and the world of the prince of the powers of the
air. The masses live (consciously) in the first alone; the good and
pious remember the second; but few even of these attempt to realize
the last in anything like a just proportion with its immensity, its
subtlety, and its ubiquity. Nor is it our object to press the subject
on their attention. It is not every mind that can bear to meet the
thought, beyond the limits of the universal prayer, “Lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
But those who can bear it and can follow it out should be doubly on
watch and guard in the interests of the multitudes who, it is true,
believe in their guardian angel, but forget their left-hand diabolic
attendant. It was not so in earlier times when faith was young, among
the primitive writers and the great ascetics. One of the holiest of
the past generation said that the cleverest work the devil had ever
accomplished was the getting men to disbelieve in his existence.
Having, as a rule (except among Catholics), established his
non-existence in their minds, the sphere of his occult action is
necessarily vastly extended. We do not look out for what we firmly
believe is not there. He is among us, and we see him not. He has
studied the Scriptures, and he knows there will be a time when our
maidens shall dream dreams and our young men see visions. He guesses
at the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, in a more determinate and wider
reign of grace, in the future of the church; and above all he has not
forgotten, though many of us have, that there is the promise of yet
another mission that will alter the whole face of the world, that will
follow on the ever-growing and extending reign of the Holy Ghost, and
that will culminate the glories of their Queen—the mission of the
angels. They will come, the bright, swift-winged messengers, and “they
shall gather out of his kingdom all scandals, and those that work
iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire. Then shall the
just shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father,”[120] and “the
angels shall go out, and shall separate the wicked from among the
just.” We read these sacred words constantly, but how far do we
realize their meaning? How far have we amplified the thought in our
mind, and given it form and consistency? We read of the day of
judgment; but do we suppose that it will be an affair of
four-and-twenty hours—the angels in the morning, the judgment about
noon, and all the past, present, and future of humanity in heaven or
hell by twilight?
It is true we are told that the awful time will come as a thief in the
night, and we are apt to explain that into being sudden; whereas it
may more properly describe the fact that the time will steal upon us,
silently and hiddenly. We shall find our bright brethren, the angels,
around us, among us, before we have altogether realized their
approach; just as, gradually and by degrees, we shall find the Spirit
illuminating the minds and hearts of the innocent and the zealous, the
“youths and the maidens,” with divine inspirations, first as the
dawning of new light, then as the blaze of noontide. All God’s
dealings with his poor creatures have been gradual. They are hidden,
but they are never sudden. He always sends his angels before his face
to prepare the way. Noe was more than a hundred years engaged in
building the ark, and there it lay, a sign to all men, the black
timber ribs against the gray dawn and the flaming evening sky,
scanning the heavens like a musical score on which were written the
notes of the awful anthem of God’s wrath, while the hammers of the
artisans beat time through a century of vain appeal to a
God-forgetting world. The suddenness must be laid to their own door,
and in no way resulted from God’s dealings with them. The Deluge
itself took forty days to exhaust the downpouring floods of rushing
waters from the opened gates of heaven. The dawn is ever gradual; the
light steals upon us, though at last the sun’s broad disc springs
sudden and refulgent above the gray horizon. Many of us, though less
guilty in our indifference, are like Gallio, who “cared for none of
those things.” The round of our daily life suffices us, and we neither
give the time nor the trouble to come to conclusions or to arrive at
definite notions even respecting the signs of the times, which our
Lord rebuked his disciples for not discerning. Catholics will often
talk among themselves and with those outside the church in a casual
way about the spiritist manifestations which are so rife in our day,
as if it were quite an open question, and that it were unnecessary to
have any fixed opinion on the subject. Not only have they never
realized that the church has spoken again and again, but also they
have never used their common reasoning powers to arrive at the
conclusion that either spiritist manifestations, as they are now
presented to us, form part of God’s mode of governing his creatures,
and therefore are most precious to each of us, and not to be treated
as a trifle; or, as they are in fact, the devil’s guess at some of
God’s secrets, and his anticipation of something belonging to the
future destiny of man. We have no intention of polluting our pages by
allusion to the jejune trifling of spiritist appearances. We would
only ask every one solemnly and reverently to think of God’s ways in
our world, and then, as before him, to declare whether or no the
half-ludicrous, partially ghastly, and altogether jerky,
will-o’-the-wisp performances of spiritists have anything in
consonance with the dignity, the uniformity, the plain good sense (if
this term sound not irreverent) of God’s dealings with his children.
They talk of undiscovered natural laws! When did any grand,
God-implanted natural law begin to reveal itself by tricks and antics?
What are natural laws but revelations of God’s action and divine
being? Every one of them shows us God, and leads us to God by simple
and lucid gradation. It is the travesty of his laws in which the devil
delights; and as within ourselves there are undeveloped laws which
have been overlaid by original sin, and lie within us as the butterfly
lies in the chrysalis, therefore the enemy of mankind, who, with
far-seeing cunning, predicates the glorious future of mankind before
the final consummation of all things, is using his knowledge to
practise upon these laws to the detriment of those who lend themselves
ignorantly as his instruments.
The fallen angels know far more accurately the secrets of our nature
than we know them ourselves, and through this knowledge they deceive
the unwary. Still more easily they have their way with those whose
reprehensible curiosity induces them to resort to dangerous
experiments. It is distressing to hear good, practical Catholics
talking loosely on these matters, as though they had little or no data
on which to form a solid, reasonable opinion, and were unable to
distinguish between natural though occult laws, as they are brought
out by divine, supernatural influence on the saints, and the miserable
and contemptible practices of the spiritists, the “lo here, lo there”
of those who prophesy false Christs.
It is an old proverb that the devil can quote Scripture, and so, also,
can he base his evil designs on his knowledge of Catholic truth. We
believe in the possibility, by a special permission from God, of the
reappearance of the departed amongst us, and of the holy souls coming
to ask for prayers, as we read constantly in the lives of the saints;
and probably many of us have ourselves known of such incidents on
creditable evidence. The devil acts upon this faith as he acts upon
his own knowledge of occult laws; and blending a theoretic truth with
practical error, he weaves a mesh to catch souls, all the while
foreboding the time when the more developed mission of the Holy Ghost,
and the elaborating in countless hearts of that hidden holiness by
which the church is “all glorious within,” shall bring about that
greater familiarity with the supernatural which is foretold as a
characteristic of the latter times.
The early teaching of the church laid more stress on the mission of
the angels than it became her habit to do in later days. Not that the
church, as the organ of the Holy Ghost, ever gives an uncertain sound
or calls back any of her divine utterances; but, like a watchful
mother, she holds in her own keeping such of the treasures, new or
old, which are not adapted to the present wants of her children. There
came a time, as Christianity grew more diffused, when the early
Christians, not entirely weaned from the heathen practices of their
forefathers, were in danger of attempting to define the occupation and
attributes of the angels beyond the limits of the church’s authority.
They affected to have learnt the names of many, and to decide on their
position and purpose in the angelic hosts. Out of that arose a kind of
worship and invocation of the angels which bordered on superstition
and savored of the worship offered to the demons among the heathens.
This fell under the reprobation of the church, and by a natural
reaction left devotion to the angels at a lower ebb than what is
warranted by sound doctrine.
Then came the German heretics and the dawn of modern Protestantism;
and one of the first of their efforts was to banish all belief in the
interposition and ministry of the angelic host. They took advantage of
the errors and follies of individuals to write against the whole
doctrine of angelic action; and though among Catholics the faith in
their guardianship and aid is constant, yet it is not now practically
(of course virtually it is the same) what it was in earlier times. But
here also we have another instance of how the church brings forth from
her divine armory the weapon most needed to defeat the machinations of
the arch-enemy; for it has been reserved for our day to see devotion
to the angels taking a fuller extension and a more definite form than
it ever before held in the history of the church’s inner life. In all
her definitions and in all her practices there resides the spirit of
prophecy. They have not only reference to the present time; they are
far-seeing and far-stretching. And as the definition of the Immaculate
Conception of Mary in our own time has led to the extension of her
reign in the hearts of men, and is preparing the way every hour for
her sweet sovereignty to “take root in an honorable people,” so does
the increasing devotion to the angels who form her court harmonize
therewith, and prepare for that mission of the angels which, however
remote, is as certain as the day of judgment. Oh! what enlarged hearts
do we need to take in, however inadequately, all that lies before us
in the history of God’s creation. Far distant though it be, still is
it ours, just as the past is ours, and the present; for all are united
in Jesus. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
Nothing shall be lost to us. No treasure of the past but has tended to
brighten our own brief day, no promise of the future but what we shall
reap; for we have all things in Him who contains all in himself, and
who gives his whole self to us.
Let us in thought go back to Paradise, to our great progenitor before
his fall. For Adam knew Jesus. Not, indeed, as we know him—the
rainless skies of the garden God had planted had formed no background
to the beloved sign of our redemption; for as the Redeemer Adam knew
him not. We have already given our reasons for believing that besides
knowing Him, by the graces of infused science, as the second Person of
the Trinity, the Logos, he knew of the intended Incarnation through
and by which Jesus was to unite Himself to us. We have also dared to
imagine that he foresaw the Real Presence as the carrying out and
completion of the Incarnation. But in those days Adam knew of no
shedding of blood, of no sacrifice of suffering. The whole of that
pathetic and terrible chapter, written in red characters, was a sealed
one to our once sinless forefather. But in addition to the first
beautiful and tender history of the future Incarnation there was a
glorious page redolent with light and full of joy; for Adam looked out
beyond Jesus as the Creator, and Jesus as the elder Brother of man in
the Incarnation, to Jesus as the Glorificator. Adam knew that the
green glades and fruit-laden forests of Paradise were not to
constitute his ultimate home. He aspired after the time when the
God-Man would reward his fidelity at the close of a longer or shorter
probation, and admit him from the infancy of innocence into the
resplendent manhood of accomplished and final grace. Then would he be
like Jesus; for he would see him as he is!
Thus did Adam dwell in the contemplation of two futures—the one tender
and familiar, the other glorious and triumphant—until his own act had
made the rift between the two, and the blood-stained cross crowned the
heights of Calvary. _O felix culpa!_ We dare to say it, because our
mother the church has said it. And as Adam sees that past now,
pardoned, ransomed, and glorified[121] with his glorified Lord, he
beholds his children, with each stroke of eternity’s golden moments,
thronging through the gates of heaven by the Sacrifice of the cross.
What must not _his_ love in heaven be! Next to that of Our Lady surely
his must be the greatest of all the multitude who have washed their
robes in the blood of the Lamb.
But the glory of the saints now in heaven cannot be compared with that
which will follow after the second mission of our Lord at the
consummation of all things; for that mission is a mission of glory,
even as his first was a mission of humiliation. He came to us in the
womb of Mary, in the manger at Bethlehem, hidden and unknown, poor and
despised; but when the time shall be ripe for that second mission, he
will come in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.[122] He
will come as the glorificator of His own creation, of which Mary is
the first in rank, a hierarchy in herself, a sealed fountain, a garden
enclosed, a second paradise, but where no sin has entered; and in that
second mission his saints, as also his angels, will take part.
Thus we look back upon the first mission accomplished—that of the
Incarnation and Redemption; the second mission being accomplished—that
of the Holy Ghost gradually developing into the reign of the Holy
Ghost; and we look forward to two other missions—that of his angels,
and, finally, that of His own second coming. “Behold, he cometh with
clouds, and every eye shall see him.”[123] “For the Lord himself shall
come down from heaven with commandment, and with the voice of an
archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead, who are in
Christ, shall rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, shall
be taken up together with them in the clouds, to meet Christ, and so
shall we be always with the Lord. Wherefore comfort ye one another
with these words.[124]
[117] 2 Peter ii. 10-13.
[118] The redemption was an ordinance of God consequent
upon man’s fall. Had Adam never sinned, Jesus had never
been crucified. But it would seem more consonant with the
boundless love of God for his creation to believe that the
Blessed Sacrament formed part of his antecedent will; and
that a sinless race would have received spiritual and
divine food, and would have been thereby sanctified, and
ultimately glorified through participation in the Body and
Blood of the God-Man. It would have been, as it is now, the
Bread of Life; bloodless as it is now, but also unbroken as
it is not now—that is, divested of its propitiatory
character in so far as propitiation involves the idea of
offence.
[119] Isaias xi. 9.
[120] Matt. xiii. 41, 42, 43, 49.
[121] It is generally believed that Adam was amongst
the souls released from Limbo when our Lord descended
thither, and who entered heaven with him.
[122] Mark viii. 38.
[123] Apocalypse i. 7.
[124] 1 Thess. iv. 15-17.
HOBBIES AND THEIR RIDERS.
Under the general head of hobbies we class a thousand peculiarities
distinguishing men which, if strictly viewed according to that
accurate balance of mind known as sanity, would almost justify us in
calling nine out of every ten men insane on some point, however
infinitesimal. Every enthusiasm, from the most exalted moral
self-forgetfulness to the most ludicrous extravagance, has been in
turn called folly and ridiculed as a hobby. There is in the world a
tradition, or rather a prescription, against anything which is not
decent and well-behaved moderation. Even Christianity is not to be too
obtrusive; even moral reform is to wear a velvet glove. No one sin, be
it ever so monstrous and preponderant over other offences in your
particular time or neighborhood, is to be singled out and fought
against more than any other; decorous generalities and pious
conventionalities are by no means to be departed from; and if your
heart burns within you, you must put a seal upon your lips and
carefully prevent the zeal from infecting your weaker brethren who
might thuswise be led astray.
A man’s character is better revealed in his hobby than in anything
else belonging to him. Oftentimes the possession of one shows him in a
more lovable, human light. He must have both heart and imagination to
have one. The man who is wholly incapable of fostering one would be a
very unpleasant, not to say dangerous, neighbor. It is said that to
have no enemies argues also that you have no friends, and that to have
no prejudices implies that you are too cold-blooded to feel
enthusiasm. Without taking either of these sayings literally, it is
yet evident that they are built upon truth. The only person who has no
individual likings, no bias, no tastes to which he is passionately
attached, is either the heartless, calculating, selfish man who moves
through life rather as an automaton than as a being of flesh and
blood, and generally ends by ruling his fellow-beings by fear and by
wealth, as many statesmen we read of in history, and pettier rulers we
hear of now and then in the world of business; or the poor, nerveless
being whose mind remains all his life a blank, and who sinks unnoticed
into an obscure grave.
Some of our friends, especially elderly people, are often the dearer
to us for their little eccentricities, which give a touch of piquancy
to their character, and most often reveal some amiable trait. Hobbies
do not sit so well on the young; for one always has an involuntary
suspicion of their genuineness, and, even if they are genuine, youth
ought to repress any attempt at thrusting itself forward and claiming
undue attention. Besides, young people have yet to earn the right to
occupy the attention of others otherwise than in the usual way of
guidance and education, and a peculiar turn of mind may be cherished
without manifesting itself by any outward sign. Sterne has a
delightful consciousness of the value of a hobby as an indication of
character when he shows us Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim in the
back-garden at Planchy, following step by step the course of the army
of the Allies by the help of a spade and some turf, placed so as to
represent bastions and fortifications. This process the old soldiers
went through over and over again, always with renewed zest. It was a
hobby something like this—but too much mixed with vain-glory and the
bad taste which nature has at last succeeded in hiding—that prompted
the planting of Blenheim Park, near Oxford, in such a way as to
represent the positions of the regiments at the battle of Blenheim.
The trees have had time to grow out of this likeness, yet they stand
in ranks and platoons which one can imagine to have looked hideous
when the oaks and beeches were young saplings.
Hobbies and collections are somehow related; at least the mind is used
to coupling them together. One can hardly be a collector of anything
without becoming absorbed in the collection and in the knowledge
required for adding to and classifying it. Even if the collection have
been begun with some object of instruction or benevolence, or as a
distraction from grief, it soon grows to be a great interest of life,
and toil in its behalf becomes pleasure and relaxation. But oftener
still the hobby precedes the collection, and many people who are taken
for sober, humdrum individuals, the mere _padding_ of society, would
in reality be fast and furious riders of hobby-horses if their means
allowed them to give outward expression to their tastes.
A very familiar type is the collector of pictures; and the fewer he
has, the more set he is on his hobby. He gets some fine specimen of an
old master “for an old song” (for such miraculous bargains are half
the charm, just as for many women the delight of contriving and
piecing and otherwise skilfully eking out old material to look “as
good as new” is much greater than to possess a new dress made of a
roll of cloth just from the store); and if he is cheated, he probably
never finds it out. He often is, and woe to him who, thinking to do
him a good turn, undeceives him. But whether the picture be genuine or
not, it is the source of unending delight to its owner. He will
discuss its points by the hour—the lights and shades, the material of
the colors, the style of the painter; he will “get up” the artist’s
life and history, buy books on the subject, pin you to your chair
while he recounts how he found it, who “restored” it, how it once got
injured by a fire; and, lastly, he will put you into corners, or
behind cupboards and curtains, that you may be sure to see it in the
best light.
The hobby of the rich collector who can dignify his gathering of
pictures with the name of gallery has a different way of showing
itself; it crops out in a sort of innocent ostentation, or again an
assumed indifference. There are men whose hobby it is to conceal their
hobby, to ape humility and pretend to a nonchalance very far from
their real feelings. Among collectors, none are more voracious, more
steady-going, and generally more happy than bibliopolists. They are of
all ranks and degrees, but perhaps clergymen and college professors
predominate. In England the country squire is often an eager
book-hunter. Books of genealogy and heraldry are favorite tidbits with
him, while clergymen often have a special mania for county histories.
The collectors of minor curiosities, miscellaneous objects from all
parts of the world, are generally old maiden ladies, who have, as a
class, the most amiable and touching weaknesses, such as that of the
benevolent little fairy, Miss Farebrother, in George Eliot’s
_Middlemarch_, who drops her lumps of sugar in a little basket on her
lap, that she may have them to bestow upon her friends, the
street-boys. Then there are collectors innumerable of stuffed beasts,
of shells, of minerals, of old china, laces, and jewelry, of heathen
idols, of all kinds of coins, of autographs, of postage-stamps, etc.
The autograph-hunter is a very restless and persistent individual. The
American who sent a cheese to Queen Victoria must have been of this
species, and the queen did not fail to reward him with a letter
written with her own hand.
A hobby that used to be rather prevalent, but has somewhat gone out of
fashion now, was that of collecting walking-sticks, canes,
snuff-boxes, and pipes. Apropos to this, a story is told of an old man
whose special mania was snuff as well as snuff-boxes. He was a man of
some standing in English society towards the latter end of the last
century. His sitting-room was fitted up with shelves like a shop, and
on these stood canisters of various kinds of snuff, their names on
labels, and the locks and keys of fantastic and rather ingenious
shape. This sanctum was his delight, and the shelves, which ran all
round the room, were being constantly replenished with new specimens
of the weed. He used snuff to an enormous extent, and willingly gave
it away to his friends; but storing it was his chief pleasure, and he
looked forward to the last variety in snuff—which his tobacconist had
a standing order to send him as soon as it touched English soil—with
the same glee with which a naturalist expects the newest kind of
living ape just imported from Africa.
We have never heard but of one person who made a _spécialité_ of
collecting pieces of wedding-cake; she was an old nurse who had been
in the service of a lady employed about the court of William IV. She
had pieces of the wedding-cakes of all the princesses of the royal
family, including Queen Victoria and some of her daughters, besides
remains of the cakes of her mistress’s family, a large and ramified
one, and of those of any person of title or distinction of whom,
through her connections, she could possibly beg these mementoes.
The horticultural mania, emphatically a hobby for the rich, is one of
the most charming and desirable of hobbies; a healthy one, too, as it
keeps one out in the open air to a great extent, and supplies the
place of such feverish excitements as arise from an interest in
politics or in the state of the funds. It even takes away the
possibility of interest in petty gossip; for how is it possible to
think of the success of Mrs. So-and-so’s coming tea-party when your
mind is anxiously engaged on the chance of a late frost ruining your
camellias, or the probable time when your _Victoria Regia_ will bloom?
A hobby rather prevalent among women is a constant attendance at
auctions. They cannot resist buying little things they do not want,
because they are cheap; and, besides, there is a fascination about the
atmosphere of a salesroom which is not reducible to mere words. It is
milk-and-water gambling, as are many other innocent-looking devices
used by very worthy people to increase their stock of pretty
possessions without paying full value for them. Very opposite to this
is the hobby of petty economies, such as untying a knot instead of
cutting it, secreting tiny bits of pencil, keeping a strict watch over
matches and candle-ends, etc. It may be a mere habit of mind, but it
often degenerates into a foolish hobby, such as is that of keeping
every scrap of cloth, silk, or flannel, and carrying about this
rubbish from place to place, for the chance of its “coming in
usefully” at some future time. Of course we know how many a gorgeous
quilt has been evolved from these savings of years, and how mats have
been made of the coarser refuse, and the rest sometimes thriftily sold
to the paper-mill; but these are often exceptions, for time and
deftness are wanting to many who have the instinct of saving, and such
small economies are apt to have in themselves a tendency to narrow the
mind. Besides, what is thrift in one case is parsimony in another; and
while one family may be praise-worthy in its attempts to “take care of
the pence,” such care would be despicable in another of easier means.
Shall we call it a hobby to “have one’s finger in every pie”? Some
people are not happy unless they are giving their neighbors gratuitous
advice, and telling them at every turn how they would act “if I were
you.” But of this kind of interference none is so dangerous and none
so fascinating as the well-meant contrivances of the born match-maker.
This individual is invariably a woman, and generally a most amiable
and kind creature. Sometimes a young matron is bitten with the mania,
and clumsily enough she sets to work extolling the delights of the
honeymoon to her girl friends; sometimes a middle-aged woman who has
had experience, and is more wary in her method, quietly sets her
snares and unluckily succeeds once in five times—unluckily, we say;
for her one success blinds her to her four failures, and she continues
in the slippery path which, in the end, is almost sure to bring ruin
on some special pet of hers. Even unmarried women are match-makers;
they will plan, and speculate, and contrive; and it is lucky indeed if
they are nothing more than indiscreet, for they are handling edged
tools. You never find a man to be a match-maker; and yet women will
have it that men are so much more benefited by matrimony than
themselves!
Among special hobbies, one is said to have been the property of a rich
old Englishman of the olden time, who altered a house on purpose to
suit it. He could not bear the sight of a female servant, and so angry
was he at meeting one on the stairs that he sent for a mason to
contrive hiding-places here and there in which an unlucky maid, if she
chanced to meet the master, might take refuge out of his sight. The
whole house was full of such cunningly-placed holes, and in this odd,
honey-combed state it passed to his next heir.
One or two members of a family often take upon themselves the
guardianship of the family honor, and bore every relation they have,
to the sixth and seventh degree, about the genealogy, intermarriages,
quarterings, etc., of their collective fetich. They are learned in
family “trees,” know every date, from the first mention of the name in
the annals of the country to the number of goods and chattels they
brought over with them in the _Mayflower_; how many shares they bought
in the cow of the first settlement; when this and that portrait was
painted, and so on. ‘Tis not the knowledge that is irksome, but the
inappropriateness and universality of its mention in the conversation
of these good people, and the unconsciousness of the narrators that
they have ever spoken to you of the subject before.
Have you ever known any one whose “best parlor” was their hobby—a
scrupulous, Dutch-like reverence for immaculate cleanliness and order?
Scarcely any hobby is more terrible to the stranger or casual visitor.
Akin to it is the excess of punctuality by which some people make
their guests wretched. Both grow to be a punishment to the person
himself; for he, or oftener she, suffers torture every time a guest
comes in with snow on his boots, or any one puts a cup of coffee on a
marble table, or leans his head on the back of an easychair. Half the
day is employed in dusting and cleaning the sacred precincts, and the
other half in resting from the exertions thereby incurred.
The hobbies of writers furnish some amusing stories. The historian of
the queens of England—Miss Agnes Strickland, as worthy and
affectionate a woman as ever breathed—had, it is well known,
constituted herself the champion of Mary, Queen of Scots. So
thoroughly had she succeeded in realizing the doings of the times of
Elizabeth that she spoke on this subject as you would of an injustice
that had been done your dearest friend, and that quite recently. It
was as fresh in her mind as some wrong committed last week on a
defenceless woman, and she grew excited and eloquent over it,
forgetting who, with whom, and where she was. This was very
unpractical and somewhat ludicrous, some may be inclined to say, but
it was a peculiarity that certainly made her happy, and it was no
annoyance to her listeners. How much more dignified, too, than the too
common fuming over the impertinence of the servant that was discharged
last week, or the chafing over the troublesome man who claims a “right
of way” and threatens to bring a suit about it next month!
Political hobbies also abound. These are generally the property of old
people, the traditions of whose youth have remained proof against the
enlightenment of the present. There are people who boast they have
never been on a railroad, and never will be—they are common in Europe,
at least—and people who would scorn to be photographed; people who
laugh at you if you tell them that the sun really does _not_ go round
the earth, and rise and set morning and evening, and who obstinately
believe that dogs only go mad during the dog-days. But there are those
who, with a better education and more opportunities, are just as
unprogressive. Such will buttonhole you and argue seriously that the
Pope is going to involve Europe in another Thirty-Years’ War. They
seriously believe it and live in dread of it. They would not hurt a
fly; but they firmly believe that, if they got hold of a Jesuit, they
would remorselessly run him through, and think they had rid the
country of a tiger or an alligator. Dr. Newman’s _Apologia_ gives an
amusing account of the awe and terror inspired by the dark house in a
by-street where “it was said a Roman Catholic lady lived all alone
with her servant.” In England the Jesuits and “Bony” long divided the
honors of bugbear-in-chief to the British public. To this day some
amiable old Welsh lady will assure you in a whisper that the whole
country has underground (and it is to be supposed submarine)
connection with Rome, and that _she_ never goes to bed without looking
underneath to see that there is no Jesuit in disguise concealed there!
Then there is the man who, under the Napoleonic _régime_, whether of
the first or third emperor, would tell you in an awestruck manner of
the impossibility of putting off the evil hour any longer, and the
inevitable certainty of a French invasion and annexation of England to
France; the landing always to take place exactly within a few miles of
his own house, if he lived by the seaside. If his house were further
inland, he would tell you he knew _his_ village would be the first and
most convenient place to halt at and plunder.
At one time there was in London a great mania for Turkish baths. A
person of some note as a writer and, we believe, an M.P. took up the
subject vigorously, and had a Turkish bath built adjoining his own
house. Here he passed the greater part of his time, combining his
reading and writing with the delights of his new hobby. But he had an
old hobby as well, which was the evil agency of Russia in the politics
of Europe. Like the philosopher who asked but one question on the
occasion of any disturbance—“Who is _she_?”—this man acknowledged but
one possible element of discord at the bottom of any diplomatic
_imbroglio_—_i.e._, Russia. A friend of his called on him one day
about midday, and, being ushered into the hall, heard his voice
shouting from behind the door leading to the bath: “Come in, S——, and
we’ll sit here a while. Stay to luncheon, won’t you? It is only two
hours to wait.” The friend was so amused that he took off his clothes
and submitted to the novel invitation of spending the time of a
morning call in a Turkish bath. Of course the conversation soon fell
on Russia and its demoniacal secret agency in all the troubles of the
world. The man was exceptionally clever, and these oddities of mind
and behavior only made his society more charming to his friends and
more _piquant_ to his acquaintances.
Among fixed ideas which may almost be called hobbies are certain
preferences which blind us to the good done without the special
adjuncts which we individually consider nearly indispensable. For
instance, it is recorded—with how much truth we cannot tell—of the
great architect, Pugin the elder, that one day, being in Rome, he went
to Benediction in a church where it is customary to say prayers in the
vernacular for the conversion of _England_. This was done after the
service proper was over, and Pugin, not recognizing the extra prayers
at the end of the familiar Benediction service, asked a neighbor what
they meant. On being told he turned to a friend who was with him and
said: “The idea of praying for the conversion of England in such a
cope as that!” A clever and well-known writer for one of our leading
Catholic magazines, who is confessedly somewhat eccentric, is said to
have been discovered one morning by a friend in a state of violent
agitation, walking up and down the breakfast-room with quick and
nervous strides, and looking like a man in passionate, personal grief.
On being gently asked the cause of this emotion, he answered
vehemently: “I was thinking of how many souls are being eternally
damned at this very moment. Is it not frightful to think of? Every
minute souls are going there, to be tormented for all eternity!” Here
was a fixed idea with which it was difficult to deal. It was true, and
a thought which would do many good if they would realize it as he
did—the innocent, large-hearted man, who did not need the idea for his
own discipline—but it was decidedly an inconvenient disturbance of the
domestic balance of things, and not a pleasant appetizer for the good
breakfast that was before him.
Bores, pure and simple, are of a remote kindred with the riders of
hobbies, and they are of as many kinds. There is the croaker, who
cherishes some pet grievance and favors every one with it; the singer
who is offended if he is not asked to perform, and is not applauded at
the end like the leading tenor of the hour; the critic who thinks he
would lose his reputation if he condescended to praise anything, or to
admire and be pleased like a common mortal; the man (or woman) who
sets himself up on a pedestal and assumes, subtly but unmistakably,
that he is entirely above his neighbors or whatever people he may be
with; the man who has quarrelled with somebody, and insists on reading
you the whole correspondence; the man who is sure always to come to
see you at inopportune times, and, worse still, never knows when to go
away; the amateur—a terrible species—who imagines he can paint, or
play the pianoforte or the flute, etc., or write poetry, or draw
plans, or, in short, do anything which it requires a life-time to
_learn_—for the greatest always think themselves still at the bottom
of the ladder of knowledge; the man who tells stories to satiety, and
expects them to be laughed at; the man who interrupts a _tête-à-tête_,
or who is so full of some interest of his own that he insists on you
sharing it when you show no inclination to listen to him; the man who
cannot take a hint, though he is as good-natured as he is obtuse—these
there are, and many more, who are the human mosquitoes of the world.
Akin to hobbies, as we said at the beginning, are tastes, harmless for
the most part, often æsthetic, and almost always beneficial. Indeed,
many a taste, well regulated, has become an antidote or a preservative
against vice; and, to put it from a very low point of view, a taste is
generally far more economical than dangerous company and degrading
sin. The _Saturday Review_, in an article on this subject last year,
said with truth: “Tastes are not, as a rule, exorbitantly expensive;
they are certainly very much cheaper than vices. A very moderate
percentage of an income, judiciously laid out, will soon secure an
excellent library. It is surprising how small a sum will suffice for
the purchase of every standard work worth having. The most famous
private libraries cost their owners nothing in comparison with the
price of a few race-horses.” Although we have somewhat disparaged
amateurs as a kind of “bores,” this was not meant to dissuade young
men and women from cultivating some taste which will serve as a
resource for evening hours or any otherwise unoccupied time, and be a
relaxation from necessary work, as well as a gradual safeguard against
coarse pleasures. As long as such pursuits are undertaken with due
modesty as to one’s proficiency in them, and not as a mere social
“accomplishment” to be obtruded on others on all possible occasions,
they are infinitely to be commended. They grow on one, too, and soon
become the chief point of attraction in our intellectual life,
especially if our business happens to be, as that of most persons is,
of a prosaic nature. As we grow old they may develop into hobbies;
never mind, they will still make us happy and never cause us shame. On
the other hand, what will tendencies to convivial “pleasures,” or to
frivolous and objectless conversation, or to gadding about to
theatres, balls, and races, come to in the end? Dead-Sea fruit.
Among the minor arts which tend to occupy one’s leisure pleasantly and
usefully are wood-carving, turning, ivory-carving, and leather-work.
Even commoner things may be taken up. We have known young men who,
during a long convalescence, took to mending cane chairs as a mode of
making their fingers useful when their brains were still too weak to
be taxed. Basket-making, decalcomania of the higher order—_i.e._, a
sort of easy glass-painting akin to decalcomania, are all useful and
possible methods of employing one’s self and cultivating a pleasant
domestic taste. Mechanics, too, and household carpentry we have often
seen fostered in young people and become their pride, while
illumination—a really high style of art, though a rare gift—is not so
uncommon as some may think. Of such tastes as gardening, reading,
embroidering, and music we say nothing; they are too well known. Such
a taste generally ends in a collection, and then the pleasure is
enhanced a hundred-fold; and, as the _Saturday Review_ says, it really
needs but a comparatively small outlay to secure a very fair
collection of any kind. This in its turn helps to study by giving us
the means of reference or comparison. And if in any family the members
were seriously to look up the money really wasted—that is, the money
spent in transitory, unhealthy pleasures, the value of which dies in
the mere excitement of the moment, leaving no pleasant memory or
useful impression behind, and often, on the contrary, leading to a
remorseful, or at least an uncomfortable, remembrance—they would find
that every year there goes forth imperceptibly from the collective
treasury of the home enough to beautify their lives and increase their
happiness if only they would lead it into the right channels. The
money would not be missed, while their pleasures would be tenfold and
lasting. Even the very poorest of the poor spends uselessly—and alas!
often wickedly—what would make him a happy, self-respecting man; and,
strictly speaking, no one can say that he cannot afford good and
healthy pleasures, for, as a matter of fact, he _does_ afford bad and
unhealthy, or, to say the least, unsatisfactory, ones. Let every one
ask this question of his own experience: Which costs most in the long
run, a healthy pleasure, say even an innocent hobby, or a vicious and
lowering pursuit?
A PLEA FOR OUR GRANDMOTHERS.
That there are many flaws and deficiencies in the social structure of
our bustling republic, from its foundation in the single family to the
collection of families forming general society, cannot be denied.
Among these none are more palpable than the failure to provide
comfortable space, suitable appointments, and a well-defined position
therein for our grandmothers.
Their claims to consideration as a class, existing—albeit by mere
sufferance—in every city, village, and rural corner throughout the
length and breadth of our wide domain, seem to have been crowded out
and lost in the confusion and dust upwhirled by our great social
vehicle in its onward sweep toward an imaginary and unattainable El
Dorado. No one seems to comprehend the binding obligation of those
claims. The force of a playful remark made by the great and good
Father Burke to his mother—when she complained that she failed to hear
his lecture because the hall was so crowded that she could not get
in—“Ah! mother dear, wasn’t that too bad? Just think of it! _Why, if
it hadn’t been for you, dear, I wouldn’t have been there myself!_” has
not come home to Americans in connection with this subject. They do
not pause to reflect that, but for our grandmothers, this great
multitude now rushing so furiously toward every promising avenue to
wealth and influence, elbowing and jostling each other in their mad
career, would not have been in existence.
Nor are the annoyances to which this class is exposed in consequence
of such neglect—itself the result rather of heedlessness than
design—any the less burdensome that they are mainly of so negative a
character as scarcely to form the basis of a positive complaint; nay,
so far from this that when they find voice in such utterance as the
disquieting consciousness of their reality, in spite of their unreal
guise, may force from the victims, the moan is more apt to excite
ill-concealed merriment in a listener, by its quaint whimsicality,
than pity or sympathy.
Yet these evils are real and constantly increasing. The most serious
of them are the outgrowth of modern civilization and the progressive
doctrines of the last quarter of a century. In this enlightened age it
is not to be supposed that people _must_ grow old, and it is highly
improper for our grandmother to insist upon submitting to conditions
proper enough to humanity before it flourished in the light of
“advanced ideas,” but wholly out of place now. As recently as
twenty-five years ago she was, perforce of that very submission, an
important element in the domestic and social circle. She occupied a
position quite independent of such prescribed rules and customs as
govern other classes in society. She was not expected to conform to
every caprice of fashion. She was permitted to dress in a manner
consistent with her age, and no one respected her the less, or thought
of indulging in sharp criticism of her style, if it was of an obsolete
date. She could employ her time in suitable occupations, and render
the useful and acceptable services to the family and neighborhood for
which the skill acquired by her long acquaintance with the world and
its exigencies eminently fitted her; or repose in the calm twilight of
life’s evening hour, in such habiliments as best comported with her
own comfort and the requirements of her gradual descent into the
valley of years.
Not so now. The milliners provide her with no bonnets or caps
befitting her age; nay, they utterly refuse to attempt, at any price,
the construction for her of suitable head-gear. Such manufacture has
taken its place among the “lost arts,” and they do not wish to revive
it. The mantua-makers insist upon “the _demi-train_, at least,” and
she _must_ submit in the matter of the overskirt, with its puffed
abominations and puckered deformities. She is allowed no ease or
comfort in her costume, but is required to assume all the grotesque
discomforts invented by modern _modistes_ for the summer-day
butterflies of fashion, at the risk, if she refuses, of being
followed, every time she ventures to appear among them, with such
remarks as, “A nice old lady? Oh! yes; but it _is_ a pity that she
will persist in making such a guy of herself, with those old-fashioned
sleeves and skirts, and her plain white muslin caps.”
It is curious to remark how different is the relative position of the
grandfather, at home and abroad, from that of his female contemporary.
How independent he is of conventional forms in his dress and
intercourse with society; how free to go and come when he pleases,
without giving occasion for wry faces or unkind criticisms if the
fashion of his coat has not been changed for half a century! Is he not
rather regarded with increased respect on that account?
But the prevailing modern rule in relation to the dress of women of
all ages is that it shall change in style with every change of the
moon, and, above all, that as much expense in material and labor shall
be lavished upon its elaboration as the inventive genius of skilled
artists can possibly devise. And American women—even grandmothers—are
so foolish as to bow in slavish submission to this intolerable
tyranny, which is working such widespread ruin and desolation in our
country! “Let _Fashion_ rule, though the heavens fall,” say they.
So completely have all correct ideas pertaining to true taste in the
discriminating consistency of different costumes adapted to the
different periods of life been swallowed up in the all-prevailing
fashion-worship, that there is now scarcely any distinction, save in
length of skirt, between the dress of the little girl of five and that
of her grandmother, mother, or the young lady, her elder sister.
Pitiable indeed is this loss of all sense of the fitness of things for
the two extremes of human life, which should be exempted from
subjection to discomforts for fashion’s sake!
What spectacle can be more mournfully absurd than that of a pale,
wrinkled old face set in a ghastly silvered frame of the hairdresser’s
curls and crimps, and surmounted, to complete its repulsiveness, with
a bedizened hat, the form of which can only be made barely tolerable
by a beautiful young face beneath it; or that of a form bending under
the weight of years, carrying with trembling steps a load of jewelry
and such remarkable excrescences, frills, flounces, and fur-belows, as
the dressmaker insists upon cumbering it withal? These pitiful sights
are constantly displayed in our palace-cars, at our hotels,
boarding-houses and watering-places, even by the aged invalids who
frequent the latter for their healing influences.
This is all wrong! There is no good sense or propriety in it. The
free-born American woman should claim immunity from such bondage, and
the right to accept with cheerful grace that rest from the petty
strifes and ambitions which agitate life’s noon-day to which she is
entitled at its twilight-hour. If she has—either by inheritance or the
successful, if not altogether honest, speculations of her male
kin—come into possession of more money than she well knows how to use,
she should set that inherent Yankee wit, which is her inalienable
national dower, to devise some less ridiculous, at least, if not more
useful, mode of disbursing it.
When we consider the multitudes of starving poor that throng our
cities; the necessities of widows and orphans; the notable rarity of
well-selected and amply-filled libraries among our wealthy classes,
and their very meagre patronage of the fine arts, we discover that
there is no lack of proper and elevating objects for expenditure.
Above all, when we reflect that the possessors of wealth must
inevitably be called to a rigid account of their stewardship at last,
the thought is appalling, and the subject, in all its phases, for this
world and the next, is a sad one to contemplate.
In pleasing contrast with the picture presented by the domestic and
social attitude of the average American grandmothers of to-day is that
which we have frequently been so favored as to witness among the most
wealthy, as well as the poorest, classes of our faithful foreign
populations; where the grandmother, in her comfortable though
antiquated cap and costume, was the most honored and tenderly beloved
member of the household, its arbiter in all disputes, its wise and
chosen counsellor in all doubts, its nurse in sickness, comforter in
affliction, and its guide to that blessed land on the confines of
which her aged feet were tottering.
She indulged no worldly ambitions; gave no thought to dress, save to
restrict it to the severest simplicity and neatness. She filled no
brilliant _rôle_ at home or in society, nor cared for anything but to
do good to all as she had opportunity. She was not learned in the
philosophy of books and literature; her deficiency in such knowledge
may have been so great as to excite a sneer in her American neighbor,
who had enjoyed the great “advantages” of the public-school system;
but even the youngest of her numerous grandchildren—who gathered
around her chair in the most cosey corner, of an evening, to listen
reverently to her explanations of “Christian Doctrine,” to join with
her in recitations of the beads, and to give rapt attention to her
tales and legends of the “dear old land”—knew that her venerable head
was stored with treasures of learning more precious than all earthly
lore in the sight of Him before whom the “wisdom of this world is
foolishness,” and who has chosen the “weak things thereof to confound
the wise.”
How will they miss her when she is gone! For how many long years will
“grandmother’s” virtues and her pious instructions form the theme, and
her advice and prayers the sustaining resource, of her children’s
children, while they carefully transmit to theirs her unwritten
memoirs as an invaluable legacy of precept and example!
FROM LAMARTINE.
Almond-bough with blossom rife,
Pride of beauty picturing;
Blooms like thee the flow’r of life,
Blooms and withers in the spring.
Missed or gathered, prized or slighted,
Still from wreath and fingered spray
One by one its petals, blighted,
Pass, like pleasures day by day.
Taste we then its brief delight,
Ere the stealthy winds go by;
Drain the laughing chalice quite,
Drink the perfume that must die.
Oft is beauty like the flow’r
Gathered for a guest at morn,
And before the festal hour
From his chilly temples torn.
One day ends: another breaks;
Spring and all her sweets decay;
Every leaf the light wind takes
Whispers, “Gather while ye may.”
Since the rose is doomed to perish—
Perish, pass, nor bloom again,
Lovers’ lips her blossom cherish,
Love her dying sweets detain.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN STATE. A Series of Essays on
the Relation of the Church to the Civil Power. Translated,
with the permission of the author, from the German of Dr.
Joseph Hergenröther, Professor of Canon Law and Church
History at the University of Würzburg. In two volumes.
London: Burns & Oates. 1876.
It is to be regretted that the price of this excellent work has been
placed so high, although its paper covers and generally cheap style of
execution give it the appearance of a German rather than an English
publication. The price in England is one pound sterling, which makes
it necessary to sell it for eight dollars in this country, and with a
decent binding it must cost ten dollars. This great cost must impede
the general circulation which such a work merits and ought to obtain.
In respect to the value of its contents, it is well worth the price it
costs, and ought to have a place in every public library and on the
bookshelves of every Catholic of intelligence and culture—indeed, of
every educated man who wishes to understand the questions mooted and
discussed so generally at the present time in respect to the nature
and mutual relations of the church and the state. It is a masterly
scientific treatise, constructed with that solid learning and
thoroughness of exposition which characterize the works of genuine
German scholarship. The author is one of the most eminent of the
Catholic professors of Germany, at home in canon law, history and
jurisprudence, well versed in theology, and enjoying an established
reputation for sound orthodoxy in doctrine. The division of his topics
into separate essays, each with its distinct sections, makes it easier
to follow his course of exposition and reasoning than it would be if
they were arranged under a more strictly methodical form, and his
abundant references, frequently accompanied by citations, give
evidence of the sources he has referred to, as well as the means of
referring, in case of need, to these authorities. He is succinct and
brief in his treatment, yet clear and precise. The subjects about
which Mr. Gladstone’s _Expostulation_ have awakened controversy are
treated comprehensively and in their principles, furnishing a general
defence of the Catholic Church, and a refutation of the accusations of
her enemies in respect to her polity, administration, and relations to
the natural and temporal order. In short, it is a text-book or manual
for instruction, fitted to be used as a guide to those who have to
teach, as an arsenal from which those who have to write or lecture may
draw their weapons of argument, and as a standard of reference for the
correct decision of the matters within its scope. The private student
will find it all that is requisite for his complete and accurate
information on the important topics of which it treats. We understand
that the translation has been made by Miss Allies, assisted by two
other ladies, and, we doubt not, under her father’s supervision. We
have not seen the original, but the translation seems to have been
thoroughly well executed. The work will undoubtedly take its place at
once as a classic.
HISTOIRE DE MADAME BARAT, FONDATRICE DE LA SOCIETE DU
SACRE-CŒUR DE JESUS. Par M. l’Abbé Baunard. Paris:
Poussielque Frères, Rue Cassette 27. 1876.
We have had the honor of receiving one of the first copies of this
long-expected biography of one of the great women of this century, and
take the earliest opportunity of making the due acknowledgment. This
is not a book to be dismissed by a brief notice, and we hope to make
it the subject of an article in one of our future numbers, after
having given it the careful perusal which it merits. It is published
in two goodly volumes of fair, large type, averaging each six hundred
octavo pages. The Abbé Baunard is already celebrated as the author of
the _Life of St. John_. Those who read French easily and with pleasure
will prefer, we suppose, to obtain the original work, which no doubt
will soon be for sale in our foreign bookstores. Nevertheless, as a
translation from the graceful pen of Lady Georgiana Fullerton is
advertised as nearly or quite ready, we are confident that the charm
of the Abbé Baunard’s style will be preserved, in so far as that is
possible, in the _Life of Madame Barat_ which is soon to appear in
English. It is already evident that this biography, which is at the
same time a history of the institute founded by the venerable lady who
is its subject, will have a worldwide circulation. In our own country
there are great numbers who are eagerly desiring the opportunity of
perusing it. We have as yet only commenced the pleasing task, but we
have gone far enough to warrant the assurance that those who are
looking forward to the reading of it as a source of great benefit and
pure enjoyment will not be disappointed.
ARE YOU MY WIFE? By the author of _A Salon in Paris before
the War_, _Number Thirteen_, _Pius VI._, etc. New York: The
Catholic Publication Society. 1876. 1 vol. 8vo. pp. 292.
The startling question that gives a title to this story has been
before the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD for many months. Those who
have followed out the puzzle presented to them through its monthly
instalments will have found for themselves the solution of the
problem, and formed their own opinion regarding its merits or
demerits. The story is now published in book-form, and adds one more
to the number of admirable original works of fiction given to the
Catholic public through the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
_Are You My Wife?_ is remarkable, and welcome, at least in this: that
it shakes itself loose from the mouldy traditions which seem to form
the stock-in-trade of most of our Catholic writers of English fiction.
It is a bold effort and well sustained. The story is full of interest
from beginning to end; the characters clean-cut and distinct; the
incidents varying and rapid; and the secret carefully concealed to the
very last. It is not, perhaps, of the first, but certainly of a very
good, order of art, and possesses this exceptional merit over its
fellows, that while the facts on which it hangs are as interesting as
those in the best works of non-Catholic novelists, the purity and
moral elevation of the whole are far beyond what even the best of such
writers can furnish.
It is needless here to sketch the plot, which, though woven out of
natural materials, is ingeniously intricate. Many of the characters
are such as may be met with any day in England. The nominal heroine is
a wild, weird creation; the real heroine is Franceline, as charming a
girl as ever met us in the pages of a novel or stole our hearts away
in real life. No wonder all the young men go wild over her; no wonder
that the old men do the same. She grows up and develops under our
sight the dreamy, happy child, until she, and we with her, suddenly
start to find she is a woman.
The graceful yet powerful pen that gave us such sketches as _A Salon
in Paris before the War_, _Number Thirteen_, and others equally good,
has not mistaken its powers—indeed, has not, we are convinced, yet
tried them to the full of their bent—in the present more finished and
more ambitious work. There is little or nothing in _Are You My Wife?_
to betray the hand of an unpractised novelist. Only here and there
occurs a fulsomeness of detail on minor matters that were better
condensed. In one or two places, though very rarely, the conversation
flags. Conversation is, as a rule, slow enough in society itself; in a
book, when slow at all, it becomes intolerable. These are the only
blemishes we find in an unusually interesting book. Sir Simon Harness,
Ponce Anwyll, Miss Merrywig, Miss Bulpit, Angélique, and Raymond are
characters with whom we regret to part, as also Franceline and Clide,
were they not so well provided for. Humor, wit, and imagination are
plentiful throughout the book, while the pictures of natural scenery
are often unsurpassed. Here, for instance, is a picture of still life
that the best of pencils or pens might be proud to own:
“On emerging from the damp darkness after an hour with Miss Merrywig,
Franceline found that the sun had climbed up to the zenith, and was
pouring down a sultry glow that made the earth smoke again. There was
a stile at the end of the wood, and she sat down to rest herself under
the thick shade of a sycamore. The stillness of the noon was on
everything. A few lively linnets tried to sing; but, the effort being
prompted solely by duty, after a while they gave it up, and withdrew
to the coolest nooks, and enjoyed their siesta like the lazy ones.
Nobody stirred, except the insects that were chirping in the grass,
and some bees that sailed from flower to flower, buzzing and doing
field-labor when everybody else was asleep or idle. To the right the
fields were brimful of ripening grain of every shade of gold; the
deep-orange corn was overflowing into the pale amber of the rye, and
the bearded barley was washing the hedge that walled it off from the
lemon-colored wheat. To the left the rich grass lands were dotted with
flocks and herds. In the nearest meadow some cattle were herding. It
was too hot to eat, so they stood surveying the fulness of the earth
with mild, bovine gaze. They might have been sphinxes, they were so
still; not a muscle in their sleek bodies moved, except that a tail
lashed out against the flies now and then. Some were in the open
field, holding up their white horns to the sunlight; others were
grouped in twos and threes under a shady tree; but the noontide hush
was on them all. Presently a number of horses came trooping leisurely
up to the pond near the stile; the mild-eyed kine moved their slow
heads after the procession, and then, one by one, trooped on with it.
The noise of the hoofs plashing into the water, and the loud lapping
of the thirsty tongues, were like a drink to the hot silence.
Franceline watched them lifting their wet mouths, all dripping, from
the pool, and felt as if she had been drinking too. There was a long,
solemn pause, and then a sound like the blast of an organ rose up from
the pond, swelling and sweeping over the fields; before it died away a
calf in a distant paddock answered it.”
THE LIFE OF REV. MOTHER ST. JOSEPH, FOUNDRESS OF THE
CONGREGATION OF SISTERS OF ST. JOSEPH OF BORDEAUX. By l’Abbé
P. F. Lebeurier. Translated from the French. New York: D. &
J. Sadlier & Co. 1876.
When, in the early part of the seventeenth century, St. Francis de
Sales founded the Order of the Visitation, he placed the corporal
works of mercy, such as visiting the sick and relieving the poor,
among the duties of its members, but he was afterwards induced to
modify the original plan by making enclosure a part of the
constitution of the order. There was a demand, however, for
communities of women devoted to the relief of human misery; and among
the many congregations of this kind which were founded during the life
or shortly after the death of St. Francis that of the Sisters of St.
Joseph holds an important rank. This order came into existence under
the fostering care of Father Medaille, a priest of the Company of
Jesus, in the year 1650, in the diocese of Puy, and was soon
established in many other parts of France. After an existence of a
hundred and forty years, it was broken up and the sisters dispersed by
the French Revolution; but upon the conclusion of the Concordat
between Napoleon and Pius VII. the religious who still survived
reassembled and opened a house in Lyons, in 1807, under the protection
of Cardinal Fesch.
One of the most exemplary and useful members of the order since its
restoration, Mother St. Joseph—in the world, Jane Chanay—is made known
to us in the biography whose title we have given. There are few lives
of which a judicious and faithful account would not be useful, and no
kind of writing is more attractive to most readers than biography. It
is seldom, however, that we meet with a religious biography with which
we are altogether pleased, and this now before us is not at all to our
taste. There is certainly no reason why the life of a nun should not
be as full of interest as that of a woman engaged in the frivolities
and vanities of the world, and we cannot but think it is the fault of
the author that Mother St. Joseph’s has not been made both instructive
and entertaining. The narrative is slow and interrupted, the style
heavy, and the facts often trivial without being either amusing or
edifying. We have the authority of Cardinal Donnet for the assertion
that the book is commendable for the beauty of its diction; but this
is certainly not true of the English translation, which is often
neither correct nor elegant. Take, for instance, the following
examples: “Other saints … are restored to their Creator with not _a
maze_ to dim their lustrous brightness” (p. 22). “When once the fire
of jealousy is kindled in the soul, nothing can _satiate its ravages_”
(p. 26).
We close with the following sentence, which we commend to the
attention of grammar-schools: “This good father having, in the course
of his missions, met with several widows and pious young women who
were desirous to retire from the world and devote themselves to the
service of the salvation of their neighbor, but were deterred for want
of means to enter convents, he formed the intention to propose to some
bishop the establishment of a congregation into which those devoted
women could enter and devote themselves to labor for their salvation,
and fulfil all the good works of which they were capable in the
service of their neighbor” (p. 66).
PRINCIPIA OR BASIS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. By R. J. Wright.
Second Edition. Philadelphia: Lippincott & Co. 1876.
The eight or ten pages of letters from various persons with which this
volume is prefaced, and in which the author receives thanks for copies
of his book, forcibly remind us of Sheridan’s formula for
acknowledging the publications that were constantly sent him: “DEAR
SIR: I have received your exquisite work, and I have no doubt I shall
be highly delighted _after_ I have read it.” The persons, known and
unknown, whose names are paraded here all anticipate a time when they
shall be able to congratulate themselves upon having put the _Basis of
Social Science_ beneath their feet.
Mr. Wright is doubtless a well-meaning man; and if good intentions
could pacify a critic’s irritable soul, between him and ourselves
there would be no quarrel. His aim has been, he informs us in his
preface, to write a work which, without offending the religious,
political, or scientific susceptibilities of any one, would commend
itself especially to “pious young men” and “students for the ministry,
who really desire to be useful and to be abreast of their age on this
subject”; and we are therefore prepared to find him ready to embrace
with equal tenderness a Mormon prophet, an Oneida free lover, a French
communist, and a Catholic monk. Mr. Wright’s sweetness and piety are
as offensive to us as the caress of a Yahoo was to Dean Swift. These
attempts to reconcile the antagonisms, incompatibilities, and
contradictions of the age, by besmearing them all with honey, are
worse than absurd; they add to the confusion and weaken the power to
apprehend truth. The self-imposed task of the author of this volume is
one which the greatest mind now living could not perform in a
satisfactory manner. Of all sciences, the social is, if it may as yet
be called a science, the most difficult, the most involved and
uncertain; in its idea it is a synthesis of all knowledges, and no one
who has not gathered into his own mind the intellectual achievements
of the whole race should attempt to construct a philosophy of social
science. The importance of the study of sociology we fully admit, and
gladly welcome even the humblest efforts to increase our knowledge of
this subject; but when those who ought to remain in the ranks seek to
take command, they become disorganizers. Had Mr. Wright been modest,
he might have been useful; having attempted too much, he has failed to
accomplish anything. In fact, he has not the first requisite of an
author—a knowledge of the language in which he writes. His style is
barbarous and tumultuary, often ungrammatical. It must, however, be
striking and emphatic, if we are to judge from the number of words
printed in italics and majuscules. And his thought is like his
style—incoherent, crude, and embryotic. He has read Comte, Fourier,
Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Appleton’s _Cyclopædia_, and with their aid
and the help of a certain “Theory of the Six Units” he has sought to
develop an ideal of human society not more impossible than Plato’s
_Republic_ or more visionary than More’s _Utopia_.
The keynote to his system is the “Theory of the Six Units.” The six
units are the Individual, the Family, the Social Circle, the Precinct,
the Nation, and Mankind. It seems to have been his acquaintance with
certain other “singular sixes” that led him to a belief in six, and
but six, social units. In the first place, “the figure which gives the
maximum amount of internal content with the minimum amount of external
surface of similar bodies joined together is a HEXAGON.” Again: “In
developed civilization there are six great classes of society”; but it
is only in some future work that the author will tell us about these
six great classes. And just here we wish to find fault with Mr. Wright
for a habit he has of adroitly arousing our curiosity, and then, as we
are beginning to imagine we are about to learn something, coolly
dropping us with the remark that the matter “will be portrayed in
another book.” He sometimes, too, seems to take a wicked delight in
puzzling his readers, as in the following sentence: “All affairs, when
they become ordinary, are apt to become matters of business; and
business matters are—well, we need not say what.” But to return to the
“sixes.” There are six fundamental motors of human passions. There are
six infinities—namely, deific spirit, soul spirit, matter, space,
duration, diversity. There are six organs of sense (the old notion
that there were but five is exploded)—sensation, temperature, taste,
smell, hearing, sight. There are six crystallizations—monometric,
dimetric, trimetric, monoclinic, triclinic, and hexagonal. There are
six religious societies—Adam, Adam and Eve, Patriarchy, Israel in
Egypt, Israel in Palestine, the Christian Church. It follows as a
matter of course that there must be six social units; and in fact, if
it were worth while, we could prove that there must be ten or twenty.
There is no unit in which Mr. Wright so much delights as the Precinct.
The real cause of the American civil war he has discovered to have
been a neglect of Precinct by both the North and the South; and it is
quite probable, we think, there is no social or political problem
which may not ultimately be solved in the same felicitous and
satisfactory manner.
Genius is manifested—at least this is, we believe, the opinion of Mr.
Emerson—quite as strikingly in quotation as in original composition,
and we respectfully call the attention of the philosopher of Concord
to Mr. Wright as a confirmatory example of this law of mind. Many a
household will find food for thought in the following citation:
“Family miffs are a grand institution for giving needful repose and
after-exhilaration to overtasked affection.” And this other will be
interesting to politicians: “It is to the criminal propensities of man
that we owe civilization.” “Alas!” sighs our pious philosopher, “that
the Radicals cannot make a better basis for civilization than the
foregoing crime-begetting one.”
From Wells, the phrenologist, Mr. Wright gets the following quotation,
which almost makes us repent of what we have written: “As a class the
theologians have the best heads in the world.”
CANTATA CATHOLICA. B. H. F. Hellebusch. Benziger Bros.
This is a collection of music for the “Asperges,” “Vidi Aquam,”
several Gregorian Masses, the Gregorian Requiem, the Preface, the
Pater Noster, Responses, Vespers, the Antiphons of the Blessed Virgin,
“O Salutaris,” and “Tantum Ergo,” besides a large number of pieces
intended to be used at Benediction and at various other times. The
Gregorian chants for the “Asperges,” “Vidi Aquam,” and the Masses are
harmonized by Dr. F. Witt. We cannot say that we admire the peculiar
“drone bass” which Dr. Witt uses so extensively, and the harmonies
are, to our ears, crude, and sometimes even barbarous, and as a
general rule are not in accordance with the _mode_. We also noticed
some ear-splitting _fifths_, used without any excuse whatever. The
Requiem is very incomplete; five verses only of the “Dies Iræ” are
given, and the Gradual and Tract are entirely omitted. Mr. Hellebusch
remarks in his preface that “the Preface and Pater Noster should only
be accompanied when required by the officiating clergyman and after
rehearsal.” In looking in the book for the reason for this remark, we
find that to accompany the simple melody of the “Preface of Trinity”
one hundred and ninety sharps, flats, and naturals are required; and
in the accompaniment of the words “socia exultatione concelebrant,” in
the “Common Preface,” we find twenty. The melody of the “Preface” has
also been altered by sharpening “do” all through. Over eight pages are
devoted to Responses, exclusive of the Responses for the Preface and
Pater Noster. In that portion of the book devoted to Vespers are some
grave errors. On page 103 is a note which informs us that “the Psalms
_can_ be chanted to any of the following _authentic_ or _simplified_
Vesper tones.” We have yet to learn which are the eight _authentic_
tones, and we were not aware that authentic and _simplified_ meant one
and the same thing. The eight Psalm-tunes are given with their various
endings, and with the Second, Fourth, Fifth, and _Sixth_, or “Final by
words of one syllable.” We suppose “mediation” is meant; but then the
Sixth tone has no different mediation for words of one syllable, and
the rule for Hebrew proper names is not given at all. In the Fifth
tone the “si” is improperly marked flat. The pointing of the Psalms is
very bad; we have “spirítui, spiritúi, vidít, sicút, motá,” etc. In
the latter part of the book, however, the pieces are selected with
good taste, and musically, although not practically, well arranged.
The book has been made up in too great a hurry.
ASPERGES ME. MASS IN F. MISSA DE ANGELIS. C. P. Morrison,
Worcester, Mass.
The “Asperges” is chiefly remarkable for some very clumsy and
incorrect modulations and the utter absence of any kind of melody and
design. The “Mass in F” is an easy setting of the Ordinary of the Mass
combined with a nauseating adaptation of English words for the use, we
suppose, of the “separated brethren” who like this kind of music. We
looked for and found the close on the words “Filius Patris,” with a
new movement for the “Qui tollis,” and the inevitable RESURRECTIONEM
mor … tu … o … rum. The C clef is placed at the beginning of the tenor
part, and the notes are incorrectly written, as if in the G clef, an
octave higher. The composer ought to know that the C clef is of as
much importance as either the G or F clef, and not a purely fanciful
character to be used or not at the option of the writer. The harmony
of the “Missa de Angelis” is entirely modern, full of chromatic
passages, dissonances, etc., which Mr. Morrison again ought to know
are not allowed in harmonies for Gregorian chant.
ALL AROUND THE MOON. From the French of Jules Verne. Freely
translated by Edw. Roth. With a Map of the Moon constructed
and engraved for this edition, and also with an Appendix
containing the famous Moon Hoax, by R. Adams Locke. New
York: The Catholic Publication Society, No. 9 Warren Street.
1876.
It is not often the case that translations are, like the present one,
an improvement on the original, especially when the original work is
such an admirable one as that from which this translation is made. We
noticed the first part, published under the title of _The Baltimore
Gun Club_, some time ago, favorably, and have been even more pleased
with this sequel.
Mr. Roth calls the book a free translation, but this term hardly
conveys the idea of the adaptation which he has really made of the
text. Verne certainly intended, when he laid the scene in America, to
make the characters, incidents, and conversation thoroughly American,
and he succeeded as well as could have been expected; but the task was
one simply impossible for a foreigner, and any translation at all
approaching to literal exactness, no matter by whom made, would have
been sure to have shared the defects of the text. Mr. Roth, therefore,
to carry out the author’s idea, had practically to rewrite the book in
such a way as to preserve the genius of the conception while altering
the details in a way which required an ability like that of the author
himself.
Besides having made the book really an American one, he has added to
its scientific merit by a fuller explanation of the problem which is
the nucleus of the story.
The “Moon Hoax,” which is appended, was probably the most successful
and the best contrived of all the scientific canards which have ever
appeared. It was written more than forty years ago, but its memory has
not yet died out, and it was so cleverly done as to be well worthy of
this reprint.
The book is illustrated by twenty-four cuts, besides the map of the
moon mentioned in the title. It would really have been better without
the rather clap-trap additional about the Centennial at its close, but
this makes it all the more American, and may be excusable under the
circumstances.
THE WYNDHAM FAMILY: A Story of Modern Life. By the author of
_Mount St. Lawrence_. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale
by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The best of motives and any quantity of the most pious reflections
have combined to make of these two volumes a remarkably dull story.
This is to be regretted; for those who can overcome the repugnance of
wading through page after page of what, with the best will in the
world we can only call dreary writing, will find much sound sense on
the conduct of the family and what are called “the exigencies” of
modern society. The author has attempted a bold feat—to paint the
“heroics” of the kitchen, or, as they are called in the story, “the
glory of service.” That there may be, that there is often, glory in
service there can be no doubt. This is the power of Christianity. That
a cook may be, and indeed often is, a model of self-sacrifice, or at
least a source of great self-sacrifice in others, he would be a rash
man who should undertake to deny. The author of _The Wyndham Family_
would reverse the old saying that “God sends the food, but the devil
sends the cook.” To be sure, the particular cook here held up to view
turns out to be quite a superior character, and this makes one of the
surprises of the story. The experiment, however, can scarcely be
considered a happy one. Were the two volumes condensed into one; were
the atmosphere of the kitchen a little less obtrusive; were the girls
in the story made to talk like girls, and not like what on this side
would be called by some “school marms”; were there only a little more
of the relief afforded by such a character as “Uncle Sanders,” _The
Wyndham Family_ might have been not only what it now is, a vehicle for
highly moral reflections, but a popular and interesting story.
It is strange that England, which has done so much in reviving
Catholic English letters within the last century, and which is so high
in the higher walks of literature, should, with a very few exceptions,
continue to furnish about the poorest specimens of Catholic stories
that the world has ever seen. Indeed, a kind of “goody-goody” school
has grown up there which holds its own with exasperating persistency.
The sooner that school is broken up the better. There surely might be
found a happy medium between the “penny dreadful,” or the fleshly
school of fiction, and that which reads like a very weak dilution of
the penny catechism.
THIRTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE
CITY AND COUNTY OF NEW YORK FOR THE YEAR ENDING DECEMBER 31,
1875.
Apart from the mass of interesting statistics contained in this
report, the comprehensive style adopted by the compiler of presenting
facts and figures deserves special mention.
We have been interested in the development of the law compelling
children to attend school, but fail to find satisfactory information
regarding its workings in the report of the Superintendent of Truancy.
An increase of 7,614 in the daily average attendance is claimed by
him. These figures do not agree with the facts stated on pp. 12 and
213, and in addition the attendance of 1874 shows an increase of
15,094 over 1873.
After a year’s trial the superintendent comes to the conclusion that
the law, as it now stands, is a failure, and recommends the enactment
of other laws, and the erection of new institutions to enforce the
present law, of which he says: “Instances of opposition on the part of
the parents to the law, or the efforts of the agents, are extremely
rare; but rather do they regard them as welcome visitors and valuable
auxiliaries, their authority and suasion being earnestly solicited for
the reformation of the child” (p. 424).
FLAMINIA, and other stories; LUCAS GARCIA, and other
stories; PERICO THE SAD, and other stories; ROBERT, OR THE
INFLUENCE OF A GOOD MOTHER; THE CRUCIFIX OF BADEN, and other
stories; THE STORY OF MARCEL, and other tales. New York: The
Catholic Publication Society. 1876.
These are all excellent stories, choice flowers of fiction culled from
French, Spanish, Italian, German, and English gardens, while those of
native growth are not forgotten. They are reprints from THE CATHOLIC
WORLD; and how admirably fitted they are to meet a general want the
reader may judge for himself by glancing at this month’s Bulletin,
which presents the verdict of the Catholic press on them. Nothing is
more needed nowadays than good popular Catholic literature, stories,
perhaps, more than anything else. We accordingly welcome the
republication in book form of stories which were universally well
received as they appeared in the columns of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and
only hope that the series may be continued.
EPISODES OF THE PARIS COMMUNE IN 1871. Translated from the
French by the Lady Blanche Murphy. Benziger Brothers, New
York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. 1876.
This is a little volume of very readable sketches, relating the
persecutions and sufferings of the various brotherhoods of Paris
during the brief reign of the Commune in 1871. Their schools were
closed, their houses invaded, and the brothers who had not succeeded
in escaping to some safe hiding-place were arrested and thrown into
prison. The services of the Christian Brothers as ambulance nurses
during the war were known to the whole country; but the Commune
ruthlessly drove them from the bedsides of the wounded and dying
soldiers. “Down with the Black-gowns!” was the cry. “Death to the
Brothers! Let them go join Darboy.”
“The watchword of the Revolution,” said Raoul Rigault to M. Cotte, the
writer of one of these sketches, and late director of the press
ambulances of Longchamps—“the watchword of the Revolution is death to
religion, to ritual, to priests!” And he added: “As long as there is
left in the land one man who dares pronounce the name of God all our
labor will have been in vain, and we shall not be able to lay down the
sword and the rifle.”
The style of the translation is easy and simple, and these _Episodes_
will very fittingly occupy a place in “The Catholic Premium-Book
Library.”
THE STORY OF A VOCATION: HOW IT CAME ABOUT, AND WHAT BECAME
OF IT. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1876.
This is really the story of two vocations—of one in the world, and of
another in, but not of, the world. It is one of those pure, graceful,
yet interesting tales which are only too few. The translation, from
the French, is well done. Parents and those who have charge of
children will find this book not only highly entertaining but of real
utility.
THE EPISCOPAL SUCCESSION IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND,
A.D. 1400 TO 1875. With appointments to monasteries and
extracts from consistorial acts taken from MSS. in public
and private libraries in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Ravenna,
and Paris. By W. Mazière Brady. Vol. I. Rome: Tipografia
della Pace. 1876.
This collection of curious documents relates to the Catholic
succession. It is of great utility to the searcher into ecclesiastical
antiquities. The author has consulted archives and searched out old
records with much diligence, and gathered together a number of curious
items of information of great value and interest to the antiquarian
student. The most interesting of these is the account of Dr. Goldwell,
Bishop of St. Asaph, the last of the old line of Catholic succession
in England, a prelate whose learning and sanctity make him worthy to
close the series which St. Augustine began.
BOSTON TO WASHINGTON. A Pocket Guide to the Great Eastern
Cities and the Centennial Exhibition, with Maps. New York:
Hurd & Houghton. 1876.
The title of this work will give the reader but a poor idea of its
value compared with other guides, which are mere advertising sheets.
This book is neat in every way—in its paper, in its printing, in its
illustrations, and in its binding—and contains a great amount of
interesting and correct information about the cities of Boston, New
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and will prove a
valuable guide to the traveller, whether native or foreign.
VOYAGES DANS L’AMERIQUE SEPTENTRIONALE. Par L. R. Père P. J.
De Smet, S. J. Bruxelles: Benziger Bros.; New York.
This is a French edition of Father De Smet’s travels as an Indian
missionary in the Rocky Mountains and in Oregon. This celebrated
Jesuit, besides being a zealous apostle, was also a keen observer of
men and customs, and his descriptions of Indian life, with which no
man was more familiar, are both entertaining and instructive. A
biography of Father De Smet has been recently published in Belgium, an
English translation of which would, we think, be welcomed by American
Catholics.
NOTE TO THE ARTICLE ON “THOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY.”
Those who read carefully the philosophical articles which appear from
time to time in our pages will notice that different, and even
contradictory, opinions on some points are to be met with
occasionally. It seems proper to explain, therefore, that the editor,
and those who assist him in supervising the conduct of the magazine,
while professing a general adhesion to the doctrine of St. Thomas,
allow a considerable latitude in the expression of individual opinion
by the different writers who contribute articles; and do not
necessarily imply, in their approbation of pieces for publication,
that they concur in every respect with the statements and arguments
contained in them.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIII., No. 136.—JULY, 1876.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1876.
SONNET.
THE CENTENARY OF AMERICAN LIBERTY.
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
A century of sunrises hath bowed
Its fulgent forehead ‘neath the ocean-floor
Since first upon the West’s astonished shore,
Like some huge Alp forth-struggling through the cloud
A new-born nation stood, to Freedom vowed:
Within that time how many an Empire hoar
And young Republic, flushed with wealth and war,
Alike have changed the ermine for the shroud!
O “sprung from earth’s first blood,” O tempest-nursed!
For thee what Fates? I know not. This I know
The Soul’s great freedom-gift, of gifts the first—
Thou first on man in fulness didst bestow:
Hunted elsewhere, God’s Church with thee found rest:—
Thy future’s Hope is she—that queenly Guest.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES,
1776-1876.
The social conditions of life which have been developed in the
European colonies of North America, though to a certain extent the
result of the physical surroundings of the early settlers, are chiefly
the freer growth of principles which had been active, for centuries,
in the Christian nations of the Old World. The elements of society
here, unhindered by custom, law, or privilege, grouped themselves
quickly and spontaneously into the forms to which they were tending in
Europe also, but slowly and through conflict and struggle. The great
and most significant fact, that it was found impossible in the New
World to create privileged classes, clearly pointed in the direction
in which European civilization was moving. Another fact not less
noteworthy is the failure of every attempt to establish religion in
this country.
Though there is but little to please the fancy or fire the imagination
in American character or institutions, it is nevertheless to this
country that the eyes of the thoughtful and observant from every part
of the world are turned. The Catholicity of Christian civilization has
generalized political problems and social movements. Civilization,
like religion, has ceased to be national; and the bearing of a
people’s life upon the welfare of the human race has come to be of
greater moment than its effect upon the national character. It is to
this that the universal interest which centres in the United States
must be attributed.
We are a commonplace and mediocre people; practical, without high
ideals, lofty aspirations, or excellent standards of worth and
character. In philosophy, in science, in literature, in art, in
culture, we are inferior to the nations of Europe. No mind
transcendentally great has appeared among us; not one who is heir to
all the ages and citizen of the world. Our ablest thinkers are merely
the disciples of some foreign master. Our most gifted poets belong to
the careful kind, who with effort and the file give polish and
smoothness, but not the _mens divinior_, to their verse; and who, when
they attempt a loftier flight, grow dull and monotonous as a
Western prairie or Rocky Mountain table-land. Our most popular
heroes—Washington and Lincoln—are but common men, and the higher is he
who is least the product of our democratic institutions.
Our commercial enterprise and mechanical achievements are worthy of
admiration, but not so far above those of other nations as to attract
special attention.
If to-day, then, the American people draw the eyes of the whole world
upon themselves, it is not because they have performed marvellous
deeds, opened up new realms of thought, or created higher types of
character, but because their social and political condition is that to
which Europe, whether for good or evil, seems to be irresistibly
tending. Beyond doubt, the tendency of modern civilization is to give
to the people greater power and a larger sphere of action. Every
attempt to arrest this movement but serves to make its force the more
manifest. This spirit of the age is seen in the general spread of
education, in the widening of the popular suffrage, in the separation
of church and state, and in the dying out of aristocracies. We simply
note facts, without stopping to examine principles or to weigh
consequences. Those who resist a revolution are persuaded that it will
work nothing but evil, while those who help it on hope from it every
good; and the event most generally shows both to have been in error.
Our present purpose does not lead us to speculate as to the manner in
which the general welfare is to be affected by the great social
transformations by which the character of civilized nations is being
so profoundly modified; but we will suppose that the reign of
aristocracies and of privilege is past, and that in the future the
people are to govern; and we ask, What will be the influence of the
new society upon the old faith?
The essential life of the Catholic Church is independent of her
worldly condition; and though we are bound to believe that she is to
remain amongst men until the end, we are yet not forbidden to hold
that at times she may to human eyes seem almost to have ceased to be;
that as in the past Christ was entombed, the _deletum nomen
Christianum_ was proclaimed, in the future also the heavens may grow
dark, God’s countenance seemingly be withdrawn, and the voice of
despair cry out that all have bent the knee to Baal.
“But yet the Son of Man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you,
faith on earth?” We may hope, we may despond; let us, then,
dispassionately consider the facts.
First, we will put aside the assumption that it is possible to
organize this modern society so as to crush the church by persecution
or violence. In a social state, which can be strong only by being
just, attempts of this kind, if successful, would inevitably lead to
anarchy and chaos, out of which the church would again come forth with
or before the civil order. We cannot, then, look forward to a
prolonged and open conflict between the church and the civilized
governments of the world without giving up all hope in the permanency
and effectiveness of the social phase upon which we have entered. In
the end the European states, like the American, must be convinced
that, if they would live, they must also let live; since a _modus
vivendi_ between church and state is absolutely essential to the
permanence of society as now constituted.
The question, then, is narrowed to the free and peaceable life of the
church in contact with the popular governments which are already
constituted or are struggling for existence; and it is in their
bearing upon this all-important subject that the world-wide
significance of the lessons to be learned from a careful study of the
history of the Catholic Church in the United States becomes apparent.
For a hundred years this church has lived in the new society, and all
the circumstances of her position have been admirably suited to test
her power to meet the difficulties offered by a democratic social
organization. The problem to be solved was whether or not a vigorous
but yet orderly and obedient Catholic faith and life could flourish in
this country, where what are called the principles of modern
civilization have found their most complete expression.
If we would understand the history of our country, we must not lose
sight of the religious character of the men by whom it was explored
and colonized. Religious zeal led the Puritans to New England, the
Catholics to Maryland, and the Quakers to Pennsylvania; and among the
Spaniards and the French there were many who, like Columbus and
Champlain, deemed the salvation of a soul of greater moment than the
conquest of an empire. We might, indeed, without going beyond our
present subject, speak of the heroic and gentle lives of the apostolic
men who, from Maine to California, from Florida to the Northern Lakes,
toiled among the Indians, and not in vain, that they might win them
from savage ways and lift them up to higher modes of life. The
Catholics of the United States can never forget that the labors of
these men belong to the history of the church on this continent; that
the lives they offered up, the blood they shed, plead for us before
God; and that if their work is disappearing, it sinks into the grave
only with the dying race which they more than all others have loved
and served. But in this age men are little inclined to dwell upon
memories, however glorious. We live in the present and in the future,
and, in spite of much cheap sentiment and wordy philanthropy, we have
but weak sympathy with decaying races. We are interested in what is or
is to be, not in what has been; and perhaps it is well that this is
so. We have but feeble power to think or act or love, and it should
not be wasted. If Americans to-day are busy with thoughts of a hundred
years ago, it is not that they love those old times and their simple
ways, but that by contrast they may, in boastful self-complacency,
glory in the present. They look back, not to regret the fast-receding
shore, but to congratulate themselves that they have left it already
so far behind. It is enough, then, to have alluded to the labors of
the Catholic missionaries among the North American Indians, since
those labors have had and can have but small influence upon the
history of the church in the United States. To understand this history
we need only study that of the Europeans and their descendants on this
continent.
The early colonists of the present territory of the United States were
as unlike in their religious as in their national characters. English
Puritans founded the colonies of New England; New York was settled by
the Dutch; Delaware and New Jersey by the Dutch and the Swedes;
Pennsylvania by Quakers from England, who were followed by a German
colony. Virginia was the home of the English who adhered to the
Established Church of the mother country, and North Carolina became
the refuge of the Nonconformists from Virginia; in South Carolina a
considerable number of Huguenots found an asylum; and in Maryland the
first settlers were chiefly English Catholics. Nearly all these
colonies owed their foundation to the religious troubles of Europe.
The Puritans, the Catholics, and the Quakers were more eager to find a
home in which they could freely worship God than to amass wealth.
The religious spirit of New England, whose influence in this country,
before and since the Revolution, has been preponderant, was as narrow
and proscriptive as it was intense, and a gloomy fanaticism lay at the
basis of its entire political and social system. The Puritan colonies
were not so much bodies politic as churches in the wilderness. To the
commission appointed to draw up a body of laws to serve as a
declaration of rights, Cotton Mather declared that God’s people should
be governed by no other laws than those which He himself had given to
Moses; and one of the first acts of the Massachusetts colony was the
expulsion of John and Samuel Browne with their followers, because they
refused to conform to the religious practices of the Pilgrims. If
dissenting Protestants were not tolerated in New England, Catholics
certainly could not hope for mercy; and, in fact, they were denied
religious liberty even in Rhode Island, which had been founded by the
victims of Puritan persecution as a refuge for the oppressed and a
protest against fanaticism. Though Mr. Bancroft, whose partisan zeal,
whenever there is question of New England, is unmistakable, denies
that this unjust discrimination was the act of the people of Rhode
Island, it served, at any rate, so effectually to exclude Catholics
that when the war of independence broke out not one was to be found
within the limits of the colony.
Puritanism, more than any other form of Protestantism, drew its very
life from a hatred of all that is Catholic. The office and authority
of bishops, the repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, the sign of the
cross, the chant of the psalms, the observance of saints’ days, the
use of musical instruments in church, and the vestments worn by the
ministers of religion were all odious to the Puritans because they
were associated with Catholic worship; and in their eyes the chief
crime of the Church of England was that she still retained some of the
doctrines and usages of that of Rome. Religion and freedom, though
their conception of both was partial and false, were the predominant
passions of the Puritans; and since they looked upon the Catholic
Church as the fatal enemy alike of religion and of freedom, their
fanaticism, not less than their enthusiastic love of independence,
filled them with the deepest hatred for Catholics. They had the
virtues and the vices of the lower and more ignorant classes of
Englishmen, from which for the most part they had sprung. If they were
frugal, content with little, ready to bear hardship and to suffer
want, not easily cast down, they were also narrow, superstitious,
angular, and unlovely; and these characteristics were hardened by a
cold, gloomy, and unsympathetic religious faith. The credulity which
led them to hang witches made them ready to believe in the diabolism
of priests; while the narrowness of their intellectual range rendered
them incapable of perceiving the grandeur and excellence of an
organization which alone, in the history of the world, has become
universal without becoming weak, and which, if it be considered as
only human, is still man’s most wonderful work. With the æsthetic
beauty of the Catholic religion they could have no sympathy, since
they were deprived of the sense by which alone it can be appreciated.
Though they fasted, appointed days of thanksgiving, and, through a
false asceticism, changed the Lord’s day into the Jewish Sabbath, the
fasts and saints’ days of Catholics were in their eyes the
superstitions of idolaters; and while they assumed the right to
declare what is true Christian doctrine and to enforce its acceptance,
they indignantly rejected the spiritual authority of the church,
though historically traceable to Christ’s commission to the apostles.
The measures, therefore, which the colonies of New England took to
prevent the establishment of the Catholic Church on their soil, were
merely the expression of the horror and dread of what they conceived
its influence and tendency to be. In 1631, just eleven years after the
landing of the _Mayflower_, Sir Christopher Gardiner, on mere
suspicion of being a papist, was seized and sent out of the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay, and in the same year the General Court wrote a
letter denouncing the minister at Watertown for giving expression to
the opinion that the Church of Rome is a true church. Three years
later Roger Williams, whose tolerant temper has been an exhaustless
theme of praise, joined with the Puritans in declaring the cross a
“relic of Antichrist, a popish symbol savoring of superstition and not
to be countenanced by Christian men”; and, in proof of the sincerity
of their zeal, these godly men cut the cross from out the English
flag. Priests were forbidden, under pain of imprisonment and even
death, to enter the colonies; and the neighboring Catholic settlements
of Canada were regarded with sentiments of such bigoted hatred as to
blind the Puritans to their own most evident political and commercial
interests. So unrelenting was their fanaticism that one of the
grievances which they most strongly urged against George III. was that
he tolerated popery in Canada. In the New England colonies, down to
1776, the Catholic Church had no existence, and the same may be said
of the other colonies, with the exception of Maryland and of a few
families scattered through parts of Pennsylvania. In Maryland itself,
where the principles of religious liberty, which now form a part of
the organic law of the land, had been first proclaimed by the Catholic
colonists, the persecution of the church early became an important
feature in the colonial legislation. In successive enactments the
Catholics were forbidden to teach school, to hold civil office, and to
have public worship; and were, moreover, taxed for the support of the
Established Church. The religious character of Virginia, though less
intense and earnest than that of New England, can hardly be said to
have been less anti-Catholic; and it is therefore not surprising that
we should find the cruel penal code of the mother country in full
vigor in this colony.
It would have been difficult to find anywhere communities more
thoroughly Protestant than the thirteen British colonies one hundred
years ago. The little body of Catholics in Maryland, in all about
25,000, who, in spite of persecution, had retained their faith, had
sunk into a kind of religious apathy; and as their public worship had
long been forbidden and they were not permitted to have schools, to
indifference was added ignorance of the doctrines of the church. A few
priests, once members of the suppressed Society of Jesus, lingered
amongst them, though they generally found it necessary to live upon
their own lands or with their kindred, and with difficulty kept alive
the flickering flame of faith. Without religious energy, zeal, or
organization, the Maryland Catholics were gradually being absorbed
into mere worldliness or into the more vigorous Protestant sects; and,
in fact, many of the descendants of the original settlers had already
lost the faith. In this way the character of the old Catholic colony
had been wholly changed; so that Maryland surpassed all the other
colonies in the odious proscriptiveness of her legislation, levying
the same tax for the introduction into her territory of a Catholic
Irishman as for the importation of a Negro slave. The existence of the
Catholic families there, and of the small and scattered settlements in
Pennsylvania, if recognized at all by the general public, was looked
upon as an anomaly, an anachronism, which, from the nature of things,
must soon disappear. There is no exaggeration, then, in saying that
the Revolution found the British provinces of North America thoroughly
Protestant, with a hatred of the church which nothing but the general
contempt for Catholics tended to mitigate; while the seeming failure
of the Catholic settlement in Maryland, one hundred and fifty years
after the landing of Lord Baltimore, gave no promise of a brighter
future for the faith.
In the presence of the impending conflict with England political
questions became supreme, and the Convention of 1774, in its appeal to
the country, entreated all classes of citizens to put away religious
disputes and animosities, which could only withhold them from uniting
in the defence of their common rights and liberties. Though this
appeal was probably meant to smooth the way for a more cordial union
between New England and the Southern colonies, which were even then as
unlike as Puritan and Cavalier, it was also an evidence of the public
feeling, showing that with the American people religious questions
were fast coming to be merely of secondary importance. At any rate it
was responded to cheerfully and generously by the Catholics, who,
without stopping to think of the wrongs they had suffered, threw
themselves heartily into the contest for national independence. The
signer of the Declaration who risked most was a Catholic, and a
Catholic priest was a member of the delegation sent to Canada to bring
about an alliance, or at least to secure the neutrality of that
province.
The conduct of the Catholics in the war made, no doubt, a favorable
impression, and the very important aid given to the American cause by
Catholic France had still further influence in softening the
asperities of Protestant prejudice; but, unless we are mistaken, we
must seek elsewhere for the explanation of the clause of the federal
Constitution which provides that “no religious test shall ever be
required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the
United States”; as well as of the First Amendment, to the effect that
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These provisions were merely a
part of a general policy, which restricted as far as possible the
functions of the federal government, and left to the several States as
much of their separate sovereignty as was consistent with the
existence of the national Union.
This is evident from the fact that the federal Constitution placed no
restriction upon the legislation of the different States in matters of
religion, leaving them free to pursue the intolerant and persecuting
policy of the colonial era; and, indeed, laws for the support of
public worship lingered in Connecticut till 1816 and in Massachusetts
till 1833, and anti-Catholic religious tests were introduced into
several of the State constitutions. In New York, as late as 1806, a
test-oath excluded Catholics from office; and in North Carolina, down
to 1836, only those who were willing to swear to belief in the truth
of Protestantism were permitted to hope for political preferment. New
Jersey erased the anti-Catholic clause from her constitution only in
1844; and even to-day, unless we err, the written law of New Hampshire
retains the test-oath.
The provision which denied to the general government all right of
interference in religious matters was a political necessity. Any
attempt to introduce into Congress religious discussions would have
necessarily rent asunder the still feeble bands by which New England
and the Southern States were held together. The reasons of policy
which forbade the federal government to meddle with slavery applied
with ten-fold force to questions of religion.
The First Amendment to the Constitution, of which we Americans are so
fond of boasting, cannot, then, be interpreted as the proclamation of
the principle of toleration or of the separation of church and state;
it is merely the expression of the will of the confederating States to
retain their pre-existing rights of control over religion, which,
indeed, they could not have delegated to the general government
without imperilling the very existence of the Union. Nearly all the
leading statesmen of that day recognized the necessity of some kind of
union of church and state, and their views were embodied in the
different State constitutions.
The year before the first battle of the Revolution no less than
eighteen Baptists were confined in one jail in Massachusetts for
refusing to pay ministerial rates; and yet John Adams declared “that a
change in the solar system might be expected as soon as a change in
the ecclesiastical system of Massachusetts”; and at a much later
period Judge Story was able to affirm that “it yet remained a problem
to be solved in human affairs whether any free government can be
permanent where the public worship of God and the support of religion
constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state.”
There is no foundation, we think, for the opinion which we have
sometimes heard expressed, that the First Amendment to the
Constitution was intended as an act of tardy justice to the Catholics
of the United States, in gratitude for their conduct during the war
and for the aid of Catholic France. It in fact made no change in the
position of the Catholics, whom it left to the mercy of the different
States, precisely as they had been in the colonial era. Various causes
were, however, at work which, by modifying the attitude of the States
towards religion, tended also to give greater freedom to the Catholic
Church. The first of these was the rise of what may be called the
secular theory of government, whose great exponent, Thomas Jefferson,
had received his political opinions from the French philosophers of
the eighteenth century. The state, according to this theory, is a
purely political organism, and is not in any way concerned with
religion; and this soon came to be the prevailing sentiment in the
Democratic party, whose acknowledged leader Jefferson was, which may
explain why the great mass of the Catholics in this country have
always voted with this party. Another cause that tended to bring about
a separation of church and state was the rapidly-increasing number of
sects, which rendered religious legislation more and more difficult,
especially as several of these were opposed to any recognition of
religion by the civil power. And to this we may add the growing
religious indifference which caused large numbers of Americans to fall
away from, or to be brought up outside of, all ecclesiastical
organization. The desire, too, to encourage immigration—which sprang
from interested motives, and also from a feeling, very powerful in the
United States half a century ago, that this country is the refuge of
all who are oppressed by the European tyrannies—predisposed Americans
to look favorably upon the largest toleration of religious belief and
practice. There is no question, then, but the Catholics of this
country owe the freedom which they now enjoy to the operation of
general laws, the necessary results of given social conditions, and
not at all to the good-will or tolerant temper of American
Protestants. Let us, however, be grateful for the boon, whencesoever
derived. At the close of the war which secured our national
independence and created the republic the Catholic Church found
herself, for all practical purposes, unfettered and free to enter upon
a field which to her, we may say, was new. At that time there were in
the whole country not more than forty thousand Catholics and
twenty-five priests. In all the land there was not a convent or a
religious community. There was not a Catholic school; there was no
bishop; the sacraments of confirmation and of Holy Orders had never
been administered. The church was without organization, having for
several years had no intercourse with its immediate head, the
vicar-apostolic of London; it was without property, with the exception
of some land in Maryland, which, through a variety of contrivances,
had been saved from the rapacity of the colonial persecutors; and,
surrounded by a bigoted Protestant population, ignorant of all the
Catholic glories of the past, it was also without honor. But faith and
hope, which with liberty ought to make all things possible, had not
fled, and soon the budding promise of the future harvest lifted its
timid head beneath the genial sun of a brighter heaven. The priests of
Maryland and Pennsylvania addressed a letter to Pius VI., praying him
to appoint a prefect-apostolic to preside over the church in the
United States; and as the Holy See was already deliberating upon a
step of this kind, Father Carroll was made superior of the American
clergy, with power to administer the sacrament of confirmation. This
was in 1784.
The priests, who at this time, for fear of wounding Protestant
susceptibilities, thought it inexpedient to ask for a bishop, were
now, after longer deliberation, persuaded that in this they had erred,
and they therefore named a committee to present a petition to Rome,
praying for the erection of an episcopal see in the United States. The
Holy Father having signified his willingness to accede to this
proposition, and it having been ascertained, too, that the government
of this country would make no objection, they at once fixed upon
Baltimore as the most suitable location for the new see, and presented
the name of Father Carroll as the most worthy to be its first
occupant. The papal bulls were dated November 6, 1789, and upon their
reception Father Carroll sailed for England, where he was consecrated
on the 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption, 1790.
Events were just then taking place in France which were of great
moment to the young church on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The French Revolution was getting ready to guillotine priests and to
turn churches into barracks; and M. Emery, the Superior-General of the
Order of Saint Sulpice, who was as far-seeing as he was fearless,
entered into correspondence with Bishop Carroll, in England, with a
view to open an ecclesiastical seminary in the United States. The
offer was gladly accepted, and the year following (1791) M. Nagot
organized the Theological Seminary of Baltimore, and in the same year
the first Catholic college in the United States was opened at
Georgetown, in the District of Columbia. In 1790 Father Charles Neale
brought from Antwerp a community of Carmelite nuns, who established
themselves near Port Tobacco, in Southern Maryland. This was the first
convent of religious women founded in the United States, the house of
Ursuline nuns in New Orleans having come into existence while
Louisiana was still a French colony. A few years later a number of
religious ladies adopted the rule of the Order of the Visitation and
organized a convent in Georgetown; and in 1809 Mother Seton founded
near Emmittsburg, in Maryland, the first community of Sisters of
Charity in this country, just one year after Father Dubois, the future
Bishop of New York, had opened Mt. St. Mary’s College. In 1805 Bishop
Carroll reorganized the Society of Jesus, and in 1806 the Dominicans
founded their first convent in the United States, at St. Rose, in
Kentucky. Two years later episcopal sees were established at New York,
Boston, Philadelphia, and Bardstown, with an archiepiscopal centre at
Baltimore.
In this way the church was preparing, as far as the slender means at
her command would permit, to receive and care for the vast multitudes
of Catholics who began to seek refuge in the United States from the
persecutions and oppressions of the British and other European
governments. But her resources were not equal to the urgency and
magnitude of the occasion, and her history, during the half-century
immediately following the close of the Revolutionary war, though full
of examples of courage, zeal, and energy, shows her in the throes of a
struggle which, whether it were for life or death, seemed doubtful.
Like an invading army, her children poured in a ceaseless stream into
the enemy’s country, and, arrived upon the scene of action, they found
themselves without leaders, without provisions, without means of
defence or weapons of heavenly warfare. Far from their spiritual
guides, in a strange land, without churches or schools, the very air
of this new world seemed fatal to the faith of the early Catholic
immigrants; and when, yielding to the rigors of the climate or the
hardships of frontier life, they died in great numbers, their orphan
children fell into the hands of Protestants and were lost to the
church. Their descendants to-day are scattered from Maine to Florida,
from New York to California.
Bishop England, though inclined to exaggerate the losses of the church
in this country, was certainly not mistaken in holding that during the
period of which we speak, though there was an increase of
congregations, there was yet a great falling away of Catholics from
the faith in the United States.
Unfortunately, the want of priests and churches cannot with truth be
said to have been the greatest evil, especially in the early years of
the organization of the hierarchy. A spirit of insubordination existed
both in the clergy and the laity. “Every day,” wrote Bishop Carroll,
“furnishes me with new reflections, and almost every day produces new
events to alarm my conscience and excite fresh solicitude at the
prospect before me. You cannot conceive the trouble which I suffer
already, and the still greater which I foresee from the medley of
clerical characters, coming from different quarters and of various
educations, and seeking employment here. I cannot avoid employing some
of them, and soon they begin to create disturbances.” There were
troubles and scandals in nearly all the larger cities, which in some
instances were fomented by the priests themselves. The trustee system
was a fruitful cause of disturbance, threatening at times to bring the
greatest evils upon the church; especially as there seemed to be
reason to fear lest the dissensions between the clergy and the laity
might serve as a pretext for the intermeddling of the civil authority
in ecclesiastical affairs. Except in the two or three colleges of
which we have spoken, there was no Catholic education to be had; and
for a long time the few elementary schools which were opened were of a
very wretched kind. Indeed, we may say that it is only within the last
quarter of a century that many of the bishops and priests of this
country have come to realize the all-importance of Catholic education.
Another unavoidable evil was the mingling of various nationalities in
the same church, giving rise to jealousies, and frequently to
dissensions; and to this we may add that the very people to whom above
all others the church in this country is indebted for its progress met
with peculiar difficulties in the fulfilment of their God-given
mission. This fact did not escape the keen eye of the first bishop of
Charleston.
“England,” he says, “has unfortunately too well succeeded in
linking contumely to their name [the Irish] in all her
colonies; and though the United States have cast away the
yoke under which she held them, many other causes have
combined to continue against the Irish Catholic more or less
to the present day the sneer of the supercilious, the
contempt of the conceited, and the dull prosing of those who
imagine themselves wise. That which more than a century of
fashion has made habitual is not to be overcome in a year;
and to any Irish Catholic who has dwelt in this country
during one-fourth of the period of my sojourn it will be
painfully evident that, although the evil is slowly
diminishing, its influence is not confined to the American
nor to the anti-Catholic. When a race is once degraded,
however unjustly, it is a weakness of our nature that,
however we may be identified with them upon some points, we
are desirous of showing that the similitude is not complete.
You may be an Irishman, but not a Catholic: you may be
Catholics, but not Irish. It is clear you are not an Irish
Catholic in either case! But when the great majority of
Catholics in the United States were either Irish or of Irish
descent, the force of the prejudice against the Irish
Catholic bore against the Catholic religion, and the
influence of this prejudice has been far more mischievous
than is generally believed.”[125]
We must not omit to add that many of the early missionaries spoke
English very imperfectly and were but little acquainted with the
habits and customs of the people among whom they were called to labor;
while the five or six bishops of the country, separated by great
distances from their priests, rarely saw them, and consequently were
in a great measure unable to control or direct them in the exercise of
the sacred ministry. The French missionaries, who in their own country
had seen the most frightful crimes committed in the name of liberty
and of republicanism, found it difficult to sympathize heartily with
our democratic institutions; and from Ireland very few priests came,
because the French Revolution had broken up the Continental Irish
seminaries from which she drew her own supplies.
The purchase of Louisiana from France in 1803 added little or nothing
to the strength of the church in the United States, since, owing to
the wretched French ecclesiastical colonial policy, which did not
permit the appointment of bishops, the Catholic population of that
province, a large portion of whom were negro slaves, had been almost
wholly neglected. What the state of the church was in Florida at the
time of its cession to the United States may be inferred from the fact
that in the whole province there was but one efficient priest, who at
once withdrew to Cuba, and afterwards to Ireland, his native country.
In the early years of the present century Protestant feeling in this
country was much more earnest and self-confident than at present—in
the simple days of camp-meetings and jerking revivals and childlike
faith in the pope as Antichrist, and in priests and nuns as Satan’s
chosen agents; when the preachers had the whole world of anti-popery
commonplace wherein to disport themselves without fear of
contradiction. The universal feeling of pity for those who doubted the
supreme wisdom of our political institutions was bestowed with not
less boundless liberality upon all who failed to perceive that
American Protestantism was the fine essence and final outcome of all
that is best and purest in religion. Catholic opinion, on the other
hand, was feeble, unorganized, and thrown back upon itself by the
overwhelming force of a public sentiment strong, fresh, and defiant.
We were, moreover, still under the ban of English literature that for
three hundred years had been busy travestying the history and
doctrines of the church, to defend which was made a crime. There were
but few Catholic books, and those to be had generally failed to catch
the phases of religious thought through which American Protestants
were passing. It was more than thirty years after the erection of the
see of Baltimore that the Charleston _Miscellany_, which Archbishop
Hughes called the first really Catholic newspaper ever published in
this country, was founded; and fifty years after the consecration of
Bishop Carroll there were but six Catholic journals in the United
States.
Much else might be said in illustration of the difficulties with which
the church has had to contend, and of the obstacles which she has had
to overcome, in order to win the position which she now occupies in
the great American republic. Enough, however, has been said to show
that it would be difficult to imagine surroundings which, while
allowing her freedom of action, would be better suited to test her
strength and vitality.
The 15th of next August eighty-six years will have passed since the
consecration of Bishop Carroll, and to this period the organized
efforts of the church to secure a position in this country are
confined. The work then begun has not for a moment been intermitted.
In the midst of losses, defeats, persecutions, anxieties, doubts,
revilings, calumnies, the struggle has been still carried on. Each
year with its sorrows brought also its joys. The progress, if at times
imperceptible, was yet real. When in the early synods and councils of
Baltimore were gathered the strong and true-hearted bishops and
priests who have now gone to their rest, there was doubtless more of
sadness than of exultation in their words as they spoke of their
scattered and poorly-provided flocks, of the want of priests, of
churches, of schools, of asylums, of the hardships of missionary life,
and of labors that seemed in vain. Still, they sowed in faith, knowing
that God it is who gives the increase. Like weary travellers who seem
to make no headway, by looking back they saw how much they had
advanced. New churches were built, new congregations were formed, new
dioceses were organized. On some mountain-side or in deep wooded vale
a cloister, a convent, a college, a seminary arose, one hardly knew
how, and yet another and another, until these retreats of learning and
virtue dotted the land. The elements of discord and disturbance within
the church grew less and less active, the relations between priest and
people became more intimate and cordial, the tone of Catholic feeling
improved, ecclesiastical discipline was strengthened, and the
self-respect of the Catholic body increased.
The danger, which at one time may have seemed imminent, of the
estrangement of the laity from the clergy, disappeared little by
little, and to-day in no country in the world are priest and people
more strongly united than here. With the more thorough organization of
dioceses and congregations parochial schools became practicable, and
the great progress made in Catholic elementary education is one of the
most significant and reassuring facts connected with the history of
the church in the United States. The number of pupils in our parochial
schools was, in 1873, 380,000, and to-day it is probably not much
short of half a million, which, however, is even less than half of the
Catholic school population of the entire country. But the work of
building schools is still progressing, and the conviction of the
indispensable necessity of religious education is growing with both
priests and people; so that we may confidently hope that the time is
not very remote when in this country Catholic children will be brought
up only in Catholic schools. By establishing protectories, industrial
schools, and asylums we are growing year after year better able to
provide for our orphan children.
The want of priests, which has hitherto been one of the chief
obstacles to the progress of the church, is now felt only in
exceptional cases or in new or thinly-settled dioceses. A hundred
years ago there were not more than twenty-five priests in the United
States; in 1800 there were supposed to be forty; in 1830 the number
had risen to two hundred and thirty-two, and in 1848 to eight hundred
and ninety. In ten years, from 1862 to 1872, the number of priests was
more than doubled, having grown from two thousand three hundred and
seventeen to four thousand eight hundred and nine. The lack of
vocations to the priesthood among native Americans was formerly a
subject of anxiety and also of frequent discussion among Catholics in
this country; but now it is generally admitted, we think, that if
proper care is taken in the education and training of our youths, a
sufficient number of them will be found willing to devote themselves
to the holy ministry.
In 1875 there were, according to the official statistics of the
various dioceses, five thousand and seventy-four priests, twelve
hundred and seventy-three ecclesiastical students, and six thousand
five hundred and twenty-eight churches and chapels in the United
States. There were also, at the same time, thirty-three theological
seminaries, sixty-three colleges, five hundred and fifty-seven
academies and select schools, sixteen hundred and forty-five parochial
schools, two hundred and fourteen asylums, and ninety-six hospitals
under the authority and control of the Catholic hierarchy of this
country.
One hundred years ago there was not a Catholic ecclesiastical student,
or theological seminary, or college, or academy, or parochial school,
or asylum, or hospital from Maine to Georgia.
Father Badin, the first person who ever received Holy Orders in the
United States, was ordained in the old cathedral of Baltimore on the
25th of May, 1793, just eighty-three years ago. It is now eighty-six
years since Bishop Carroll was consecrated, and down to 1808 he
remained the only Catholic bishop in the American Church, whose
hierarchy is composed at present of one cardinal, ten archbishops,
forty-six bishops, and eight vicars-apostolic.
In 1790 there was not a convent in the United States; in 1800 there
were but two; to-day there are more than three hundred and fifty for
women, and there are probably one hundred and thirty for men.
We may be permitted to refer also to the increase of the wealth of the
church in this country, especially since this seems to be the cause of
great uneasiness to the faithful and unselfish representatives of the
sovereign people. The value of the property owned by the church in
this country, as given in the census reports, was, in 1850,
$9,256,758; in 1860, $26,774,119; and in 1870, $60,985,565. The ratio
of increase from 1850 to 1860 was 189 per cent., and from 1860 to 1870
128 per cent.; while the aggregate wealth of the whole country during
these same periods increased in the former decade only 125 per cent.
and in the latter only 86 per cent. In 1850 the value of the church
property of the Baptists, the Episcopalians, the Methodists, and the
Presbyterians was greater than that of the Catholics, but in 1870 we
had taken the second rank in point of wealth, and to-day we think
there is no doubt but that we hold the first.
“Whatever causes,” says Mr. Abbott, in his recent article on _The
Catholic Peril in America_, “may have contributed to this significant
result, it is certain that among the chief of them must be reckoned
exemption from just taxation, extraordinary shrewdness of financial
management, and fraudulent collusion with dishonest politicians.”
Those who know more of the history of the church in this country than
can be learned from statistical reports, or articles in reviews, or
cyclopædias are aware that there are no possessions in the United
States more honestly acquired, or bought with money more hardly
earned, than those of the Catholic Church; and that her present
wealth, instead of being due to special financial shrewdness, has in
many instances been got in spite of great and frequent financial
blundering; while the bishops and priests of America, with here and
there an exception, have neither had nor sought to have any political
influence, nor would they, if disposed to meddle with partisan
politics, meet with any encouragement from the Catholic people. Their
position with regard to the question of education is the result of
purely conscientious and religious motives; and while claiming for
Catholics the right to give to their children the benefit of religious
training, they have everywhere and repeatedly given the most
convincing proofs of their sincere desire to concede to all others the
fullest liberty in this as in other matters; and though they cannot
approve of that feature in the common-school system which excludes all
teaching of doctrinal religion, they have never thought of pretending
that those to whom it does commend itself should not be permitted to
try the experiment of a purely secular education, provided they
respect in others the freedom of conscience which is now a part of the
organic law of the land.
With very few exceptions, Catholics have, throughout the whole
country, been rigidly excluded from all the higher political offices;
though now, unfortunately, this can hardly be considered a grievance,
since the general corruption and unworthiness of public life have
caused the more respectable class of American citizens to shrink from
the coarseness and vulgarity of our partisan contests. On the other
hand, those nominal Catholics who acquire influence in what are called
“ward politics” are generally very much like other politicians, eager
to serve God and the country whenever it puts money in their purse.
What political reasons may have determined the great body of Catholic
voters in this country to prefer the Democratic to the Whig, and later
to the Republican, party, we know not; but we are very sure that
nothing could be more unfounded than to imagine that the welfare or
progress of the church can in any way be connected with the success of
Democratic partisanism. As a religious body we have nothing to hope
from either or any party. We ask nothing but the liberty which with us
is considered the inalienable heritage of all Christian believers; and
for the rest, we know that a politician doing a good deed is more to
be shunned than an enemy plotting evil.
The property of the Catholic Church in the United States has not been
exempted from taxation, except under general laws which applied
equally to that of all other religious denominations; and though we
can imagine nothing more barbarous, more hurtful to the progress of
the national architecture and to the general æsthetic culture of the
people, than a change in the policy which has hitherto prevailed, not
in this country alone, but in all the civilized states of the world;
nevertheless, if those who hold that religion has no social value
succeed in revolutionizing legislation on this subject, the Catholics
will not be less prepared than their neighbors to abide the issue.
A more interesting study than the wealth of the church is the growth
of the Catholic population in the United States, though, in the
absence of reliable or complete statistics on this subject, we are not
able to give an entirely satisfactory or exact statement of the facts.
The “number of sittings,” to use the phrase of the official reports,
given in the United States Census, is of scarcely any assistance in
determining the religious statistics of the country. The number of
Protestant church sittings, for instance, was in 1870 19,674,548,
whereas the membership of all the Protestant sects of the country was
only about 7,000,000; and it is well known that, while in most
Protestant churches many seats are usually unoccupied during religious
service, in the Catholic churches the same seat is frequently filled
by three, or four, or even five different persons, who take it in
succession at the various Masses.
Ninety-one years ago Father Carroll set down the Catholic population
of the United States at twenty-five thousand, and he may have fallen
short of the real number by about ten thousand. In 1808, when
episcopal sees were placed at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and
Bardstown, the Catholic population had increased to about one hundred
and fifty thousand. In 1832 Bishop England estimated the Catholics of
the United States at half a million; but in 1836, after having given
the subject greater attention, he thought there could not be less than
a million and a quarter. Both these estimates, however, were mere
surmises; for Bishop England, who always exaggerated the losses of the
church in this country, not finding it possible to get the data for a
well-founded opinion as to the Catholic population, was left to
conjecture or to arguments based upon premises which, to say the
least, were themselves unproven. The editors of the _Metropolitan
Catholic Almanac_ for 1848, basing their calculations upon the very
satisfactory returns which they had received from the thirty dioceses
then existing in the United States, set down our Catholic population
at 1,190,700, and this is probably the nearest approach which we can
make to the number of Catholics in this country at the time the great
Irish famine gave a new impulse to emigration to America. From 1848
down to the present day the increase of the Catholic population has
been very rapid, it having risen in a period of twenty-eight years
from a little over a million to nearly seven millions. The third
revised edition of Schem’s _Statistics of the World for 1875_ gives
6,000,000 as the Catholic population of the United States, and the
_American Annual Cyclopædia_ for 1875 reckons it as more than
6,000,000; and from a careful consideration of the data, which,
however, are still imperfect, we think it is at present probably not
less than 7,000,000. This remarkable growth of the church here during
the last thirty years must be attributed to various causes, by far the
most important of which is beyond all doubt the vast immigration from
Ireland; to which, indeed, we must also chiefly ascribe the progress
of the church during this century in all other countries throughout
the world in which the English language is spoken. No other people
could have done for the Catholic faith in the United States what the
Irish people have done. Their unalterable attachment to their priests,
their deep Catholic instincts, which no combination of circumstances
has ever been able to bring into conflict with their love of country;
the unworldly and spiritual temper of the national character; their
indifference to ridicule and contempt; and their unfailing
generosity—all fitted them for the work which was to be done here, and
enabled them, in spite of the strong prejudices against their race
which Americans had inherited from England, to accomplish what would
not have been accomplished by Italian, French, or German Catholics.
Another cause of the more rapid growth of the church during the last
quarter of a century may be found in the more thorough organization of
dioceses, congregations, and schools, by which we are better able to
shield our people from unhealthy influences, and thus year after year
to diminish our losses; while the increasing number of converts to the
faith helps to swell the Catholic ranks. Of 22,209 persons who were
confirmed in the diocese of Baltimore from 1864 to 1868, 2,752, or
more than 12 per cent., were converts; and our converts are generally
from the more intelligent classes of Americans. The efforts to arrest
the progress of the church, which now for nearly half a century have
assumed a kind of periodicity, may be placed among the causes which
have added to her strength. These attempts are made in open violation
of the religious and political principles which are the special boast
of all Americans, and the only arguments which can be adduced to
justify them are drawn from fear or hatred. Whenever we have been made
the victims of lawlessness or fraud, as in the burning of the
Charlestown convent and the churches of Philadelphia, or in the
spreading “Awful Disclosures” throughout the land, the sympathies of
generous and honest men have been attracted to us. And when Protestant
bigotry has made an alliance with a political party in order to
compass our ruin, it has merely succeeded in forcing the opposing
party to take up throughout the whole country the defence of the
Catholics. Thus during the brief day of the “Know-nothing” conspiracy
large numbers of Protestants, for the first time since the
Reformation, were led to examine into the history of the church, with
a view to defend her against the traditional objections of
Protestantism itself. In fact, in a country which looks with equally
tolerant complacency upon every form of belief or unbelief from
Atheism to Voudooism, from the Joss-House of the Chinaman to the
Mormon Tabernacle and breeding caravansary of free-love, to imagine
that there can be either decent or reasonable motives for exciting to
persecution of the Catholic Church is sheer madness; nor can we think
it less absurd to suppose that the good sense and justice of the
American people will allow them to commit themselves to a policy as
inconsistent as it would be outrageous.
However this may be, there can be no doubt but the repeated and
unprovoked attacks made upon the Catholics of the United States by
fanatics and demagogues have helped to increase their union and
earnestness; and this leads us away from the growth of the church in
her external organization to the consideration of the development of
her spiritual and intellectual life. And here we are at once struck by
the similarity between her progress and that of the country itself,
which has been diffusive at the expense of concentration and
thoroughness. Nevertheless, no attentive observer can fail to be
struck by the intense and earnest religious spirit by which the great
body of the Catholics of the United States are animated, as well as
the readiness with which they co-operate with their priests in
promoting the interests of religion. Nowhere do we find greater
eagerness for instruction in the truths of the faith, or greater
willingness to make sacrifices in order to give to the young a
religious education, than among the Catholics of this country. Our
priests are, as a body, laborious, self-sacrificing, and
disinterested, and are honestly struggling to make themselves worthy
of the great mission which God has given them in America.
Our position in this country hitherto has turned the thoughts of our
best minds to polemical and controversial writing, which, though
useful and even necessary, has only a temporary value, since it is
addressed primarily to objections and phases of belief which owe their
special significance to transitory conditions of society and opinion.
Controversies between Catholics and Protestants which forty years ago
attracted general attention and produced considerable impression,
would now pass unnoticed; for the simple reason that Americans, in the
confusion of sects and religious opinions, have come to realize that
Protestantism has no doctrinal basis, and is left to trust exclusively
to religious sentiment. Dogmatic Protestantism is of the past, and the
most popular preachers are those who appeal most skilfully to the
religious instincts without requiring the acceptance of any religious
beliefs. Most of our best writers have been men whose arduous labors
left them but little time for study or literary composition, and their
works frequently bear the marks of hasty performance; but they will
nevertheless not suffer from comparison with the religious writings of
American Protestants. The ablest man who has devoted himself to the
discussion of religion and philosophy, or probably any other subject,
in the United States during the last hundred years is Dr. Brownson,
all of whose best thoughts have been given to the elucidation of
Catholic truth; and though there was something wanting to make him
either a great philosopher or a great theologian, or even a perfect
master of style, we know of no other American of whom this may not
also be justly said; unless, perhaps, we may consider Prescott,
Hawthorne, or Irving worthy of the last of these titles. And though we
Catholics have no man who is able to take up the pen which has just
fallen from the hand of Dr. Brownson, none who have the power which
once belonged to England and Hughes, we are in this not more
unfortunate than our country, which no longer finds men like Adams or
Jefferson to represent not unworthily its supreme dignity; nor any
like Webster, Clay, or Calhoun, whose minds were as lofty as their
honor was pure, to lend the authority of wisdom and eloquence to the
deliberations of a great people.
During the hundred years of our independent life the external
development of the church, like that of the nation, has been so rapid
that all individual energies have to a greater or less degree been
drawn to help on this growth. Another century, bringing other
circumstances, with them will bring the opportunity and the duty of
other work. A more thorough organization must be given to our
educational system; Catholic universities mast be created which in
time will grow to be intellectual centres in which the best minds of
the church in this country may receive the culture and training that
will enable them to work in harmony for the furtherance of Catholic
ends; a more vigorous and independent press, one not weakened by want
or depraved by human respect or regard for persons, must be brought
into existence. We must prepare ourselves to enter more fully into the
public life of the country; to throw the light of Catholic thought
upon each new phase of opinion or belief as it rises; to grapple more
effectively with the great moral evils which threaten at once the life
of the nation and of the church. All this and much else we have to do,
if our God-given mission is to be fulfilled.
And now we will crave the indulgence of our readers while we conclude
with a brief reference to what we conceive to be the office which the
Catholic Church is destined to fulfil in behalf of the American state
and civilization.
De Tocqueville, in his thoughtful and singularly judicious treatise on
American institutions, makes the following very just remarks:
“I think the Catholic religion has been falsely looked upon
as the enemy of democracy. On the contrary, Catholicism,
among the various sects of Christians, seems to me to be one
of the most favorable to the equality of social conditions.
The religious community in the Catholic Church is composed
of but two elements—the priest and the people. The priest
alone is lifted above his flock, and all below him are
equals. In matters of doctrine the Catholic faith places all
human capacities upon the same level; it subjects the wise
and the ignorant, the man of genius and the vulgar crowd, to
the details of the same creed; it imposes the same
observances upon the rich and the poor; it inflicts the same
austerities upon the powerful and the weak; it enters into
no compromise with mortal man, but reducing the whole human
race to the same standard, it confounds all the distinctions
of society at the foot of the same altar, even as they are
confounded in the sight of God. If Catholicism predisposes
the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not prepare
them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of
Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent
more than to render them equal.… But no sooner is the
priesthood entirely separated from the government, as is the
case in the United States, than it is found that no class of
men are naturally more disposed than the Catholics to
transfuse the doctrine of the equality of conditions into
political institutions”[126]
The generous sentiments which two centuries and a half ago led the
Catholics of Maryland to become the pioneers of religious liberty in
the New World, are still warm in the hearts of the Catholic people of
the United States. We have even here been the victims of persecution,
and it is not impossible that similar trials may await us in the
future; but we have the most profound conviction that, even though we
should grow to be nine-tenths of the population of this country, we
shall never prove false to the principle of religious liberty, which,
to the Catholics of the United States, at least, is sacred and
inviolable. For our own part, we should turn with unutterable loathing
from the man who could think that any other course could ever be
either just or honorable.
The Catholics of this republic are deeply impressed with the
inviolability of the rights of the individual. We believe that the man
is more than the citizen; that when the state tramples upon the
God-given liberty of the most wretched beggar, the consciences of all
are violated; that it is its duty to govern as little as possible, and
rather to suffer a greater good to go undone than to do even a slight
wrong in order to accomplish it. For this reason we believe that when
the state assumed the right to control education, it took the first
step away from the true American and Christian theory of government
back towards the old pagan doctrine of state-absolutism. Though we
uphold the rights of the individual, we are not the less strong in our
advocacy of the claims of authority. In fact, the almost unbounded
individual liberty which our American social and political order
allows would fatally lead to anarchy, if not checked by some great and
sacred authority; and this safeguard can be found only in the Catholic
Church, which is the greatest school of respect the world has ever
seen. The church, by her power to inspire faith, reverence, and
obedience, will introduce into our national life and character
elements of refinement and culture which will temper the harshness and
recklessness of our republican manners. By her conservative and
unitive force she will weld into stronger union the heterogeneous
populations and widely-separated parts of our vast country. The
Catholics were the only religious body in the United States not torn
asunder by sectional strife during our civil war, and we are persuaded
that, as our numbers grow and our influence increases, we are destined
to become more and more the strong bond to hold in indissoluble union
the great American family of States. The divisions and dissensions of
Protestantism have a tendency to prepare the public mind to
contemplate without alarm or indignation like divisions and
dissensions in the state; and all who love the country and desire that
it remain one and united for ages must look with pleasure upon the
growth of a religion which, while maintaining the unity of its own
world-wide kingdom, inspires those who are guided by its teachings
with a horror of political dissensions and divisions.
[125] Bishop England’s works, vol. iii. p. 233.
[126] _Democracy in America_, vol. i. p. 305.
A FRENCHMAN’S VIEW OF IT.[127]
M. Claudio Jannet has recently sent forth from the little town of Aix,
in Provence, a work on the United States of the present day which may
be both interesting and profitable to American readers. It does not
appear that M. Jannet has visited the country whose moral, social, and
political condition he sets himself to describe. His information has
been gathered from books, pamphlets, and periodicals; his conclusions
are the result of deliberation rather than the hasty observations of a
tourist, and they are all the more valuable because they are not
distorted by the usual blunders and prejudices which obstruct the
vision of the average Frenchman in America. The European traveller,
particularly the French traveller, finds many things in our country to
shock his prejudices and offend his tastes. The discomforts of the
journey, the harshness of the climate, the extravagance of living, the
imperfections of our domestic economy, the general crudeness of our
new and incomplete civilization, the press and hurry of business, the
lack of æsthetic culture, the vulgarity of popular amusements—all
these things put him out of the humor to be just. He dislikes the
surface aspects of American life, and, with the best disposition in
the world, he commonly fails to see what lies underneath. He fills his
note-book with dyspeptic comments, and when he goes home he writes a
volume of blunders, and all the Americans who read it laugh at it.
Take, however, a conscientious Frenchman of sober and reflective turn
of mind, shut him up in his own study, supply him with an abundance of
the right kind of American books and newspapers, let him ponder over
his subject at leisure in the midst of his accustomed comforts, and
the chances are that he will write a very good essay on the condition
of this country, and tell a great many wholesome truths which we
ourselves hardly suspect.
M. Jannet’s book has been evolved in this way. His industry in the
collection of materials seems to have been remarkable; and if his
judgment has not always kept pace with it, the instances in which he
has been misled are fewer than we should have expected. For most of
his mistakes he can show the excuse of an American authority. It does
not become us, therefore, to find too much fault with him. We are
rather disposed to overlook errors in the statement of particular
facts, and consider the really valuable and novel points in his essay,
with the moral which he wishes us to draw from it. We shall find in
what he says abundant food for reflection, even when we believe him to
be wrong.
He sets out with an attempt to show that the spirit of revolution has
been waging incessant war for nearly a hundred years upon “the work of
Washington,” and that the Constitution, as it was devised by the wise
and conservative party represented by our first President, has been
almost torn to shreds, and is destined to destruction by the
aggressions of radicalism. M. Jannet’s references to “the school of
Washington” seem rather odd to an American reader. We doubt whether
there ever was a distinct political school to which that name could be
properly applied; and it is not at all clear that there have been two
well-defined and antagonistic political principles in conflict since
the very foundation of the government, as Ormuzd and Ahriman, the
spirit of good and the spirit of evil, waged perpetual warfare, in the
Zoroastrian system, for the dominion of the world. The philosophical
historian is fond of tracing in the revolutions of states and the
development of political theories the steady growth of some fixed
principle of action. But it is a specious philosophy which takes no
account of accidents. M. Jannet has made the mistake of going too
deep, and overlooking what lies right on the surface. He sees the
spirit of radicalism, fostered by the influx of communistic and
infidel immigrants from Europe, attacking the conservative safeguards
originally established in our federal and State constitutions,
assailing the rights of the States, extending the suffrage, sweeping
the country into the vortex of uncontrolled democracy. “Popular
sovereignty” is the watchword of this radical movement. “The doctrine
of popular sovereignty,” says M. Jannet, “is based upon the idea that
man is independent, and that consequently there can be no authority
over him except with his own consent. This principle established,
there can no longer be any question of limiting the suffrage by
conditions of capacity, of fitness, or of the representation of
interests, since sovereignty is an attribute of the voter in his
quality as a man. The exclusion of women and minors from the polls is
only an abuse, a relic of old prejudices. Thus the most advanced party
already places female suffrage at the head of its programme, and
perhaps it will some day be established in the United States. The
people, being sovereign by nature, cannot be checked in its will by
any custom, any tradition, any respect for acquired rights. Whatever
it wills is just and reasonable by the mere fact that it so wills.
There can be no permanent constitution for the country; the
constitution can be only what the people wills, or is thought to will,
_for the time being_.” About the year 1850, according to our author,
the heresy of “popular sovereignty,” otherwise the religion of
revolution, obtained full headway, and the radical party, making
skilful use of the anti-slavery sentiment which had hitherto been
cultivated only by a small band of eccentric philanthropists, captured
the masses of well-meaning, unreflecting voters. Liberty and
emancipation were their watchwords; but their real purpose was only
the supremacy of the mob. Slavery was the abuse which they pretended
to attack, but they only feigned a horror for it in order to win over
the small but zealous party of sincere abolitionists; their actual
object was to abolish the federal Union with its limited powers, and
set up a unitary democracy based upon the despotism of universal
suffrage. “From the day when this party came into power by the
election of Lincoln,” says M. Jannet, “nothing remained for the South
but to take up arms to protect its rights against the projects already
disclosed.” And he adds that the radical movement towards pure
democracy “alone can explain the unheard-of ferocity with which the
Northern armies fought, and the odious persecution which followed
their triumph, and which still lasts, ten years afterwards.”
Thus the anti-slavery agitation was only an incident—and, indeed, M.
Jannet seems not to regard it as a very important one—in the long,
uninterrupted, deplorable decline of America from a moderately
conservative federal republic to the despotism of an ignorant,
centralized democracy. It can hardly be necessary to point out to
American readers the serious mistake in M. Jannet’s theory. It is
useless to look beyond slavery for an explanation of the changes
wrought within the past fifteen years in the character of the American
government. Mr. Seward was right when he declared that there was an
irrepressible conflict between slavery and freedom. It had been
gathering force for years when it broke into war in 1861; it had been
the original cause of nearly all the encroachments upon the rights of
the States which preceded the Rebellion, and it had made the very
words “State rights” odious to a vast majority of the Northern people.
The plain truth is that the only State right which the conservative
and aristocratic party cared about maintaining was the right to hold
human beings in bondage, and buy and sell them like cattle. They chose
to identify a political theory with a hateful social institution, and
it was only natural that, when the end came, theory and institution
should go down together. The evil influence of slavery, however, has
survived the extinction of slavery itself. We must not forget that the
active men of 1876 were boys in the exciting period just before the
war, and their political creed took shape at a time when the doctrine
of State rights was the defence of the slave-driver and the
secessionist, and the federal power was the safeguard of freedom and
union. The ideas impressed upon them during the years of conflict have
remained during the years of peace, and have affected in a most
serious manner the fortunes of the country during the period of
reconstruction. For four years, so crowded with great historical
changes that they may be counted as equivalent to nearly a whole
generation of uneventful peace, the nation was taught by the necessity
of war to believe that the reserved rights of the States must yield to
the paramount necessity of preserving the Union, and ultimately of
destroying slavery for the sake of union. It would be unfair to say
that the letter of the Constitution fell into contempt, but there was
a general agreement that constitutions, to be worth anything, must be
elastic instruments, stretched to cover unforeseen emergencies.
Naturally, when the war was over we did not return at once to the old
ideas. In the provisions for saving the fruits of the contest,
guarding against fresh attempts at disunion, and protecting the
emancipated race in its newly-acquired liberties, the despotic and
absolute spirit of the war still prevailed. The federal government
which had put down the rebellion was called upon to secure its
victory. So for the next ten years we saw a constant assumption at
Washington of powers which no Congress or President would have dreamed
of asserting a generation ago. The “reconstructed States” became
little more than vassal provinces, practically ruled at the seat of
the federal government. In some cases, even after the military
governors had disappeared and the States had been restored to
representation in Congress, and nominally to their full powers of
self-administration, we have seen soldiers sent from Washington to
decide local election contests, legislatures dispersed at the point of
the federal bayonet, and the verdict of the ballot rudely set aside by
the President’s despotic order. The general course of legislation for
the Southern States at Washington was inspired by the belief that the
whole Confederacy was a hot-bed of insurrection and crime. Special
laws were enacted to prevent the “rebel element” from acquiring that
predominance in the Southern communities which naturally belonged to
it, and to lift up the negroes to a political power to which they were
not entitled by their numbers, and for which they were not qualified
by character or education. The control of elections was taken away
from the States by the Enforcement laws, and the ordinary police
duties of preserving the peace were usurped by federal appointees
under a strained interpretation of the statutes. An incident reported
in Alabama during the political campaign of 1874 illustrates the
extreme length to which federal interference was carried, and the
ingenuity with which it was employed for merely partisan purposes. A
Republican politician had been murdered in August of that year, and
the perpetrators of the deed had not been discovered. The guilt was
charged, however, upon several active Democrats, and just before the
election they were arrested by a federal marshal and committed for
trial. Of course there was no law which gave the federal authorities
cognizance of murder, and no indictment for that offence could be
found in a federal court; but it was desirable that the arrests should
be made for political effect, and the accused were consequently
indicted under a clause of the Enforcement law for “conspiracy to
prevent a citizen from voting “—a conspiracy to prevent his voting in
November by killing him in August! The arrest served its purpose, and
it is hardly necessary to say that the case never was tried.
But of late the progress of the country towards centralization has
been sensibly checked. The abuses of the past few years have been
followed by a popular reaction. The temper of the South is better
understood. The North begins to see the dangers of the course it has
been following, and at the same time to feel ashamed of its injustice.
And more than all else, the Supreme Court of the United States, in two
able decisions, sweeps away a great mass of the most mischievous
Enforcement legislation, and redefines the almost obliterated
boundaries of State and federal authority. The judgment of the court
in the Grant Parish and Kentucky cases marks an era in our
constitutional history. It neutralizes a great deal of the evil
consequences of the war period, and can hardly fail of a most salutary
effect upon future legislation. When he has read it, even M. Jannet,
perhaps, will take a more cheerful view of our condition.
But let us leave the historical part of M. Jannet’s book, and look at
the picture which he draws of our actual condition. We do not purpose
to criticise it. We shall let our readers correct errors for
themselves, as they can easily do, while we content ourselves with
showing them how the political and social aspects of our country
impress an intelligent foreign student. M. Jannet is deceived
sometimes; he takes too seriously the satire of “the American humorist
Edgar Poë,” and the mixture of sarcasm and burlesque which he cites
from “The gilded age by Mark Twain and Dudley”; but upon the whole he
tells the sober truth. He gives a pretty exact account of our
electoral system, and especially of our system of nominations, which
practically prevents the people from voting for anybody except the
favorites of a little knot of professional politicians assembled in a
committee or ward meeting. As political struggles in the United
States, he says, are not for the triumph of principles, but only for
the possession of power, politics has naturally become debased,
high-minded citizens have insensibly become disgusted with it, and at
the same time the rising flood of universal suffrage has driven the
wealthy classes out of political life. Between 1824 and 1840 the party
organizations were definitively settled, and since then politics has
been the exclusive appanage of politicians by profession. M. Jannet
gives a very unpleasant sketch of this class of persons, and describes
the machinery of manipulating conventions and setting up candidates
with considerable minuteness and accuracy. Nor is it possible for us
to read without mortification his account of the manner in which the
professional politicians carry on the government:
“Such institutions leave the nation completely disarmed
against corruption. No one, either in the executive or the
legislative branch, has any interest in stopping it. We
shall even see that, under the political customs of the
country, the representatives of power in every grade have a
manifest interest in tolerating it.… Before the presidential
election the politicians who manage the conventions of the
party make careful bargains with their candidate for the
distribution of the offices. The President, when he desires
a re-election, has here in the same manner a powerful motive
of action; all the federal employees fight for him with
ardor and by every possible means, for the retention of
their places depends upon his triumph. It is easy to see how
party spirit is inflamed by the prospect of so much booty in
case of success. The evils of this system have become more
striking as the number of federal employees has increased.
Given the prevalence of dishonesty and love of money, it is
evident that office-holders who can retain their places only
a few years must make use of the time to enrich themselves.…
But corruption is not confined to the employees, properly
speaking; it extends in a large measure even to the
representatives of the nation. The President nominates his
cabinet, subject to the confirmation of the Senate. But in
the party conventions the President’s choice is fixed in
advance. Arrangements of the same kind are made with the
senators; for their approval is necessary for a thousand
federal appointments, and naturally for the most important.
The result of this state of things is that the Senate which,
by the Constitution is a directing political body without
whose co-operation it is impossible for the President to
carry on the government, becomes a theatre of incessant
intrigue and corruption.”
We prefer not to follow M. Jannet in his brief recital of the Crédit
Mobilier scandal, the Fremont affair, the Pacific Mail bribery, the
operations of the Tweed and Erie Rings, the boldness of the lobby, the
power of the railway corporations in politics, the pressure of
enormous debts and taxes as the inevitable consequence of legislative
venality, and the degradation of the judicial office. It is a horrible
account, but it is not exaggerated. For all his statements—save, of
course, some mistakes of secondary importance—M. Jannet can show good
American authority.
In the face of all this disorder and corruption the best citizens,
disgusted with political life, hold themselves every year more and
more strictly aloof from it.
“Men of property, merchants, and manufacturers are injured
by the mismanagement of affairs, and deplore it; but each
one finds it for his individual advantage not to lose his
time in trying to correct public evils. The country is still
rich enough to bear the waste and rascality of a government
which calls itself popular.… Even in these days there are
certain influences of religion, race, or locality which
sometimes bring honest and capable men into the local
political assemblies; but the ruling trait of American
democracy is nevertheless the ostracism of the upper classes
and of eminent men. The consequence is that these classes
become more and more dissatisfied with democratic
institutions, and cast wistful eyes towards the
constitutional government, in reality more free than theirs,
which Great Britain and her colonies enjoy. From De
Tocqueville and Ampère to Duvergier de Hauranne and Hepworth
Dixon, all observers have been struck by this sentiment, not
in general openly expressed, but sufficiently shown by the
considerable number of distinguished Americans who pass the
greater part of their lives out of the country.”
In this there is just a modicum of truth—less now, perhaps, than there
was when it was written; for there is to-day an unmistakable tendency
among our best citizens to resume that share in the management of
public affairs from which they have too long suffered themselves to be
excluded. But M. Jannet follows Hepworth Dixon in his stupendously
absurd remarks on the “moral emigration” of the best men of America,
and finds it a proof of distaste for democratic institutions that
Washington Irving should have rambled about the Alhambra, Bancroft
accepted the mission to England, and Hawthorne the consulate at
Liverpool; that Motley should have read the archives of the Dutch
Republic at the Hague, Power and Story studied among the monuments of
Italy, and Longfellow amused himself with the “Golden Legend” when he
might have found so many heroic subjects at home! We are astonished
that M. Jannet, who has certainly read a great many American books,
should not have perceived the dense ignorance which distinguishes this
particular portion of Dixon’s _New America_ perhaps above the rest of
the book. M. Jannet has only to pause and reflect for a moment, and he
will not accuse Diedrich Knickerbocker and the author of the _Life of
Washington_ and _Rip van Winkle_ of neglecting his own country to
lounge in Granada, nor blame the poet of Cambridge because he rhymed
the “Golden Legend” as well as the story of Evangeline and Miles
Standish. Hawthorne too, the most thoroughly national of American
romancers, and Bancroft, who has spent a lifetime in the study of
American history! Is it also to Mr. Hepworth Dixon that M. Jannet is
indebted for the discovery stated in the following passage?
“Americans, even those who at heart are most disgusted with
democracy, have a passionate love of their country, and look
upon themselves as the first nation of the world. This
patriotism, despite its exaggerations, is a great power for
the country. Without precisely desiring the establishment of
a constitutional monarchy, many enlightened Americans aspire
to a stronger and more stable government under a republican
form. I have been struck, in the intercourse that I have had
with many of them, by the secret admiration with which the
rule of Napoleon III. in its day inspired them. This rule,
democratic in its origin, revolutionary in its principle,
but favorable to the preservation of material order and the
acquisition of wealth, agreed very well with their desire
for additional security, and at the same time with their
lack of principles. Sentiments of this kind—and they are
wide-spread—are one of the greatest dangers that threaten
American society.”
Of course the corruption which disgraces politics appears likewise in
the private life of the people. The constant aim of the Yankee, says
M. Jannet, is to make money.
“The love of money seizes the young man from the time of his
adolescence, and does not let the old man allow repose to
the evening of his life. Except in the old slave States,
there is no class of people of leisure in America. From top
to bottom of the ladder, all society is a prey to devouring
activity. Its economical results are considerable; the rapid
growth of the nation and its prodigious development in all
the arts of material well-being are the fruits of this
ardent labor which knows no rest. If the Americans love
money, it is not for the sake of mere acquisition, but in
order that they may give themselves up to the enjoyment of
luxuries and launch into new speculations. Harpagon is a
type which does not exist among them. Indeed, they generally
lack those habits of patient economy which constitute the
strength and the virtue of our old races of peasants and
_bourgeois_. Their readiness to spend and their generosity
in case of need equal their appetite for gain. One who fails
to take account of this characteristic restlessness of
American life will get but an imperfect idea of the private
habits and public institutions of the people. In no country
are ‘honors’ more eagerly sought after or is democratic
vanity more freely indulged; but it must be confessed that
‘honor’ is interpreted among Americans, or at least among
Yankees, in quite a different sense from that which is
accepted in Europe. No man plumes himself upon
disinterestedness. Magistrates, generals, statesmen, accept
subscriptions of jingling dollars as testimonials of public
esteem. It is alike in dollars that they pay, among the
Yankees, for injuries and insults. This universal thirst for
gold has perhaps the good effect of softening political
asperities, at least so long as a boundless field remains
open for work and speculation. The unbridled love of money,
in fact, lowers all men to the same level, and stifles alike
fierce fanaticisms and generous passions. The same ardor in
the pursuit of wealth soon scatters the family. Aged
parents, home, or the paternal acres, nothing can restrain
those who are ruled by this passion alone. There is no
attempt, as there is with us, to conceal the love of money.
‘The almighty dollar!’ cry the Americans with admiration. A
new-comer is presented to them. ‘How much is this man
worth?’ they ask, instead of inquiring, as we should do,
about his antecedents and his merit. Everything is
overlooked for a rich man, and, except in a few chosen
circles, a bankruptcy counts for nothing when fortune smiles
again. Nowhere is merit valued without money. Hence the
inferiority of American literature and art; hence the
commercial customs that prevail in professions which we
style liberal. Physicians, counsellors at-law, even
ministers of the Gospel (we speak, be it understood, only of
the Protestant sects), advertise as freely as the commonest
working-man. Poverty is held in contempt to a degree of
which our older society, formed in the school of Catholicity
and chivalry, can have no idea. In spite of universal
suffrage and absolute political equality, there is no
country in which so great a gulf has been placed between the
rich and the poor. This superficially democratic society
would not live in peace two days, if it were not that the
poor man can raise himself with a little trouble to comfort,
if not to fortune. But when the natural riches of the
country become less abundant and the demand for labor
abates, will not these hard social customs become a cause of
formidable antagonism? Distant as this future may still
appear, the question is one which no serious observer can
well avoid asking.
“The pursuit of wealth is the main-spring of material
progress, but when it is carried to an extreme it misses the
very object of its pursuit. The excessive love of money has
developed in the United States a financial dishonesty which
stains the national character and causes a great loss of the
public property. Who has not heard of the great fires which
so often destroy entire quarters of the large cities? They
are often kindled by individuals who wish to conceal their
bankruptcy or to get the amount of their insurance. These
crimes affect a multitude of innocent persons and cause an
increase in the rates of insurance; in short, it is the
nation at large which pays for such frauds by an increase in
the cost of all its products. It is the same thing with
failures. They entail no dishonor, as they do in France;
that is why they are so many.…
“The causes of this perversion of the moral sense are
complex. Amid the almost infinite subdivision of Protestant
sects there is no longer any religious teaching which
addresses itself with authority to the mass of the nation.
We do not take sufficient account of what Catholicism is
doing in our country to maintain the fundamental ideas of
morality even among men who during their lives remain
strangers to its practices. The corruption of the public
authorities and the inefficient administration of justice
have also a great influence.… Moreover, we must take into
consideration the very mixed character of the population.
Even the native Americans are incessantly in motion. They
transfer themselves from one end of the country to the other
for the slightest of reasons, and thus they escape the
salutary control of local opinion which, among stable
populations, is one of the most powerful moral influences.
The establishment of joint-stock companies for financial and
commercial enterprises—an innovation which dates from about
fifty years ago—has done a great deal to weaken the
sentiment of responsibility.… If certain companies are
honestly administered, a great number are made the occasion
of shameless frauds. We see audacious speculators buying up
a majority of the stock in order to make secret issues of
new shares. This operation is called ‘stock-watering.’ It is
estimated that between July 1, 1867, and May 1, 1869,
twenty-eight railway companies increased their capital from
$287,000,000 to $400,000,000. These shares only serve for
stock-gambling, and woe to those who have them left on their
hands! ‘It would appear,’ says an American writer, ‘that the
railroad speculators have three objects in view: First, to
get as much as possible of the public lands; experience has
proved that the more they ask the more they will obtain, and
that the ease with which Congress is induced to favor their
projects is proportioned to the liberality with which they
distribute funds for corruption. Secondly, to raise in
Europe as large a loan as possible, no matter at what rates.
Thirdly, when they have got all the land and all the money
they can, and have attracted all the immigration from
Germany they can hope for, they sell the railroad, at
whatever loss to the bondholders, and make a little ring of
members of the company its sole proprietors!’ The great
number of these immoral speculations, the adventurous
character of commerce, and the senseless luxury in which all
business men indulge bring on periodically grave financial
crises of which Europe feels only the after effects.
Malversation is common even in institutions which have the
best reasons to be free from it. Enormous defalcations are
daily committed in the administration of charitable works,
neutralizing in a great measure the generosity with which
the Americans have endowed them.”
Alas! it is impossible to deny that these statements are substantially
true. The discoveries of corruption in public life which have recently
produced so much political excitement surprise nobody who has studied
American society. This is a “representative” democracy; and though
certain well-understood causes, which it would be out of place to
discuss here, have long been at work driving the highest class of our
citizens out of public employment, it is undeniable that as a general
rule the morality of men in office is about on a level with that of
the voters who put them there. When peculation and swindling become
common in commerce, and a man who makes money is always treated with
respect until he goes to the penitentiary, it is almost inevitable
that there should be bribery in the cabinet and conspiracy in the
antechambers of the White House. The stream cannot rise higher than
its source.
But if we wish to understand the real condition of the American
people, we must study it in the nurseries of all public virtue—the
home, the school, and the church. With the first of these the woman
question has a most intimate connection. De Tocqueville said that
Americans did not praise women much, but daily showed their respect
for them. Now, says M. Jannet, things have sadly changed. We have
ceased to respect women, and we are always talking about their rights.
There is a considerable party among us which not only insists upon the
right of women to vote and hold office, but would make of them
lawyers, physicians, and ministers of the Gospel, and give them the
direction of industrial and commercial enterprises precisely as if
they were men. M. Jannet confesses that American women, on the whole,
show very little eagerness to play the new _rôle_ which the modern
social reformers have created for them; but the agitation, if it
produces no practical results, has a very unhappy influence upon the
female mind, and a bad effect upon female education. How fearfully the
family relation has been impaired in America all intelligent observers
know. The laxity and confusion of the marriage laws; the shocking
frequency of divorce; the publicity given to scandalous and indecent
investigations; the prevalence of the crime of infanticide, against
which the press, the pulpit, and the medical profession have long
exclaimed in horror; the growing inability or unwillingness of
American women to bear the burden of maternity; the rapid decay of the
American element in the population through the excessive proportion of
deaths to births; the breaking up of homes; the license allowed to the
young of both sexes—all these things are the appalling symptoms of a
deep-seated social disorder. We have been in the habit of making it a
reproach to the French that there is no word in their language which
expresses the American and English idea of home; but it may be
questioned whether, retaining the word, we are not in danger of losing
the reality. In the cities, at all events, there has been within the
last quarter of a century a lamentable change in domestic life.
Fashionable society has broken up the family gatherings around the
evening lamp. The mother no longer lives in the midst of her children;
she spends her days in shopping, visiting, and receiving, and her
nights in the ball-room. Children are educated by hired nurses, and
before they are full grown emancipate themselves from the control of
parents whom they have never been taught to respect and obey. “At
home,” in the jargon of the day, has become a travesty of its original
meaning; it designates the exhibition of a domestic interior from
which all the characteristics of home life are rigorously excluded.
Architects are forgetting the meaning of home, and in the fashionable
house of the period the domestic virtues could hardly find a lodgment.
The hotel and the boarding-house are driving out of existence those
model homes which were once the glory of America. What else could we
expect? It is the woman who gives character to the household, and the
tendency of our time is to remove woman from the fireside and set her
upon the platform.
That there is nothing in the American school system to supply the
defects of American home education no Catholic will need to be
assured. The whole system rests upon the principle that the
school-teacher has nothing to do with the cultivation of the moral
nature of his pupil. His duty is limited to the atlas, the copy-book,
and the multiplication-table. The pretext upon which this rule has
been adopted, says M. Jannet, is respect for all religious beliefs,
but its real end is to create a generation without any positive
religious belief whatever. Zealous Christians even among Protestants
are not deceived by it. A report upon the state of schools in
Pennsylvania in 1864 says: “The importance, not to say the absolute
necessity, of religious education becomes day by day more apparent. If
we wish to maintain our institutions, it is essential to raise the
standard of character and to revive among our people the spirit of
Christianity. The generation which will soon succeed us should not
only be skilful of hand, stout of heart, and enlightened in mind, but
it must learn also to love God and man and practise duty.” But
unfortunately, continues M. Jannet, such remonstrances have proved
unavailing, and the “unsectarian” system is now permanently
established—a sad result for which the Protestant clergy is in great
part to blame. Nearly all of them approve the system, in the belief
that Sunday-schools will be sufficient for religious instruction; but
“true Christians point out that this separation of the two branches of
education tends to make religion regarded as something foreign to the
practical affairs of life.” Our author shows how steadily the godless
theory of education has gained acceptance; he perceives the growing
disposition to enforce it by the authority of the federal government,
and make it obligatory upon the States to provide irreligious schools,
and upon the people to use them. In the progress of this destructive
tendency he traces the influence of German ideas, political,
pseudo-philosophical, socialistic, and atheistic, in which lies one of
the greatest dangers of the republic. “Two things strike us in these
new currents of opinion: on the one hand, their opposition to the old
bases of Anglo-Saxon ideas and liberties under which the United States
lived until about 1850; on the other, their identity with the
principles disseminated in Europe by the revolutionists. It is
impossible for an impartial observer not to recognize here the effect
of one and the same cause acting in accordance with a well defined
aim. This cause, this agent, let us say at once, is Freemasonry. It is
easy to judge of the real purpose which it has in view by studying it
in the United States. There the conflicts and passions of the Old
World have no place; what Freemasonry seeks to accomplish is the
destruction of all positive religion and of every principle of
authority in man’s political and social relations.”
Protestantism, far from checking these disastrous tendencies, has
allowed itself to increase them; and even if it had the will to
constitute itself the defender of the state and the family, it is torn
by intestine divisions and driving rapidly towards disintegration. Yet
M. Jannet does not quite give us up for lost. “The crisis which is now
passing over the country and checking its material prosperity may be
the signal for a reform, in forcing honest men to recognize the vices
of their institutions and the corruption of their manners.” There are
four influences which he hopes may combine to save us. These are, 1,
the wisdom and energy of the people of the South, who, after ten years
of persevering efforts, have at last begun to recover the direction of
their local affairs, and to clear away “the ruins caused by the war
and the domination of the Radicals.” 2. The success obtained by the
Democrats, or rather the Conservatives, in the elections of November,
1874, and April, 1875—a success that will put an end to the despotism
with which the Radicals have cursed the country for fifteen years. We
give these two points for what they are worth; of course we do not
believe that there is any such fundamental difference between the
people of the North and the people of the South, the people who call
themselves Republicans and the people who call themselves Democrats,
as M. Jannet imagines. 3. The great number of American families who,
in the midst of corruption and disorder, have faithfully preserved the
virtues and domestic habits which lie at the foundation of all
prosperous society. 4. Lastly and chiefly, the marvellous progress of
the Catholic Church.
We make no comment upon this portion of his essay, but we end our
review with a few lines from his closing paragraph which it will do us
Americans, at the beginning of our new century, no harm to take to
heart: “In all countries, in all times, under the most diverse
historical and economical conditions, the moral laws which govern
human society are unchanging and inevitable. Founded upon the
decalogue, nay, upon the very nature of God, the distinction between
good and evil knows no mutation. Everywhere men are prosperous or
unfortunate, according as they keep the divine law or break it.”
[127] _Les Etats-Unis Contemporains, ou les Mœurs,
les Institutions et les Idées depuis la Guerre de la
Sécession._ Par Claudio Jannet. Paris: E. Plon et Cie.
1876.
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.
(FROM THE FRENCH.)
ORLEANS, January, 1867.
I hasten to tell you, my darling sister, of our happy arrival in the
city of Joan of Arc. It was cold during this long journey, but I was
so _silkenly_ enveloped inside the elegant _coupé_ which was René’s
New Year’s gift to me that I did not feel it.
_Ah! qu’un autre vous-même est une douce chose!_—“How sweet it is to
have a second self!” You know how often I used to say this at the
Sacred Heart, and with what questioning eyes our Parisian companions
were wont to regard the daughters of Erin. Our impassioned fondness
for one another surprised them, and we said that doubtless in France
people did not know how to love. Dearest, we have now learnt that the
country of our adoption is as _warm_ as our native land. What kind
hearts have we not found here! I am glad, therefore, to remain here
for the winter; besides, with René I cannot grow weary anywhere. Why,
darling Kate, are you not with us? Prepare yourself for frequent
letters, as I have the mania of a scribbling friendship, to the
astonishment of my mother-in-law. True, my writing-desk accompanies me
everywhere, and before all other pleasures I prefer that of conversing
with you.
Our home is delightful for comfort and elegance. We—that is, René and
I—occupy the second story. Our house is in the _Rue Jeanne d’Arc_, and
I have only to go to the window to see the beautiful cathedral, which
I do not fail to visit often, there to pray in union with my Kate. _A
tout seigneur tout honneur._[128] Let us, then, speak first of this
marvel of stone; of this Gothic pile whose lofty towers excite the
admiration of the artist. Dearest, shall I tell you? I felt myself
more _at home_ there than in any other church. I am not going to
describe either the rich chapels or the splendid windows. In these
first visits to _Sainte-Croix_ my heart melted with joy at the thought
that I am a Catholic. “Well, my little _Irlandaise_, and so you are
enthusiastic about Orleans,” said René softly to me, on observing the
flush upon my cheeks.
I have been shown also the statue of Joan of Arc in the _Place du
Martroi_. This, however, I do not admire; it is not the young
shepherdess of my dreams, but a robust maiden of vigorous mould on
horseback. But the bas-reliefs!… These are magnificent, sublime! What
memories! What a history!—put to death upon the soil of this same
France which she had saved. My blood boils when I think of the cruelty
of England.
We are quite a large colony here. I must introduce you, Miss Kate,
into this family circle. You scarcely know my mother-in-law, having
only had an occasional glimpse of her amid the solemnities of my
marriage, and when you were thinking only of your Georgina. We orphans
were all in all to each other—we who were then on the point of being
separated. Dear, dear Kate! my _alter ego_, my idol, who, wholly
possessed by the highest love, have willed to consecrate your youth
and future to the service of our Lord in the persons of his poor; and
now there are you in your coarse habit, while Georgina the worldly is
adorning herself with the jewels which became you so well!
My mother-in-law, who is kindness itself to me, is a person of
exceeding dignity; quite a mediæval _châtelaine_, with the noble
bearing of the heroines of Walter Scott. Her piety is fervent, and,
her sons tell me, just a little austere. Ah! dearest, what a blessing
is such a mother as this. The breath of the present age has not passed
over her dwelling; her children believe and worship; and I seem to
behold in her a Christian of the early centuries or a Blanche of
Castile. My four sisters-in-law are very kind to the last comer, your
Georgina. You saw my brothers in Paris.[129] Mme. Adrien is a Belgian,
lively and graceful, and as proud of her “jewels” as the Cornelia of
antiquity. She has three sons, who are pupils of the Jesuit Fathers in
the _Rue des Postes_, and whom we shall only see during the vacations.
Her daughter Hélène, a superb _blonde_, worthy of inspiring a Raphael,
has just completed her education at the Benedictines of ——. Mme. Raoul
was born of a French family on the other side of the Rhine. Her two
daughters, Thérèse and Madeleine, are my delight. I sometimes go and
look at them sleeping, and then go to sleep myself to dream of angels.
Picture to yourself these twins, the one small and fair, the other
tall, slender, with a pale complexion and brown curls; gayly bearing
the light burden of their ten years, and alike in one thing only—the
voice; and thus they often amuse themselves in taking us by surprise
and making us guess which of the two is speaking. Mme. Paul has four
treasures: the _dauphin_, Arthur, and demoiselles Marguérite, Alix,
and Jeanne, the pretty one who arrived last—all this little
population, young, fresh, smiling, chattering, and roguish. Mme.
Édouard, the most sympathetic of all, the most French, and the most
attractive, who has been married three years, is rich in the sweetest
little cherub that could flatter maternal pride.
Adieu, dearest; this is only a sign of life. I am tired with the
expeditions of the day, and René reminds me that it is late. Be happy,
my Kate, and help me to bless God for my happiness; I am so afraid of
being ungrateful.
YOUR GEORGINA.
JANUARY, 1867.
Booksellers are abundant here, my dear; and René, who knows my
weakness, daily brings me something new. I have just read _Mme.
Rosély_, by Mlle. Monniot, a name dear to our youth. How much I should
like to know this authoress! The mind capable of such conceptions must
be a personification of virtue and devotedness. The thought occurred
to me of writing to her. Dear busy one, you will not even open this
book; and yet how much it would please you, it is so beautiful! What
pleasure it gave me there to find Margaret again, become a sister of
_Bon-Secours_![130] I visited yesterday two churches, St. Paul and
_Recouvrance_, both newly restored. There are fine windows at St.
Paul’s, but the colors are too vivid for my taste. To the right
is a chapel nearly dark, and a black Virgin held in great
veneration—_Notre-Dame des Miracles_. I shall often return thither. I
prayed there with all my heart for you, for our friends, for our own
Ireland. _Recouvrance_ is a charming church, close upon the Loire.
(Did I tell you of my transport on seeing the beautiful river about
which I had written volumes in the upper classes?) The altar is
surmounted by sculptures—Mary and Joseph finding Jesus in the midst of
the doctors. This sanctuary is a casket. Around the side aisles are
delicious little chapels, with frescoes by Hippolyte Lazerges. I will
mention those of the baptistery—Moses striking the rock, and the
Samaritan at Jacob’s well. The Samaritan is admirably fine in form and
expression. I stayed long before it—this fair page of Scripture made
to live, as it were; the Saviour teaching the truth to this sinful
woman! Here are the most beautiful confessionals that can be seen,
with exquisite little paintings—the father of the prodigal welcoming
his son, and the good Shepherd recovering his sheep from among the
thorns.
Your letter has just reached me. Thanks, Kate! How sweet and good a
thing it is to be so loved! Fain would I shed around me some little of
the happiness with which I am flooded. My mother-in-law is so kind as
to let me share in her works of charity, and my good René accompanies
me into the abodes of the poor. Oh! in these low streets what miseries
there are, what repulsive infirmities! These poor quarters remind me
of London. In the evening we pay visits. Orleanese society appears to
me much less frivolous than that of Paris. I felt very shy at the
prospect of all these introductions, but they came about in the most
natural way in the world. Our family party is so united, so animated,
that we have no need to seek amusement from without. At ten o’clock
_Grandmother_ gives the signal for us to separate. René and I prolong
the evening by reading together. With regard to René, I am full of
remorse for having—quite inadvertently, however—neglected to enclose
in my last letter the one which he had written to you, and which you
must since have received. Oh! how excellent he is, this brother of
yours; and how proud of him I am—so intellectual, so distinguished, so
handsome, and, what is far better and worth all the rest, so pious!
Every morning we go together to Mass at _Sainte-Croix_. The Masses of
communion are said in an expiatory chapel before the image of the
Mother of Sorrows. From an artistic point of view this chapel is an
anachronism—a Greek marble in a Gothic church. But what peace reigns
there, what recollection; and one can pray there so well! Orleans
seems to me empty in the absence of its great bishop, now in Rome. Do
you remember our enthusiastic exclamations while reading his excellent
work on education? I am impatient to be presented to him, to speak to
him of Ireland—of this people which he has justly called “a people of
martyrs and apostles.”[131]
Have read the _Souvenirs d’une Institutrice_, by Mme. Bourdon. That
isolation, those struggles against penury, that life so troubled and
stormy, made a hymn of thanksgiving gush out of my heart to Him whose
providence has ordained for me so different a destiny. “O fortune!”
said the Solitary of Cayla, “what suffering dost thou not cause when
thou art adverse!” Dear Kate, with all my heart I pity the poor,
especially the mothers. René made a discovery yesterday—a young
married couple in utter distress, owing to the illness of the husband.
The young mother is wholly occupied in the attendance necessary to the
sick man and to her new-born son, who might be well named Benoni, the
poor darling! It does not possess even a cradle. How I wept while
listening to the story of their last three months! We sent the doctor
to them, and I felt the pleasure of a child in myself choosing
whatever I thought needful for this family. Mary and Joseph must have
been thus at Bethlehem. The poor woman had sold her furniture bit by
bit, not venturing to beg or speak to any one of her troubles; and yer
the charities here are admirably organized.
Lucy (Mme. Édouard) is coming with us to-morrow on a pilgrimage to
Cléry; I shall pray there for my Kate, and for all whom we love. I go
the round of the churches with Lucy; René carves, paints, or writes,
and we have music together. My mother-in-law has given me a beautiful
piano, one of Pleyel’s. Our brothers have excellent voices. Lucy and I
play splendid pieces of Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Beethoven. What
concerts, what harmonies, what an enchanted life! From eight o’clock
in the evening until ten we work for churches or the poor. Don’t be
uneasy, dear Kate, with regard to what you call the unsettled, aimless
life of the world; my hours and minutes are regulated with a
mathematical precision. René loves order above everything, and my
mother-in-law’s hobby is punctuality. Your Georgina, who is not
over-exact and a bit of a loiterer, is making rapid strides to attain
to the perfection of her lord and master, who is good and lovable a
thousand times over, and never scolds.
Do you remember our old mistress Annah, who invariably used to say
upon quitting us, “My husband will scold,” at which we always laughed,
little giddy ones that we were? I bow before your gravity, and kiss
you a hundred and a hundred times.
FEBRUARY, 1867.
I am just come from _St. Pierre du Martroi_, where the Père Minjard
has been preaching a sermon in behalf of the Society of St. Vincent de
Paul—an institution shown by the eloquent orator to be a source of
comfort to sorrows otherwise inconsolable, and also a preservative
against a social danger. What a picture he drew of atheistic
poverty—poverty without God! What eloquence! What a soul of fire! At
last, under this austere Dominican habit, I have beheld a man of
genius. Thought makes this manly countenance its abode, and here
dwells intellect in its plenitude. His eyes sparkle at times with a
lightning flash almost dazzling. Ah! dear Kate, what an absorbing
discourse.
How exactly like yourself it is to be so interested in Benoni and his
family! I scarcely venture to go there, the poor woman so overwhelms
me with her thanks. In vain I tell her again and again that she is my
_sister_, and that in giving her a little from my abundance I have
done nothing more than my strict, rigorous, obligatory duty. She
receives me as if I were an angel from Paradise. The young man is
recovering his health, and the child his roses. Thanks to my good
René, who is really the most generous of men, I have installed them in
a commodious and airy apartment where everything is bright with
sunshine. This morning the God of the Eucharist entered this truly
sanctified dwelling. This little household is so religious, resigned,
and thankful to a kind Providence that God must take pleasure in it as
in a temple.
Our pilgrimage was charming. Lucy consecrated her baby to Our Blessed
Lady; and how happy the little love appeared to be about it! The
church of Cléry is of Gothic architecture, sufficiently remarkable,
but how dilapidated, poor, and bare! I noticed a clock and a Christ
which must be as old as the time of Louis XI.; a magnificent Way of
the Cross; beautiful antique carving in a small chapel which is quite
in a ruinous state. The black Virgin is _Notre-Dame de Cléry_, who
shared with _Notre-Dame d’Embrun_ the affection and the eccentric
devotion of the son of Marie d’Anjou, in whose mind they represented
two distinct persons; and were invoked (O blasphemy!) almost as
witnesses of the atrocities and revengeful deeds of the sombre lord of
Plessis-lez-Tours. The black Virgin is over the high altar. I had a
couple of tapers placed before this miraculous image, one for my
Kate’s intentions and one for my own. The tomb of Louis XI. and of
Charlotte of Savoy is in the nave. By the side of the pulpit is a
monument of black marble; four colonnades of white marble support the
upper portion, also of the same material, upon which the King of
France is kneeling, his hand joined and his face turned towards the
altar of the Blessed Virgin. His countenance has not by any means the
wily and cruel expression given to him in the portraits of the time.
At the four corners are four angels facing the spectators. On the way
home we visited the Church of St. Fiacre. The road is animated in
spite of the season; there, too, is the river, the beautiful river,
the river so eminently French. Besides, must not even the dullest
landscape appear radiant when one is twenty years old, with a husband
whom one adores, a golden future in prospect, and heaven itself in the
heart? Kate dearest, I am faithful to my daily _Te Deum_; it is the
only hymn that can express what I feel.
My mother-in-law gave a large dinner-party in the evening. I made
myself resplendent … in simplicity! This, at least, is the encomium
bestowed on me by René, who pretends that I was very much admired. I
would not say this to any one but my sister. Great names were
represented there; some of the greatest in France—names of chivalrous
associations. How happily inspired was Mother St. Athanasius in making
us read the chronicles of the middle ages! It is to my having done so
that I am indebted for the most gracious smiles of two honorable
dowagers to whom I spoke of the glorious and historical deeds of their
ancestors. Edward sang with me _Le fil de la Vierge_;[132] and
altogether _la petite Irlandaise_ found the evening too short and the
company too amiable. These kind brothers and sisters never weary of
bringing me forward, placing me in the light, and making everybody
love me; my mother-in-law calls me her lily, her heath-flower, her
violet; and the children are wild about Aunt Georgina. Dear Kate, how
ravishingly fair is the dawn of my existence as a young wife!
A fortunate meeting, dearie—namely, with Margaret W——, the beautiful
Englishwoman, who is, she says, _en passage_ here. I was at Ste.
Croix, lost in my thanksgiving after communion, when a rustling of
silk and lace reminded me that I was still on earth, and a musical
voice with a slight English accent said in my ear: “_C’est bien
vous?_—Is it really you, Georgina?” I raised my head and recognized
our friend. We came out together. Margaret has since paid me a visit,
and my mother-in-law asked her to spare a whole day to Georgina. All
the family is won by the grace and lively wit of _la belle Anglaise_.
She is on her wedding tour; her husband is very agreeable—an
accomplished gentleman, with the manners and bearing (if you please)
of a peer of England. Lady Margaret told us about her presentation at
court. Queen Victoria is very fond of her. In the evening
twilight[133] we found ourselves alone together; then, looking
straight into my eyes, Margaret asked me: “Are you truly and perfectly
happy, Georgina?” You may guess what was my answer. “So much the
better; so much the better,” sighed the lofty lady; and then, blushing
and with a full and beating heart, she confided to me her grief—her
husband does not love her! And yet he had seemed to me full of
thoughtful attention to her. “Ah! dear Georgina, if you only knew what
I suffer. I love Lord William passionately. I believed in his love,
and now I know that my large fortune tempted his mother, who, by dint
of entreaties, persuaded him to marry me, when he really loved his
cousin, a poor and pretty orphan, who was, moreover, well deserving of
his affection.” I did not know what to say to her. Was she seeking
consolation? I cannot tell. She was lofty and proud until this
intimate confidence. I took her hand, and with the utmost tenderness
expressed my sympathy, assuring her that no one could see her without
loving her, and that there could be no doubt that Lord William
returned her affection. She burst into tears and kissed me twenty
times. Had I convinced her? In the evening I watched the English peer
attentively; his amiability was perfect. I managed skilfully to bring
out the talents of Margaret, who sang and played the loveliest things,
and with such an expression!… Pray for this heart, dear Kate. Ah! how
true it is that a serpent hides among the flowers. Who would not envy
the happiness of this young bride, endowed with all the good things of
this world, and of an aristocratic beauty really incomparable? On
returning from Italy Margaret will visit Switzerland. We have agreed
that she is to write to me, and that we will do impossibilities to
meet again.
René complained of my being melancholy after the departure of “the
English.” I could not confide to him the secret of my friend. “Dear
Georgina, has this fine bird of passage inspired you with her
wandering propensities?” “You know very well, René, that with you I
desire nothing.” “Smile, then, my lady, or I shall think you are ill;
come, sing me ‘The Lake,’ to shake off your gloom.”[134]
My eyes will no longer stay open, dear sister; my tender affection to
you.
FEBRUARY 17, 1867.
A heavenly day, dear Kate; all fragrant with holy friendship, and,
still better, with divine love. Père Minjard preached a charity sermon
at Ste. Croix on behalf of the schools in the East. We went _en
chœur_,[135] as the twins say. What incomparable eloquence! Nothing so
captivates me as the art of language. I was fascinated, and as if
hanging on the lips of this son of Lacordaire. He took for his text,
“We must rescue Christ. Christ is in danger.” In a sustained and
always admirable style he showed us Christ, in peril in the Gospel, by
false criticism; in peril in tradition, by false science; in peril in
the church teaching, by false politics; in peril in the church taught,
by false literature—all this is a social danger. Oh! what beautiful
things, what sublime thoughts; I could have wished the sermon never to
end, and felt myself living a life of intelligence in a higher region
than I had ever dreamed of before. Here is one among other beauties:
“In our hours of poetry and youth have we not all dreamed of the East,
with its clearer sun, its balmier breezes, its holier memories?… Such
is, in fact, the incomparable favor that Christ has granted us in
leaving in our hands the destiny of his name and his works.” Would
that I could transcribe to you this living harmony, this austere
teaching, ardent and true! How splendidly he brought before us the
ancient memories of that East from which everything we have has come
to us; the grand and Christian souvenirs also of the Crusades, and of
those ages of faith when men were capable of a passionate ardor for
the beautiful and the good! Never had I imagined such rapidity of
thought, such facility of elocution, such magnificence of language.
The few words of allusion to Mgr. Dupanloup were of exquisite
delicacy: “And I say this with so much the more freedom because he to
whom my eulogies would be addressed is not present.” What a picture,
too, he drew of the debasement of our souls if we no more had Jesus
Christ!
A walk yesterday in the _Jardin des Plantes_. Our English parks are
naturalized in France, except in the official gardens—flat and
monotonous squares. A fine view from the top of the rising ground and
the sky of France with René—all this I found superb. The twins were
with us, amusing themselves with a violet, and at every step uttering
exclamations of joy. Thérèse takes the airs of a duchess, and thus
gets called by no other name—a custom which does not seem to displease
her. As for Mad, so small and fragile, I have named her Picciola. My
nieces are already pious, and delight to take me into the churches; we
have seen five—the Visitation, the Sacrè-Cœur, the Presentation, the
Bon-Pasteur, and the Sainte-Enfance.
Great sensation at home: my mother expects her elder sister, _la tante
solennelle_—the solemn aunt—as the _dauphin_, Arthur, has whispered to
me. Everybody makes up a countenance and a toilet suitable to the
occasion; even the babies put on serious faces. These preparations
make me afraid. I whisper to you that the least cloud frightens me;
our sky is always so clear. My mother-in-law, kind and maternal as she
is to me, nevertheless intimidates me greatly. René is going away
to-morrow on business, and this first separation causes me more pain
than I am willing to confess. I long so much to say to him: “Take me
with you.” I feel it would be unreasonable. He is going to travel
eighty leagues in a few days, and does not wish to expose me to this
fatigue, though it seems to me that with him nothing could be
difficult. What will you say, dear Kate, to your Georgina?—that you no
longer recognize her great courage, and that inability to bear the
least contrariety is not the mark of a Christian; that I ought rather
to thank Providence for sending me the opportunity of gaining a little
merit. Dear little preacher! the heart that loves does not reason, and
René is my universe. But I promise you to accept this light trial.
Send your good angel to the traveller, darling Kate.
_Evening._—I set out to-morrow with the dawn! René read in my eyes
that I was fretting, and altered his itinerary; I am radiant, and
looking forward to a thousand delights.
Love your Georgina. Let us pray together for our green Erin, so worthy
of our love. I have always in my heart the hope of its resurrection.
MARCH 6, 1867.
Shall I tell you about my journey, dearest Kate? We made a halt in
Brittany, the land of true poets, where we are to pass the summer. As
we walked over the barren heaths we shut our eyes and evoked the old
memories of Armorica, while the mild image of Guy de Bretagne and of
Isabelle aux Blanches Mains[136] mingled in our imaginations with the
shades of the martyrs. Dear Kate, I enjoyed this excursion immensely.
The farther I go, the more I realize the happiness which God has
allotted me in giving me for guide, adviser, and support this dear and
gentle René, so truly the _brother_ of my heart. We have been reading
together the life of Saint Elizabeth by M. de Montalembert. The “dear
saint” of Protestant Germany was wont to call her husband by the sweet
name of brother, and this we thought so suave, so charming, and
angelic that we agreed to call each other brother and sister when we
are alone. Oh! what a heavenly thing is Christian love. That which I
first of all admired in René, even when he was to me merely a
stranger, was his recollectedness in church. He has often said to
me—and with what earnestness!—“Georgina, let Jesus be all in all to
us.” It is to your prayers, my darling Kate, that I owe this happy
destiny.
What a surprise! My Aunt de K—— was not expected before the end of the
week; but this morning, on returning from my visits among the poor,
René left me at the house door, and I hastened as usual into the
drawing-room to say good-morning to the dear little ones who daily
welcome me with shouts of joy. On entering I beheld an unknown face;
it was the _solemn aunt_. A sudden blush mounted even to my forehead.
My mother-in-law introduced me; while I lost myself in reverences, my
aunt bestowed on me a half-inclination of the head—so cold! looking at
me all the time with so searching an eye that I was almost out of
countenance. Fortunately, the door was again thrown open very wide,
and a footman in full livery announced Mme. Edouard, M. Gaston (this
is the pretty baby), and in succession M. et Mme. Adrien, M. et Mme.
Raoul, M. et Mme. Paul. All were richly dressed. I hid myself as well
as I could behind Lucy’s fauteuil to keep my shabby toilet out of
sight, and then took advantage of the entrance of the children to make
my escape before the entry of René. The solemnity of the _déjeûner_
nearly sent me to sleep. At eight o’clock in the evening Mme. de K——
retired to her room, alleging that she was fatigued with her journey;
you may judge whether any one tried to detain her. Then we began to
dress ourselves up, and exchanged silence for joyous dances and merry
laughter. _Duchesse_ was a “golden fairy,” superb with her lofty air;
there is a touch of my _solemn aunt_ about her. Picciola was charming
in her ribbon-decked costume of a shepherdess. Your Georgina was
dressed _en Sévigné_; the sparkling Lucy as a _soubrette_ of the time
of Louis XIV. A few intimate friends joined us about nine o’clock. The
brilliant chords of the piano troubled not the repose of Mme. de K——,
who was purposely lodged far from the noise. Our songs, our dances,
and lively follies went on till one o’clock; and as I am not tired,
and, besides, make a point of sending you news of us before
_mortifying_ Lent shall have proclaimed a truce to our delights, with
René’s permission I relate to you these little events. Dear Kate, my
letters will no longer speak of anything but sanctity. I kiss you with
all my heart. _My brother_, who is beginning to read me a chapter of
the _Imitation_, tells you how much he is devoted to you in Him whose
love is the bond of our souls.
MARCH 10.
My dearest Kate, do not be anxious if I tell you that I am going to
keep all the fasting days of Lent. The good doctor gives me permission
to do so, in spite of my eighteen years, on condition that in case of
the slightest fatigue I give it up. This is understood. M. l’Abbé
Charles Perraud, of the Oratory, is preaching the Lent at
_Sainte-Croix_. What a congregation! It was a compact crowd. The text
was, “Man does not live by bread alone.” In order to please your love
of sacrifice I will not send you another note during all these forty
days; but as I have not yet made any vow to renounce the most
legitimate gratifications of the heart, I shall keep a journal with
great regularity, to send you after Easter.
I am reading again _Rob Roy_ with René; this is for our secular
reading, but for the spiritual we have the Conferences of Fathers
Lacordaire and De Ravignan.
12th.—Was at the sermon: “Enter into your heart.” The orator spoke of
recollectedness, inviting us to enter into our heart, promising that
by so doing we should find _light_, _joy_ and _virtue_; these were the
three points of his discourse. We take interminable walks with
Isabelle (Mme. Raoul) and her children. I am working a magnificent
chasuble which I wish to present to our _curé_ in Brittany. René reads
to us the _Revue du Monde Catholique_ and the _Union_. These gentlemen
do not go to the club, but occupy themselves, according to their
respective tastes, in painting, carving, illuminating, and creating
surprises for us. My _solemn aunt_ took her departure this morning,
and all that is cold, heavy and pompous went with her.
I have not told you that Hélène and I are the best of friends. We are
of the same age; she has always had an especial liking for René, and
she also entrusts me with her confidences. Dear Kate, this good young
heart has likewise been wounded by the divine Hand, and she who is the
idol of her family desires to leave us, that she may give herself
wholly to God. The poor mother knows nothing, but she has a
presentiment of this secret (at the same time sweet and distressing),
and strives to dissuade her daughter from her purpose. Hélène wishes
to be a Carmelite. She has her grandmother’s energy and greatness of
soul, and nothing can shake her resolution. Thus there will be a
separation under this happy roof; the singing-bird is about to spread
her wings and fly away to other skies. Since my pretty niece opened
her heart to me I have become quite thoughtful. If it should so happen
that God required of me a similar sacrifice; and if, after giving up
my sister to him, I must also give him a child of my own!… But I put
aside this apprehension. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.
14th.—“Bear God in your heart and glorify him in your bodies.” This
sermon has deeply impressed me; how I love the Catholic doctrine
respecting the body of man!
I love to communicate by the side of René. Hélène followed us this
morning; in returning from the altar I involuntarily looked at her,
and was struck by the air of ecstatic joy and profound happiness which
shone on her countenance. Kate, she is truly called! Adrien dotes upon
his daughter. Each one of the family feels the charm of her bright and
cheerful piety, which makes her admirable even in the smallest things;
she is _grandmother’s_ right hand, who feels herself living over again
in this fair child.… How we are going to suffer!
16th.—A long walk with all the darlings, which made me miss a sermon
of the Abbé Bougaud, whom I so much want to hear. Visited two
churches. Orleans is full of them, and reminds me of the towns in
Italy, where one comes upon them at every step. I have had some
letters from Ireland, from our friends in Dublin. Lizzie asks me if,
like her, I have a “dear, sweet home”; she is enchanted with her
position. Ellen, the lively Ellen, gently rallies me on my love for
France, and reminds me of Petrarch:
_Non e questa la patria!_
How she misjudges my feelings if she thinks that my happiness could
make me forgetful of Ireland!
21st.—Sermon on the love of our neighbor. I have no trouble in loving
this dear neighbor of mine. _Duchesse_ allows herself to rally her
aunt on what she calls her _love of everybody_! Happily for this lofty
little person, Berthe (Mme. Raoul) wages unflinching war against the
slightest tendency to pride, and the uncles surpass one another in
teasing her out of it. My room is all perfumed with the sweet
fragrance of violets. René has brought me home splendid ones from his
morning’s ramble. I delight in my bouquets like a child with a
plaything; it is long since I have had any flowers, and I love these
balmy things, which the poetic Margaret calls the “beauties of nature,
queens of solitude, and daughters of the sun.”
25th.—The weather was fine; René had the horses put in, and we set out
together, delighted to be alone. As we were coming down the _Rue
Royale_ I caught sight of Hélène and her father, lost in admiration
before some fine engravings. “Shall we take them with us?” I said to
René; and a minute afterwards the future Carmelite was giving us her
impressions of the day. How charming she is! And all this beauty is
going to conceal itself under the austere _bandeau_ and thick veil.…
We went to the _Chapelle Saint-Mesmin_, where Monseigneur has his
college and his summer residence. The pure air, the perfumes of the
spring, the evening calm, gave me an inexpressible feeling of
enjoyment. For a moment I forgot this earth, and in the isolation of
thought went back to my childhood; saw our beloved home, and our so
lamented mother watching us at play. Why is she not with us still? She
would have been so proud of René. “What are you thinking of,” asked
Hélène, “looking in this way up to heaven like the picture of the
Mignon of Ary Scheffer?” “She is dreaming of Ireland,” replied _my
brother_, who had understood me.
31st.—Sermon on the intellectual life: “Lord, give me understanding
and I shall live.” My mother-in-law was rather unwell; I passed the
day in her room. The whole _flight of doves_, profiting by this fine
Sunday, went out to flutter in the bright sunshine. Hélène presented
her grandmother with a bunch of double violets; she took them with a
smile, and then delicately placed them in my hair, saying as she did
so: “Darling Violet, receive your sisters.” I kissed her hand—that
soft, white hand which reminds me of my mother’s.
April 2.—“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The
days succeed each other, but are not much alike, it is said,
immutability not belonging to this earth. That which always resembles
itself is my union with René. He is no sooner absent than something
within me suffers; as soon as he returns my heart overflows with joy.
Lucy asked me, “Are you never sad?” “Never!” “Happy sister!” she
rejoined; “as for me, I weep sometimes when baby suffers; then I feel
as if all was lost—as if I must die. Edward calls this exaggeration.”
“Dear Lucy, the Holy Ghost has said, ‘If you are glad of heart, sing:
if sorrowful, pray.’ Pray, then, so that you may never be sad. God is
so good that we ought to serve him with a joyful heart.”
7th.—Played some splendid duets with Hélène, who has remarkable power.
Sermon on the supernatural life: “If you eat not the flesh of the Son
of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” The Père Perraud
was the intimate friend of the gentle Abbé Perreyve—“this delightful
apparition,” said M. de Montalembert, “which, after an interval of
thirty years, has made me seem to see again Lacordaire as he appeared
before the court of the peers of France, young, eloquent, intrepid,
gentle and frank, austere and charming, but above all ardent and
tender, endowed with that spring of fascination, that key of hearts,
which is found so rarely here below. In him one saw again that noble
and sympathetic look which no one who had once received it could ever
forget—that eye, questioning and candid as that of a child.”
I am reading again, with René, _Quentin Durward_ and _Charles the
Bold_. I am translating into English _Les Enfants d’Édouard_ for Lucy,
who says she likes English better than anything, and wishes to teach
it to her son. Edward (ours) pretends that I possess all the
qualifications for a good professor. They will spoil me, these kind
brothers.
12th.—Way of the Cross, of the Friday. I love this devotion. Even the
_dauphin_, Arthur, begs to go to it; he has a taste for music, and the
pretty voices of the children of the choir fascinate him.
I have to-day been absorbed in a delightful book for which I am
indebted to the obliging kindness of Adrien. It is the letters of
Silvio Pellico, translated by M. Latour. What an admirable man Silvio
is! Do you recollect the _Mémoires d’Andryane_? Silvio speaks of this
book, and deeply regrets that his friend, the Frenchman, did not use
more reserve in his confidences to the public, as there were still
prisoners in the Spielberg.
14th.—Copied a beautiful letter of Mgr. le Comte de Chambord, _our
king_, as _duchesse_ proudly says. Mgr. Dupanloup is at Orleans; this
evening he appeared in the pulpit. I was there; for, although the
sermon was for men only, I like so much to witness this fine spectacle
of the nave quite filled with men. I know of nothing more solemn and
imposing than the _Miserere_ chanted by this multitude of deep and
powerful male voices, accompanied by the rich tones of the great
organ. My heart beat; for I was about to listen to the great orator.
Alas! after the invocation Monseigneur left the pulpit, and was
replaced by the Père Perraud. He took for his text the words of the
prophet Isaias: “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the
night? And the watchman answered: The morning cometh, and also the
night: if you seek, seek: return, come.”[137] M. Bougaud preaches the
retreat for ladies; we are entering upon the week that is indeed holy.
15th.—Dear Kate, I am in a state of enthusiasm. M. Bougaud is quite
what his _Sainte Chantal_ had led me to anticipate: an ardent soul, a
heart of fire, his style unique, rich, picturesque, poetic, incisive,
penetrating; the priestly heart which knows all the feelings, the
aspirations, and the needs of souls.
“Who are you, and what say you of yourselves?” It was admirably fine.
He described to us the three wounds, the three martyrdoms, or the
three honors of man in this world:, in the mind, the thirst for
infinite illumination; in the heart, a keen and incessant hunger after
affections; and in the whole being, the craving for eternity. It is
from eternity that we are descended, and thither we must ascend again.
I warmly expressed my admiration to René and Edouard, who were waiting
for me. My sisters were detained at home by their maternal cares, but
it is settled that to-morrow we are to go _in choir_.
16th.—Sermon on the duties of mothers: “Three things constitute a
great soul, a soul strong and invincible: a horror of sin, a contempt
for all that passes away, and the love of God.” Oh! if it were granted
me to have a child, what happiness it would be to me to develop in him
these three things.
17th.—I have not been to the sermon, dear Kate … A letter from Fanny
W—— has informed me of the sudden death of our dear Mary. I have been
weeping all day, thinking of the despair of her poor mother. There had
been nothing to prepare her for this thunderclap. Mary appeared to
have entirely recovered from the fall she had last year, of which the
only remaining effect was an excessive paleness—“a paleness which
rendered her so attractive that no one saw in it any alarming symptom.
The eve of her death she was speaking of you, of Kate, the chosen one
of her heart. Our vigil was prolonged to a later hour than usual; I
make use of the word _vigil_, because Mary loved it. We spoke of the
great subjects of interest about which she was so enthusiastic—of the
church, of Ireland, and of Poland, that other martyr; and Mary said to
us: ‘How the saints must implore the Lord for their brethren upon
earth!’ Dear soul! she also implores him now. Comfort us, darling
Georgina.” I have written. I have tried to comfort these two hearts,
so stricken by death—that wound which is incurable here below. May God
be their help! Dear Kate, you will not hear of this loss for eight
days to come, in the midst of the Catholic alleluia; but it is indeed
alleluia that one ought to sing over this early tomb. Happy are they
whom God calls to himself! René has been reading to me this evening
some chapters on the sufferings of Jesus Christ, by Father Thomas of
Jesus. Truly, the Calvary of Lady W—— is the sudden departure of her
angelic child; and who can console a mother?
Fanny is saddened on account of their isolation, although, with the
marvellous intuition of pure souls, she feels that death separates
bodies only. “She is always present to me,” she writes. A world of
memories revived within me upon reading these pages, bedewed with many
tears. How warmly this family is attached to us!
18th.—I could write a volume upon this Holy Thursday, the Thursday
_par excellence_. At seven o’clock I was in the _Black Chapel_ with
René; and we did not leave Ste. Croix until past eleven. What a
service, dear Kate! The Catholic worship is nowhere more magnificently
celebrated. To adorn this vast temple, Monseigneur is having admirable
Stations of the Cross sculptured in the walls themselves; the sculptor
requires a year for each station, of which the earlier ones are now
open to the pious curiosity of the public. Before one o’clock I set
out with René, Hélène, and the twins for the visits to the churches—a
veritable steeplechase. _Duchesse_ had laid a wager with Arthur that
she would see fifteen; and as she was bent upon gaining it, she so
prettily pressed me to show her “some more” that we still went on and
on. We had afterwards a time of repose; a sermon from that true
orator, M. Bougaud: “Whensoever you shall do these things, do them in
remembrance of me.” Our Lord has left us a remembrance. What is this
remembrance, and with what feelings ought we to regard it? What
eloquence! How well he depicted this remembrance, and also how
thorough an insight he possesses of the heart! What happy similitudes
and figures! How he feels and how he loves! It is plain that the love
of God predominates all else in this soul. “When I was young I took
offence at Bossuet for saying that friendships pass away with years;
but now I am offended with him no more: he saw clearly; he saw only
too well.” “When I glance over the globe I am greatly moved. I see
Ireland dying of famine; Poland groaning forth her last sigh of agony;
Germany, who has not yet stanched the bleeding wounds inflicted by her
fratricidal wars; Italy, binding up her wounds in the sun like a poor
stricken Samaritan; France, who perhaps in a few months’ time will be
covered with blood—all the nations shattered and expiring.… “Dear
Kate, I wept as I listened to this enumeration; for I thought of Mary,
who died almost while speaking of the martyr-nations. With regard to
what M. Bougaud said about the love of God, my pen is powerless to
express it.
We are come back this evening from Ste. Croix. Never did I see
anything more imposing. The cathedral was full. The singing of the
_Stabat_ was something admirable. We were in the transept, and before
us this mass of men like a moving sea, a profusion of lights, numerous
clergy, the grand voice of the organ, and in the tribune the children
of the choir, with the voices of angels. I was transported. A good
day, upon the whole, although I should have preferred to all this
agitation a few hours of solitude at the feet of Jesus. It is late;
René is waiting for me for the holy hour. Good-night, dear Kate; let
us love Jesus more and more.
19th.—This morning I hastened with Hélène to make the Way of the Cross
before there was a crowd. The service was very fine. Monseigneur was
present; he seemed to me to be in great suffering. I was at the sermon
preached by M. Bougaud on the Passion. What attractive eloquence! What
love for the divine Crucified One! The preacher showed us the Passion
as the true Sacrifice in which are united the three parts of the
sacrifices of antiquity: oblation, immolation, and communion. He
portrayed the august Victim, his beauty, his courage, and his love;
and in accents of the most touching pathos he retraced for us the
great tragedy of the cross. How he has understood and experienced the
Saviour’s love! Speech is inadequate to express his lofty enthusiasm,
accompanied as it is by a heart and an imagination enkindled with such
fervor.
On a day like this one does not know how to quit the church. We were
there again this evening for the sermon of the Père Perraud: “He was
bruised for our sins.” This young preacher was truly eloquent; he too
believes and loves, and the love of God is a flame which is marvellous
in its inspiration. He pointed out to us in the Passion of Jesus
Christ a great teaching: hatred of sin; a sure hope; the mercy of the
Lord. Kate dearest, this is the first Good Friday that I have ever
spent away from you!
20th.—Heard three Masses with René; his ardent piety is a help to my
tepidity. This is _the vigil par excellence_, the last of the holy
forty days.
M. Bougaud’s concluding sermon has been worthy of the preceding ones;
it was taken from the words of St. Augustine, spoken on the same day,
in the year 387, when St. Ambrose gave holy baptism to this _son of so
many tears_: “I believe in God; I believe in Jesus Christ; I believe
in the church.” To listen to M. Bougaud is a royal treat; I hung, as
it were, on his lips, drinking in that eloquence which is indeed the
two-edged sword spoken of in Scripture. “God is the place of souls. A
place is that which bears, which supports.” How ably he developed this
great proposition! “Jesus Christ is the only veritable source of love,
devotedness, immolation, and sacrifice. All in the present age that is
vile, or despicable, or impious will never be able to effect anything
against the church; while all it has that is beautiful, noble,
refined, great, and excellent will never be able to effect anything
but by the church; these I call the two axioms of the intelligence and
love of the church. The distinctive and immortal sign which
characterizes the church, and which belongs to her alone, is not
science, eloquence, or genius; it is devotedness, immolation,
sacrifice.” And speaking of the love of God, of Jesus Christ, and of
the church, the characteristic of living souls, he said: “It is
needful to awaken in souls this threefold love.” It was beautiful,
sublime; but a discourse like this cannot be reproduced by lips
profane. This evening we had no regular sermon, owing to the fatigue
of the preacher. He contented himself with thanking his male auditors
for their assiduous and willing attention (the Abbé Bougaud thanked us
also, with a charm peculiarly his own), gave a _résumé_ of the
principal features of the plan he has been following in this course of
instruction, and, after saying a few words on the subject of the
Paschal Communion, ended by inviting to it those who have not yet
responded to the call of their Saviour, entreating them to be among
the workmen who came at the eleventh hour. O Lord Jesus! draw all
souls unto thee; reveal to them the incomparable sweetness of thy
service.
Dear Kate, I am told so much of the beauties of the Procession of the
Resurrection that I have decided to go to it. Marianne promises to
wake me. Do you remember the good Duchess Elizabeth giving orders for
her foot to be pulled in the night by one of her attendants, and of
the pleasing trait of the Landgrave? To-morrow I shall have this
volume put into the post; read in every line the unalterable affection
of your Georgina. I do not mention René, our hearts having been melted
into one alone. _Alleluia_, dear sister of my soul! When will the
Catholic alleluia be sung in all the universe? Who can ever have made
the title of _papist_ a term of reproach? May England herself one day
become papist and receive the pardon of Ireland! O my country! how
devotedly I love her.
TO BE CONTINUED.
[128] “To every noble, all honor” (proverb).
[129] Mmes. de T—— were detained in Brittany at
the time of Georgina’s marriage. The birth of Jeanne,
Mme. Paul’s fourth child, took place the same day.
[130] Our Lady of Good Help.
[131] Sermon preached at St. Roch, 1861.
[132] “The Virgin’s Thread,” the poetic and popular
name in France for the gossamer.
[133] _L’entre chien et loup._
[134] _Désassombrir._
[135] _In choir_—in a body; a whole party.
[136] The white-handed Isabelle.
[137] Is. xxi. 11.
THE TYPICAL MEN OF AMERICA.
The commemoration of the birth of American independence one hundred
years ago, which is now engaging the attention of our entire
community, and exciting a lively interest in every quarter of the
civilized world, while it affords us an excellent opportunity for the
display of the most tangible evidences of great national prosperity
and progress in arts, sciences, and industrial pursuits, will not be
without its salutary influence on the thousands of intelligent
foreigners who this year, for the first time, may visit our shores.
Whether these strangers come to us merely to gratify their curiosity,
or, actuated by a laudable spirit of investigation, to study our laws,
institutions, and peculiar systems of labor, a personal inspection of
our social and political condition will doubtless have the effect of
removing many latent prejudices and false conceptions from their minds
which have been planted and fostered there by ignorant journalists and
hostile critics.
And if, instead of confining their observations to the things to be
seen in the grand Exhibition at Philadelphia, or even to the seaboard
cities, with their fleets of shipping, gigantic warehouses, and
immense factories, they should penetrate into the interior, they will
behold a condition of society unequalled in any country or age. There,
in the near and far West, the observant traveller will find millions
of happy homesteads, wherein the laborious husbandman can repose in
the twilight of his useful existence, conscious that the fertile soil
upon which he has spent the best years of his manhood, and the
roof-tree that covers him, are absolutely his own, subject to no
earthly authority but the law which he and his fellows have devised
for their mutual happiness and protection.
But while these advances in material as well as political greatness
are naturally subjects of honest pride with the people of this
country, they likewise give rise to grave reflections, and
instinctively suggest the question: Has our progress in the higher
aims of life, in civilization, morality, and religion, kept pace with
our extraordinary increase in wealth, population, political power, and
material development? We have no desire to throw a passing shadow over
the festive spirit of this centennial year by dwelling too
emphatically on individual and national faults—faults which, though
more apparent in our popular system of government than in the more
secretive polity of other nations, are nevertheless common to all—but
we are obliged in candor to admit that the grosser pursuits of life,
the desire to possess the perishable things of the world, have
occupied much more the attention of the busy brains and restless
physical energy of our population, than the cultivation of solid
mental gifts and the practice of public and private virtues.
Much, of course, may be urged in palliation of this undue tendency to
materialism. Possessing a fertile, unsettled country of vast
dimensions and inexhaustible agricultural and mineral wealth, it was
not unnatural that the new-born energies of our young republic should
be directed to the attainment of personal independence, by the
cultivation and exploration of the almost illimitable public domain of
which we became the owners by right of conquest or purchase. But is it
not now time to pause on the threshold of our second century of
existence, and enquire whether, in this headlong pursuit of material
success, we have not almost lost sight of the great and sole end for
which man was created, and the means by which his destiny in this
world and the next is to be accomplished? Has not our test of human
usefulness been an incomplete one, and our standard of mental and
moral excellence far too low?
In nature, it is said, everything is great or little by comparison. If
the same rule be applied to the conduct and achievements of the men of
the present day, as contrasted with those of a past age, we fear it
would be found that, while we are willing to honor the virtues of our
ancestors and eager to claim a share of their glory, we have
lamentably failed in following their brilliant example, and much more
so in improving on their plans and methods of benefiting mankind. And
yet examples worthy of imitation are not wanting in the short but
eventful pages of our history. We need not go back to remote antiquity
for them, or even search through tomes of mediæval chronicles for what
is so plentifully supplied us in modern records—models of moral
purity, unsullied reputation, unselfish ambition, and perfect manhood.
Take, for instance, those two illustrious men whose names are most
inseparably connected with American history—Christopher Columbus, the
discoverer of the New World, and George Washington, the central figure
in that group of patriots and statesmen who founded the only really
free republic that now exists or ever had an existence.
From the day he left his father’s house in Genoa, at the early age of
fifteen, till, spent by toil and worn down by disease, he expired in
Valladolid, the great discoverer pursued one unvarying course with a
tenacity of purpose and a strength of will that were truly heroic. But
Columbus was more than a hero: he was a Christian in the highest
sense, a Catholic thoroughly imbued with the doctrines of the church,
and as jealous of her honor and authority as the most loving son could
be of the reputation of his earthly mother. During nearly half a
century of constant study, adventure, grand successes, and
disheartening changes of fortune, the experienced seaman, erudite
astronomer, and close observer of natural phenomena exemplified in his
whole career, with singular consistency, all the supernatural virtues
with which God is sometimes pleased to endow his creatures. To a mind
well disciplined and stored with all the human knowledge of his age
were added a profound faith; deep-seated reverence for authority; a
sincere love, not only for friends and relatives, but for all mankind;
and an implicit reliance on the beneficence and justice of divine
Providence that no terror could shake and no reverse lessen in the
slightest degree.
A careful examination of the career of Columbus leads to the
conviction that his chief object and ultimate aim from the beginning,
what in after-life became more apparent, was to rescue the Holy
Sepulchre from the polluting grasp of the infidel, and to bring the
light of Christianity to races of men who were in darkness; all other
efforts, though consistent with this grand scheme, were subordinate
and auxiliary to it. Actuated by an ambition less exalted or an
enthusiasm less aborbing, he could never have attained that glorious
success which, though partial, has linked his name to immortality.
Neither was this crusader a theorist or a religious fanatic, but, on
the contrary, one of the most practical and calculating of men. Though
thoroughly satisfied with the feasibility of his plans and confident
in the rectitude of his motives, he neglected no opportunity of
qualifying himself for the noble task upon which he had set his heart.
While others attempted to reach Asia by slow and uncertain coasting
along the western shores of Africa, he proposed to launch boldly out
on the unknown and trackless deep, and, by taking a direct course
westward, to reach the remotest parts of the East, where was situated,
it was reported, the great Christian empire of Kublai Khan, the land
of gold and precious stones, a tithe of which would be sufficient to
initiate and sustain a new and more successful crusade against the
Mohammedans.
With this end constantly in view, Columbus carefully studied every
work on cosmogony and the physical sciences within his reach,
accurately noted down each new discovery in navigation, and was never
tired of consulting old mariners on their experience and observations.
Even the writings of learned churchmen were placed under contribution.
“He fortified himself,” says one of his biographers, “by references to
St. Isidore, Beda, St. Ambrose, and Duns Scotus.” He also became a
practical sailor, and grew as familiar with the frozen seas of Iceland
and the torrid heats of the African coast as with the bays and inlets
of his native Italy. “I have been seeking out the secrets of nature
for forty years,” he tells us, “and wherever ship has sailed, there
have I voyaged.”
Having at length, by study and personal observation, accumulated a
large and varied stock of scientific knowledge, the future discoverer
retired with his family to the remote island of Porto Santo, the
advanced outpost of African discovery. There for several years he
devoted his leisure to the patient collation and arrangement of his
authorities, till he was able to reduce a mass of crude philosophical
speculations and ill-digested cosmical theories to an elaborate
system, which, if not altogether borne out by subsequent
investigation, was in the main correct, and far in advance of the
intelligence of the fifteenth century.
His plans thus thoroughly matured, Columbus considered that the time
had arrived to put them into execution. He had already submitted
certain proposals to Portugal, but they were rejected by a body called
the Geographical Council, who, while they treated with seeming
contempt the scheme of the astute Italian, had the unparalleled
meanness to appropriate and attempt to use secretly the results of his
long years of toil and study. Armed with letters of recommendation, he
now appeared before the court of Spain, and, with the earnestness and
lucidity of a mind thoroughly convinced by long and patient analysis,
he explained to Ferdinand and Isabella his great project of crossing
the Atlantic and adding to their dual crown, not only a new continent,
but the everlasting glory of having been the means of bringing into
the bosom of the church millions of human beings. Though engaged in
the desperate war which ended in the final overthrow of Moslem power
in Spain, the Catholic sovereigns gave the daring adventurer a kind
reception, and referred his proposition to a junta of cosmographers
for consideration. The members of that body, however, seem to have
been as incapable of understanding the merits of the questions
submitted for their deliberation as they were of appreciating the high
resolve and mental comprehensiveness of their originator. After five
tedious years, during which Columbus, with anxious steps but
unfaltering courage, followed the court from place to place as the
exigencies of the war required, the junta reported that his plans were
“vain and impossible.”
Disgusted, but not disheartened, Columbus retired to the small port of
Palos, where, in the society of a few learned men, clerical and lay,
he forgot for a while his disappointment, but not his darling project.
Through the interference of friends negotiations with the Spanish
court were renewed, and again broken off on account of the conditions
demanded by Columbus being considered exorbitant. He did not think so,
however, and the result proved that he did not overrate the value of
his services. Abandoning all hope of co-operation from Spain, the
gifted Italian was about to pass the Pyrenees, and was actually on his
way to the French frontier, when a courier was despatched to recall
him to court. The remonstrance of influential friends, and the fear of
yielding to a rival the profits as well as the political prestige
which were sure to follow the success of Columbus’ projects, at last
overcame the caution of Ferdinand; while a strong sympathy with the
daring designs of the gifted adventurer, and an ardent desire for the
propagation of the faith, made Isabella an active advocate of his
interests. At Santa Fé, on the 17th of April, 1492, the agreement
between Columbus and the Catholic sovereigns was signed, whereby he
became admiral and viceroy of all the seas and countries he might
discover; a sharer, to the extent of one-tenth, in all the profits
accruing from the trade with such foreign possessions; and, by virtue
of his contribution of one-eighth of the expenses of the voyage, a
proportionate part of the gains which might result from it.
These conditions, which had previously been looked upon as
inadmissible, but which were now willingly allowed, furnish the key to
the character of Columbus. Few men of that age cared less for titles,
power, or wealth than he; but these means were necessary, he
considered, for the accomplishment of his grand ulterior design—the
Christian possession of Palestine. He had studied human nature
thoroughly, and knew that no great movement, social or political,
could ever command the confidence and sympathy of the world unless
directed by leaders of approved position and sustained by liberal
expenditures of money.
So far, then, his wish was gratified. Ferdinand, the cautious, had
yielded a reluctant consent to the fitting out of the expedition on
satisfactory terms, and Isabella, his consort, the noblest woman that
ever graced a throne, pawned her jewels to procure funds for its
proper equipment. Amid the congratulations of his sanguine friends and
the prayers of the populace, Columbus, with his fleet of three frail
boats and scanty crews, “after they had all confessed and received the
sacraments,” set sail from Palos on the memorable 3d of August, 1492.
Once out of sight of land, on the boundless ocean where keel of ship
had never ploughed before, naught around him but a gloomy waste of
waters, naught above him save the sun and stars, no friend to consult,
no familiar voice to whisper hope or combat despair, with a crew both
ignorant and superstitious, he held on his prearranged course,
self-reliant, watchful, and dauntless. Night succeeded day, and light
followed darkness, in dreary succession, yet still no land appeared.
Appalled by imaginary dangers and sick from hope deferred, his men,
whose hearts were never wholly in their work, first began to murmur,
then broke out into open reproaches, and finally threatened to throw
their captain into the sea. It was amid such trying circumstances that
the true character of the man became manifest in all its magnificent
proportions. Calm alike in sunshine and storm, his hand constantly on
the tiller and his eye directed to the west, he heeded little the
rumbling of mutinous discontent beneath his feet, nor for a moment did
he allow himself to doubt that God in his own good time would conduct
him safely to the haven of his hopes.
In the dark watches of the night, when the waves ran highest and the
heavens were obscured as with a pall, he felt that he had that within
his soul beckoning him on, more brilliant in its coruscations than the
starry cross that illumines the southern hemisphere, as unerring in
its guidance as the beacon which of old led the children of Israel
through the pathless desert—implicit belief in the sublimity of his
mission, and an entire reliance on the mercy of his Creator, in whose
hands he felt himself an humble instrument for the accomplishment of
noble ends. Nor were his confidence and humility long unrewarded.
After eight weeks of constant watching and unspeakable anxiety, land
was at length discovered, the first glimpse of the New World presented
to European eyes; and scarcely had the anchor of the _Santa Maria_
become embedded in the sands of San Salvador, than her brave commander
and his now repentant followers hastened ashore to plant the sacred
emblem of our salvation, and, weeping and prostrate on that heathen
soil, to pour forth their thanksgiving to the Almighty.
The honors which were showered upon Columbus on his return to Spain
after this great event were in strange contrast to the neglect,
treachery, and injustice of which he was afterwards the victim. Three
times again did he cross and recross the Atlantic, making on each
occasion new and important discoveries. But ignorance, venality, and
envy of his fair fame and spotless honor conspired to raise up against
him a host of powerful enemies, who at last stripped him of his
hard-earned rewards, and would, had it been possible, have robbed him
even of the glory of having been the discoverer of America. However,
he bore his trials with fortitude as he had worn his great honors with
meekness, seldom retorting on his enemies, and but once, as far as we
are aware, condescending to complain of the rank ingratitude of a
country to which he had given a whole continent. This occurred during
his fourth voyage, in a despatch to the king, in which he says:
“Wearied and sighing, I fell into a slumber, when I heard a piteous
voice saying to me: ‘O fool! and slow to believe and serve thy God,
who is the God of all. What did he more for Moses, or for his servant
David, than he has done for thee? From the time of thy birth he has
ever had thee under his peculiar care. When he saw thee of a fitting
age, he made thy name to resound marvellously throughout the earth,
and thou wert obeyed in many lands, and didst acquire honorable fame
among Christians. Of the gates of the ocean sea, shut up with mighty
chains, he delivered to thee the keys; the Indies, those wealthy
regions of the world, he gave thee for thine own, and empowered thee
to dispose of them to others according to thy pleasure. What did he
more for the great people of Israel when he led them forth from Egypt?
or for David, whom from being a shepherd he made a king in Judea? Turn
to him, then, and acknowledge thine error; his mercy is infinite. He
has many and vast inheritances yet in reserve. Fear not to seek them.
Thine age shall be no impediment to any great undertaking. Abraham was
above a hundred years when he begat Isaac; and was Sara youthful? Thou
urgest despondingly for succor. Answer! Who hath afflicted thee so
much and so many times—God or the world? The privileges and promises
which God hath made to thee he hath never broken; neither hath he
said, after having received thy services, that his meaning was
different, and to be understood in a different sense. He fulfils all
that he promises, and with increase. Such is his custom. I have shown
thee what thy Creator hath done for thee, and what he doeth for all.
The present is the reward of the toils and perils thou hast endured in
serving others.’”
Whether Columbus had a vision, which is not improbable, or that he
adopted this metaphorical style of complaint to avoid giving offence
to Ferdinand, it is equally characteristic of the depth of his
religious feelings and the depth of his gratitude to the Almighty. But
remonstrance, no matter how just or how delicately urged, had little
effect on the court of Spain. He was soon after recalled, to end his
days in comparative want and obscurity. It was not apparently in the
designs of Providence that Columbus should have succeeded in his
primary object—the delivery of Jerusalem—but his half-success, the
demonstration of the rotundity of the earth and the discovery of our
hemisphere, were productive of more benefit to humanity than the
complete victories of most other great benefactors of mankind. While
he has handed down to all ages an imperishable name, he has also left
an example to posterity—and particularly to us Americans, who owe him
so much gratitude and reverence—that far outweighs in importance his
contributions to science and his efforts to aggrandize his adopted
country. He has proved in his own person that a soul filled with deep
and intense devotion to the Creator, and a will conformable in all
things to his laws, are alone capable of leading human beings to the
achievement of true and lasting greatness.
Equally salutary, though different in degree and purpose, is the
lesson taught us by the life and labors of George Washington, who may
be considered as having been in the natural what Columbus was in the
supernatural order—a noble specimen of humanity; a lover and
benefactor of his kind.
As Americans, we cannot study too diligently the character of him who
was properly called the Father of his Country. No other among our
Revolutionary ancestors embodied in himself so many of those civic
virtues which constitute the perfect citizen. Like most men who have
played prominent parts on the world’s stage, Washington was born with
strong passions and an imperious disposition; but careful self-culture
early changed his powerful impulses into tenacity of purpose and
strength of will, while his natural exclusiveness gave him afterwards
that dignity of word and action which is absolutely necessary for
those who are called upon to command. As general of the army and
president of the infant republic, he had men around him of more
brilliancy, larger experience, and greater mental attainments; but he
alone possessed in a superior degree that well-balanced organization
and intuitive wisdom to which all could pay the homage of obedience.
Washington’s mind, however, was neither synthetical nor originating.
He was more a man of ability than of genius. He never could have
initiated a revolution, though once begun, as experience has proved,
he was admirably adapted to carry it out successfully. In a monarchy,
he might have been a loyal, chivalrous subject; under a wise,
conservative government, he would have been the first to oppose
innovation; under all circumstances, he could not have failed to be a
high-toned, accomplished, and honorable gentleman.
We are not surprised that our Protestant fellow-citizens love to point
with commendable pride to the example of their great and good
co-religionist, though Protestantism, particularly that professed in
his day, and by his family and associates, had little to do with the
formation of his character or the regulation of his public actions;
but as Catholics we yield to none in admiration and affection for the
noblest citizen of our common country. We can never forget that when
our numbers were “few and faint, but fearless still,” when Puritan
fanaticism and Anglican superciliousness endeavored to underrate our
services, malign our motives, and misrepresent our doctrines, George
Washington, rising superior to the narrow, petty bigotry of his
generation, was the first to give a hearty and candid recognition to
our claims as good and faithful citizens. His words to Bishop Carroll
and the other representatives of the Catholics of the Revolution are
indelibly impressed on the memory of the millions of Catholics among
us who feel, and are proud to acknowledge, that to him and his
associates they are mainly indebted for the civil and religious
liberty they now so freely enjoy. “As mankind become more liberal,” he
wrote, “they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct
themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to
the protection of civil government. I hope ever to see America among
the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality. And I
presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part
which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution and the
establishment of their government, or the important assistance which
they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is
professed.”
Though a sincere Christian, Washington cannot be said to have been a
religious man. The cold formalities of Episcopalianism to which he was
accustomed could not touch his heart nor inspire his soul with great
and glowing emotions; but this was more the fault of the system in
which he was reared than of himself. The motives of his actions seem
to have been principally based on a refined sense of honor, on his
comprehension of the requirements of the natural law, which in his
regard was usually in conformity with the teachings of the church. He
was just, honest, truthful, and manly; faithful in his social
relations and moderate in his ambition. Had he possessed some of the
glorious enthusiasm of Columbus, great as he was, he might have been
still greater; and had the discoverer united to his other wonderful
qualities the worldly wisdom of Washington, his star might not have
descended amid the darkness and disappointment which clouded the last
years of his eventful life.
Taking the character of the two greatest personages, we find in their
collective lives the development of the highest qualities which human
nature is capable of exhibiting. As such, we desire to hold them up
for imitation to the youth of this country, who in a short time will
take the place of the present generation in the conduct of our civil
and domestic affairs. That those men were of different races and
peculiar national tendencies does not prevent the blending of their
characters into one harmonious whole. The greatest nations of ancient
and modern times, those which have developed the most equitable and
stable systems of government, with the greatest liberty and the
highest civilization, have been formed upon the union of various
tribes, clans, and families, having many radically different
tendencies and special characteristics. In what one people may be
deficient another may have a superabundance; and the volatile and
supersensitive nature of one race is counteracted by the sedateness
and stolidity of others less imaginative. As the river Nile, flowing
from different sources, bears in its course the riches of the soils of
a hundred climes, and empties them all into the lap of Egypt, so
families of men, gifted by their Creator with various qualities of
heart and mind, collect together, each with its contribution, to form
a lasting and magnificent commonwealth. This is as true of religious
as of political society. The church, guided by a divine instinct,
finds employment and turns to account the genius of all her children,
no matter how peculiar or dissimilar their attributes. She welcomes
and perfects the organizing power of the Latin races, and the fire and
enthusiasm of the Celtic, equally with the solidity of the Germanic
and the imagination of the Orientals. Unity in diversity, authority
with liberty, are essentials and correlative in the science of good
government, whether it be that of a republic or of the universal
church.
Who knows but that the nation now in process of forming in the bosom
of our republic, from the various races of Europe, with ampler natural
capacities quickened into greater activity by the political character
of its institutions, is destined, in the order of events, to give to
Christianity an expression more adequate and more in accordance with
its universal spirit and divine origin? The church of Christ has no
reverses in the movement of her divine mission, and she has turned to
account each race according to its gifts in the Old World from her
beginning. May not all these, in their best energies combined in the
New, be called to realize the highest type of the Christian character?
Do not the leading traits of Columbus and Washington point out to us
the ideal Christian, the union of the most exalted faith with the
thoroughest manhood? For as Christ was perfect God and perfect man in
one personality, so is he who unites the most exalted faith with the
most thorough manhood in one personality the complete Christian. Is
not this ideal Christian the glorious promise of the future of this
New World?
Protestantism, which has been the religion of the vast majority of our
countrymen, is gradually losing its hold upon their convictions. The
religion alone which can claim the attention of all mankind is the
Catholic. It alone has all the notes of truth, both inward and
outward, in its favor.
Unsupported by religious convictions, no nation can realize its true
destiny. Unity of religious conviction, and the virtues necessary to
uphold its institutions, are more necessary to a republic like ours
than to any other form of political government. The principles and
views of human nature on which our republic is based are sustained by
the doctrines of Christianity taught by the Catholic Church. Gradually
the church and the republic are approaching each other, and with this
nearer approach there springs up reciprocal appreciation and sympathy.
Fanatics on one hand, and infidels on the other, may warn, may threat,
and may attempt to keep them apart by conspiracy and persecution, but
in vain; for God, in whose providence they are destined to be united,
will not be frustrated by the puny efforts of his enemies to keep them
asunder. Out of this divine wedlock will spring forth children whose
lives will be of the highest type of Christian manhood, and whose
civilization will be the most glorious development of God’s kingdom on
earth.
CATHOLICS IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
The moment of England’s triumph in the last century was the dawn of
American independence. When England, aided by her colonies, had at
last wrested Canada from France, and, forcing that weakened power to
relinquish Louisiana to Spain, had restored Havana to the Catholic
sovereign only at the price of Florida, her sway seemed secure over
all North America from the icy ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, from the
shores of the Atlantic to the Mississippi. But her very success had
aroused questions and created wants which were not to be answered or
solved until her mighty American power was shattered.
While Spain and France kept colonies in leading-strings, England
allowed her American provinces to thrive by her utter neglect of them.
Monarchs granted charters liberally, and with that their interest
seemed to vanish, until it was discovered that offices could be found
there for court favorites. But the people had virtually constituted
governments of their own; had their own treasury, made their own laws,
waged their wars with the Indian, carried on trade, unaided and almost
unrecognized by the mother country.
The final struggle with France had at last awakened England to the
importance, wealth, and strength of the American colonies. It appeared
to embarrassed English statesmen that the depleted coffers of the
national treasury might be greatly aided by taxing these prosperous
communities. The Americans, paying readily taxes where they could
control their disbursement, refused to accept new burdens and to pay
the mother country for the honor of being governed. The relation of
colonies to the mother country; the question of right in the latter to
tax the former; the bounds and just limits on either side, involved
new and undiscussed points. They now became the subject of debate in
Parliament, in colonial assemblies, in every town gathering, and at
every fireside in the American colonies. The people were all British
subjects, proud of England and her past; a large majority were devoted
to the Protestant religion and the house of Hanover, and sought to
remain in adherence to both while retaining all the rights they
claimed as Englishmen.
A small body of Catholics existed in the country. What their position
was on the great questions at issue can be briefly told.
They were of many races and nationalities. No other church then or now
could show such varieties, blended together by a common faith.
Maryland, settled by a Catholic proprietor, with colonists largely
Catholic, and for a time predominantly so, contained some thousands of
native-born Catholics of English, and to some extent of Irish, origin,
proud of their early Maryland record, of the noble character of the
charter, and of the nobly tolerant character of the early laws and
practice of the land of Mary. In Pennsylvania a smaller Catholic body
existed, more scattered, by no means so compact or so influential as
their Maryland brethren—settlers coming singly during the eighteenth
century mainly, or descendants of such emigrants, some of whom had
been sent across the Atlantic as bondmen by England, others coming as
redemptioners, others again as colonists of means and position. They
were not only of English, Irish, and Scotch origin, but also of the
German race, with a few from France and other Catholic states. New
Jersey and New York had still fewer Catholics than Pennsylvania. In
the other colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia, they existed only
as individuals lost in the general body of the people. But all along
the coast were scattered by the cruel hand of English domination the
unfortunate Acadians, who had been ruthlessly torn from their Nova
Scotian villages and farms, deprived of all they had on earth—home and
property and kindred. With naught left them but their faith, these
Acadians formed little groups of dejected Catholics in many a part,
not even their noble courage amid unmerited suffering exciting
sympathy or kindly encouragement from the colonists. Florida had a
remnant of its old Spanish population, with no hopes for the future
from the Protestant power to which the fortunes of war and the
vicissitudes of affairs had made them subjects. There were besides in
that old Catholic colony some Italians and Minorcans, brought over
with Greeks under Turnbull’s project of colonization. Maine had her
Indians, of old steady foes of New England, now at peace, submitting
to the new order of things, thoroughly Catholic from the teaching of
their early missionaries. New York had Catholic Indians on her
northern frontier. The Catholic Wyandots clustered around the pure
streams and springs of Sandusky. Further west, from Detroit to the
mouth of the Ohio, from Vincennes to Lake Superior, were little
communities of Canadian French, all Catholics, with priests and
churches, surrounded by Indian tribes among all which missionaries had
labored, and not in vain. Some tribes were completely Catholic; others
could show some, and most of them many, who had risen from the
paganism of the red men to the faith of Christ.
Such was the Catholic body—colonists who could date back their origin
to the foundation of Maryland or Acadia, Florida or Canada, Indians of
various tribes, new-comers from England, Germany, or Ireland. There
were, too, though few, converts, or descendants of converts, who,
belonging to the Protestant emigration, had been led by God’s grace to
see the truth, and who resolutely shared the odium and bondage of an
oppressed and unpopular church.
The questions at issue between the colonies and the mother country
were readily answered by the Catholics of every class. Catholic
theologians nowhere but in the Gallican circles of France had learned
to talk of the divine right of kings. The truest, plainest doctrines
of the rights of the people found their exposition in the works of
Catholic divines. By a natural instinct they sided with those who
claimed for these new communities in the western world the right of
self-government. Catholics, of whatever race or origin, were on this
point unanimous. Evidence meets us on every side. Duché, an Episcopal
clergyman, will mention Father Harding, the pastor of the Catholics in
Philadelphia, for “his known attachment to British liberty”—they had
not yet begun to talk of American liberty. Indian, French, and
Acadian, bound by no tie to England, could brook no subjection to a
distant and oppressive power. The Irish and Scotch Catholics, with old
wrongs and a lingering Jacobite dislike to the house of Hanover,
required no labored arguments to draw them to the side of the popular
movement. All these elements excited distrust in England. Even a
hundred years before in the councils of Britain fears had been
expressed that the Maryland Catholics, if they gained strength, would
one day attempt to set up their independence; and the event justified
the fear. If they did not originate the movement, they went heartily
into it.
The English government had begun in Canada its usual course of
harassing and grinding down its Catholic subjects, putting the
thousands of Canadians completely at the mercy of the few English
adventurers or office-holders who entered the province, giving three
hundred and sixty Protestant sutlers and camp-followers the rights of
citizenship and all the offices in Canada, while disfranchising the
real people of the province, the one hundred and fifty thousand
Canadian Catholics. How such a system works we have seen, unhappily,
in our own day and country. But with the growing discontent in her old
colonies, caused by the attempts of Parliament to tax the settlers
indirectly, where they dared not openly, England saw that she must
take some decisive step to make the Canadians contented subjects, or
be prepared to lose her dear-bought conquest as soon as any war should
break out in which she herself might be involved. Instead of keeping
the treaty of Paris as she had kept that of Limerick, England for once
resolved to be honest and fulfil her agreement.
It was a moment when the thinking men among the American leaders
should have won the Canadians as allies to their hopes and cause; but
they took counsel of bigotry, allowed England to retrace her false
steps, and by tardy justice secure the support of the Canadians.
The Quebec act of 1774 organized Canada, including in its extent the
French communities in the West. Learning a lesson from Lord Baltimore
and Catholic Maryland, “the nation which would not so much as legally
recognize the existence of a Catholic in Ireland, now from political
considerations recognized on the St. Lawrence the free exercise of the
religion of the Church of Rome, and confirmed to the clergy of that
church their rights and dues.”
Just and reasonable as the act was, solid in policy, and, by
introducing the English criminal law and forms of government,
gradually preparing the people for an assimilation in form to the
other British colonies, this Quebec act, from the simple fact that it
tolerated Catholics, excited strong denunciation on both sides of the
Atlantic. The city of London addressed the king before he signed the
bill, petitioning that he should refrain from doing so. “The Roman
Catholic religion, which is known to be idolatrous and bloody, is
established by this bill,” say these wiseacres, imploring George III.,
as the guardian of the laws, liberty, and religion of his people, and
as the great bulwark of the Protestant faith, not to give his royal
assent.
In America, when the news came of its passage, the debates as to their
wrongs, as to the right of Parliament to pass stamp acts or levy
duties on imports, to maintain an army or quarter soldiers on the
colonists, seemed to be forgotten in their horror of this act of
toleration. In New York the flag with the union and stripes was run
up, bearing bold and clear on a white stripe the words, “No Popery.”
The Congress of 1774, though it numbered some of the clearest heads in
the colonies, completely lost sight of the vital importance of Canada
territorially, and of the advantage of securing as friends a community
of 150,000 whose military ability had been shown on a hundred
battle-fields. Addressing the people of Great Britain, this Congress
says: “By another act the Dominion of Canada is to be so extended,
modelled, and governed as that, by being disunited from us, detached
from our interests by civil as well as religious prejudices; that by
their numbers swelling with Catholic emigrants from Europe, and by
their devotion to administration so friendly to their religion, they
might become formidable to us, and on occasion be fit instruments in
the hands of power to reduce the ancient free Protestant colonies to
the same slavery with themselves.” “Nor can we suppress our
astonishment that a British parliament should ever consent to
establish in that country a religion that has deluged your island in
blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and
rebellion through every part of the world.”
This address, the work of the intense bigot John Jay, and of the
furious storm of bigotry evoked in New England and New York, was most
disastrous in its results to the American cause. Canada was not so
delighted with her past experience of English rule or so confident of
the future as to accept unhesitatingly the favors accorded by the
Quebec act. She had from the first sought to ally herself with the
neighboring English colonies, and to avoid European complications.
When she proposed the alliance, they declined. She would now have met
their proposal warmly; but when this address was circulated in Canada,
it defeated the later and wiser effort of Congress to win that
province through Franklin, Chase, and the Carrolls. It made the
expeditions against the British forces there, at first so certain of
success by Canadian aid, result in defeat and disgrace. In New York a
little colony of Scotch Catholics, who would gladly have paid off the
score of Culloden, took alarm at the hatred shown their faith, and
fled with their clergyman to Canada to give strength to our foe, when
they wished to be of us and with us. In the West it enabled British
officers to make Detroit a centre from which they exerted an influence
over the Western tribes that lasted down into the present century, and
which Jay’s treaty—a tardy endeavor to undo his mischief of 1774—did
not succeed in checking.
Pamphlets, attacking or defending the Quebec act, appeared on both
sides of the Atlantic. In the English interest it was shown that the
treaty of Paris already guaranteed their religion to the Canadians,
and that the rights of their clergy were included in this. It was
shown that to insist on England’s establishing the state church in
Canada would justify her in doing the same in New England. “An
Englishman’s Answer” to the address of Congress rather maliciously
turned Jay’s bombast on men like himself by saying: “If the actions of
the different sects in religion are inquired into, we shall find, by
turning over the sad historic page, that it was the —— sect (I forget
what they call them; I mean the sect which is still most numerous in
New England, and not the sect which they so much despise) that in the
last century deluged our island in blood; that even shed the blood of
the sovereign, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, superstition,
hypocrisy, persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of
the empire.”
One who later in life became a Catholic, speaking of the effect of
this bill in New England, says: “We were all ready to swear that this
same George, by granting the Quebec bill, had thereby become a
traitor, had broke his coronation oath, was secretly a papist,” etc.
“The real fears of popery in New England had its influence.” “The
common word then was: ‘No king, no popery.’”
But though Canada was thus alienated, and some Catholics at the North
frightened away, in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the French West the
fanaticism was justly regarded as a mere temporary affair, the last
outburst of a bigotry that could not live and thrive on the soil.
Providence was shaping all things wisely; but we cannot be surprised
at the wonder some soon felt. “Now, what must appear very singular,”
says the writer above quoted, “is that the two parties naturally so
opposite to each other should become, even at the outset, united in
opposing the efforts of the mother country. And now we find the New
England people and the Catholics of the Southern States fighting side
by side, though stimulated by extremely different motives: the one
acting through fear lest the king of England should succeed in
establishing among us the Catholic religion; the other equally fearful
lest his bitterness against the Catholic faith should increase till
they were either destroyed or driven to the mountains and waste places
of the wilderness.”
Such was the position of the Catholics as the rapid tide of events was
bearing all on to a crisis. The Catholics in Maryland and Pennsylvania
were outspoken in their devotion to the cause of the colonies. In
Maryland Charles Carroll of Carrollton, trained abroad in the schools
of France and the law-courts of England, with all the learning of the
English barrister widened and deepened by a knowledge of the civil law
of the Continent, grappled in controversy the veteran Dulany of
Maryland. In vain the Tory advocate attempted, by sneers and jibes at
the proscribed position of the foreign-trained Catholic, to evade the
logic of his arguments. The eloquence and learning of Carroll
triumphed, and he stood before his countrymen disenthralled. There, at
least, it was decided by the public mind that Catholics were to enjoy
all the rights of their fellow-citizens, and that citizens like
Carroll were worthy of their highest honors. “The benign aurora of the
coming republic,” says Bancroft, “lighted the Catholic to the recovery
of his rightful political equality in the land which a Catholic
proprietary had set apart for religious freedom.” In 1775 Charles
Carroll was a member of the first Committee of Observation and a
delegate to the Provincial Convention of Maryland, the first Catholic
in any public office since the days of James II. “Charles Carroll of
Carrollton, the great representative of his fellow-believers, and
already an acknowledged leader of the patriots, sat in the Maryland
Convention as the delegate of a Protestant constituency, and bore an
honorable share in its proceedings.”
When the news of Lexington rang through the land, borne from town to
town by couriers on panting steeds, regiments were organized in all
the colonies. Catholics stepped forward to shoulder their rifles and
firelocks. Few aspired to commissions, from which they had hitherto
been excluded in the militia and troops raised for actual service, but
the rank and file showed Catholics, many of them men of intelligence
and fair education, eager to meet all perils and to prove on the field
of battle that they were worthy of citizenship in all its privileges.
Ere long, however, Catholics by ability and talent won rank in the
army and navy of the young republic.
We Catholics have been so neglectful of our history that no steps were
ever taken to form a complete roll of those glorious heroes of the
faith who took part in the Revolutionary struggle. The few great names
survive—Moylan, Burke, Barry, Vigo, Orono, Louis, Landais; here and
there the journal of a Catholic soldier like McCurtin has been
printed; but in our shameful neglect of the past we have done nothing
to compile a roll that we can point to with pride.
When hostilities began, it became evident that Canada must be gained.
Expeditions were fitted out to reduce the British posts. The Canadians
evinced a friendly disposition, giving ready assistance by men,
carriages, and provisions to an extent that surprised the Americans.
Whole parishes even offered to join in reducing Quebec and lowering
the hated flag of England from the Castle of St. Louis, where the
lilies had floated for nearly two centuries. But the bigotry that
inspired some of our leaders was too strong in many of the
subordinates to permit them to reason. They treated these Catholic
Canadians as enemies, ill-used and dragooned them so that almost the
whole country was ready to unite in repulsing them. Then came
Montgomery’s disaster, and the friends of America in Canada dwindled
to a few priests: La Valiniere, Carpentier, the ex-Jesuits Huguet and
Floquet, and the Canadians who enlisted in Livingston’s, Hazen’s, and
Duggan’s corps, under Guillot, Loseau, Aller, Basadé, Menard, and
other Catholic officers.
Then Congress awoke to its error. As that strategic province was
slipping from the hands of the confederated colonies, as Hazen’s
letters came urging common sense, Congress appointed a commission with
an address to the Canadian people to endeavor even then to win them.
Benjamin Franklin was selected with two gentlemen from Catholic
Maryland—Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll. To increase their
influence, Congress requested the Rev. John Carroll to accompany them,
hoping that the presence of a Catholic priest and a Catholic layman,
both educated in France and acquainted with the French character,
would effect more than any argument that could be brought to bear on
the Canadians. They hastened to do their utmost, but eloquence and
zeal failed. The Canadians distrusted the new order of things in
America; the hostility shown in the first address of Congress seemed
too well supported by the acts of Americans in Canada. They turned a
deaf ear to the words of the Carrolls, and adhered to England.
Canada was thus lost to us. Taking our stand among the nations of the
earth, we could not hope to include that province, but must ever have
it on our flank in the hands of England. This fault was beyond
redemption.
But the recent war with Pontiac was now recalled. Men remembered how
the Indian tribes of the West, organized by the mastermind of that
chief, had swept away almost in an instant every fort and military
post from the Mississippi to the Alleghanies, and marked out the
frontier by a line of blazing houses and villages from Lake Erie to
Florida. What might these same Western hordes do in the hands of
England, directed, supplied, and organized for their fell work by
British officers! The Mohawks and other Iroquois of New York had
retired to the English lines, and people shuddered at what was to come
upon them there. The Catholic Indians in Maine had been won to our
side by a wise policy. Washington wrote to the tribe in 1775, and
deputies from all the tribes from the Penobscot to Gaspé met the
Massachusetts Council at Watertown. Ambrose Var, the chief of the St.
John’s Indians, Orono of Penobscot, came with words that showed the
reverent Christian. Of old they had been enemies; they were glad to
become friends: they would stand beside the colonists. Eminently
Catholic, every tribe asked for a priest; and Massachusetts promised
to do her best to obtain French priests for her Catholic allies.
Throughout the war these Catholic Indians served us well, and Orono,
who bore a Continental commission, lived to see priests restored to
his village and religion flourishing. Brave and consistent, he never
entered the churches of the Protestant denominations, though often
urged to do so. He practised his duties faithfully as a Catholic, and
replied: “We know our religion and love it; we know nothing of yours.”
Maine acknowledges his worth by naming a town after this grand old
Catholic.
But the West! Men shuddered to think of it. The conquest of Canada by
a course of toleration and equality to Catholics would have made all
the Indian tribes ours. The Abnakis had been won by a promise to them
as Catholics; the Protestant and heathen Mohawks were on the side of
England, though the Catholics of the same race in Canada were
friendly. If the Indians in the West could be won to neutrality even,
no sacrifice would be too great.
Little as American statesmen knew it, they had friends there. And if
the United States at the peace secured the Northwest and extended her
bounds to the Mississippi, it was due to the Very Rev. Peter Gibault,
the Catholic priest of Vincennes and Kaskaskia, and to his sturdy
adherent, the Italian Colonel Vigo. Entirely ignorant of what the
feeling there might be, Col. George Rogers Clark submitted to the
legislature of Virginia, whose backwoods settlement, Kentucky, was
immediately menaced, a plan for reducing the English posts in the
Northwest. Jefferson warmly encouraged the dangerous project, on which
so much depended. Clark, with his handful of men, struck through the
wilderness for the old French post of Kaskaskia. He appeared before it
on the 4th of July, 1778. But the people were not enemies. Their
pastor had studied the questions at issue, and, as Clark tells us,
“was rather prejudiced in favor of us.” The people told the American
commander they were convinced that the cause was one which they ought
to espouse, and that they should be happy to convince him of their
zeal. When Father Gibault asked whether he was at liberty to perform
his duty in his church, Clark told him that he had nothing to do with
churches, except to defend them from insult; that, by the laws of the
state, his religion had as great privileges as any other. The first
Fourth of July celebration at Kaskaskia was a hearty one. The streets
were strewn with flowers and hung with flags, and all gave themselves
up to joy. But Clark’s work was not done. The English lay in force at
Vincennes. Father Gibault and Colonel Vigo, who had been in the
Spanish service, but came over to throw in his fortunes with us, urged
Clark to move at once on Vincennes. It seemed to him rash, but Father
Gibault showed how it could be taken. He went on himself with Dr.
Lefont, won every French hamlet to the cause, and conciliated the
Indians wherever he could reach them. Vigo, on a similar excursion,
was captured by British Indians and carried a prisoner to Hamilton,
the English commander at Vincennes, but that officer felt that he
could not detain a Spanish subject, and was compelled by the French to
release him. When Clark, in February, appeared with his half-starved
men, including Captain Charlevoix’s company of Kaskaskia Catholics,
before Vincennes, and demanded its surrender with as bold a front as
though he had ten thousand men at his back, the English wavered, and
one resolute attack compelled them to surrender at discretion. What is
now Indiana and Illinois, Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, was won to the
United States. To hold it and supply the Indians required means. Clark
issued paper money in the name of Virginia, and the patriotic Colonel
Vigo and Father Gibault exhausted all their resources to redeem this
paper and maintain its credit, although the hope of their ever being
repaid for their sacrifice was slight, and, slight as it might have
been, was never realized.[138] Their generous sacrifice enabled Clark
to retain his conquest, as the spontaneous adhesion of his allies to
the cause had enabled him to effect it. The securing of the old French
posts Vincennes, Fort Chartres, and others in the West which the
English had occupied, together with the friendship of the French
population, secured all the Indians in that part, and relieved the
frontiers of half their danger. Well does Judge Law remark: “Next to
Clark and Vigo, the United States are more indebted to Father Gibault
for the accession of the States comprised in what was the original
Northwestern Territory than to any other man.”
Those Western Catholics did good service in many an expedition, and in
1780 La Balm, with a force raised in the Illinois settlements and
Vincennes, undertook to capture Detroit, the headquarters of the
English atrocities. He perished with nearly all his little Catholic
force where Fort Wayne stands, leaving many a family in mourning.
The first bugle-blast of America for battle in the name of freedom
seemed to wake a response in many Catholic hearts in Europe. Officers
came over from France to offer their swords, the experience they had
acquired, and the training they had developed in the campaigns of the
great commanders of the time. Among the names are several that have
the ring of the old Irish brigade. Dugan, Arundel, De Saint Aulaire,
Vibert, Col. Dubois, De Kermorvan, Lieut.-Col. de Franchessen, St.
Martin, Vermonet, Dorré, Pelissier, Malmady, Mauduit, Rochefermoy, De
la Neuville, Armand, Fleury, Conway, Lafayette, Du Portail, Gouvion,
Du Coudray, Pulaski, Roger, Dorset, Gimat, Brice, and others, rendered
signal service, especially as engineers and chiefs of staff, where
skill and military knowledge were most required. Around Lafayette
popular enthusiasm gathered, but he was not alone. Numbers of these
Catholic officers served gallantly at various points during the war,
aiding materially in laying out works and planning operations, as well
as by gallantly doing their duty in the field, sharing gayly the
sufferings and privations of the men of ’76.
Some who came to serve in the ranks or as officers rendered other
service to the country. Ædanus Burke, of Galway, a pupil of St.
Omer’s, like the Carrolls, came out to serve as a soldier, represented
South Carolina in the Continental Congress, and was for some time
chief-justice of his adopted State. P. S. Duponceau, who came over as
aide to Baron Steuben in 1777, became the founder of American
ethnology and linguistics. His labors in law, science, and American
history will not soon be forgotten.
Meanwhile, Catholics were swelling the ranks, and, like Moylan, rising
to fame and position. The American navy had her first commodore in the
Catholic Barry, who had kept the flag waving undimmed on the seas from
1776, and in 1781 engaged and took the two English vessels, _Atlanta_
and _Trepassay_; and on other occasions handled his majesty’s vessels
so roughly that General Howe endeavored to win him by offers of money
and high naval rank to desert the cause. Besides Catholics born, who
served in army or navy, in legislative or executive, there were also
men who took part in the great struggle whose closing years found them
humble and devoted adherents of the Catholic Church. Prominent among
these was Thomas Sims Lee, Governor of Maryland from 1779 to the close
of the war. He did much to contribute to the glorious result,
represented his State in the later Continental Congress and in the
Constitutional Convention, as Daniel Carroll, brother of the
archbishop, also did. Governor Lee, after becoming a Catholic, was
reelected governor, and lived to an honored old age. Daniel Barber,
who bore his musket in the Connecticut line, became a Catholic, and
his son, daughter-in-law, and their children all devoted themselves to
a religious life, a family of predilection.
In Europe the Catholic states, France and Spain, watched the progress
of American affairs with deepest interest. At the very outset
Vergennes, the able minister of France, sent an agent to study the
people and report the state of affairs. The clear-headed statesmen saw
that America would become independent. In May, 1776, Louis XVI.
announced to the Catholic monarch that he intended to send indirectly
two hundred thousand dollars. The King of Spain sent a similar sum to
Paris. This solid aid, the first sinews of war from these two Catholic
sovereigns, was but an earnest of good-will. In France the sentiment
in favor of the American cause overbore the cautious policy of the
king, the amiable Louis XVI. He granted the aid already mentioned, and
induced the King of Spain to join in the act; he permitted officers to
leave France in order to join the American armies; he encouraged
commerce with the revolting colonies by exempting from duties the
ships which bore across the ocean the various goods needed by the army
and the people. The enthusiasm excited by Lafayette, who first heard
of the American cause from the lips of an English prince, soon broke
down all the walls of caution. An arrangement was made by which
material of war from the government armories and arsenals was sent
out, nominally from a mercantile house. A year after the Declaration
of Independence, France, which had opened her ports to American
privateers and courteously avoided all English complaints, resolved to
take a decisive step—not only to acknowledge the independence of the
United States, but to support it. Marie Antoinette sympathized deeply
with this country, and won the king to give his full support to our
cause. On the 6th of February, 1778, Catholic France signed the treaty
with the United States, and thus a great power in Europe set the
example to others in recognizing us as one of the nations of the
earth. America had a Catholic godmother. Amid the miseries of Valley
Forge Washington issued a general order: “It having pleased the
Almighty Ruler of the universe to defend the cause of the United
American States, and finally to raise us up a powerful friend among
the princes of the earth, to establish our liberty and independence
upon a lasting foundation, it becomes us to set apart a day for
gratefully acknowledging the divine goodness and celebrating the
important event, which we owe to his divine interposition.” France now
openly took part in the war, and in July, 1778, a French fleet under
d’Estaing appeared on our coasts, neutralizing the advantage which
England had over us by her naval superiority. The ocean was no longer
hers to send her army from point to point on the coast. This fleet
engaged Lord Howe near Newport, and co-operated with Sullivan in
operations against the English in Rhode Island. After cruising in the
West Indies it again reappeared on our coast to join Lincoln in a
brave but unsuccessful attack on Savannah, in which fell the gallant
Pulaski, who some years before had asked the blessing of the pope’s
nuncio on himself and his gallant force in the sanctuary of Our Lady
of Czenstochowa, before his long defence of that convent fortress
against overwhelming Russian forces.
In July, 1780, another fleet, commanded by the Chevalier de Ternay,
entered the harbor of Newport, bringing a French army commanded by an
experienced general, John Baptiste de Vimeur, Count de Rochambeau. An
army of Catholics with Catholic chaplains, observing the glorious
ritual of the church with all solemnity, was hailed with joy in New
England. The discipline of that army, the courteous manners of
officers and privates, won all hearts. What that army effected is too
well known to be chronicled here in detail. When Lafayette had
cornered Cornwallis in Yorktown, Washington and Rochambeau marched
down, the fleet of the Count de Grasse defeated Admiral Graves off the
capes of Virginia, and, transporting the allied armies down, joined
with them in compelling Cornwallis to surrender his whole force; and
old St. Joseph’s Church, in Philadelphia, soon rang with the grand _Te
Deum_ chanted in thanksgiving at a Mass offered up in presence of the
victorious generals.
None question the aid given us by Catholic France. Several who came as
volunteers, or in the army or fleet, remained in the United States.
One officer who had served nobly in the field laid aside his sword and
returned to labor during the rest of his life for the well-being of
America as a devoted Catholic priest.
But France was not the only Catholic friend of our cause. Spain had,
as we have seen, at an early period in the war, sent a liberal gift of
money. She opened her ports to our privateers, and refused to give up
Captain Lee, of Marblehead, whom England demanded. She went further;
for when intelligence came of the Declaration of Independence, she
gave him supplies and repaired his ship. She subsequently sent cargoes
of supplies to us from Bilbao, and put at the disposal of the United
States ammunition and supplies at New Orleans. When an American envoy
reached Madrid, she sent blankets for ten regiments and made a gift of
$150,000 through our representative. When the gallant young Count
Bernardo de Galvez, whose name is commemorated in Galveston, was made
governor of Louisiana, he at once tendered his services to us; he
forwarded promptly the clothing and military stores in New Orleans;
and when the English seized an American schooner on the Louisiana
lakes, he confiscated all English vessels in reprisal.
Spain had not formally recognized the United States. She offered her
mediation to George III., and on its refusal by that monarch, for that
and other causes she declared war against England. Galvez moved at
once. He besieged the English at Baton Rouge, and, after a long and
stubborn resistance, compelled it to surrender in September, 1780; he
swept the waters of English vessels, and then, with the co-operation
of a Spanish fleet under Admiral Solano and de Monteil, laid siege to
the ancient town of Pensacola. The forts were held by garrisons of
English troops, Hessians, and northern Tories, well supplied and ready
to meet the arms of the Catholic king. The resistance of the British
governor, Campbell, was stout and brave; but Pensacola fell, and
British power on our southern frontier was crushed, and neutralized.
Spain gave one of the greatest blows to England in the war, next in
importance to the overthrow of Burgoyne and Cornwallis.
On the Northwest, too, where English influence over the Indians was so
detrimental, Spain checked it by the reduction of English posts that
had been the centre of the operations of the savage foe. America was
not slow in showing her sense of gratitude to Catholic Spain. Robert
Morris wrote to Galvez: “I am directed by the United States to express
to your excellency the grateful sense they entertain of your early
efforts in their favor. Those generous efforts gave them so favorable
an impression of your character and that of your nation that they have
not ceased to wish for a more intimate connection with your country.”
Galvez made the connection more intimate by marrying a lady of New
Orleans, who in time presided in Mexico as wife of the Viceroy of New
Spain.
But it was not only by the operations on land that the country of
Isabella the Catholic aided our cause. Before she declared war against
England, her navy had been increased and equipped, so that her fleets
co-operated ably with those of France in checking English power and
lowering English supremacy on the ocean.
Yet a greater service than that of brave men on land or sea was
rendered by her diplomacy. Russia had been almost won by England; her
fleet was expected to give its aid to the British navy in reasserting
her old position; but Spain, while still neutral, proposed an armed
neutrality, and urged it with such skill and address that she detached
Russia from England, and arrayed her virtually as an opponent where
she had been counted upon with all certainty as an ally. Spain really
thus banded all Continental Europe against England, and then, by
declaring war herself, led Holland to join us openly.
Nor were France and Spain our only Catholic friends. The Abbé Niccoli,
minister of Tuscany at the court of France, was a zealous abettor of
the cause of America. In Germany the Hessians, sent over here to do
the work of English oppression, were all raised in Protestant states,
while history records the fact that the Catholic princes of the empire
discouraged the disgraceful raising of German troops to be used in
crushing a free people; and this remonstrance and opposition of the
Catholic princes put a stop to the German aid which had been rendered
to our opponent.
Never was there such harmonious Catholic action as that in favor of
American independence a hundred years ago. The Catholics in the
country were all Whigs; the Catholics of Canada were favorable, ready
to become our fellow-citizens; France and Spain aided our cause with
money and supplies, by taking part in the war, and by making a
Continental combination against England; Catholic Italy and Catholic
Germany exerted themselves in our favor. Catholics did their duty in
the legislature and in the council-hall, in the army and in the navy;
Catholics held for us our northeastern frontier, and gave us the
Northwest; Catholic officers helped to raise our armies to the grade
of European science; a Catholic commander made our navy triumph on the
sea. Catholic France helped to weaken the English at Newport,
Savannah, and Charleston; crippled England’s naval power in the West
Indies, and off the capes of Virginia utterly defeated them; then with
her army aided Washington to strike the crowning blow at Cornwallis in
Yorktown. Catholic Spain aided us on the western frontier by capturing
British posts, and under Galvez reduced the British and Tories at
Baton Rouge and Pensacola. And, on the other hand, there is no
Catholic’s name in all the lists of Tories.
Washington uttered no words of flattery, no mere commonplaces of
courtesy, but what he felt and knew to be the truth, when, in reply to
the Catholic address, he said: “I presume that your fellow-citizens
will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the
accomplishment of their Revolution and the establishment of their
government, or the important assistance which they received from a
nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed.”
[138] “Father Gibault, but especially Vigo, had on
hand at the close of the campaign more than $20,000 of
this worthless trash (the only funds, however which
Clark had in his military chest), and not one dollar
of which was ever redeemed.”
THE IRISH HOME-RULE MOVEMENT.[139]
What is the real nature of the new political movement or organization
in Ireland which emblazons on its banner the device “Home Rule”?
Beyond all question it has attained to national dimensions. It has
concentrated upon itself more of the attention and interest, hopes and
sympathies, of the Irish people than any political endeavor on the
same field of action for many years. More than this, it seems to have
succeeded in exacting a tribute to its power and authority which no
previous movement received from the adverse ministers, publicists, and
people of England. These, while they combat it, deal with it as
“Ireland.” It makes propositions, exacts terms, directs assaults,
assents to arrangements on behalf of and in the name of the Irish
people; and, as we have indicated, the singular part of the case is
that not only is its action ratified and applauded by them, but its
authority so to act in their name is virtually recognized by the
government. In the House of Commons it takes charge of Irish affairs;
has almost an Irish (volunteer) ministry, certainly an organized party
not inferior, if not superior, in discipline to that of the
“government” or “opposition.” We hear of its “whips,” its councils,
its special division-lists, its assignment of particular duties,
motions, or bills to particular individuals; and, lastly, we hear of
it boldly challenging the Disraelian hosts, fighting them in debate
throughout a set field-day, and, despite the actual government
majority of forty-eight and working majority of seventy, running the
ministerialists to within barely thirteen votes.
In all this there is much that is new in the history of Irish
politics; and it were impossible that it should not intensely
interest, if not affect, the Catholic millions of America, bound, as
most of them are, to Ireland by the sacred ties of faith and kindred
and nationality.
What, then, is Home Rule? Is it Fenianism, “veiled” or unveiled? Is it
Repeal? Is it less than repeal, or more than repeal? Is it a surrender
or a compromise of the Irish national demand; or is it, as its
advocates claim, the substance of that demand shaped and adjusted
according to the circumstances, requirements, and necessities of the
present time?
With the fall of the Young Ireland party, and the disastrous collapse
of their meditated rather than attempted insurrection in 1848, there
seemed to foes and friends an end of national movements in Ireland for
the balance of the century. It is almost a law of defeats that the
vanquished are separated into two or three well-defined parties or
sections: those whom the blow has intensified and more embittered in
their opposition; those whom it wholly overawes, who thereafter
consider they have done enough for honor, and retire entirely from the
field; and, lastly, those who recognize, if they do not accept, the
defeat; who admit the impossibility of further operations on a
position so advanced, fall back upon some line which they imagine they
can hold, and, squaring round there, offer battle with whatever of
strength and resources survive to them. This is just what resulted in
Ireland in 1848-49. The Young Ireland movement of 1848 was never
national in dimensions or acceptance. O’Connell’s movement _was_, from
1842 to 1844; but from that date forward, though there were two or
three rival movements or parties, having for their leaders
respectively O’Connell, Smith O’Brien, and John Mitchel, no one of
them had the nation at its back. The Young Irelanders led away from
O’Connell the youth, talent, enthusiasm, and, to a large extent,
though not entirely, the resolute earnestness and honesty of the old
Repeal party. It is a very common but a very great fallacy that they
broke away on a “war policy” from the grand old man whose fading
intellect was but too sadly indicated in the absurd conduct that drove
the young men from his side. They had no “war” policy or design any
more than he had (in the sense of a war attack on England), until they
caught up one in the blaze and whirl of revolutionary intoxication
scattered through Europe by the startling events of February, 1848, in
Paris. They seceded from O’Connell on this point,[140] because they
would not subscribe to the celebrated test resolutions (called “Peace
Resolutions”) declaring that under _no_ circumstances was it or would
it be lawful to take up arms for the recovery of national rights.
Spurning such a declaration, but solemnly declaring they contemplated
no application of its converse assertion in their political designs
for Ireland, the seceders set up the “Irish Confederation.” But the
magic of O’Connell’s name, and indeed the force of a loving gratitude,
held the masses of the people and the bulk of the clergy in the old
organization. The Confederates were in many places decidedly
“unpopular,”[141] especially when, the Uncrowned Monarch having died
mournfully in exile, his following in Conciliation Hall raised the cry
that the Young Irelanders “killed O’Connell.” Soon afterwards the
seceders were themselves rent by a secession. The bolder spirits, led
by John Mitchel and Devin Rielly, demanded that the Confederation, in
place of disclaiming any idea of an armed struggle against England,
should avowedly prepare the people for such a resort. The new
secession was as weak in numbers, relatively towards the
Confederation, as the original seceders were towards the Repeal
Association. The three parties made bitter war upon one another. A
really national movement there was no more.
Suddenly Paris rose against Louis Philippe, and throughout Europe, in
capital after capital, barricades went up and thrones came down.
Ireland caught the flame. The Mitchel party suddenly found themselves
masters of the situation. The Confederation leaders—O’Brien, Duffy,
Dillon, O’Gorman, Meagher, and Doheny—not only found their platform
abandoned, but eventually, though not without some hesitation and
misgiving, they themselves abandoned it too, and threw themselves into
the scheme for an armed struggle in the ensuing summer or autumn. It
was thought, perhaps, that although this might not reunite the
O’Connellites and the Young Irelanders, it would surely reunite the
recently-divided sections of the O’Brien following; but it did so only
ostensibly or partially. There were two schools of insurrectionists in
the now insurrectionary party: Mitchel and Rielly declared that
O’Brien and Duffy wanted a “rosewater revolution”; O’Brien and Duffy
declared the others were “Reds,” who wanted a _jacquerie_. The refusal
of the leaders to make the rescue of Mitchel the occasion and signal
for a rising, led to bitter and scarcely disguised recrimination; and
when, a couple of months later, they themselves, caught unawares and
unprepared by the government, sought to effect a rising, the result
was utter and complete failure. The call had no real power or
authority behind it. The men who issued it had not the mandate of the
nation in any sense of the word. They were at the moment the fraction
of a fraction. They had against them the bulk of the Repeal millions
and the Catholic clergy; not against them in any combative sense, but
in a decided disapproval of their insurrection. Some, and only some,
of the large cities became thoroughly imbued with and ready to carry
through the revolutionary determination—an impress which Cork has ever
since retained; but beyond the traditional vague though deep-rooted
feeling of the Irish peasantry against the hateful rule of England,
the rural population, and even the majority of the cities and towns,
had scarcely any participation in “the Forty-Eight movement.”
When, therefore, all was over, and the “Men of ’48,” admittedly the
flower of Ireland’s intellect and patriotism, were fugitives or
“felons”—some seeking and receiving asylum and hospitality in America,
others eating their hearts in the hulks of Bermuda or the dungeons of
Tasmania—a dismal reaction set in in Ireland. The results above
referred to as incidental to defeats as a rule were plainly apparent.
Of the millions who, from 1841 to 1848, whether as Repealers,
O’Connellites, Confederates, Mitchelites, Old Irelanders, or Young
Irelanders, partook in an effort to make Ireland a self-governed or
else totally independent nation, probably one-half in 1849 resigned,
as they thought, for ever, all further hope or effort in that
direction. Of the remainder, a numerically small party—chiefly, though
not all, men who had belonged to John Mitchel’s section of the Young
Irelanders—became only the more exasperated by a defeat in which they
felt that their policy had not had even a chance of trying what was in
it; a defeat, too, that left the vanquished not one incident to solace
their pride and shield them from humiliation and ignoble ridicule.
Chafing with rage and indignation, they beheld the rest of what
remained at all visible of the national party effecting that
retrograde movement alluded to in a foregoing page. Of all the
brilliant leaders of Young Ireland, Gavan Duffy alone now remained to
face on Irish soil the terrible problem, “What next?” Openly
proclaiming that the revolutionary position could not be held, he
ordered a retreat all along the line. Halting for a while on an
attempt to revive the original Irish Confederation policy—an attempt
which he had to abandon for want of support—he at length succeeded in
rallying what could be called a political party on a struggle for
“Tenant Right.” It raised in no way the “national” question. It
gathered Presbyterians of the north and Catholics of the south,
repealers and anti-repealers, in an organization to force Parliament
to pass a bill preventing the eviction of tenant-farmers unless for
non-payment of rent; preventing also arbitrary increasing of rent that
might squeeze out the farmer in another way. “Come, now, this is
something practical and sensible,” said matter-of-fact non-repealers
and half-hearted nationalists. “Why, it is craven surrender and sheer
dishonor!” cried the irreconcilable section of the ’48 men. A band of
thirty or forty members of Parliament were returned at the instance of
the Tenant League to work out its programme. They were mostly corrupt
and dishonest men, who merely shouted the new shibboleth for their own
purposes. Were the people thoroughly in earnest, and did they possess
any really free voting power (there was no vote by ballot then), all
this could be cured; but as things stood, the parliamentary band broke
up in the first three months of their existence. The English minister
bought up its noisiest leaders, of whom Keogh (now a judge) and
Sadleir are perhaps most widely remembered. In some cases the
constituencies, priests and people, condoned their treason, duped into
believing it was not treason at all, but “a great thing to have
Catholics on the bench.” In other places the efforts of priests and
people to oppose the re-election of the traitors were vain; free
election amongst “tenants at will” being almost unknown without the
ballot. The tenants’ cause was lost. Thus ruin, in its own way as
complete and disastrous as that which overtook the insurrectionary
attempt of 1848, now overthrew the experiment of a great popular
campaign based on constitutional and parliamentary principles. Not
only was there now no movement for nationality in Ireland; there was
not an Irish movement of any kind or for any Irish purpose at all,
great or little. It was _Pacata Hibernia_ as in the days of Carew and
St. Leger.
Now came the turn for the unchanged and exasperated section of the ’48
war party. Few in numbers, and scattered wide apart, they had hissed
forth scorn and execration on Duffy’s parliamentary experiment as a
departure from the revolutionary faith. If he in 1849 answered to
their invectives by pointing to the fiasco of the year before, they
now taunted him with the collapse of 1853. Not more than two or three
of the ’48 men of any prominence, however, took up this actually
hostile attitude. Most of them—O’Brien, Dillon, Meagher, O’Gorman, and
even Martin—more or less expressly approved the recent endeavor as the
best thing practicable under the circumstances in Ireland. Now,
however, the men who believed in war and nothing but war, in total
separation and nothing short of separation, would take _their_ turn.
The Fenian movement thus arose.
If neither of the sections or subsections of the Irish nationalists in
1848 could be said to have succeeded in rallying or representing the
full force, or even a considerable proportion, of Irish patriotism,
this new venture was certainly not more fortunate in that respect.
Outside its ranks, obstinately refusing to believe in its policy,
remained the bulk of the millions who had followed O’Connell or Smith
O’Brien. Yet the Fenians worked with an energy worthy of
admiration—except where the movement degenerated into an intolerance
that forbade any other national opinions save those of its leaders to
be advanced. In truth, their influence on Irish politics was very
mixed in its merits. In some places it was a rude and vaunting
rowdyism that called itself Fenianism; in others an honest, manly,
self-sacrificing spirit of patriotism marked the men who were its
confessors and martyrs. If in their fall they drew down upon Ireland
severities worse than anything known since 1798, it is only fair, on
the other hand, to credit in a large degree to the sensations aroused
by their trials the great awakening of public opinion on the Irish
question which set in all over England at the time.
And now once more the board was clear. England had won the game; not a
pawn remained untaken on the Irish side. Not an Irish association, or
society, or “agitation,” or demand of any kind challenged Britannia’s
peace of mind. Once more it was a spectacle of the lash and the
triangle; state-trials, informers, and prosecutors; the convict-ship
and the hulk; the chain-gangs at Portland and Chatham.
“Who will show us any light?” exclaims one of the Young Ireland bards
in a well-known and beautiful poem. Such might well have been the
exclamation of Ireland in 1867. Was this to be the weary cycle of
Irish effort, for ever and for ever? Was armed effort hopeless, and
peaceful effort vain? Was there no alternative for Irishmen but to
become “West-Britons,” or else dash their brains out against a dungeon
wall? Could no one devise a way whereby to give scope and vent to the
Irish passion for national existence, to give a field to Irish
devotion and patriotism, which would be consonant with the spirit of
manhood, without calling for these hecatombs of victims?
Suddenly a new element of consideration presented itself; new, indeed,
and rather startling.
It was Irish Protestantism offering the hand of reconciliation to
Ireland.
The Tory party had come into power in the course of the Fenian
prosecutions, and had carried on the work in a spirit which Cromwell
himself would approve. They really held office, not because they had
an effective majority in the House of Commons, but because the
liberals were broken up and divided, unable to agree on a policy. To
turn to his own account the “Fenian scare” was Mr. Gladstone’s
brilliant idea. To make a dash on the Irish Church establishment would
rally all the mutinous fractions of liberalism, on the principle of
“hit him, he has no friends.” It would gratify all England as a sort
of conscience-salve for the recent dragonnades and coercion laws. Yes;
this was the card with which to beat Disraeli. True, Mr. Gladstone had
only a few years before put down his foot and declared that never,
“no, _never_,” could, would, or should that Irish Church be
disestablished or interfered with in any way. What was he to say now
to cover this flank movement, made for purely party purposes? In all
Britain there is no brain more subtle, none more fertile of strategic
resource, than that of W. E. Gladstone. He put it all on Fenianism. He
had changed his mind, _not_ because he was out of office with a weak
and broken party, and wanted to get back with a strong and united one,
but because he had opened his eyes to Fenianism! He never hit on a
more successful idea. On the cry of “Down with the Irish Church!” he
was swept into office at the head of the most powerful majority
commanded by any minister since Peel in 1841. It must not be thought
that Mr. Gladstone was insincere, or meant anything but service to
Ireland (while also serving his party) by this move. He has the
faculty of intensely persuading himself into a fervid conscientiousness
on any subject he likes, whether it be Free Trade, Church
Establishment, Church Disestablishment, or Vaticanism.
The Irish Protestants had an unanswerable case against England—that
is, as between them and her—on this matter of disestablishment. It
was, on her part towards them, an open, palpable, and flagitious
breach of faith—breach of formal treaty in fact. The articles of the
Union in 1800 expressly covenanted that the maintenance of the Irish
Church establishment was to be one of the cardinal, fundamental,
essential, and everlasting conditions of the deed. Mr. Gladstone
snapped his fingers at such considerations. “Mind, you thereby repeal
and annul the Union,” cried Irish conservatives. “We will kick another
crown into the Boyne,” said Parson Flanagan at an Orange meeting. “We
have held by this bargain with you with uneasy consciences,” said and
wrote numbers of sincere Irish Protestants; “break it, and we break
with you, and become Irishmen first and before everything.”
It was rightly judged by thoughtful observers that, though noisy
braggarts of the Parson Flanagan class would not only let the crown
alone, but would cringe all the more closely by England’s side even
when the church was swept away, there was much of sober earnestness
and honest resolve in what hundreds of Protestant laymen (and even
clergymen) spoke upon this issue. Yes, though the bulk of Irish
Protestants would prove unequal to so rapid a political conversion,
even under provocation so strong, there would still be a considerable
movement of their numbers towards, if not into, the Irish camp. Time,
moreover, and prudent and conciliatory action on the part of their
Catholic countrymen, would be always increasing that _rapprochement_.
And so in the very chaos and disruption and upheaval of political
elements and parties in Ireland from 1868 to 1870 there was, as by a
mysterious design of Providence, a way made for events and
transformations and combinations which otherwise would have been nigh
impossible.
The church was disestablished; Irish Protestants were struck with
amazement and indignation. England had broken with them; they would
unite with Ireland. But, alas! no; this was, it seemed, impossible.
They could never be “Fenians.” No doubt they, after all, treasured in
their Protestant hearts the memory, the words, and, in a way, the
principles of their great coreligionists, Grattan and Flood, Curran
and Charlemont. In _this_ direction they could go; but towards
_separation_—towards an “Irish republic,” towards disloyalty to the
crown—they would not, could not, turn their faces. These men belonged
in large part to a class, or to classes, never since 1782 seen joining
a national movement in any great numbers. They were men of high
position; large landed proprietors, bankers, merchants,
“deputy-lieutenants” of counties, baronets, a few of them peers, many
of them dignitaries of the Protestant church, some of them fellows of
Trinity College. Such men had vast property at stake in the country.
They saw a thousand reasons why Irishmen alone should regulate Irish
affairs, but they would hold by a copartnership with Scotland and
England in the empire at large. This, however, they concluded, was not
what the bulk of their countrymen was looking for; and so it almost
seemed as if they would turn back and relapse into mere West-britonism
as a lesser evil for them than a course of “rebellion” and “sedition.”
At this juncture there appeared upon the scene a man whose name seems
destined to be writ large on the records of a memorable era in Irish
history—Isaac Butt.
When, on Friday evening, the 15th of September, 1865, the British
government seized the leading members of the Fenian Society and flung
them into Richmond jail, it became a consideration of some difficulty
with the prisoners and their friends how and by whom they should be
defended. In one sense they had plenty of counsel to choose from. Such
occasions are great opportunities for briefless advocates to strike
in, like ambitious authors of unacted plays who nobly offer them to be
performed on Thanksgiving day or for some popular public charity. No
doubt the prisoners could have had attorneys and lawyers of this stamp
easily enough; but it was not every man whom they would trust equally
for his ability and his honesty. Besides, there was the money
difficulty. The crown was about to fight them in a costly law duel. To
retain men of the front rank at the bar would cost thousands of
pounds; to retain men of inferior position would be worse than
useless. Could there be found amongst the leaders of the Irish bar
even one man bold enough and generous enough to undertake the
desperate task and protracted labor of defending these men, leaving
the question of fee or remuneration to the _chance_ of funds being
forthcoming? What of the great advocates of the state trials of 1843
and 1848? Holmes—_clarum et venerabile nomen_—dead! Shiel—gone too;
Whiteside—on the bench; O’Hagan—also a judge; Sir Colman O’Loghlen—a
crown prosecutor; Butt—yes, Butt, even then in the front rank, the
most skilful, the boldest, the most eloquent, and most generous of
them all—_he_ is just the man! Where is Butt?
Where, indeed? He had to be searched and sought for, so utterly and
sadly had a great figure silently disappeared from the forum. Thirty
years before Isaac Butt was the young hope of Protestant conservatism,
the idol of its _salons_. He had barely passed his majority when he
was elected to the professorship of Political Economy in Trinity
College; and, at an age when such honors were unprecedented, was
elevated to a “silk-gown,” as Queen’s Counsellor at the bar. Yet there
was always about young Butt an intense Irishism; he was a
high-spirited Protestant, a chivalrous conservative; but even in that
early time the eagle eye of O’Connell detected in him an Irish heart
and a love of the principles of liberty that would yet, so he
prophesied, lead Butt into the ranks of the Irish people. The English
Tory leaders enticed him over to London, and sent him into Parliament
for one of their boroughs—Harwich. They made much of him—and were his
ruin. In the whirl of parliamentary life, in the fascination of London
society, he abandoned his professional business and fell into debt
difficulty, and dissipation. Had he been less independent and less
self-willed, he would no doubt have been richly placed by his
ministerial friends. Somehow or another he and they drew apart as he
went sullenly and recklessly downward. In 1864 he had almost dropped
out of sight, having just previously ceased to sit in Parliament.
To the solicitation to undertake the defence of the Fenian prisoners
he responded by giving them, it may be said, three whole years of his
professional life. He flung himself into that fight for the men in the
dock with the devotion, the enthusiasm, the desperate energy of a man
striving for life itself. His genius and ability, conspicuous before,
shone out more than ever. He was admittedly the first lawyer of his
day; and now not only the crown counsel but the judges on the bench
felt they were dealing with their master. Of money he took no thought.
Indeed, in the best and worst days of his fortunes he gave it little
heed. He has been known in the depth of his difficulties to hand back
a special fee of a hundred guineas which he knew a poor client could
not spare, and the same day pay his hotel bill with a check doomed
never to be cashed. The incident is unfortunately only too typical of
one phase of his nature.
Three or four years immersed in such labors—one protracted series of
state trials—dealing in the most painfully realistic way with the
problem of Ireland’s destiny, could not fail to have a profound effect
on a man like Butt. Meantime, he grew into immense popularity. His
bold appeals for the prisoners, which soon came to be the sentiments
of the man rather than the pleadings of the advocate, were read with
avidity in every peasant’s cottage and workman’s home. The Fenians,
broken and defeated as an organization, yet still ramifying throughout
the country, looked to him with the utmost gratitude and confidence.
Under his presidency and guidance a society called the Amnesty
Association was established for the purpose of obtaining the royal
clemency for at least some of the Fenian convicts. A series of
mass-meetings under its auspices were held throughout the island, and
were the largest assemblages seen in Ireland since the Repeal meetings
of Tara and Mullaghmast. In fine, Mr. Butt found himself a popular
leader, at the head of at all events the pro-Fenian section of Irish
political elements, and daily becoming a power in the country.
The resentful Protestants, just now half-minded to hoist the national
flag, were many of them Butt’s old comrades, college-chums, and
political associates. He noted their critical position, and forthwith
turned all his exertions, in private as well as in public, to lead
them onward to the people, and to prevent them from relapsing into the
character of an English garrison. In his public speeches he poured
forth to them the most impassioned appeals. In private he sought out
man by man of the most important and influential among them. “Banish
hesitation and fear,” he cried. “Act boldly and promptly now, and you
will save Ireland from revolutionary violence on the one side, and
from alien misgovernment on the other. You, like myself, have been
early trained to mistrust the Catholic multitude, but when you come to
know them you will admire them. They are not anarchists, nor would
they be revolutionists if men like you would but do your duty and lead
them—that is, honestly and faithfully and capably lead them—in the
struggle for constitutional liberty.” The Protestants listened, almost
persuaded; but some sinister whisper now and again of the terrors of a
“Catholic ascendency” in an Irish parliament—a reminder that Irish
Catholics would vote for a nominee of their clergy right or wrong, and
consequently that if the Irish Protestant minority threw off the yoke
of England, they should bear the yoke of Rome—seemed to drive them,
scared, from the portals of nationality.
About this time, the beginning of 1870, Mr. Gladstone raised to the
peerage Colonel Fulke Greville Nugent, M.P. for Longford County. He
was a respectable and fairly popular “liberal” in politics, was a good
landlord, and, though a Protestant, kindly and generous to the
Catholic clergy and people around him. He had held his seat by and
from the priests; for Longford County, from the days when it
heroically won its independence a generation before, had been
virtually in the gift of the Catholic clergy. This vacancy occurred in
the very fever of the Amnesty excitement. A few months before Mr.
Gladstone had rather harshly refused the appeal for Amnesty; and
Tipperary made answer and commentary thereon by electing to Parliament
one of the Fenian convicts, at the moment a prisoner in Chatham. It
was proposed to imitate this course in Longford, but a more worthy
resolve was taken: John Martin of Rostrevor—“Honest John Martin”—one
of the purest, most heroic, and lovable of Irish patriots, was put in
nomination, although at the moment he was travelling in America and
unaware of the proceedings. But the clergy had at a private conference
committed themselves to the son of their late member—a brainless young
officer in the army. Neither party would withdraw their man; and out
of this arose a conflict as fierce, bitter, and relentless as if the
parties to it had been ancient and implacable foes instead of lifelong
and loving friends. Altar denunciations of the most terrible kind were
hurled at the men who dared to “oppose their clergy” by advocating
John Martin. Platform denunciations were hurled at the men who dared
to go “against Ireland” by preferring to a stainless and devoted
patriot a brainless little fop who had not a political idea in his
head or a spark of Irish patriotism in his heart.
Ireland, and England too, looked on in intense amazement and
curiosity. Here was a great problem brought to a critical test. The
old story of the anti-Catholic English press, that Irish Catholics
would slavishly “vote black white at the ordering of their priests,”
was about to be proved true or put to shame. The Longford clergy
defeated John Martin and carried their man, but he was subsequently
unseated on petition. The experiment otherwise, however, was decisive.
For John Martin, a Presbyterian Protestant, a Catholic people fought
their own clergy as vehemently as they and those clergy had ever
fought the Tory landlords. It was an exceptional and painful incident,
but at the moment one of vast importance, which proudly vindicated
both priests and people from a damaging calumny.[142]
There was no misunderstanding all this. No Irish Protestant,
patriotically inclined, could any longer be scared by the bugbear of
“Catholic intolerance.” The time at last had come for the step they
meditated. The moment had arrived also for some attempt to answer the
aspirations of Ireland. And “the Hour had brought the Man.”
On the night of Thursday, the 19th of May, 1870, there were quietly
assembled in the Bilton Hotel, Upper Sackville Street, Dublin—the most
exclusive and aristocratic of the quasi-private hotels in that city—a
strange gathering. Such men had never met to confer or act together
before. It was a “private conference of Irish gentlemen to consider
the state of Ireland.” But looking around the room, one might think
the millennium at hand, when the wolf would lie down with the lamb and
the lion slumber with the fawn. Men who were Tories, nay, Orangemen;
men who were “ultra-montanes,” men who had been Repealers, men who
were Whigs, men who had been rebels; Protestants, Catholics,
Presbyterians, Quakers, Fenians, anti-Fenians, knights, high sheriffs,
aristocrats, democrats—a strange array, about fifty in all.[143]
Soberly and earnestly and long they discussed and debated and
deliberated. The men seemed thoroughly to realize the gravity of what
they were about.
They did not claim any representative character whatever; they spoke
each man for himself. The questions they had proposed to discuss dealt
merely with “absenteeism and the consequent loss of trade and national
prosperity,” and “the advantages of a royal residence in Ireland in a
political and financial point of view.” But in the very first moments
of discussion even the new converts to nationality took up bolder
ground. Lord Mayor Purdon, a Protestant Conservative, a man
universally respected in Dublin; Sir William Wilde (husband of the
Young Ireland poetess “Speranza”), an archæologist of European fame;
the Hon. Capt. King-Harman; and the Rev. J. E. Galbraith, fellow of
Trinity College, one of the most distinguished mathematicians of the
age, were amongst the men of conservative politics who came especially
to the front. The nationalists, both “extreme” and “moderate,”
interfered but little in the discussions, looking on greatly
astonished at all they heard and saw; but their part of the case was
well handled by the man who was really the guiding spirit of the
scene, and who eventually rose and in a brief speech of thrilling
power proposed:
“That it is the opinion of this meeting that the true remedy for
the evils of Ireland is the establishment of an Irish parliament
with full control over our domestic affairs.”
A dozen men rose to second this resolution of Mr. Butt, which was
carried in the meeting not only without a dissentient voice, but with
enthusiasm. Considering the composition of the assemblage, this was
one of the most startling incidents in Irish politics for half a
century. Having appointed a committee to report resolutions to a
future meeting, the assembly adjourned.
This was the birth of the Home-Rule movement.
The course of procedure adopted, following upon the above events, was
one quite unique in Irish politics. Usually the promoters in such
cases would hold a meeting as “we the people of Ireland” and begin to
act and speak in the name of the country. Not only was this line of
conduct eschewed, it was expressty repudiated, by the semi-private
society or association which at first grew out of the Bilton Hotel
meeting. It was only four months afterwards (1st of Sept., 1870) that
they ventured to assume public form or shape as a political
organization. During all this interval they announced themselves
simply as a number of Irishmen associated together in an endeavor to
ascertain the feeling of the country upon the subject of national
autonomy. They had themselves arrived at certain general conclusions
or resolutions (hereafter to be noticed), but they declared they could
not arrogate to themselves any right or authority to speak for the
nation at large. When at length they broke ground and took the field
publicly as the “Irish Home Government Association,” they still
disclaimed the right to assume the authoritative functions or tone of
a great national organization.[144] _That_ would come at the right
time, if the country thought well of calling forth such a body; but
_this_ was at best a sort of “precursor society” projecting certain
views, and submitting them to public examination by the people, with
the avowed intention on the part of these “precursors” of some day, if
they found encouragement for their course, calling on the country to
pass its deliberate and decisive verdict upon those views, so that
_Ireland, the nation_, might speak, and, speaking, command obedience
from all loyal and faithful sons.
This was all Butt’s sagacity. _Festina lente_ was the motto that
befitted work so grave and momentous as an effort to lift Ireland up
and bid her hope and strive once more. There was need of this
deliberation and caution. The experiment of bringing together such
elements as he gathered around this new venture was a hazardous one.
There were prejudices to be allayed, objections to be removed,
antipathies to be conquered. Notoriously there were men who wanted not
to go very far on a road so new to them, and whom a very little bit
indeed of self-government would satisfy. Just as notoriously were
there men who wanted to go a great deal further than they could get
the rest of their countrymen to join them in attempting. These two
sections—the Protestant loyalists and the Fenian secessionists—were
the most widely opposed. Then there were men of the “Old Ireland”
school and men of the “Young Ireland” school—men who objected to
“repeal” as worthless without the addition of a separate and
responsible Irish administration; and men who objected to repeal as
dangerous without stronger guarantees against conflict and separation
of the kingdoms.
It was expected that the greatest difficulty would be with the (Irish)
Fenians; but this was not so. Mainly through Mr. Butt’s great
influence with them, but partly because adversity had taught them
useful lessons, they either came into the new scheme or else declared
for a friendly neutrality. Not that any of them did so in the sense of
recanting their Fenian principles. They expressly reserved their own
convictions, but announced their determination to give a fair trial
and a friendly aid to an honest endeavor in the direction proposed.
Some of their body, absent in America, disapproved of this resolve,
and bitterly decried the idea of letting any patriotic scheme but
their own find tolerance, much less favor, from their ranks. In
England, however—_i.e._, among the Irish in England—where the wreck
and disorganization that had broken up Irish Fenianism had had little
effect, and where for several years past there had resided whatever of
strength and authority remained of that body, the proposals of Mr.
Butt were taken up heartily, and even enthusiastically, by them.
A much more formidable work it was found to be to assure the men of
large property that this was not an embryo scheme for rebellion and
revolution; to persuade the Catholic clergy that it was not either a
cloak for Fenianism or a snare of Orangeism; and to convince the
Protestants that it was not a trap laid for them by Cardinal Cullen
and the Jesuits.
And now what was the scheme or plan or “platform” put forward after
such deliberation, inquiry, negotiation, and investigation? What
specifically has been the Irish national demand as put forth to the
world in 1870, solemnly ratified in a great National Conference in
1873, and unmistakably and triumphantly endorsed at the general
elections of February, 1874?
Substantially the old demand and declaration on the basis of which
Ireland has been ready enough any time for the last two hundred and
fifty years to compromise with the English connection—equality in a
copartnership, but no subjugation; the national autonomy of Ireland
secured; the right of Ireland to legislate for and control her own
affairs established. The Irish Confederate government of 1642, the
free Irish parliament of 1690, the free Irish parliament of 1782, and
the decree of the Irish millions organized in the Repeal movement of
1843 formulated just that programme—modified somewhat, no doubt, each
time, it might be, according to the requirements of the period; but
still, as the student of authentic historical documents will discover,
it was on all those memorable occasions in substance the same. The
Catholic Confederation at Kilkenny in the seventeenth century, and the
Protestant convention at Dungannon in the eighteenth, spoke in almost
identical tones as to Ireland’s position under the triple crown of
Scotland, England, and Ireland. It was very much as if Virginia in
1865 said: “I have fought you long and bravely; recognize and secure
to me the fulness of state rights, and I will loyally cast in my lot
as a member of the United States.” How closely the founders of the new
Irish movement kept on the old lines may be seen from the subjoined
“platform” laid down by the “Home Government Association” in 1870:
“HOME GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION.
“GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
“I.—This association is formed for the purpose of obtaining
for Ireland the right of self-government by means of a
national parliament.
“II.—It is hereby declared, as the essential principle of
this association, that the objects, and THE ONLY OBJECTS,
contemplated by its organization are:
“To obtain for our country the right and privilege of
managing our own affairs, by a parliament assembled in
Ireland, composed of her majesty the sovereign, and her
successors, and the Lords and Commons of Ireland:
“To secure for that parliament, under a federal
arrangement, the right of legislating for and regulating
all matters relating to the internal affairs of Ireland,
and control over Irish resources and revenues, subject to
the obligation of contributing our just proportion of the
imperial expenditure:
“To leave to an imperial parliament the power of dealing
with all questions affecting the imperial crown and
government, legislation regarding the colonies and other
dependencies of the crown, the relations of the United
Empire with foreign states, and all matters appertaining
to the defence and the stability of the empire at large.
“To attain such an adjustment of the relations between the
two countries, without any interference with the
prerogatives of the crown, or any disturbances of the
principles of the constitution.
“III.—The association invites the co-operation of all
Irishmen who are willing to join in seeking for Ireland a
federal arrangement based upon these general principles.
“IV.—The association will endeavor to forward the object it
has in view, by using all legitimate means of influencing
public sentiment, both in Ireland and Great Britain, by
taking all opportunities of instructing and informing public
opinion, and by seeking to unite Irishmen of all creeds and
classes in one national movement, in support of the great
national object hereby contemplated.
“V.—It is declared to be an essential principle of the
association that, while every member is understood by
joining it to concur in its general object and plan of
action, no person so joining is committed to any political
opinion, except the advisability of seeking for Ireland the
amount of self-government contemplated in the objects of the
association.”
Though rather diffidently and unostentatiously projected, the new
movement was hailed with general approbation. Yet it had for some time
hanging on either flank very bitter though not very numerous
assailants. The ultra-tories, led by the Dublin _Daily Express_,
shrieked fiercely at the Protestant conservatives that they had
entered the camp of Fenianism and Romanism; the ultra-whigs, led by
the Dublin _Evening Post_, howled wildly at the Catholics that they
were the tools of Orangemen who shammed Home Rule merely to spite Mr.
Gladstone for disestablishing the Protestant Church. There can be no
doubt this latter idea had long a deterrent effect on the Catholic
bishops and clergy; they thought the new movement too like a
Protestant revenge on an English minister whom they regarded as a
benefactor. “The newly-born patriotism of these Tory-nationalists will
soon vanish,” they said (not without show of reason); “wait until they
have driven Mr. Gladstone from office, and got Disraeli back
again—they will then draw off quick enough from Home Rule.” “Very
likely,” answered the Catholic Home-Rulers; “we are quite prepared to
find a large percentage of these men fall off, but enough of them will
remain faithful and true to make the movement a success; and
especially the Protestant _youth_ of the country henceforth will be
ours.”
Time—at all events such time as has since elapsed—has quite vindicated
this view.
Meantime the country was pronouncing gradually but decisively on the
movement. Within the first six months the following corporations, town
commissions, and boards of guardians passed formal votes endorsing its
principles:
Cork (Municipal Council).
Limerick “ “
Athlone (Town Commission).
Ballinasloe “ “
Clones “ “
Dungarvan “ “
Galway “ “
Kingstown “ “
Longford “ “
Nenagh “ “
New Ross “ “
Mullingar “ “
Queenstown “ “
Tuam “ “
Dublin (Board of Guardians).
Cork “ “
Drogheda “ “
Galway “ “
Kilkenny “ “
Kilmallock “ “
Millstreet “ “
Limerick Farmers’ Club
Cork “ “
Mallow “ “
This was barely a few months’ work as to the pronouncement of
popularly-elected public bodies. A number of public meetings in
various parts of the country, attended by tens of thousands of the
people, gave a further stamp of approval and a cheer of welcome to the
movement.
The mode of electing the governing body or council of the association
was peculiar. In place of the usual mode—proposing the list at the
annual public meeting, and passing it there and then—the members of
the council were elected by ballot-papers; each member of the
association, no matter where resident, receiving his paper and
exercising his vote as well as if he lived on the spot in Dublin. Much
curiosity existed to see the result of this secret ballot-vote in a
large body so mixed in religious class and (in a sense) political
opinions. Two-thirds or three-fourths of the voters would be
Catholics—was it not a grievous peril that by any chance they might
ballot in a nearly exclusively Catholic council, and thus sow
misgiving and mistrust amongst the Protestants? But never yet have the
Catholics of Ireland, in private or in public, failed to refute by a
noble tolerance the evil suspicions of their foes. The very first
council thus elected (under circumstances, too, that precluded concert
or arrangement as to either general or particular result) turned out
to be composed of thirty-two Catholics and twenty-nine Protestants;
and two Protestants headed the poll![145] The announcement had a
profound effect, not only in cementing and solidifying the new union
of parties and creeds within the organization, but also in spreading
its principles abroad. A good idea of the varied classes composing the
governing body thus elected may be gathered from the following
analysis of the Home-Rule Council for 1872:
Catholic clergy, 5
Protestant clergy, 4
(The late) Lord Mayor, 1
Aldermen, 7
Deputy lieutenants, 3
Doctors of medicine, 3
Knights, 3
Justices of the peace, 4
Lieutenant-Colonel, 1
Members of Parliament, 5
Queen’s counsel, 1
Solicitors, 2
Town councillors, 3
The British Liberal party, who at first pooh-poohed the “Home-Rule
craze,” at length began to take alarm; for without the Irish vote that
party could neither attain to nor retain office. They warned the
Catholic hierarchy to discourage this mischievous business. It was at
best “inopportune”; it would arrest Mr. Gladstone’s beneficent design
of settling the Catholic university education question; and would only
“play the Tory game.” Liberalism was not going to die easily. Things
came to a crisis in the Kerry election of 1872. On the death that year
of Lord Kenmare, his son, Viscount Castlerosse, then Catholic-whig-liberal
member for Kerry, attained to the earldom, and thus created a vacancy
in the parliamentary representation. By a compact between the great
landlords of the county, Whig and Tory, thirty years previously, it
was agreed to “halve” the county between themselves: one Protestant
Tory member from the great house of Herbert of Muckross, and one
Catholic Whig from the noble house of Kenmare—an “alliance offensive
and defensive” against all third parties or popular intruders being
thus established. On this occasion the new Earl of Kenmare nominated
as his successor in the family seat his first cousin, Mr. James A.
Dease, an estimable Catholic gentleman acceptable to the people in
every way but one: he was not a Home-Ruler. Although the Catholic
bishop, Right Rev. Dr. Moriarty, joined the county landlords in
nominating Mr. Dease, the bulk of the Catholic clergy, and the people
almost unanimously, revolted, and, amidst a shout of derision at such
a “hopeless” attempt, hoisted the flag of Home Rule. They, Catholics
almost to a man, chose out as their candidate a young Protestant
Kerryman barely home from Oxford University—Roland Blennerhassett, of
Kells. He was a Home-Ruler, and much loved even as a boy by the Celtic
peasantry of that wild Iveragh that breaks the first roll of the
Atlantic billows on the stormy Kerry coast. Ireland and England held
breath and watched the struggle as a tacitly-admitted test combat.
“Who spills the foremost foeman’s life,
His party conquers in the strife.”
Such an election-struggle probably had not stirred Ireland since that
of Clare in 1829. It resulted in an overwhelming victory for Home
Rule. Deserted by every influence of power that should have aided and
befriended them (save their ever-faithful priests, who, in nearly
every parish, marched to the poll at the head of their people)—the
frieze-coats of “O’Connell’s county,” rising in their might, tore down
the territorial domination that had ruled them for thirty years, and
struck a blow that decided the fortunes of the Home-Rule movement.
Barely less important (and only less important because of some
peculiar features in the Kerry struggle) was another election being
fought out in Galway County at the same moment. That county, about a
year previously, had elected unopposed, on Home-Rule principles, a man
the value of whose accession to the national ranks it would be almost
impossible to overestimate. This was Mitchell Henry, of Kylemore
Castle, near relative by descent of that Patrick Henry illustrious in
American annals. Not because of his large wealth—he is said to have
succeeded on his father’s death to a fortune of over a million pounds
sterling—but for his high character, his great ability and thoroughly
Irish spirit, he was a man of great influence, and his espousal of
Home Rule was quite an event. Now, however, another election, this
time contested, fiercely contested, had arisen; the candidates being
Colonel Trench, son of Lord Clancarthy, Whig and Tory landlord
nominee, and Captain John Philip Nolan, Home-Rule candidate, under the
auspices of the great “Prelate of the West,” the world-famed
Archbishop of Tuam. For years the grand old man had not interfered in
an election or emerged from the sorrowful reticence into which he
retired after the ruin of the Tenant League. But Ireland was up for
the old cause, and “John of Tuam,” O’Connell’s stoutest ally in the
campaign for Repeal, was out under the old flag. Not to let his name
and his influence be discredited in his old age was as much the point
of battle, certainly the point of honor, on the part of the people, as
to return the Home-Ruler. The struggle was one of those desperate and
merciless encounters between landlord tyranny on the one side and
conscience in the poor man’s breast on the other, which used to make
Irish elections as deadly and disastrous as armed conflicts in the
field. Happily, it was the last of its class ever to be seen in
Ireland; for the Ballot Act, passed a year after, closed for ever the
era of vote-coercion. Captain Nolan was triumphantly returned. The
famous “Galway Election Petition,” in which Judge Keogh so
distinguished himself, unseated him (for a time) soon after; but Kerry
and Galway struck and won together that week in February, 1872; and
the one blaze of bonfires on the hill-tops of all the western
counties, the following Saturday night, celebrated the double victory
for the national cause.
In the course of the next succeeding year every election vacancy in
Ireland but one resulted in the return of a Home-Ruler, Mr. Butt
himself being among the number. There was now no longer any question
as to the magnitude of the dimensions to which the movement had
attained. “Home Rule” had become a watchword throughout the land; a
salutation of good-will on the road-sides; a signal-shout on the
hills. To this had grown the work begun almost in fear and trembling
that night at the Bilton Hotel in 1870. The hour could be no longer
delayed for convening the whole Irish nation in solemn council to make
formal and authoritative pronouncement upon the movement, its
principles, and its programme. In the end of the summer of 1873 it was
accordingly decided that in the following November an Aggregate
Conference of Delegates from every county in Ireland should be
convened in the historic Round Room of the Rotunda, memorable as the
meeting-place of the Irish Volunteer Convention more than
three-quarters of a century before.
But the history of that important event fitly belongs to another
chapter of such a record as this. The point now arrived at closes the
first stage of the Home-Rule movement—from 1870 to 1873. The second
three years—from 1873 to 1876—will exhibit it in a new light, with the
mandate of a nation as its authority, and a powerful parliamentary
party as its army of operation.
[139] The above article is from the pen of Mr. A. M.
Sullivan, M.P. for Louth, editor of the Dublin
_Nation_, and one of the leaders in the national
movement for Home Rule in Ireland. The movement is one
of great importance and significance. It has many
enemies. It has been and continues to be much
misrepresented. For these reasons we open our pages to
one of its ablest and most eloquent exponents to give
its history to our readers. Mr. Sullivan will resume
and close the subject in the next number of THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.—ED. C. W.
[140] There were certain other issues, chiefly as to
alleged profligacy of financial expenditure, and as to
audit and publication of accounts, etc., which need
not be considered here.
[141] Their meetings in Dublin were constantly
“mobbed” for some time.
[142] Not many months later the climax was capped
by the triumphant return of Mr. Martin for Meath,
probably the most Catholic constituency in Ireland;
the candidate whom he defeated (in a stiff but
thoroughly good-humored contest) being the son of Lord
Fingal, one of the best and most popular of the Irish
Catholic nobility.
[143] As this assembly has become in a degree historical,
it may be interesting to give the following list
(never before published) of those who attended it, and
others added by vote thereat to make up a Committee on
Resolutions. In nearly every case an indication of the
political and religious opinions of the parties is now
added. The list includes some of the largest merchants
in Dublin:
The Rt. Hon. Edward Purdon, Lord Mayor, Mansion House,
Protestant Conservative.
Sir John Barrington, ex-Lord Mayor, D.L., Great
Britain Street, Prot. Cons.
E. H. Kinahan, J.P., ex-High Sheriff, Merrion Square,
Tory.
James V. Mackey, J.P., Beresford Place, Orangeman.
James W. Mackey, ex-Lord Mayor, J.P., 40 Westmoreland
Street, Catholic Liberal.
Sir William Wilde, Merrion Square, F.R.C.S.I., Prot.
Cons.
James Martin, J.P., ex-High Sheriff, North Wall, Cath.
Lib.
Cornelius Denehy, T.C., J.P., Mountjoy Square, Cath.
Lib.
W. L. Erson, J.P., Great Charles Street, Or.
Rev. Joseph E. Galbraith, F.T.C.D., Trinity College,
Prot. Cons.
Isaac Butt, Q.C., Eccles Street, Prot. Nationalist.
R. B. Butt, Eccles Street, Prot. Nat.
R. W. Boyle, Banker, College Green, Tory.
William Campbell, 26 Gardiner’s Place, Cath. Lib.
William Daniel, Mary Street, Cath. Lib.
William Deaker, P.L.G., Eden Quay, Prot. Cons.
Alderman Gregg, Sackville Street, Prot. Cons.
Alderman Hamilton, Frederick Street, Cath. Repealer.
W. W. Harris, LL.D., ex-High Sheriff of the County
Armagh, Eccles Street, Prot. Cons.
Edward M. Hodson, Capel Street, Prot. Cons.
W. H. Kerr, Capel Street, Prot. Cons.
Major Knox, D.L., Fitzwilliam Square (proprietor of
_Irish Times_), Prot. Cons.
Graham Lemon, Town Commissioner of Clontarf, Yew Park,
Prot. Cons.
J. F. Lombard, J.P., South Hill, Cath. Repealer.
W. P. J. McDermott, Great Britain Street, Cath. Rep.
Alexander McNeale, 104 Gardiner Street, Prot. Cons.
W. Maher, T.C., P.L.G., Clontarf, Cath. Rep.
Alderman Manning, J.P., Grafton Street, Prot. Cons.
John Martin, Kilbroney, “Forty-eight” Nationalist,
Presbyterian.
Dr. Maunsell, Parliament Street (editor of _Evening
Mail_), Tory.
George Moyers, Richmond Street, Or.
J. Nolan, Sackville Street (Secretary Fenian Amnesty
Association), Cath. Nat.
James O’Connor, Abbey Street (late of _Irish People_),
Cath. Fenian.
Anthony O’Neill, T.C., North Strand, Cath. Rep.
Thomas Ryan, Great Brunswick Street, Cath. Nat.
J. H. Sawyer, M.D., Stephen’s Green, Prot. Nat.
James Reilly, P.L.G., Pill Lane, Cath. Nat.
Alderman Plunket, James’ Street, Cath. Nat. Rep.
The Venerable Archdeacon Goold, D.D., M.B., Protestant
Tory—son of Goold of ’82.
A. M. Sullivan, T.C., P.L.G., Abbey Street, Cath. Nat.
Rep.
Peter Talty, Henry Street, Cath. Rep.
William Shaw, M.P., Beaumont, Cork (President of
Munster Bank), Prot. Lib.
Captain Edward R. King-Harman, J.P., Creevaghmore,
County of Longford, Prot. Cons.
Hon. Lawrence Harman King-Harman, D. L., Newcastle,
County of Longford, Prot. Cons.
George Austin, Town Commissioner of Clontarf,
Winstonville, Prot. Cons.
Dr. Barry Rathmines, Cath. Lib.
George Beatty, Henrietta Street, Prot. Cons.
Joseph Begg, Capel Street, Cath. Nat. (Treasurer of
Fenian Amnesty Association).
Robert Callow, Alderman, Westland Row.
Edward Carrigan, Bachelor’s Walk, Cath. Lib.
Charles Connolly, Rogerson’s Quay, Cath. Lib.
D. B. Cronin, Nassau Street, Cath. Fenian.
John Wallis, T. C., Bachelor’s Walk, Prot. Cons.
P. Walsh, Merrion Row, Cath. Nat.
John Webster, Monkstown, Prot. Cons.
George F. Shaw, F.T.C.D., Trinity College, Prot. Cons.
P. J. Smith, Dalkey, Cath. Nat. Repealer.
George E. Stephens, Blackhall Place, Prot. Cons.
Henry H. Stewart, M.D., Eccles Street, Prot. Cons.
L. J. O’Shea, J.P., Margaret Place, Cath. Rep.
Alfred Webb, Abbey Street, Nat., “Quaker.”
[144] “This association has never proposed to itself
the position and duties of such a great popular
organization as must eventually take up and carry out
to the victorious end the national question. It has
rather proposed to itself the less ambitious though
not less arduous task of preparing the ground for such
a comprehensive organization.”—_First Report of the
Irish Home Government Association._ Dublin: Falconer,
Upper Sackville Street. 1871.
[145] Every year nearly the same five or six men
have been returned at the head of the paper; Isaac
Butt always first, next to him either O’Neill Daunt or
John Martin; the others almost invariably being Rev.
Professor Galbraith, A. M. Sullivan, J. P. Ronayne,
and Mitchell Henry.—[Mr. Ronayne, we regret to say,
died while this article was in our hands.—ED. C. W.]
SIR THOMAS MORE
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._
FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON
IX.
After the king had declared that he no longer wished her to assume any
authority in the household, the queen secluded herself entirely in the
most retired portion of the palace. In default of happiness, she at
least found forgetfulness there; for it was no longer thought
necessary to watch over her. Her rival, on the contrary, glorying in
the light of the king’s favor and of her own youth and beauty, spent
her days in festivity and enjoyment. She allowed herself to be carried
away by the flattery of the throng of courtiers who followed in her
train and servilely implored a glance from the eye, a smile or a word
from her whom they had so quickly abandoned but a short time before.
For several days, however, the tumult of these _fêtes_, the sound of
music and dancing, had not entered to wound the heart of Catherine in
her seclusion. She was seated near the fire, and turning in her hands
some worsted stuff intended to make a garment for a poor child. The
heavy folds of the curtains hung motionless, the light flame of the
waxen tapers burning near her had not wavered, and yet Catherine
started nervously and trembled. The anguish of mind she had so long
endured had, so to speak, worn away the mortal covering and brought
her soul in direct contact with exterior objects; she saw that which
possessed no corporeal shape, she heard that which had no sound. Some
person unknown has entered her apartments; her beautiful eyes are
turned towards the door. Very soon, in fact, the curtains roll on
their golden rings. A man enters. He advances a step and pauses. It is
Norris, the favorite attendant of Henry VIII.
“What wouldst thou?” asked the queen with that sweet but imposing
majesty of manner so natural to her that she could not lay it aside.
“Madam—the king—madam!” And the unfortunate man hesitated, trembling
in every limb.
A mist passed over Catherine’s eyes.
“Madam,” he was at last able to articulate, “the king, my lord, sends
me to tell you that before daybreak to-morrow morning he wishes you to
be ready to leave the palace.”
The queen turned pale.…
“Has your majesty any command to give me?” said Norris after a
moment’s silence.
“The king shall be obeyed,” replied the queen coldly, and she made a
sign for him to withdraw. He bowed and hastily left the apartment.
Catherine remained mute with grief and astonishment. “I have, then,
still more to suffer!” she cried at length, falling on her knees. “He
drives me from his presence—he, my own husband. He will not even
permit me to breathe in the most remote corner of his palace!… Ah!
well. Yes, I will fly from this house of malediction, whose
hearthstone has been soiled by infamy, and may I never enter it
again!”
But, alas! Catherine had as yet spoken for herself alone. Suddenly the
mother’s heart asserted its supremacy; she arose hastily, seized one
of the lights near her, and, passing rapidly through several
apartments, she at length paused, panting for breath.
“No one!” she exclaimed, looking wildly around her, “no one has been
near these apartments to disturb her rest. The most profound silence
reigns.” And in her turn she feared to awaken her daughter.
Softly approaching the bed on which reposed the little Mary, she drew
aside with her royal hand the heavy curtain of purple and gold. The
child was sleeping profoundly; her head rested on one of the delicate
arms; her long, golden hair, loosened from all confinement, hung over
her lovely neck and shoulders, and down on her light muslin
nightdress. She had thrown off the bedclothing that covered her. The
blood, pure and calm, circulated gently through the transparent veins.
She seemed as happy, as tranquil, as her mother was agitated and
miserable. Catherine, in an agony inexpressible, regarded her sleeping
child, her hand nervously clenching the curtain she was holding back.
“Sleep on, my daughter, sleep!” she murmured. “Mayst thou never know
the weary vigils and bitter anguish of suffering! But what do I say?
Does he not involve thee in the unjust proscription of thy mother? The
hatred he bears towards her, will he not extend it to thee? Art thou
not the very link that must be broken?”
And Catherine, in despair, drew back like a stranger in this apartment
she must leave before the dawn of the morning.… Again she returned to
the couch of her child. She bent over her; her lips almost touched her
forehead. Then a gloomy courage took possession of her soul.
“Why torture myself thus,” she cried, “since thou art still left to
me? Though all forget me, though the earth open beneath me, I will
never more be separated from thee. Thou shalt be my joy, my life, my
hope; thou shalt become my sole, my only friend! One day, yes, one day
thou wilt understand thy mother. Let him cast thee far away from
him—ah! what matters it? I open my heart to thee! The earth is vast;
she will welcome her unfortunate children. And when, worn down by
sorrow, I shall be ready to yield up my life, my hand will still be
raised to bless thee, and my eyes will be fixed upon thine. It shall
be thou who wilt close these eyes before I descend into the night of
the grave, and thy tears will bedew my last resting-place. Then wilt
thou be courageous, and in thy turn learn how to vanquish and defy
evil fortune.”
Thus spoke the unhappy queen. She arose and again fell on her knees.
But the hour strikes—that hour she had desired, hoped, waited for, as
a moment of happiness, of hope and consolation. It now strikes,
clashing, resounding through the silent chambers of her stricken
heart, only to awaken a new and fearful sorrow. Still, she hesitates
not; she again embraces the child, then tears herself away—flies. She
hastens eagerly on—Catherine has disappeared.…
* * * * *
On being informed of the clergy’s refusal the king fell into a furious
rage. For three days the bishops were shut up in Westminster. The
royal commissioners went to and fro continually from the king’s palace
to the assembly; but the deliberations were conducted with so much
secrecy that nothing was known of them outside.
Meanwhile, night came on, and the most profound silence reigned
throughout the long cloisters of the abbey. The pale rays of the moon
alone illuminated the splendid arches. The sanctuary was deserted, and
the red flicker of a lamp suspended in the immense vault showed no
larger than a luminous point set in space. A woman covered with a long
veil stood within the sacred place, leaning against the iron railing,
apparently absorbed in prayer. But no, she was not praying; the human
soul must be calm and resigned before it can truly lift itself up
towards God. Burning tears streamed from her eyes in torrents upon the
stone pavement beneath her feet; she started at the slightest creaking
of the wooden stalls surrounding the choir, and her attentive ear
caught even the least breath of air. Anon footsteps were heard.
“St. Catherine, pray for us,” said a dear and well-known voice.
“Amen,” responded the queen; and she advanced towards two men who were
approaching.
“More!” she exclaimed, “More! you have abandoned me, then?”
“Never, madam!”
“Well, then,” she cried, seizing his hand, “abandon me now! Cease,
cease to sacrifice yourself for me! Know that you have no longer a
queen; the banished Catherine leaves to-morrow the palace of her cruel
husband. No place of refuge is offered her; she is left to choose some
obscure corner of the earth where she will be at liberty to die. But
he is mistaken! I will never leave the soil of England—no, never!” she
cried. “I will never look again upon my own happy land. ‘Woman,’ they
would say to me, ‘you have deserted your children; you have not known
how to die in the land over which you ought to reign; has the Spanish
blood, then, ceased to flow in your veins?’ No, never!”
On hearing her speak thus More stood transfixed with astonishment and
sorrow.
“They have dared!” he said at last, “they have dared, Rochester!”
“Yes,” replied the queen, “they have dared! But, Rochester, speak; the
time is short; every moment is precious. What has passed in the
assembly?”
“Where shall I find words to tell you, madam?” replied the good and
venerable old man. “Parliament has been won over; your friends,
powerless, have been made to tremble for their own lives; threats of
death pass from mouth to mouth. I myself have scarcely been able to
escape their criminal attempts on my life; a dish on my table was
poisoned, and several of my people have died from eating of it.
Consternation reigns secretly in every heart. The clergy are
threatened on all sides; the people are exasperated by a thousand
calumnies, the sources of which remain scrupulously concealed. The
soil of old England seems about to be shaken to its foundations. Vice
stalks forth with head erect, while the virtuous man flies in terror.
There is time yet, madam. Save yourself! Save us all! Renounce an
alliance so fatal for you; abandon this prince who no longer puts any
restraint upon his passions—he is not worthy of you; and let the house
of the Lord become your retreat and be your refuge!”
“What sayest thou?” replied Catherine. “Was it for cowardly advice
like this I called you to me, Rochester? And my daughter—what kingdom
and what father would you give her?”
“God, madam, and the justice of her cause!” cried the afflicted old
bishop.
“Then you have yielded?” said the queen.
“Yes,” replied Rochester, “we have recoiled before our worst fears; we
have made a pact with falsehood, since we can no longer believe in the
veracity of the king. He has summoned before him in turn each one of
the most influential members of the conference. He has sworn to them,
in the presence of God himself, that he desired in naught to usurp the
authority of the spiritual head of the church; that naught could ever
change him from being the faithful and obedient child of the church he
is; that he hated heresy, and that his sole desire was to prevent it
spreading in his kingdom—in a word, that he wished to live and die in
the Catholic faith, in the faith of his fathers, and that he only
asked of them a title that would give him honor and prove the
confidence they had in their prince and the love they bore toward
their lawful sovereign. Now, madam, what shall I say to you? He has
been so far successful in convincing them that they have carried the
majority of votes. We have granted him everything—with this
restriction, however: that we acceded to his demand only so far as the
law of God would permit. But, alas! discouragement and dissensions
have entered among us, and the choice of men by whom the king
surrounds himself is sufficient evidence of the road he is resolved to
follow. Thomas Audley replaces More, and Cranmer, that base intriguer,
is installed in the place of the learned and immortal Warham.”
“Great heaven!” said the queen, “that vile tool of Anne Boleyn primate
of England? Then all is lost to faith, hope, the future, succor—all!”
Meanwhile, a strange disturbance was heard, and all at once a door
leading to the interior of the abbey was opened. A number of the
king’s guard appeared, armed and bearing torches. The queen,
terrified, hurriedly retired with More and Rochester within the shadow
of a chapel where for centuries had reposed the ashes of the old Saxon
kings. The tombs, on which they were represented in sculpture the size
of life, lying at full length, their hands crossed on their breasts,
the head and feet resting on pillows of stone, cast deep shadows all
around them. These shadows, fortunately, concealed the queen,
Rochester, and More entirely from observation, while they could see
distinctly all that took place in the choir.
The monks, marching in two lines, defiled two by two and took their
places in the stalls, while the guards stationed themselves at the
different openings. The gleam of the torches lighted up everything.
Soon was seen to enter the Abbot of Westminster, who preceded three
men richly dressed and enveloped in cloaks. They all three seated
themselves in large velvet arm-chairs; but one of them sat in the
loftiest and most richly adorned of all. In a word, it was plain that
a tribunal was constituted, but that it waited the presence of the
accused in order to give judgment. He tarried not long. The door again
opened, and they beheld a young woman enter whose countenance was very
pale. She walked between two guards, and her dress was that of a
religious.
“What!” said Sir Thomas in a stifled tone. “Why, that is the Holy Maid
of Kent! I believe she has her hands bound. No, it is her veil. What a
strange matter! Poor young girl! The rumor of her predictions must
have reached the king’s ears. I have so constantly warned her not to
meddle in affairs of state!” murmured More.
“Can it be she?” cried the queen and Rochester in the same breath.
“More, are you sure of it?”
“Quite sure,” he answered. “I remember perfectly her pale and
suffering countenance.”
In the meantime they made the young girl seat herself on a stool in
the midst of the assembly, and the Abbot of Westminster began to
interrogate her.
“What is your name?” he asked in a very loud tone of voice.
She neither moved nor replied.
“I conjure you, my sister, to answer me,” he added more solemnly
still. “What is your name?”
“Elizabeth Barton,” she answered, fixing on him a lingering look of
surprise and astonishment.
“Where were you born?”
“In Aldington, in the county of Kent,” answered she very distinctly.
“What is your age?”
“Twenty-three years.”
“Why did you become a religious?” continued the abbot.
“I am not a religious; I have assumed this habit in order to do
penance and take care of the poor.”
“Who has persuaded you to do this?”
“Myself.”
“But do you not pretend to have revelations from heaven, and have you
not told the assembled people of extraordinary things which are hidden
in the future?”
“Yes, my lord,” she replied; and her eyes began to gleam with a
singular light.
“Well! repeat what you have said,” interrupted he who was seated in
the loftiest chair, rising abruptly to his feet. “Repeat what you have
said,” he continued. And the long, flame-colored plume that shaded his
large hat seemed to tremble with impatience, like the head which it
covered.
At the sound of that voice, so imperious and bearing the expression of
a soul so deeply agitated, the Holy Maid of Kent seemed stricken with
horror. She arose and stood in the midst of the assembly, and, turning
toward the speaker, extended her hand.
“O King Henry!” she cried, “think not to conceal yourself from my
eyes. I know you; I know with what power you are invested; and now you
would have me tell you what I have said and teach you what I have
learned. Well, then, … yes, … king, … but mortal like myself, …
tremble, recoil with horror and dismay, at sight of the black
hypocrisy with which you have enveloped your heart. Look well; fix
your eyes on the infamous vices that have eaten out the last sentiment
of virtue God had implanted there.… Your crimes have multiplied like
the sands which roll with the waves in the depths of the sea; you will
inundate the steps of your throne with the blood of the noblest and
purest. Heresy, introduced by you into this land, will multiply under
a thousand different forms; everywhere with truth will be banished
true charity. The years of your reign will witness the birth of more
calamities than the rain of heaven will cause flowers to grow. The
woman you desire will dishonor your bed and perish on the scaffold
which your own hands will have erected; and your daughter, the child
you this day reject, shall reign. Yes! she shall reign,” she cried,
“in spite of all your efforts. Then your bones, eaten by worms, shall
be buried under the stones of the sepulchre; but your execrable memory
shall live among men, and your name—this name of Henry VIII., stamped
with the ineffaceable seal of blood—will carry down to ages most
remote the horrible memory of a monster!… I have spoken!”[146]
Who could describe the effect produced by these last words on the
spectators? Whiter than the linen robe which enveloped his form, the
Abbot of Westminster was seized with terror. It was he who had
persuaded the king to summon this woman, in order, he said, to
undeceive the people, who believed in her, and pacify in this way the
credulous and superstitious masses.
A prolonged silence reigned throughout that vast temple; who should
dare to speak?
Cromwell alone turned towards the king. He encountered his fixed and
furious gaze, which plainly said: “Woe to those who have deceived me!”
He was not at all disconcerted by it. “Be calm, sire,” he said in a
low voice, “be calm; nothing is lost yet.”
Henry made no reply, but Cromwell needed no answer.
“My dear sister,” he said in a gentle and honeyed tone, “who has
instructed you to say these things?” And he saw Henry VIII.
convulsively clench his fists.
“No one,” answered she in a sweet, sonorous voice.
“No one! That is hard to believe,” he replied in a tone almost of
derision.… “You have, at least, repeated all this to several others.…
That the king, your lord, may believe you to be sincere, you should
hide nothing from him. Have you not written to Cardinal Wolsey?”
“Without doubt,” she replied, “I have informed him of what I ought to
have let him know, … because that was my duty. Sir Thomas More, the
lord chancellor, can bear witness that I tell you the truth.”
“Ah! Sir Thomas too,” replied with emphasis the odious Cromwell; and
he dwelt especially on the name of this just man. “Sir Thomas More! It
is very well, my dear sister. We verily believe thee.”
The anxiety that seized on the invisible spectators of the chapel may
be imagined. The queen was entirely absorbed with the thought of her
daughter; but on hearing the terrible indiscretion of this foolish or
inspired woman she with difficulty stifled a cry of terror.
“More has written to you, then?” continued Cromwell, whose ingenuity
was never at fault.
“Yes, to recommend himself to my prayers, but not on this subject.”
“But you have spoken with him many times,” replied Cromwell in a
confident tone, although he really knew nothing about it.
“Once only,” she answered, “in the house of the Carthusians at
Richmond, where I saw him with Masters Beering, Risby, and my Lord
Rochester.… But they advised me not to speak of these things, and to
keep my revelations secret.”
“They were only the more criminal,” replied Cromwell; “because it was
their duty to have unfolded the wicked designs of which you are guilty
toward his royal majesty.”
At the word “guilty” she raised her head and fixed her black and
piercing eyes upon Cromwell.
“Guilty!” she exclaimed. “It is a crime, then, to speak the truth?”
She said no more, but took her seat without awaiting permission.
In the meantime the king, thanks to Cromwell, had time to recover from
the astonishment that had seized him, and to hide from the monks the
humiliation which he could hardly wait to avenge; for, not disdaining
himself to subdue this feeble enemy whom they had represented as
unable to speak in his presence, he had believed, on the faith of his
confidants, it was worth while to summon the Holy Maid of Kent before
him, in order to show that she was worthy of no confidence. Now the
most furious thoughts were at strife within him. How had she
recognized him? Had the queen’s friends instructed her?… But she would
not name them. What a story this would make throughout the kingdom!
And his hardened heart could not cease being troubled.
Cromwell, despite the joy he felt at having made her name More and the
Bishop of Rochester, was at a loss how to close with dignity this
disagreeable scene. The monks opened their office-books and pretended
to be reading; the woman remained seated on her stool and said nothing
more; the guards waited some signal, which no one gave.
The king decided the question, which was becoming every moment more
and more embarrassing.
“It is well,” he said; “we have had enough of it; I am satisfied.”
He arose abruptly. All followed him; the guards threw open the doors,
extinguished the lights, led away the Holy Maid of Kent, and the monks
slowly retired into the abbey.
* * * * *
The hours of night rapidly succeeded each other; already a whitish
circle began to rise and extend over the horizon. Nevertheless, all
were wrapped in sleep in the plain and beneath the shadow of the
woods. The industrious husbandman still rested his weary limbs on his
rude couch; the dog which guarded his thatched cottage had ceased to
howl; and even the invalid found, at the approach of day, a moment of
repose. But idleness, always so prolonged in the palaces of kings,
seemed to have been banished from the palace of Whitehall. Lights were
seen glancing to and fro athwart the large windows; hurried footsteps
were heard running up and down the marble stairways; whilst a coach
with several horses attached, slowly drove around a distant courtyard.
Anne Boleyn herself was already occupied with the arrangement of her
attire. She was seated upon soft cushions of velvet before a toilet
table of ebony and gold. A young girl named Anne Savage, whom she
preferred above all her maids because of her uninterrupted
cheerfulness, her merry chat, and her expertness in the arts of the
toilet, perfumed the long and beautiful hair which she was arranging
with extreme care on the brow of her mistress, while the latter was
searching in a casket she held in her lap for the jewels she wished to
adorn her ears and add to her _coiffure_.
“There is nothing at all in this box!” cried Boleyn, tossing over
pell-mell the most magnificent jewelry.… “These emeralds are so trying
to the face! These pearls injure the complexion! Anne, go bring me
something else. All these are frightful I tell you!… But what is that?
I hear a noise, … a cry.… Listen.… No, … it is in the king’s
apartments.…”
“I hear nothing,” replied Anne Savage after a moment’s silence, during
which she had not breathed.
“Ah! yes, I hear it,” replied Anne Boleyn; “I suspect the cause of it,
too.… But I do not want to think about this.… However, it is a bad
omen.…”
And as Lady Boleyn was very superstitious, and her conscience far from
easy, she let the casket fall at her feet, and, bowing her head on her
bosom, seemed to be absorbed in deep reflection.
Anne Savage tried to complete the _coiffure_ as she sat in that
position, but she failed in her task.
“If my lady cannot hold up her head,” at last cried the maid
impatiently, “it will be impossible for me to arrange her head-dress
properly.”
This admonition recalled Anne Boleyn to herself; she immediately
raised her head and began carefully to scrutinize herself in the
mirror placed before her. Well pleased with her appearance, she
arranged two or three hair-pins ornamented with pearls strung like the
beads of a rosary, and drew down a little the net-work of gold that
fell below her cap and confined her tresses.
With this improvement she arose, in order to choose from among the
dresses she had caused to be brought and laid out on all the furniture
in the room.
“This blue, … or rather this lilac,” she murmured; “no, these
embroideries are heavy and ugly. I will try this white.… I would have
liked a rose-color; here is one. Really, there is nothing here that
pleases me.… It is true,” she continued spitefully, “any of these
ought to be good enough for one who is going to be married in a
garret!”
“In a garret!” interrupted the maid. “What! is it not in the chapel my
lady is to be given away?”
“No,” replied Lady Boleyn, reddening. “The king has changed everything
since yesterday evening. He has had an altar put up in one of the
upper rooms of the palace. You alone are to carry my train, and Norris
and Heneage will serve as witnesses. These are the honors which he
deigns to accord the Queen of England.… Ah! my dear Anne, I am very
miserable,” added Lady Anne, almost ready to burst into tears.
“In a garret!” repeated Savage, and she stood as if stupefied. “In a
garret! O my lady! how can you suffer this?… Well, now do you not
think I was right in telling you that you would do wrong to marry the
king, and abandon so cruelly Lord Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and
lord of I know not how many boroughs? He would not have believed
himself obliged to marry you in the garret of Northumberland Castle!
He loved you so much; he was so proud of you! Many a time has he said
to me: ‘Anne, you are a good girl; you have the same name as your
mistress. You shall never leave my wife; I will give you a marriage
portion and an honest man for a husband.’ Besides, madam,” continued
Anne Savage in a grave, sententious manner, “I can never forget that
my grandfather, who was very learned and respected by all the parish,
used to say to me as I would sit by his side to sew: ‘Remember well,
my little Anne, never to marry a man who is above you in wealth or
rank; otherwise you will not be happy, because love flies away very
quickly, and reproaches follow.’”
“Ah! my dear Anne, do not recall anew my regrets,” cried Lady Boleyn,
with tears in her eyes. “I have never ceased to love Percy; … and when
I compare the violence and haughty manner of the king with the
gentleness and virtues of Percy, I am miserable for having listened to
my ambition. Oh! how severely I am punished. Henry considers me
overwhelmed with honor by his loving me! Submissive to all his
caprices, I am for ever fearful of losing his favor; while Percy,
happy in the sole hope of marrying me, always thanked me for every
smile or word that I addressed him. Anne, do you believe that he has
entirely forgotten me?” she asked suddenly.
“Truly, my lady, I wot not; I only know by my cousin Savage that he no
longer receives any one in his fair castle at York.… But be it as it
may, how, my lady, could it profit you to-day?”
“Nay, as thou sayest, naught, my poor Anne,” replied Lady Boleyn; but
as she spoke she could not restrain her tears.
She recalled to mind all that she had done to induce the king to marry
her; that, since she had been able to attain an end so difficult, she
certainly ought to feel satisfied; and yet, in spite of these
considerations, she found herself overwhelmed with regrets for the
past and fears for the future. She reflected that Henry had conducted
himself so cruelly toward the queen, if ever she ceased to please him
she would have everything to fear; and the happiness of that brilliant
picture of thrones and honors which she had always dwelt on with such
ardent longings seemed to vanish at the very moment when she saw it
about to be realized. But Anne Savage could not conceive what should
afflict her on this point.
“Why,” she exclaimed, “should you torture yourself in this way? It is
too late to think of bringing him back, since he is already married.
Besides, it is very strange; for you have told me a hundred times that
you loved nobody but the king.”
“You are right,” replied Lady Boleyn; “that is true. I did love him,
and I love him still; but I feel that it is impossible to love very
long a person whom one cannot respect.”
“Better to have thought of that sooner,” murmured the maid; but she
took care not to say so aloud.
Absorbed as she was in her sorrow, Lady Boleyn did not forget the care
of her toilet, and, to assist in drying her tears, she turned the
Venetian mirror in every direction in order to survey herself; but she
was by no means satisfied with the _ensemble_ nor the details it
presented to her.
“See!” she cried, “how badly these sleeves fit; and these heavy plaits
around my waist. In sooth, never was I so badly dressed. This white
satin robe with silver flowers is frightful.… Besides, I wanted a
rose-colored dress, … but of a color that is not here. They leave me
with naught indeed. This may not be borne. Go, bid all my women enter;
I would know what they think of me.”
Anne Savage ran to open the door. Scarcely had she opened it.…
But let us leave the frivolous and coquettish Boleyn to adorn with so
much care that form which the dust of the tomb has long since claimed,
and follow rather this man, all flushed, out of breath, and hurried,
who eagerly mounts the stairs in search of the king. The guards are
standing near the doors; the mats on which they passed the night are
still lying on the floor in the lower hall of the palace; they rub
their half-opened eyes, still bewildered with sleep. They offer the
usual salutations to Norris, who advances, and whom they recognize;
but he passes through their midst without seeming to perceive them,
and enters abruptly the apartment of the king.
Henry VIII., leaning against one of the windows, his face pressed
close to the glass, was gazing eagerly out to behold all he had been
able to see of Catherine’s departure; but, hearing the door open, he
turned quickly around, withdrew from the window, and, going to the far
end of the apartment, took his seat.
“Well, good Norris,” he said, looking attentively at him, “what a sad
air you wear! It was, then, very difficult to get Catherine off? I had
foreseen it all, however.”
“Your majesty had foreseen it all, and yet methinks you have chosen
not to be by the while.”
“What, then, has happed?”
“Naught, of great moment—no, in sooth, naught but what should have
been. But I vow my heart was bruised sore when the queen’s grief brake
forth. Nothing loath was she to go; but when she saw the Princess Mary
was not let go with her, and the door of the coach closed, she fain
would have cast herself without. Then she uttered cries the most
heartrending, and, stretching out her arms towards us, besought us to
let her return and once more embrace her daughter. The princess,
seeing the despair of her mother, with sobs and cries begged to follow
her. At length, there being no way to prevent the queen from
descending, she clasped her a thousand times in her arms. She then
wrote something on a scrap of paper I have here, and bade me deliver
it to your majesty, which I promised to do. She entreated all present
to beg you to have compassion on her and send the Princess Mary to
her; that she asked but this one favor, and then she would consent to
do all that you wished. It was necessary to carry her to the coach;
for she fell fainting while embracing her daughter for the last time.”
“Always these fainting fits of hers,” replied the king angrily; “yet
will she say it is I who have slain her. Come, let us see the paper!”
Norris presented it.
The king opened it and read the following words which the queen had
written in a trembling hand:
“SIRE: What have I done to you that you treat me thus? You banish me
from your palace and condemn me to exile. Alas! to this I had
submitted; but why have you the cruelty to separate me from the only
good of mine that is left in all the world? You know well that never
have I gainsaid wish of yours; but is it in my power not to be your
lawful wife? I conjure you, then, to have compassion on me! Give me
back my daughter; give her to me, and I will weep no more the lot you
have cast for me. Become a stranger in the land over which you reign,
at least permit to die in peace an unfortunate woman whom you have
deprived of her rank, her country, and her friends. Leave me my
daughter to console the last days of a life that is almost ended. What
can you hope or fear from her? Since you cast her out from your arms,
leave me the happiness to take her to mine. I am her mother; I have
brought her into the world in sorrow; I have nourished her from my own
bosom—she is mine; and, since it is your will to deprive her of a
father, do not, at least, tear her from the arms of her unhappy
mother.”
This letter, still all wet with tears, produced a painful impression
on the mind of Henry.
“This fellow will assuredly find me of the cruelest,” he said to
himself. “It is well, it is well,” he added in a loud voice. “It is a
request that she makes to me; we will see to it later on. Everything
is ready, Norris?” he added immediately.
“Yes, sire; your orders have been executed with the greatest
exactness. Heneage and Lady Berkley are below; they await your
majesty.”
“Is Dr. Roland also there?” demanded the king. “Yes, sire; he has been
there more than an hour.”
“Well, go and seek Lady Boleyn.”
Norris immediately descended. He found all the doors of Lady Boleyn’s
apartments open, and in the distance heard exclamations mingling, and
unceasingly repeated.
“Oh! how lovely is my lady. Never did she look more fair!” they cried.
“How handsomely my lady’s hair is dressed, and what beautiful hair it
is! What a sweet complexion, what a charming figure! There is not a
woman in all the kingdom who is my lady’s equal!”
Hearing this concert of praise, Anne Boleyn began to take courage.
“No, no,” she said with an air of disdain; “I am very badly dressed
to-day.”
As she said these words Norris entered and announced to Lady Boleyn
that the king awaited her.
She followed him at once, accompanied by Anne Savage; the other women
stood in astonishment, and were very curious to know why this favor
was shown to their companion, while the jealousy with which they
already regarded her was still further increased.
TO BE CONTINUED.
[146] See Sanders on the Holy Maid of Kent.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT IN NEW ENGLAND.[147]
This volume reads pleasantly. There is attached to it a peculiar
interest, and something of the charm of a romance, for those who have
had some knowledge of the transcendental movement in New England, and
acquaintance with its leaders. The author has evidently written his
account with feelings of sympathy and friendship, which he
acknowledges, and these have led him to bring out all the good points
of the movement, while its shortcomings, exaggerations, and
absurdities are scarcely, if at all, hinted at. The style is clear and
smooth, the narrative never falters; the writer has contrived to throw
a certain halo around the leaders of transcendentalism, and succeeded
in presenting in his book a series of ideal portraits calculated to
impose somewhat upon strangers. The impression which the work leaves
on the mind of the reader is as if he had been listening to the
conversation of a member of a mutual admiration society. Octavius
Brooks Frothingham is not a “central thinker,” his knowledge of the
subject of which he treats is very limited, and his religious insight
is null. Transcendentalism requires a differently-equipped man to be
its historian. There is, somehow, a narrowness of structure and a
peculiar twist in the faculties of the New England mind—perhaps a
constitutional inheritance—which renders it inapt to conceive first
principles and grasp universal truths; and although transcendentalism
was an effort to rise above this condition, it nevertheless carried
with it in its flight all these defects.
Our author has not written a history, but an interesting sketch which
will be useful, no doubt, to some future historian. To write a
history, especially of a philosophical and religious movement such as
transcendentalism pretended to be, and really was, requires more than
an acquaintance with persons and facts. One must comprehend its real
origin, and have mastered and become familiar with his subject. This
is a task which Mr. Frothingham has not accomplished.
Every heresy segregates its adherents from the straight line of the
true progress of the human race, all deviations from which are, in the
nature of things, either transitory or fatal. They live, for the
greater part, outside of the cumulated wisdom and the broad stream of
the continuous life of humanity. When the heresy has almost exhausted
its derived life—for no heresy has a source of life in itself—and the
symptoms of its approaching death begin to appear, the intelligent and
sincere who are born in it at this stage of its career are the first
to seek to regain the unbroken unity of truth. This is reached by two
distinct and equally legitimate ways. The first class gains the
knowledge of the whole body of the originally revealed truth, from
which its heresy cut it off, by tracing the truths retained by the
sect to their logical connection with other no less important truths
equally contained in the same divine revelation. The second class
falls back upon the essential truths of natural reason; and as all
supernatural truth finds its support in natural truth, it follows that
the denial of any of the former involves a denial of the latter.
Heresy always involves a mutilation of man’s natural reason. Once the
integral natural basis recovered, the repudiation of heresy as
contrary to reason follows logically. But the experience of the human
race, that of the transcendentalists included, shows plainly that
nature does not suffice nature; and this class, at this moment, starts
out to find a religion consonant with the dictates of reason,
satisfactory to all their spiritual necessities, and adequate to their
whole nature. They ask, and rightly, for a religion which shall find
its fast foundations in the human breast. This appeal can only be
answered, and is only met, by the revelation given to the world in the
beginning by the Author of man, completed in the Incarnation, and
existing in its entirety and in unbroken historical continuity in the
Catholic Church alone.
This dialectical law has governed the course of all heresies, from
which they could not by any possibility escape; the same law has
governed the history of Protestantism on its native soil, in Germany,
as well as in old England, in New England, and wherever it has
obtained a foothold.
Our business at present is with those of the second class, under which
head come our New England transcendentalists; and what is not a little
amusing is the simplicity with which they proclaim to the world, in
this nineteenth century of the Christian era, the truths of natural
reason, as though these were new and original discoveries! They appear
to fancy that the petty sect to which they formerly adhered, and their
dreary experience of its rule, have been the sad lot of the whole
human race! It is as if a body of men had been led astray into a
cavern where the direct rays of the sun never penetrated, and, after
the lapse of some generations, their descendants approach its mouth,
breathe the fresh air, behold the orb of light, the mountains, the
rivers, and the whole earth covered with trees, flowers, and verdure.
For the first time this glorious world, in all its wonderful beauty,
bursts upon their view, and, in the candor of their souls, they
flatter themselves that they alone are privileged with this vision,
and knowledge, and enjoyment! Their language—but, be it understood, in
their sober moods—affects those whose mental sight has not been
obscured by heresy; somewhat like the speech of children when first
the light of reason dawns in their souls. For the transcendental
movement in New England was nothing else, in its first instance, than
the earnest and righteous protest of our native reason in
convalescence against a false Christianity for its denial or neglect
of rational truths.
Mr. Frothingham tells us that “he was once a pure transcendentalist,”
and that perhaps “his ardor may have cooled.” We protest, and as a
disinterested party assure him that he writes with all the glow of
youth, and in his volume he has furnished a pretty cabinet-picture, in
_couleur du rose_, of transcendentalism in New England, without
betraying even so much as the least sign of a suspicion of its true
place in the history either of philosophy or religion. In seeking for
the “distinct origin” and the place in history of the transcendental
movement in New England, he goes back to Immanuel Kant, born at
Königsberg, in Prussia, April 22, 1724, and finds it, as he supposes,
in Kant’s famous _Critique of Pure Reason_, published in 1771. After
mentioning some of the disciples of Kant, we are taken to the
philosophers of France—Cousin, Constant, Jouffroy; then we are next
transported across the Channel to old England, and entertained with
Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth; finally we are landed in New
England and are told:
“With some truth it may be said that there never was such a
thing as transcendentalism out of New England. In Germany
and France there was a transcendental philosophy, held by
cultivated men, taught in schools, and professed by many
thoughtful and earnest people; but it never affected society
in its organized institutions or practical interests. In old
England this philosophy influenced poetry and art, but left
the daily existence of men and women untouched. But in New
England the ideas entertained by foreign thinkers took root
in the native soil and blossomed out in every form of social
life. The philosophy assumed its full proportions, produced
fruit according to its kind, created a new social order for
itself, or rather showed what sort of social order it would
create under favoring conditions. Its new heavens and new
earth were made visible, if but for a moment, and in a
wintry season” (p. 103).
The contact with the productions of the foreign philosophers as well
as religious and literary writers whom Mr. Frothingham mentions
undoubtedly stimulated and strengthened the transcendental movement in
New England; but it did not originate it. The movement was the
spontaneous growth of the New England mind, in accordance with the law
which we have stated, aided by the peculiar influence of our political
institutions, as will be shown further on. Its real authors were
Channing, Alcott, and Emerson, who were neither affected at their
start nor afterward—or if at all, but slightly—by foreign or
extraneous influences.
Moreover, the Kantian philosophy afforded no logical foothold for the
defence of the movement in New England. Were our New Englander, who
still clings to his early faith in transcendental ideas, to present
himself to the philosophical offspring of Kant, he would no more pass
muster than his old orthodox Protestant antagonist of the exclusive
traditional school. The logical descendants of Kant are, in the region
of philosophy, to use an Americanism, played out, and those who still
keep up an existence will be found in the ranks of positivism,
materialism, and blank atheism.
The idea of God, the immortality of the soul, the liberty of the will,
the creation of the world—these and all such ideas the descendants of
Kant have politely conducted to the frontiers of philosophy, and
dismissed each and every one, but not before courteously thanking them
for their provisional services. Our New Englander would appear to
their eyes as a babe still in swaddling-clothes, or as a child
learning to read by amusing itself with the pictures of old Mother
Goose stories. Whatever hankering Mr. Frothingham and some few others
may have after their first love of transcendental ideas—and those in
New England with whom they are most in sympathy, one and all are
moving in the same direction—they are only in the initial stage of the
process of evolution of the Kantian germ-cell, the product of
Protestant protoplasm, and will end eventually in the same logical
issues as their less sentimental German, French, and English
_confrères_.
To give us a right history of transcendentalism, Mr. Frothingham must
enlarge the horizon of his mental vision, and include within its scope
a stretch of time which elapsed before his ancestors were led off by
heresy into the cavern of obscurity. He will find a historical no less
than a “dialectical basis” for its ideas or primary truths, and other
truths of natural reason of which he has not yet made the discovery,
in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, in Augustine, in Vincent of
Lerens, in Anselm, and above all in Thomas of Aquinas, whose pages
contain all the truths, but purified from the admixture of error, of
the pagan philosophers, as also of those who had preceded him in
Christian philosophy—men whose natural gifts, as well as devotion to
truth, were comparable, to say the least, with Immanuel Kant and his
French, or English, or American disciples. Those profound thinkers
maintained and demonstrated the truth of the great ideas which Kant,
according to his own showing, neither dared affirm nor deny, and which
the transcendentalists held for the most part by openly contemning
logic and by submissively accepting the humiliating charge of being
“sentimentalists.” What those great men taught from the beginning has
been always taught, even to our day, by all sound Catholic teachers in
philosophy. So jealous has the supreme authority of the church been in
this matter of upholding the value of the natural powers of human
reason against those who would exalt tradition at its expense it has
required, if they would teach philosophy in the name of the church, as
a test of their orthodoxy, a subscription to the following
proposition: “Reason can with certitude demonstrate the existence of
God, the spirituality of the soul, and the liberty of man.” Had the
author of the volume which we are briefly reviewing read the _Summa_
of St. Thomas, or only the chapters which treat of these subjects, and
understood them—which is not, we hope, asking too much from an
advanced thinker of our enlightened age, inasmuch as St. Thomas wrote
this work in the “dark ages” for mere tyros—he would have gained a
stand-point from which he might have done what he tells us in his
preface was “the one purpose of his book—to define the fundamental
ideas of philosophy, to trace them to their historical and speculative
sources, and to show whither they tended” (p. viii.) Such a work would
have been more creditable to his learning, more worthy of his
intellectual effort, more satisfactory to intelligent readers, and one
of permanent value. We commend to Octavius Brooks Frothingham the
perusal and study of St. Thomas’ _Summa_—above all, his work _Contra
Gentiles_, which is a defence of Christianity on the basis of human
reason against the attacks of those who do not admit of its divine
revelation; or if these be not within his reach, to take up any one of
the modern works on philosophy taught in Catholic colleges or
seminaries to our young men.
After all, perhaps, the task might prove an ungracious one; for it
would not be flattering to the genius of originality, on which our
transcendentalists pride themselves, to discover that these utterances
concerning the value of human reason, the dignity of the soul, and the
worth of man—barring occasional extravagant expressions attributable
to the heat of youth—were but echoes of the voice of the Catholic
Church of all ages, of the traditional teachings of her philosophers,
especially of the Jesuitical school; all of which, be it said between
ourselves, has been confirmed by the sacred decrees of the recent
Vatican Council! Still, passing this act of humiliation on their part,
it would have afforded them what our author says their system
“lacked,” and for which he has had recourse—in our opinion in vain—to
the great German systems: namely, a “dialectical basis.” He would have
found in Catholic philosophy solid grounds to sustain every truth
which the transcendentalists so enthusiastically proclaimed in speech,
in poetry, and prose, and which truths, in their practical aspect, not
a few made noble and heroic sacrifices to realize.
To have secured such a basis would not have been a small gain, when
one considers that these primary truths of reason are the sources from
which religion, morals, political government, and human society draw
their vitality, strength, and stability. Not a small service to
humanity is it to make clear these imperishable foundations, to render
them intelligible to all, and transmit them to posterity with
increased life and strength. It is well that this noble task of
philosophy did not depend on the efforts of the transcendentalists;
for Mr. Frothingham sadly informs us in his preface that “as a form of
mental philosophy transcendentalism may have had its day; at any rate
it is no longer in the ascendant, and at present is manifestly on the
decline, being suppressed by the philosophy of experience, which,
under different names, is taking possession of the speculative world”
(p. vii.) Who knows what might have been the precious fruits of all
the high aspiration and powerful earnestness which were underlying
this movement, if, instead of seeking for a “dialectical basis of the
great German systems,” its leaders had cast aside their prejudices,
and found that Catholic philosophy which had interpreted the divine
oracles of the soul from age to age, consonant with man’s original and
everlasting convictions, and sustaining his loftiest and noblest
hopes?
But with the best will in the world to look favorably on the practical
results of the transcendental movement, and our sincere appreciation
of its leaders—both of which, the issues and the men, are described
from chapter vii. to xv., which latter concludes the volume—in spite
of these dispositions of ours, our sympathy for so much praiseworthy
effort, and our respect for so many highly-gifted men, in reading
these chapters a feeling of sadness creeps over us, and we cannot help
exclaiming with the poet Sterling:
“O wasted strength! O light and calm
And better hopes so vainly given!
Like rain upon the herbless sea,
Poured down by too benignant heaven—
We see not stars unfixed by winds,
Or lost in aimless thunder-peals,
But man’s large soul, the star supreme,
In guideless whirl how oft it reels!”
But this is not to be wondered at; for although these men had arrived
at the perception of certain great truths, they held them by no strong
intellectual grasp, and finally they escaped them, and their
intellectual fabric, like the house built upon sand, when the storm
came and the winds blew, great was the fall thereof. This was the
history of Brook Farm and Fruitlands, communities in which the two
wings of transcendentalism attempted to reduce their ideas into
practice. Here let us remark it would have increased the interest of
the volume if its author had given to his readers the programme of
Brook Farm, “The Idea of Jesus of Society,” together with its
constitutions. It is short, interesting, and burning with earnestness.
There is scarcely any account of the singular enterprise of the group
of idealists at Fruitlands, and the name of Henry Thoreau, one of the
notables among transcendentalists, is barely mentioned, while to his
life at Walden Pond there is not even an allusion. True, these
experiments were, like Brook Farm, unsuccessful, but they were not
without interest and significance, and worthy of a place in what
claims to be a history of the movement that gave rise to them; at
least space enough might have been afforded them for a suitable
epitaph.
We will now redeem our promise of showing how the influence of our
political institutions aided in producing what goes by the name of
transcendentalism. But before doing this, we must settle what
transcendentalism is; for our author appears to make a distinction
between idealism and transcendentalism in New England. Here is what he
says:
“There was idealism in New England prior to the introduction
of transcendentalism. Idealism is of no clime or age. It has
its proportion of disciples in every period and in the
apparently most uncongenial countries; a full proportion
might have been looked for in New England. But when Emerson
appeared, the name of idealism was legion. He alone was
competent to form a school, and as soon as he rose, the
scholars trooped about him. By sheer force of genius Emerson
anticipated the results of the transcendental philosophy,
defined its axioms, and ran out their inferences to the end.
Without help from abroad, or with such help only as none but
he could use, he might have domesticated in Massachusetts an
idealism as heroic as Fichte’s, as beautiful as Schelling’s,
but it would have lacked the dialectical basis of the great
German systems” (p. 115).
If we seize the meaning of this passage, it is admitted that previous
to the knowledge of the German systems Mr. Emerson had already defined
the axioms, run out their inferences to the end, and anticipated the
results of the German transcendental philosophy. But this is all that
any system of philosophy pretends to accomplish; and therefore, by his
own showing, the distinction between idealism and transcendentalism is
a distinction without a difference.
Mr. Frothingham, however, tells us on the same page that
“transcendentalism, properly so-called, was imported in foreign
packages”; and Mr. Frothingham ought to know, for he was once, he
tells us, “a pure transcendentalist”; and on pages 128 and 136 he
criticises Mr. Emerson, who identifies idealism and transcendentalism.
With the genius and greatness of the prince of the transcendentalists
before his eyes, our author, as is proper, employs the following
condescending language: “It is audacious to criticise Mr. Emerson on a
point like this; but candor compels the remark that the above
description does less than justice to the definiteness of the
transcendental movement. It was something more than a reaction against
formalism and tradition, though it took that form. It was more than a
reaction against Puritan orthodoxy, though in part it was that. It was
in a very small degree due to study of the ancient pantheists, of
Plato and the Alexandrians, of Plutarch, Seneca, and Epictetus, though
one or two of the leaders had drunk deeply from these sources.
Transcendentalism was a distinct philosophical system” (p. 136).
So far so good. Here is the place, if the author knows what he is
talking about, to give us in clear terms the definition of
transcendentalism. But what does he? Does he satisfy our
anticipations? Mr. Emerson, be it understood, does not know what
transcendentalism is! Well, hear our author, who thinks he does. He
continues: “Practically it was an assertion of the inalienable worth
of man; theoretically it was an assertion of the immanence of divinity
in instinct, the transference of supernatural attributes to the
natural constitution of mankind.… Through all was the belief in the
living God in the soul, faith in immediate inspiration, in boundless
possibility, and in unimaginable good” (p. 137). Ordinarily when
writers attempt to give a definition, or convey information of a
“distinct philosophical system,” they give one to understand its first
principles or axioms, its precise method, and its important
conclusions, and particularly wherein it differs in these respects
from other systems of philosophy. This is what Mr. Frothingham in the
passage last quoted has led us to expect; but instead of this he gives
to the reader mere “assertions” and “beliefs.” And these assertions
and beliefs every one knows who has heard Dr. Channing, or Mr.
Emerson, or Mr. Alcott, or who has a slight acquaintance with their
writings, to have been the sources of inspiration in their speech,
which appear on almost every page they have written! Proof is
needless; for there is no one who will venture a contradiction on this
point. The men who were most influenced by the study of the
philosophers abroad were neither the originators nor leaders of the
so-called transcendental movement in New England—Brownson, Parker, and
William Channing. Mr. Frothingham, we submit, has not made out his
case, and has given too much credit where it was not due, while
robbing others of their just merit, whatever that may be. If
“transcendentalism was a distinct philosophical system,” nowhere in
his book has this been shown.
Transcendentalism, accepting the author’s statement as to its true
character, was never a philosophical system in New England; and had
its early disciples been content to cultivate the seeds sown by its
true leaders, instead of making the futile attempt to transfer to our
clime exotics from Germany which would not take root and grow in our
soil, we should have had, in place of a dreary waste, stately trees
whose wholesome and delicious fruits would now refresh us.
And now for our reasons why it was native to the soil from which it
sprang. If we analyze the political system of our country, we will
find at its base the maxim, “Man is capable of self-government.” The
American system exhibits a greater trust in the natural capacities and
the inherent worth of man than any other form of political government
now upon this earth. Hence all the great political trusts are made
elective; hence also our recourse to short periods of election and the
great extension among us of the elective franchise. The genius and
whole drift of the current of our political life runs in this
direction. Now, what does this maxim mean, that “Man is capable of
self-government”? It means that man is endowed by his Creator with
reason to know what is right, true, and good. It means that man
possesses free-will and can follow the right, true, and good. These
powers constitute man a responsible being. It supposes that man as he
is now born is in possession of all his natural rights, and the primal
tendencies of his native faculties are in accordance with the great
end of his existence, and his nature is essentially good. But such
views of human nature are in direct opposition to the fundamental
doctrines of Puritanism and orthodox Protestantism. These taught and
teach that man is born totally depraved, that his nature is
essentially corrupt, and all his actions, springing from his nature,
nothing but evil. Now, the political influence of our American
institutions stimulated the assertion of man’s natural rights, his
noble gift of liberty, and his inalienable worth, while the religion
peculiar to New England preached precisely the contrary. In the long
run, the ballot-box beat the pulpit; for the former exerted its
influence six days in the week, while the latter had for its share
only the Sabbath. In other words, the inevitable tendency of our
American political system is to efface from the minds of our people
all the distinctive dogmas of the orthodox Protestant views of
Christianity by placing them on a platform in accordance with man’s
natural capacities, his native dignity, and with right and honorable
views of God. Herein lies the true genesis of Unitarianism and its
cogenitor, the transcendental movement in New England.
Dr. Channing was right in discarding the attempt to introduce the
worse than idle speculation of the German and French philosophical
systems in New England. “He considered,” so says his biographer,
“pretensions to absolute science quite premature; saw more
boastfulness than wisdom in ancient and modern schemes of philosophy;
and was not a little amused at the complacent confidence with which
quite evidently fallible theorists assumed to stand at the centre, and
to scan and depict the panorama of existence.” “The transcendentalists,”
he tells James Martineau in 1841, “in identifying themselves a good
deal with Cousin’s crude system, have lost the life of an original
movement.” In this last sentence Dr. Channing not only anticipated
history but also uttered a prophecy. But how about a philosophy whose
mission it is to maintain all the great truths for which he so
eloquently and manfully fought? How about a conception of Christianity
which places itself in evident relations with human nature and the
history of the universe?—a religion which finds its sanctuary in man’s
soul, and aims at the elevation of his finite reason to its archetype
and its transformation into the Infinite Reason?
Unitarianism in New England owes its existence to the supposition that
Calvinism is a true and genuine interpretation of Christianity. “Total
depravity,” “election,” “reprobation,” “atonement,” etc., followed, it
was fancied, each other logically, and there was no denying one
without the denial of all. And as it was supposed that these doctrines
found their support in the divinity of Christ, and in order to bring
to ruin the superstructure they aimed at upsetting its base by the
denial of the divinity of Christ. They had grown to detest so heartily
the “five points” of Calvinism that they preferred rather to be pagans
than suckled in such a creed. Is it probable, is it reasonable to
suppose that our New Englanders, who have a strong vein of earnest
religious feeling in their nature, would have gone across the ocean to
find a support for the great truths which they were so enthusiastic in
affirming among the will-o’-the-wisps of the realms of thought, when
at their very doors was “the church which has revealed more completely
man to himself, taken possession of his inclinations, of his lasting
and universal convictions, laid bare to the light those ancient
foundations, has cleansed them from every stain, from every alien
mixture, and honored them by recognizing their impress of the
Divinity?”
But Mr. Frothingham tells us: “The religion of New England was
Protestant and of the most intellectual type. Romanism had no hold on
the thinking people of Boston. None besides the Irish laboring and
menial classes were Catholics, and their religion was regarded as the
lowest form of ceremonial superstition” (p. 107); and almost in the
same breath he informs his readers that “the Unitarians of New England
were good scholars, accomplished men of letters, humane in sentiment
and sincere and moral in intention” (p. 110). Is Octavius Brooks
Frothingham acquainted with all “the ceremonial superstitions” upon
this earth, and does he honestly believe that the Catholic religion is
“the lowest form” of them all? Or—what is the same thing—does he think
that the “good scholars and accomplished men of letters” of New
England thought so? Perhaps such was his received impression, but that
it was common to this class of men we stoutly deny. No one stood
higher among them than Dr. Channing, and his estimate of the Catholic
religion was certainly not the same as Mr. Frothingham’s. It would be
difficult to find in a non-Catholic writer a higher appreciation of
her services to humanity, and more eloquent descriptions of certain
aspects of the Catholic Church, than may be found in his writings. Mr.
Frothingham ought to know this, and only the limits of our article
hinder us from citing several of these. Is he aware that President
John Adams headed the subscription-list to build the first Catholic
church in Boston. Our author, by his prejudices, his lack of insight,
and limited information, does injustice to the New England people,
depreciates the intelligence and honesty of the leaders in
Unitarianism, and fails to grasp the deep significance of the
transcendental movement.
He does injustice to the people of Boston especially, who, when they
heard of the death of the saintly Bishop Cheverus, tolled the bells of
the churches of their city to show in what veneration they held his
memory; and if he was not of the age to have listened, he must have
read the eloquent and appreciative eulogium preached by Dr. Channing
on this great and good man. And Bishop Cheverus was the guide and
teacher of the religion of the Irish people of Boston!
Mr. Frothingham will not attempt to make a distinction between the
“Catholic religion” and “the religion of the Irish menial and laboring
classes”—a subterfuge of which no man of intelligence and integrity
would be guilty. The Irish people—be it said to their glory—have from
the beginning of their conversion to Christianity kept the pure light
of Catholic faith unsullied by any admixture of heresy, and have
remained firm in their obedience to the divine authority of the holy
church, in spite of the tyranny, of the bitterest persecution of its
enemies, and all their efforts of bribery or any worldly inducements
which they might hold out. When our searchers after true religion
shall have exhausted by their long and weary studies Zoroaster,
Pythagoras, Svenalis, Plato, Epictetus, Brahma, Buddha, Confucius,
Mahomet, and any other notable inventor of philosophy or religion;
when they have gathered up all the truths scattered among the
different heresies in religion since the Christian era, the end of all
their labors will only make this truth the plainer: that the Catholic
Church resumes the authority of all religions from the beginning of
the world, affirms the traditions and convictions of the whole human
race, and unites, co-ordinates, and binds together all the scattered
truths contained in every religious system in an absolute, universal,
divine synthesis.
[147] _Transcendentalism in New England._ A History.
By Octavius Brooks Frothingham. New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons. 1876.
CHARLES CARROLL OF CARROLLTON.[148]
[Illustration]
Charles Carroll’s is a household name in the American family—the name
of a man marked among his peers for a purity of character on which a
Christian mind loves to dwell: _integer vitæ scelerique purus_! His
independence was so noble and sublime, yet so toned with homeliness
withal, that of him it was said he walked the streets of his
regenerated country with brow erect and mien expanded, because he was
_sans peur et sans reproche, a preux chevalier_—the idol in the family
sanctuary. He alone of the great founders chosen by the angel of this
land was destined to witness, beyond the span of days usually allotted
to man, the unparalleled prosperity and unequalled development of the
resources of a virgin country. Such was the well-earned reward of a
career marked by the purest disinterestedness in motives, justice in
the choice of means, and humblest dependence on the assistance of the
Lord God of nations.
On the anniversary of that day when the covenant that saved mankind
was announced by an archangel from the highest heavens, and ratified
on earth by the assent of the lowly maid of Jesse, the _Ark_ and the
_Dove_ moored on the American waters of the Potomac. A stalwart band
of men who were to herald—and they alone of all the Pilgrims—the great
covenant of true liberty leaped on shore and planted the standard of
salvation. They planted the cross on a new land to be added to Mary’s
dowry. Truer men were never hailed by an uncivilized people—men who
had learned how to fulfil their destinies in the schools of Bethlehem
and of Golgotha.
The Catholic student of American history feels his heart glowing with
sentiments of the holiest pride, as, reverting to the twenty-fifth day
of March, 1632, he reads that the Catholic pilgrim alone, with his
descendants after him, has held steadfastly and without swerving, even
to this day, to the true dictates of that moral and religious economy
whereby man can secure his happiness and moral independence here, with
a never-wavering certainty of thereby securing a claim to an
everlasting welfare hereafter. Cardinal McCloskey to-day represents
and enacts these very same principles and laws among and to the
millions of Catholics in America, which the humble Jesuit missionary
Andrew White proclaimed among and to the tribes of the Potomac two
hundred and forty-three years ago—nay, the same principles and laws
which were, by the Lord’s mandate, proclaimed by Peter and the
apostles when for the first time they announced their mission to the
throngs gathered in the city of David.
We love to dwell on these facts. The child who was christened in his
mother’s arms in Jerusalem on the day after Pentecost became endowed
with the same heavenly prerogatives as the Indian babe regenerated in
the laver of redemption by Father White sixteen ages later or by any
priest of the church on this very day! In very deed, the indelible
marks and divine perfections of the heavenly court are mirrored and
reflected by the city of God on earth. That same and one Christ who
reigned, with his laws, in the church of Jerusalem, and a thousand
years after in Vineland of North America, reigns and rules to-day,
with the same laws, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Meanwhile, where is the church of the Puritans? Where are her
antecedents? Has any of her aspirations been fulfilled? Is there any
mark of benediction left by her professors?
The past of Charles Carroll clusters around his life in manifold
benedictions; his name is borne aloft on the waters of that grand
stream over which the bark of Peter has triumphantly glided for
eighteen centuries, and will continue its triumphant course to the
consummation of the world. Such is the perpetuity of faith!
A half-century had hardly passed away since the landing of the
Pilgrims when Daniel Carroll, the grandsire of our Charles, came to
America (A.D. 1680). He was an Irishman, of that prodigious stock
which, in the wonderful ways of Providence, being transplanted on our
shores, was on some future day to give to America most energetic and
determined laborers in the rearing of our independence. Surely did the
orator of Concord, amid the festivities of the last Centennial, prove
himself miserably ignorant of what his sires owed to the Irish[149] of
Pennsylvania.
For let it be recorded for the hundredth time: but for those men our
cause would have been lost, in the straits to which the public weal
was brought. They came to the rescue, and George Washington took good
heart and went on to victory.
Daniel was born in Littemourna, King’s County, Ireland. During the
reign of James II. he held responsible offices. Lord Baltimore was his
patron, and by his favor, close application, sterling honesty, and
persevering industry he became the owner of large estates, and the
family prospered and increased in wealth, although not in social or
political position, during the second and third generations.[150]
Daniel Carroll rose very high in the estimation of the colony, and was
chosen to offices of important and delicate trust. So great was his
renown for spotless integrity, extraordinary ability, and love of the
public weal that when Protestant bigotry obtained the upper hand, and,
in the language of McMahon, the non-Catholic historian of Maryland,
“in a colony which was established by Catholics, and grew up to power
and happiness under the government of a Catholic, the Catholic
inhabitant became the only victim of religious intolerance,” he was
exempted from the opprobrious and hateful disqualifications inflicted
upon his coreligionists by the penal code—an exemption, at first
sight, of doubtful honor, were it not for the exceptional nature and
circumstances of the case. It entailed not the least compromise on the
part of the recipient, who accepted it without hindrance to an open
profession of his faith; moreover, it enabled him to shelter less
favored colonists in the enjoyment of rights most dear to their hearts
and indispensable to their happiness.
Charles Carroll, the father of the signer, was born in 1702. He was a
high-spirited man, but he had no chances to display his talents, nor
field on which to exert his energies. He chafed under the wrong and
ingratitude with which the children of mother church were harried in
the “Land of the Sanctuary” which they had opened to the oppressed of
all climes. Alluding to the legislation of the Maryland colony in
1649, Chancellor Kent says: “The Catholic planters of Maryland won for
their adopted country the distinguished praise of being the first of
American States in which toleration was established by law. And while
the Puritans were persecuting their Protestant brethren in New
England, and Episcopalians retorting the same severity on the Puritans
in Virginia, the Catholics, against whom the others were combined,
formed in Maryland a sanctuary where all might worship and none might
oppress, and where even Protestants sought refuge from Protestant
intolerance.”
But Protestant intolerance demolished the sanctuary, the handiwork of
noble and loving Catholic hands. In accord with the wish of many, Mr.
Carroll entertained the idea of seeking freedom of action, liberty of
conscience, and equality of rights under another sky. Thus, in one of
his journeys to Europe, he applied to the French minister for the
purchase of a tract of land in Louisiana. The project was far
advanced, when the minister growing alarmed at the vast purchase which
it was their wish to make on the Arkansas River, the negotiations were
(providentially?) broken off. The project, viewed in the light of
succeeding events, may appear, as it was then by many deemed,
injudicious. Yet great praise is due to Charles Carroll, Sr., for his
taking the lead in the movement at a time when, as Mr. Latrobe
observes, “the disqualifications and oppressions to which Catholics
were subjected amounted to persecution. Roman Catholic priests were
prohibited from the administration of public worship. The council
granted orders to take children from the pernicious contact of
Catholic parents; Catholic laymen were deprived of the right of
suffrage; and the lands of Catholics were assessed double when the
exigencies of the province required additional supplies.”… Nay, more:
a Catholic was levelled to the condition of a pariah or a helot—he was
not even allowed to walk with his fellow-citizen before the
State-house. Things were carried to a point beyond endurance. No
wonder the Catholics of Maryland felt relief even in the thought of
fleeing from home. And yet, with these facts, admitted by all American
historians, staring him in the face, the British ex-premier has dared
to flaunt a lie in the face of the whole world!
Charles Carroll, Sr., died at a patriarchal age, more than four-score
years. Like Simeon of old, he had long waited for the consolations of
Israel, for the day when the spouse of Christ would cast aside the
slave’s garb, and, emerging from American catacombs, come forth in the
radiant panoply of freedom and celestial splendor. He himself never
had faltered in this hope. He always felt that Mary’s land would not
be forsaken by her in whose name it was first held. He saw his country
free, and he rejoiced. He witnessed around him the beneficent results
accruing from the influences of mother church. He raised his hand to
bless God, to bless his kin, to bless the land. But how shall we
portray the emotions of his heart when no more in hiding-places, but
in full noon-day, openly and freely, he saw the clean Sacrifice
offered by the priests of the Most High? And when the form of his
beloved son knelt before him for a last blessing, how with the
father’s benedictions must have mingled feelings of pride and
gratitude because even by the untiring labors of that son had the
blessings of liberty to church and state been won!
It was the writer’s good-fortune, a great many years ago, to seek for
rest in what, among Catholic Marylanders, was formerly known as the
“Jesuit Tusculum.” In a secluded nook in Cecil County, on the Eastern
Shore, lies embosomed within dense thickets and shady lanes the
Bohemia Manor, a dependency of Georgetown College. When the Catholic
youth of Maryland were debarred the privilege of collegiate training
in their native schools, the members of the Company of Jesus had, at a
very early period, opened there a boarding-school, especially for such
of the American boys as would afterwards, like their persecuted peers
in England, seek for a sound education and a thorough Christian
training at the well-known academies of Belgium and France. Wandering
through those woods, rowing over the meandering streams whose soft
murmurings give life to the silent homes of the crane and gentle game,
the youthful forms of the Carrolls and Brents, Dorseys and Darnells,
haunted the imagination and brought one back to those days of fervent
Catholic spirit, pure hearts, and high-minded youths who waxed in
years and strength under the saintly training of Hudson and Manners,
Farmer and Molineux. To the care of experienced, learned, and saintly
Jesuits was entrusted the training of that part of the Lord’s vineyard
which, amid persecution and manifold dangers, mirrored the days of
primitive Christianity.
Young Charles Carroll, who was born in 1737, was sent thither to drink
the first pure waters of secular learning and Christian training. At
one time well-nigh twoscore of the sons of the more fortunate
colonists were there united with him at the Tusculum of the Company of
Jesus.
But a day of separation dawned. Charles was in his eleventh year when
not the swift steamship of our time but a laggard craft was to convey
him to distant shores. He was accompanied in his journey by his
cousin, John Carroll, with whom many years after he accomplished a
most delicate and important mission at the command of the government.
Thus he added to the ties and sympathies of blood a link of such
friendships as are so apt to knit in college life and ever after
congenial souls and hearts beating in unison. True, when the day
arrived on which each was to enter an avenue of life that would lead
to the career for which each was fitted by nature, they chose
different gates, but came forth on the great drama of life to be the
leaders of two generations, one in the church, the other in the state.
Charles Carroll with unerring finger points to the Catholic layman the
resources which he should improve for the perfect execution of his
part; John Carroll has represented him who is the infallible guide of
the church, becoming at the same time the model of bishop and priest,
the pride and the joy of the anointed minister of that same church in
the United States.
Six years did young Carroll spend at St. Omer’s, in French Flanders,
in the study of the classics of ancient and modern times under Jesuit
tuition; thence he passed to Rheims; and lastly he entered the college
of Louis le Grand in Paris. In the two last places he applied himself,
under the guidance of learned Jesuits, to the study of logic and
metaphysics, mathematics and natural sciences. When at Louis le Grand
the elder Charles crossed the ocean a third time to feast his eyes and
gladden his doating heart on the son who had waxed in years as well as
in grace. He found the promising boy grown into a manly youth, and
bade him say farewell to the charms of a life whose days glided on in
unruffled peace, breathing in an atmosphere of religion and science.
His intercourse there was with men whose aspirations were to the
greatest glory of God, whose conversation was in heaven. These men, so
noble, so learned, so perfect, had entwined the hearts of their pupils
with their own.
In 1757 Charles Carroll removed to London to enter upon the study of
law. Admitted to the Inner Temple, an inmate, or at least a
frequenter, of those halls wherein surely the Holy Ghost did not hold
an undisputed sway, the noble-minded and pure-souled Maryland youth
must have felt the change to the quick. What a contrast to the
simplicity of his western home at the paternal manor, the sweet
influences and innocent life at the Bohemian Tusculum, and in the
blessed halls of Bruges and St. Omer’s! At the Temple he spent the
five years requisite in order to be called to the bar; but he remained
in Europe until 1764, when he again set sail for his western home.
A great change had meanwhile come over the moral atmosphere of his
native State. Whilst bickerings about religion were growing
distasteful, a rumbling noise of threatened disasters in the distance
drew the hearts of the colonists together. Indistinct and sombre
figures of enemies lurking around the premises counselled measures of
internal peace, equal distribution of civil rights, and a unity of
sentiments and aims as the only hope of averting ruin and of
conquering a powerful foe. Ties of friendship were strengthened,
measures of concerted action were discussed, whilst religious
questions were laid aside, and arrogant claims of superior rights on
the part of non-Catholics forgotten, in the presence of an impending
danger; the more so because it was felt that there was a party
brooding in their midst which was in accord with the enemy outside.
When the boy left the land of his birth, and the prow of the ship that
bore him ploughed the waters of the Atlantic, his soul expanded with a
heretofore unexperienced sentiment of liberty; for only then did he
begin to feel that freely under the canopy of heaven he could practise
his religion without let or hindrance, without the sneers or
intermeddling of his neighbors. Add to this the anticipated enjoyment
of the liberty in wait for him on the eastern lands of Catholic faith.
Yet the prospective and future return to the land of bondage must from
time to time have thrown shadows of sadness over the gushing and
joyful youth at school. But now comes a truce to religious dissensions
and family quarrels; a victory is gained: the church is free, her
shackles broken. Catholic and non-Catholic worship at the altar of
their choice freely and publicly. They are all children of the same
political family, members of the same moral body!
But the liberties of the colonies are crushed by the mother country,
and Charles Carroll lands on these shores only in time to be one of
the mourners at the funeral of liberty. His countrymen had been galled
with bitterness by the contempt, insolence, and arrogance of the
British soldiery, and felt a contempt for the martinet leaders of the
Braddock defeat, while at the same time a feeling of superiority was
engendered in their heart by the warlike qualities displayed by rank
and file under the leadership of him who was already first in the
hearts of his peers. They chafed at being made the hewers of wood and
drawers of water to British indolence; they felt the sanctuary of
their homes desecrated by the writs of assistance; their inmost souls
were moved with indignation at being ordered to sacrifice their
hard-earned comforts, their very subsistence, to the pleasure of a
ribald soldiery. Such things could not be endured by the sons of
liberty. And thus it happened that Charles Carroll was not welcomed
with the cheers of a hearty greeting; he only heard the groans, the
smothered curses, the oaths of vengeance deep and resolute, uttered by
his oppressed fellow-colonists.
His soul was fired with wrath and zeal; but a wrath subdued by
self-control, a zeal swayed by prudence. His was a self-possession
that was never thrown off its guard. He seemed ever to be on the alert
against surprises—a foe more fatal to armies than cannon and shot.
During the excitement of the Stamp Act Charles Carroll, who had
returned from the Continent “a finished scholar and an accomplished
gentleman,” was at first a silent but careful and discerning observer.
He studied the tendency of events, and the moral elements on which
these events should work some remarkable development. Cautious but
firm, he gradually entered the lists, and then in the struggles which
seemed so unequal he fought heart and soul with that noble galaxy of
Maryland patriots who, bold and undismayed, opposed an unbroken front
to those first encroachments which were even countenanced by
interested parties in the colony. But for a prompt resistance a breach
would have been opened for such inroads into the domain of our
liberties as would break down its ramparts, overwhelm our defenders,
and enslave the people.
It is not necessary for us here to relate how the obnoxious law was
repealed—a tardy and unwilling act of atonement (“an act of empty
justice,” as McSherry well defines it); yet its revocation was hailed
by the colonies with great rejoicings as the harbinger of a better
rule and the dawn of a day of just polity in the home government.
Surely, the rulers in the mother country had felt the temper of her
children abroad; they loved her fondly as long as she proved herself a
mother; woe were she to forget the ties of love and harshly deal with
them!
Charles Carroll was neither blinded nor hoodwinked by this sporadic
token of motherly justice. Those years of residence in England were
not lost to him. He well knew the temper of the British lion, his
arrogance and his treachery. Sooner or later another paroxysm of
exigencies would come over him; they must be met, cost what it may.
“_Wicked_ is the only word which I can apply to the government of your
colonies. You seem to regard them as mere material mines from whence
the mother country is to extract the precious ore for her own luxury
and splendor.”[151]
The victory gained and the danger averted for the nonce, Mr. Carroll
devoted himself to promoting the welfare of the colony. In fact,
whilst a short period of comparative peace lasted outside the
colonies, Maryland was not free from internal disturbance. Two sources
of disquietude were then opened—the Proclamation and the Vestry Act.
Nor was the colony less annoyed by the unfaithfulness of leading
merchants in Baltimore, who, goaded by thirst of money and not
prompted by feelings of love for their country, had slackened in their
opposition to the encroachment of the government at home. They only
followed in the wake of New York and Philadelphia, and even of Boston.
The love of lucre and the diseased tastes of what was then called _the
quality_ allowed the merchants of those cities to fall away from the
compact entered upon with the sister colonies. To advance their
interests and to satisfy a portion of the community, they forsook
their principles and paid the hated tributes for proscribed
commodities. But outside Baltimore the people in the counties remained
firm and unshaken in their patriotism.
Charles Carroll was young in years, but ripe in judgment. The future
statesman lost no opportunities. It was of the utmost importance that
he should thoroughly know the habits of his fellow-citizens and their
calibre, whether he looked upon them as a distinct colony or in their
relations to the other provinces; what were the materials and the
resources of the whole country; what guarantees could be drawn from
the past for the welfare of the future; how far or within what bounds
should the liberties of the colonies be restrained; what security for
the rights of conscience; were the rights of each colony to be
paramount over the exigencies of the whole family of provinces?… To a
mind well stored with the choicest theoretical lore it became an easy
matter to trace its course and clearly see the way ahead. Thus
prepared, he grappled with Charles Dulany, the champion of those who
opposed the people’s claims and remonstrances. Dulany was his senior
by many years, had grown up identified with the selfish interests of
office-holders and of the established clergy, himself high in the
councils of the government, whilst his opponent had just arrived from
a long sojourn abroad, and was a “papist” enthralled and
disfranchised.
The main point of dispute turned on the rights of the government of
the colony to tax the people arbitrarily for the payment of officers
and the support of the clergy. The history of the Proclamation, drawn
up by Dulany himself, and the burial thereof amid a most solemn
pageant by the freemen of Annapolis on the 14th of May, 1673, are too
well known to require detailing here. It is enough to say that by
general acclamation the people acknowledged Charles Carroll as their
champion. He could not be selected as a delegate, enthralled as he
was, but in public meetings held in Frederick, Baltimore, and
Annapolis they unanimously voted and formally tendered him the thanks
of the people.
Mr. Carroll entered the lists veiled under the name of _First
Citizen_, whilst Dulany met him in combat as _Antilon_—an unnecessary
disguise, for he was too well known, being the patriot “who,” says
McSherry, “had long stood the leading mind of Maryland.” The war was
carried on in the columns of the _Maryland Gazette_, and Mr. Carroll
sustained his character of “finished scholar and accomplished
gentleman.” Never did he swerve from the high tone of a writer who was
conscious of his own powers. Assailed with offensive names by his
adversaries, he never descended to their level. When the real name of
the _First Citizen_ was yet unknown, the excitement created by his
articles, written in a style ready and incisive, and withal most
graceful, was enhanced by and received a keener zest from the stimulus
of curiosity. Wonderful was the avidity with which they were sought
and read. These articles fed the public spirit, inspired the people
with courage, and shaped the course to be pursued not only by the
colonists of Maryland, but even in sister colonies. The articles by
_First Citizen_ were held in so much esteem that Joseph Galloway, when
speaker in the Pennsylvania Assembly, would copy them with his own
hand, on the loan from a fortunate subscriber, and send them to
Benjamin Franklin.
Thus the popular party triumphed. The party of oppression, with the
established clergy at their back, was discomfited. Hammond and Paca
were elected. Maryland was saved, and her saviour was Charles Carroll.
Amid these controversies arose a young man, spirited, wealthy, and
highly educated, who threw himself headlong into the struggle, and,
growing with its trials, became renowned in its darkest hours, and
honored and cherished in its glorious success” (McSherry, p. 170).
That young man, only seven-and-twenty, was already a renowned
statesman.
A distinguished non-Catholic historian remarks that Charles Carroll
brought to play on whatever he undertook “a decided character, stern
integrity, and clear judgment.” Truly, the star of his name had
reached the meridian of its course already. There it became fixed. His
countrymen were guided by it during the dark days of the most perilous
events, through battles and storms, dissensions and heart-burnings,
the exuberancy of victories and the dejection of defeats. Thirty
years, the best of his life, his whole manhood, a long manhood—for he
grew old only when others cease to live—he devoted to the welfare of
his country.
The life of Charles Carroll becomes at this period so entwined and
blended with the history of the country that our article would swell
into a portly volume were we to undertake a narrative of the details
of his public career. We have endeavored to give a faithful portrait
of the character of a man who is the pride of the secular history of
the Catholic Church in America. It has been our aim to give a key to
open the inmost recesses of that soul the noblest of the noble, that
heart the purest of the pure, that mind greatest among the great.
Therefore we shall only hint at the events of his public life, _omnia
quæ tractaturi sumus, narratione delibabimus_, as Quintilian would
teach us.
As foreseen, the British lion awoke from his apparent lethargy, and
with a roar and a spring he bounded anew. Stung to the quick at being,
even only once, foiled in his endeavors to saddle on the colonies
unjust burdens, he made renewed attempts, and the tax on the
“detestable weed” was revived. The people arose in their indignation,
and gave vent to it in the hazardous but successful festivities of the
famous Boston Tea Party. Massachusetts was disfranchised. Indeed, it
was the vent of a petty spite. Not the Bay State alone, but all the
colonies, would soon disfranchise themselves, all in a body, and in a
way of their own. But Massachusetts had given the example, and
Maryland followed close in the wake. The latter even improved on the
act of the former; for what had been achieved in the Boston Bay under
disguise the citizens of Maryland consummated at Annapolis openly and
undisguised. And yet brave Maryland had intestine troubles that
engrossed her attention—troubles which were aggravated even by the
fact that the abettors thereof were interested in carrying out the
measures of the home government. But there shone above them the
guiding star—Charles Carroll led them to victory. Undaunted and
uncompromising, Mr. Carroll looked coming events in the face; and when
Mr. Chase indulged in the hope that there would be no more trouble,
for “had they not written down their adversaries?” he would not thus
flatter himself with illusions of enduring peace. To other means they
would have yet to resort. “What other means have we to resort to?”
asked the other. “The bayonet,” calmly rejoined Charles Carroll. And
so firm was his conviction that they should resort to arms that he
held his opinion against many at home and abroad. His reply to the
Hon. Mr. Graves, M.P., who averred that six thousand soldiers would
easily march from one end of the colonies to the other, is too
characteristic of the statesman not to copy it here: “So they may, but
they will be masters of the spot only on which they encamp. They will
find naught but enemies before and around them. If we are beaten on
the plains, we will retreat to our mountains and defy them. Our
resources will increase with our difficulties. Necessity will force us
to exertion, until, tired of combating in vain against a spirit which
victory after victory cannot subdue, your armies will evacuate our
soil, and your country retire, a great loser by the contest. No, sir;
we have made up our minds to abide the issue of the approaching
struggle, and, though much blood may be spilt, we have no doubt of our
ultimate success.” In these few lines the spirit, the gallantry, the
tactics, the greatness of our armies from Lexington to Yorktown are
both eloquently and accurately described.
And when a second cargo of the “detestable weed” entered the waters of
Maryland, the friends of Mr. Stewart, a leading merchant in the
colony, to whom the brig _Peggy Stewart_ belonged, and to whom the
cargo was consigned, appealed to Charles Carroll for advice and
protection. The _First Citizen_ was ever consistent. Was not the
importation an offence against the law? Was not the majesty of the
people insulted? To export the tea to the West Indies or back to
Europe was no adequate reparation—what if Mr. Stewart was a friend of
his?… “Gentlemen, set fire to the vessel, and burn her with her cargo
to the water’s edge!” With sails set and colors flying, she floated, a
sheet of fire, amid the shouts of the people on shore.
Besides the powerful promptings of a heart burning with love of
country, Charles Carroll felt moved to deeds of heroism and
self-defence by motives of equal, if not superior, importance. He
became, nay, he seemed to feel that he was, in the hands of
Providence, the chosen champion to assert Catholic rights and
liberty—ay, might we not look upon him as the O’Connell of America in
the eighteenth century? It can be proved beyond all doubt that the
Catholics of the colonies placed great trust in him. Surely he became
their representative. There was power in his name. He had become a
leading genius, inspiring with wise resolves, and determination to
carry them out, those valiant men of his faith who had clustered
around the Father of his Country, or were admitted to the councils of
the nation, or formed part of the rank and file in the American army,
or had it in their power to swell with generous hands the national
resources. This power of Mr. Carroll was felt even outside the pale of
his own church. The case of the _Peggy Stewart_ is one to the point.
Another and far more important illustration of his power is the
following: Thomas Conway, a meteor of sinister forebodings, with his
plots of disaster and ruin, has defiled a very short page of American
history. Yet, brief as his career was in this country, it worked
mischief. “Conway’s Cabal” is well known. It is well known how the
despicable adventurer was bribed into a conspiracy against Washington
in favor of an unpopular superior officer. Charles Carroll was a
member of the Board of War. In that board there was a party covertly
yet powerfully at work to displace the commander-in-chief in favor of
Horatio Gates. Mr. Carroll, as usual, always on his guard, watched his
opportunity. He was approached cautiously and warily, even before a
vote was taken. Then calmly and stoutly, yet with that rock-like
firmness of his that had become proverbial, he said: “Remove General
Washington, and I’ll withdraw.” Words were those pregnant with weighty
consequences. Carroll was at the head, he was the representative of
the Catholics. Maryland went with him; the Catholics of Pennsylvania,
nine-tenths of the whole population, an element of great power,
indispensable to success, were with him. The colonies needed the aid
of Catholic France sadly. What if Charles Carroll withdrew to
Carrollton? What if he recrossed the ocean? George Washington was
_not_ removed; and under God’s favor was not George Washington _the_
chosen leader, _the_ appointed conqueror, the Moses of his day, the
Josue of his people? Who was there to take his place as _the first_
over those fierce legions of sturdy and resolute assertors of a
nation’s life?
We must be allowed here to transfer to these columns, in words far
more eloquent and true than we could ever command, both the source and
the development of the ideas to which the deeds of those two men in
the infancy of the nation has given rise in our mind.
In a dialogue between himself and a mysterious apparition on the
threshold of that Temple whose entrance was forbidden to the Emperor
Theodosius, Frederick Faber, yet an Anglican, thus addresses his
companion:
“Do you not think that we should be in a more healthy state if there
were a greater indifference to politics amongst us?”
“No,” replied he; “I know of no indifference which is healthy, except
indifference to money. The church has a great duty to perform in
politics. It is to menace, to thwart, to interfere. The Catholic
statesman is a sort of priest. He does out in public the secular work
of the retired and praying priesthood; and he must not be deserted by
those spiritual men whom he is arduously, wearily, and through evil
report conscientiously representing.”
Could modern publicist ever utter words more squarely tallying with
the circumstances of our own times?
We have followed our hero only to the performance of his first acts in
the great drama in which the Ruler of nations had appointed him to
bear such important parts. Charles Carroll, in his adjuncts and
circumstances, as regards both his cast of religion and politics,
stood alone among his peers. Much he had to destroy ere he could
build. But he addressed himself to his work with well-appointed tools,
a clear mind, a steady hand, a glowing heart, and an immovable
reliance in Him who hath said that “unless the Lord build the house,
they labor in vain that build it; unless the Lord keep the city, he
watcheth in vain that keepeth it” (Ps. cxxvi.) Thus appointed, he
never faltered. On, on he advanced, step after step; stretching forth
himself to those things that were before him, he pressed towards the
mark, until he had received the prize.
More than onescore years and ten he labored as man never did labor for
the well-being of his country. When he had reached the sixty-fourth
year of his life, and only then, he rested; he unbuckled his armor and
laid it down, to enjoy the blessings which his own heart and mind had
drawn on America. How beautifully were his talents apportioned, in
equal distribution—thirty years of study in the best schools of
Europe; thirty years of the most faithful service in the greatest work
that it ever was the lot of man to be engaged in; thirty years of
unruffled peace in the bosom of his family, in the home of his youth,
which became the Mecca of the people, as a writer calls it—a shrine of
wisdom and goodness! There “the patriarch of the nation” taught two
generations; he laid before their appreciative minds the principles
and inspired their grateful hearts with those sentiments of Christian
polity of which he himself was such a shining ornament and faithful
embodiment.
We well remember how, in days long passed away, old men who had known
him in the days of his manhood were wont to speak of him; how that
heart, so noble and so pure, fondly watched the healthy growth of that
tree of liberty to plant which he himself had lent a strong hand.
These men would tell how the ripe and veteran statesman felt as much
zest in the enjoyment of surrounding events as when, a boy and a
youth, he applied himself to literary studies, or pursued the more
arduous acquisition of scientific lore in the halls of philosophy or
in those of law and jurisprudence. His was an equanimity of character
seldom witnessed in man. And that placid, calm bearing which made his
countenance the mirror of a soul preserved in patience and perfect in
self-control never forsook him to the very last hours of his life. A
very old member of the Company of Jesus, a professor and superior of
the Georgetown University, has more than once related, within hearing
of the writer, that the appearance of Charles Carroll riding into the
college enclosure, on a docile and yet lively pony, when the great
patriot had already overstepped the fourscore years of life, conveyed
the impression of a youthful and innocent old age, so full of charm
and gravity, pensiveness and gayety, authority and condescension, that
it was felt indeed, but could not be described. It was the reflection
of a past without reproach, and of a future without fear. His very
carriage, the manner of his conversation, were an embodiment of his
last words: “In the practice of the Catholic religion the happiness of
my life was established!” Holy words! Sublime expression of the hopes
of Christianity! May the example of such a man never fail, and be for
ever the mould in which the young American spirit should be cast!
Providence seems to have granted him so long an existence because he
was the purest of the Revolutionary patriots, and he wished his
example to last the longest!
After his death no page was ever written to vindicate his character or
plead in behalf of one single shortcoming! No word of merciful
forgiveness was heard at his grave. His peers, his descendants, had
naught to forgive. With one voice of acclamation from one end of the
country to the other, amid wreaths of unspotted lilies and fragrant
roses, his name was emblazoned on the fair escutcheon of the American
nation as the name of
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT WITHOUT
FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH.
On the shield of this untrammelled and free American Church let two
names for ever be emblazoned with undying fame—John and Charles
Carroll; one the father of his clergy, the other the leader of his
people; John Carroll, the first vicar-apostolic, the first American
bishop; Charles Carroll, a signer of our Magna Charta, the assertor
and defender of those rights which shall for ever be the palladium of
religious freedom. Could a line of conduct be laid before us in more
unmistakable words and surer meaning?
Not by the ties of blood alone were those two souls knit to one
another, like David and Jonathan of yore; but inspired with love of
country, and deep, holy, unswerving affection for the church, they
fully appreciated the resources, moral and physical, which with proper
culture would make of this land a favorite portion of the mystical
Vineyard and the asylum for the oppressed. John within the sacred
enclosure of God’s tabernacle, Charles in the halls of legislation,
they worked in different departments, yet with one accord, the former
to give the great garden fit husbandmen, and provide it with every
appurtenance in nurseries of virtue and learning; the latter to lead
the instincts born with a people, purified by trials and trained to
justice, into a current which, swelling in its course within the
bounds of Christian discipline, would, the one directing,
strengthening, hallowing the other, run to endless days in great
majesty and overwhelming power.
Charles outlived the archbishop by many years, and witnessed the
triumphs of the Redeemer’s spouse to the achievement of which his
great kinsman had devoted the resources of his extraordinary mind, the
most tender and inviolate affections of his exuberant heart, and the
untiring exertions of a long apostleship.
And here we feel as if we may lay down our pen and look upon our task
as accomplished. We have endeavored to be the faithful limner of a
character noblest among the noble, the pride and the guide of our
Catholic laity in the American Church.
How grand that figure loometh in the galaxy of our greatest men! Great
and grand, pure, unselfish, guileless, wise, loving, he stands on a
pedestal of imperishable renown, religion blended with wisdom, charity
with prudence, firmness with condescension!… When shall we look upon
his like again? Yea, the memory of his deeds is fresh, and his many
virtues as a Christian and as a statesman are even mirrored in the
lives of many noble, devoted, valiant followers—bright examples of
true patriotism and golden righteousness to our rising youth, on whose
stern vigor, unfaltering courage, and sterling virtues mother church
will lean for comfort and defence—a youth called, may be, to fight
even fiercer battles than our great ancestor, their shining model, had
to meet; battles that will need stout hearts, level minds, souls
prompt in bold resolves. But the God of yesterday is the God of
to-day; and with Charles Carroll in the van our gallant youth will
advance to the battle, sure also of the victory.
[148] The medal of which the above is an engraving
gives its own history. It was struck, we are informed
at the expense of the Carroll family. It was suggested
long since that if the _fiftieth_ anniversary of
American Independence was so befittingly honored by
thin tribute of love and heartfelt gratitude of a
whole nation to the only survivor of the signers, and
he a Catholic, it would be _dulce et decorum_ for the
Catholics of these United States to restrike it for
distribution, and as a lively reminder on the dawn of
the _hundredth_ anniversary. Nor would it be a
difficult or costly undertaking. We are told the die
is still preserved, although not at the mint. The only
alteration should occur in the legend of the reverse,
thus: d. Nov. 14, 1832, æt. 98. The exergue should
read: July IV. MDCCCLXXVI.
[149] “We enter upon the second century of the republic
with responsibilities which neither our fathers nor
the men of fifty years ago could possibly foresee.”
Again: “This enormous influx of strangers has added
an immense ignorance and entire unfamiliarity with
republican ideas and habits to the voting class.”
And: “It has introduced powerful and organized
influences not friendly to the republican principle
of freedom of thought and action,” etc.—Geo. W.
Curtis, LL.D., of New York, oration before the town
authorities of Concord, Mass., April 19, 1875.
Printed by permission. The _New England Historical
and Genealogical Register_, vol. xxix., October,
1875.—Strange that Mr. Curtis should have forgotten
the foreign _influx_ among the signers! Yet Thornton
was born in Ireland; Smith also, Taylor also; Lewis
in Wales; Witherspoon near Edinburgh; Morris in
Lancashire, England; Wilson in Scotland; Gwinnett in
England. Strange that of fifty-nine signers so many
should be strangers, besides those who were born of
foreigners! And strange that the most refined and
elegant civilians George Washington associated with
in Philadelphia were Irishmen. And was not that a
strange influx of Nesbitt saving Washington’s army
from starvation? And what of the $25,000 that Barclay
gave, and the $50,000 given by McClenaghan, etc.,
etc.?—an influx _in infinitum_. The influx worked
well a hundred years ago; fear not, it will work well
even now, but keep demagogues and false patriots
aside. Yet on what side are most of them to be found?
[150] Hence sprung the qualification added to the
name of Daniel’s grandson. When Charles, as one of the
members delegated by the State of Maryland to attend
the Convention in Philadelphia, advanced on the 2d of
August, 1776, to the secretary’s desk to sign his name
to the Declaration, allusion was made to the great
wealth of the Maryland delegate, who would thereby
jeopardize it all. “But,” remarked a bystander “it
will be hard to identify; are there not several
Charles Carrolls?”
“Ah! yes,” rejoined the signer; and dipping the pen
anew in that famous ink-stand, with that noble grace
of person so peculiar to him, he bent over the
parchment once more, and added, of _Carrollton_.
Surely Carrollton was the only manor of that name, and
our Charles was the only master thereof. Hence the
qualification which has since become useless—Charles
Carroll of Carrollton. In our days the great American
family knows only one Charles Carroll.
[151] A supernatural interlocutor in Father Faber’s
_Sights and Thoughts_. London: Rivingtons, 1842, p. 181.
THE CATHOLIC SUNDAY AND PURITAN SABBATH.
“Mamma, what kind of a place is heaven?” inquired a boy, after a two
hours’ Sunday session in a parlor corner, with the Bible for mental
aliment. “Why, my child, heaven is one perpetual Sabbath!” “_Well, ma!
won’t they let me go out sometimes, just to play?_” Absurd as was his
mode of expressing it, the boy was right as to the fundamental idea;
and though he could not have given the steps by which he reached the
conclusion, yet he judged well that the Almighty, when sending us into
this world, did not decree that we should be perpetually miserable in
it. The enforced performance of what was intended for a devotional
exercise was, in his case, beginning to bear its legitimate and
inevitable fruits of irksomeness at the outset, wearisomeness while it
lasts, and loathsomeness at the end.
All who claim the name of Christians observe, with greater or less
strictness, one day in seven as a day of rest and worship; the
devotional exercises conjoined therewith, emanating from the authority
of the church in the case of Catholics, and from the varying taste and
fancy of the sect, congregation, or even, it would seem, of the
individual, among non-Catholics. We propose in this article to inquire
into the origin of the Catholic usage regarding the Sunday; the
grounds and mode of its observance among Protestants; the difference
between the sectarian modes of keeping it and that enjoined by the
church. And as about every religious practice where variance exists
there must be a right and a wrong—a method of observance consistent
with authority and reason, and one either less so or entirely
incongruous therewith—we shall try to find (apart from the authority
of the church, which, though ample for us, would be of little avail
for _outsiders_) on which side right reason is, and to show the
absurdity of wrong custom in the matter.
The church tells us simply what the law of nature informs us of, the
existence of God the Creator, and of our duty of worshipping him; but
the time when all other things must be abandoned for this special
purpose is subject to another law—the ceremonial—and as under the
Mosaic dispensation that law was only a shadow of future good, to be
laid aside when the true Light should descend upon earth, so the
Jewish Sabbath, which was clearly established in the third commandment
of the Decalogue, is no longer to be held sacred, but the first day of
the week, which was consecrated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ
and the descent of the Holy Ghost, is _by her_ ordered to be kept
holy; and she enjoins on all her children at least to hear Mass
devoutly and to abstain from servile labor on that day. Having to
provide, however, for all sorts and conditions of men, the church adds
that reasons of necessity or transcendent charity will excuse us from
either obligation. And this is all that our holy mother enjoins on the
subject. As Catholics we accept and celebrate the Sunday wholly on her
authority; and, _à fortiori_, we are not bound to any further
observance of it than she dictates.
While it is clear from Holy Scripture that the apostles did meet with
each other and with the early converts to Christianity twice on the
_Dominica_ or Lord’s day, yet there is nothing to show that it was
even habitual with them to convene on that day; still less is there
anything, either in the form of precept or exhortation, in the entire
New Testament, that would manifest the fact of any change in the
ceremonial law of Moses on the subject. There is no announcement
whatever either of the abrogation of the Sabbath of the Jews or of the
establishment of Sunday instead; so that, had we but the Scripture to
refer to, we should grope in the dark both as to the obligation itself
and the mode of its fulfilment. But when we come to the fathers of the
Church, the very earliest of them indicate distinctly that the
Christians of their day did habitually meet together on the first day
of the week (called by them κυριακὴ, or _Dominica_). As we go on we
find them frequently enjoin, both expressly and by clear implication,
the obligation resting upon all Christians of meeting together on that
day for participation in the Holy Mysteries. Later still we find them
affirm this duty as of apostolic institution. To give a single example
of many, St. Saturninus, before suffering martyrdom at Abitina, in
Africa, in the year 304, under Diocletian, _for celebrating Mass on
Sunday_, exclaims, in presence of his judges: “_The obligation of the
Sunday is indispensable; it is not lawful for us to omit the duty of
that day!_” From the earliest Christian records to the present day
there is no break, no link wanting. Historians have clearly shown the
practice of the faithful, and councils have firmly enjoined and
reiterated it. So much for the origin and history of Sunday worship in
the Church.
It is, of course, one of the cardinal principles of Protestantism—in
fact, its sole _raison d’être_—that “the Bible is the only rule of
faith and practice”; that everything therein commanded should be
performed literally; and that whatever has no clear and direct warrant
of Scripture is purely of man’s device, and, by consequence, of no
authority whatsoever. All very fine, in words; but when we examine how
the doctrine works in point of fact, we shall find an amazingly great
discrepancy between the expressed faith and the actual, tangible
practice. There has certainly been no considerable drain upon the
reservoirs of our large cities in carrying out the injunction that “if
ye wash not one another’s feet, ye have no part in me.” It is not, so
far as we are informed, peculiarly characteristic of any sect of
Protestants, when “smitten on one cheek,” immediately to “turn the
other” for a repetition of the blow. No special alacrity has ever been
shown, even by the straitest sects, in eager obedience to the command,
“From him that borroweth from thee, turn not thou away”; and so far
are they from obeying the absolute injunction of the Apostle James to
“call in the priests of the church to the sick,” and to “anoint them
with oil in the name of the Lord,” that they rave and rage against
Catholics for doing so, and affirm it to be a superstitious
observance. If St. Paul ever expressed himself clearly on any point,
he certainly does so most unmistakably when he says that “it is a
shame for a woman to speak in the church”; yet the sectarian world is
now very largely supplied with “reverend” ladies, widowed, married,
and maiden, who evangelize with great acceptance, and even officiate
as regular pastors to various congregations throughout the country. It
would seem, therefore, that the cardinal principle aforesaid must have
either disappeared or some ingenious mode have been discovered by
which it works only when wanted, to be set aside whenever its
admission would run counter to the whim which may happen to be in
vogue.
Now, the only texts of the New Testament that mention the Sunday in
such way that it would be possible to draw from them any inference in
regard to its observance are Acts xx. 7 and 1 Cor. xvi. 1, neither of
which declares the abolition of the ancient Sabbath or enjoins the
observance of Sunday. But notwithstanding this fact, Protestants at
large have accepted our Sunday, whether _on tradition_, which they
reject; _or on the authority of the church_, which they despise; or,
finally, of their own good pleasure—certainly not _on Scripture_,
since it is not instituted therein. It is hardly worth while, owing to
their paucity, to mention as exceptions the Sabbatarians, who maintain
that Christians have no authorization for changing the divine
institution of the Jewish Sabbath, and who consequently observe
Saturday. Luther does not pretend any divine authority for the change,
but takes for granted that “mankind needs a rest of one day, at least,
in seven; and the first day, or Sunday, having prescription in its
favor, ought not lightly to be changed.” He says elsewhere that “if
any man sets up its observance on a Jewish foundation, then I order
you to labor on it, to ride or dance on it, or to do anything whatever
on it that shall remove its infringements on Christian liberty.” The
Augsburg Confession pointedly says: “Those who judge that in place of
the Sabbath the Lord’s day was instituted, as a day necessarily to be
observed, do very grossly err.” Calvin says in his Institutes: “It
matters not what day we celebrate, so that we meet together for the
desirable weekly worship; there is no absolute precept”; and he adds
that the sticklers for Sunday are “thrice worse in their crass and
carnal view of religion than the Jews whom Isaias (ch. i. 13)
denounced.” The doctrine of the English Reformers on the subject is
most concisely and strikingly put by Tyndale, who, in his _Answer_ to
Sir Thomas More, thus speaks:
“As for the Sabbath, _we be lords over the Sabbath_, and may
yet change it into Monday, or into any other day, ass we see
need, or may make every tenth day holy day, only ass we see
cause why. We may make two every week, if it were expedient
and one not enough to teach the people. Neither was there
any cause to change it from Saturday, but to put a
difference between ourselves and the Jews; neither need we
any holy day at all, if the people might be taught without
it.”
Even in Scotland John Knox, who attached himself to the innovators
with a bigoted zeal, did not pretend to find any Gospel warrant for
what he was pleased to call _the Sabbath_; and Dr. Hessey candidly
acknowledges that the strained sabbatarianism of Scotland is by no
means to be attributed to him or his coadjutors, mentioning at the
same time that Knox, when on a visit to Calvin at Geneva, found that
eminent Reformer occupied, on the Sunday of his arrival, at a game of
bowls! If, then, it be plain that the arch-innovators are not
responsible for that peculiarly unlovely, rigid, and ultra-Judaic
observance of the Sunday (the traces of which, growing fainter year by
year, are yet plainly discernible in the laws, institutions, habits,
and manners of the English-speaking portion of the Protestant world),
whence did it originate? Why are the ideas of English-speaking
Protestants so widely different from those of their brethren, and even
of their own founders, on this subject?
Fuller (in whose pages much quaint and naïve information about the
history of those transition days is to be found) tells us that the
_Puritans_, “who first began to be called by that name about 1564,”
and who dissented from the church of King Henry on the ground that the
Reformation had not gone “far enough,” were, like all other renegades,
anxious to distinguish themselves by hostility at every point to the
camp they had abandoned. They preached that to throw bowls on the
Sabbath “were as great sin as to kill a man”; to make a feast or
wedding dinner on that day “were as vile sin as for a father to cut
the throat of his son with a knife”; and that to ring more bells than
one “were mickle sin as is murder.” Of this brood was Vincent Bownde,
whose great work on the _Observance of the Sabbath_ first appeared in
1595; and to this book, which began the polemical controversy on the
subject, is due the rabid sabbatarianism of the English Puritans
during the remainder of the reign of Elizabeth and the dynasty of the
Stuarts. The Scottish Calvinists eagerly seized the cry, and from both
sects (their influence, pertinacity, and numbers being much greater
than those of the Anglican Establishment, which was itself, of
necessity, largely tinctured by their practice), through our own
hard-headed but harder-hearted Puritans of New England, who practised
this unmitigating observance of the day with the same zeal of
enforcement that they displayed in many other grimly ludicrous things,
we of this age and country are still to a great extent under the sway
of an intolerant and enforced sabbatarianism which the spread of
intelligence and liberality is gradually wearing away, but which,
after all, dies very hard. Just as no enmity is so envenomed, no
hatred so intense, so in like manner no distinctive practice or usage
disappears so slowly, as those originally engendered by religious
faction. It was clear that no Scriptural authority existed for the
abrogation of the Jewish Sabbath, and equally evident that the denial
of the authority of the church destroyed for ever all ecclesiastical
sanction for Sunday. There remained, consequently, no possible
authorization for it but to insist that the mere meeting together of
the apostles on that day (which, so far as anything to the contrary
can be shown from Scripture, _might have been accidental_) constituted
sufficient warrant; and next to regulate the observance of the day by
the practice of the Jews with regard to the Sabbath. This Bownde did
without hesitation. His book, gratifying as it did at once the
malignity of the Puritans against the church, their envy of the
established sect, and their own exclusiveness, became exceedingly
popular, was largely read and quoted, and its influence remains to the
present day. Here in the United States we yet retain traces of it in
our laws; as, indeed, we still do of that other intolerance by which
Catholics were, in former days, not allowed to hold civil office. In
some of the New England States Sunday (or _Sabbath_, as they
wrong-headedly insist on calling it) begins at sunset on Saturday; but
in most of them it legally begins at twelve o’clock on Saturday night,
lasting twenty-four hours. In some States contracts made on that day
are void; but generally they are binding, if good in other respects.
Of course the name Sunday is the Anglo-Saxon _Sunnan-dœg_, equivalent
to the Roman _dies solis_, so called in both tongues from its being
anciently devoted to the worship of the sun. Sabbath is the Hebrew
noun _shabbāth_ (rest) from the verb _shābath_ (to rest).
To ourselves and those who think with us that the state, in
legislating about matters of religion, whether doctrinal or merely of
exterior observance, is overstepping her proper limits—nay, who go
further, and insist that government was no more instituted to educate
our children than to feed and clothe them; that there is not an
assignable ground for the former which would not be even more
conclusive for the latter—it follows that all such legislation, from
that of Cromwell’s Puritans and the Six Sessions of Scotland, down
through the Blue Laws of Connecticut, to the last municipal regulation
that allows no concert on Sunday unless it be a “sacred” one, and no
procession accompanied by a band of music on that day, seems, what it
really is, an absurdity and a monstrosity, a relic of odious strifes
and bitter hates; and we would be glad, in common, we think, with
sensible and tolerant men of all creeds, to see our statute-books rid
of its remotest traces.
In speaking of any religious practice enjoined by the Catholic Church
we have this advantage: viz., that what it is at one place or time it
is in all places and at all times. The practice, then, of Catholics,
in accordance with the church teachings above stated, is to hear Mass
on Sunday, and, except in cases of necessity, to abstain from servile
labor. Most Catholics also attend Vespers on that day, though there be
no absolute obligation. We take no extreme cases, either of the very
pious on the one side who for their souls’ sake may be said to make a
Sunday of every day in the week, or of those on the other hand whose
religion sits so lightly upon them that it is sometimes difficult to
tell whether, beyond a feeble claim to the name of Catholic, they have
any religion at all. Among the 200,000,000 Catholics of the world are
to be found many of both descriptions. We speak, however, of the
average. Among these, Mass and Vespers being over, there will be found
no strait-lacedness; no tone peculiar to a Sunday, put on for that
day, and not observable on other days; no hesitation in conversing
about sublunary affairs of all kinds that can and may engage the
attention during the week. Should a concert-hall be open, as in Europe
is often the case, the Catholic hesitates not to go there, providing
it be one to which he would go on any day—_i.e._, if it be a proper
place for himself or family under any circumstances. He converses on
business or for pleasure with his friends in the public gardens, at
the _cafés_; with his family he visits other families with whom they
may be intimate. He does not hesitate to write a business letter, to
view a lot which he thinks of purchasing, or to take the railway train
on that day. It is needless to go further. He has complied with the
command of the church, and, not being a _law unto himself_
spiritually, he invents for himself no obligations superadded to those
of the church, which, in accordance with the commands of Scripture, he
believes himself _bound to hear_.
In speaking of Protestant doctrine or practice we are, of course, more
at a loss to speak definitely than when we lay down Catholic usage;
since the former rarely remains the same on any single point, even
within the same sect, for an ordinary generation of man. Why, fifty
years ago Christmas was an abomination, “a rag of popery,” to all but
the Anglicans. The sign of the cross was “the mark of the beast.” An
organ in a meeting-house was “a seeking out of their own inventions.”
Of the least approach to a liturgical observance, were it but the
repetition of the Creed, it was said: “In vain do they worship me,
teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” Now nearly all the
sects make a feint of some sort of service or observance of the
Christmas season; the cross is displayed within and without many
church buildings; not merely organs but string and brass bands fill
the choirs of Protestant fashionable churches; they may nearly all be
heard falsely repeat, Sunday after Sunday, that they “believe in the
holy Catholic Church”; and the prophet who should now foretell their
changes in another half-century would run the risk of being mobbed in
the public streets.
We give the doctrinal teaching of the Presbyterians on Sunday and its
observance, or at least of so many of the different religious bodies
going under that name as still subscribe to, and say they deduce their
doctrines from the Bible _via_ the Westminster Confession of Faith. It
was formerly, and is to some extent still, the most generally
received teaching on the subject of observing the Sabbath among
English-speaking Protestants, who seem to have had a monopoly of
spiritual information and an exclusive enlightenment on this whole
matter. How much the bitter hatred existing between Roundhead and
Cavalier had to do with the firm hold the said observance took on
Puritans and their descendants is not to the present purpose to
inquire. In response to the question, “How is the Sabbath to be
sanctified?” we have this answer:
“The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting _all that day, even
from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other
days_; and spending _the whole time_ in public and private exercises
of God’s worship, except so much as may be taken up in works of
necessity and mercy.”
What was meant by this is sufficiently indicated by the legislation
effected both before and subsequent to the meeting of the “Assembly of
Divines.” We are assured by excellent authorities that in England,
some twenty years after the appearance of Bownde’s book, people “dared
not, for fear of breaking the Sabbath, kindle a fire, or dress meat,
or visit their neighbors; nor sit at their own door nor walk abroad;
nor even talk with each other, save and it were of godly matters.” In
1643 the Long Parliament enacted laws “for the more thorough
observance of the Sabbath,” and caused to be burnt by the hangman
James I.’s _Book of Sports_. In the next year the Court of Six
Sessions forbade in Scotland all walking in the streets on the Sabbath
after the noonday sermon; and soldiers patrolled the streets,
arresting both old and young whom they should find outside their
houses and not on the way to or from church. The gates of Edinburgh
were ordered to be shut from ten P.M. of Saturday till four A.M. of
Monday; and the case is on record of a widow who had to pay a fine of
two merks for having “had a roast at the fire during sermon time.”
It is told of an English lady of rank in our own day that, having
procured some Dorking fowl, she some time after asked the servant who
attended to them whether they were laying many eggs; to which the
latter replied with great earnestness: “Indeed, my lady, they lay
every day, _not excepting even the blessed Sabbath_!” Nor is the
puritanic feeling still existing to a considerable extent among some
few of the sectaries in Scotland badly illustrated by Sandie’s remark
when he saw a hare skipping along the road as the people were
gathering for sermon: “Ay! yon beast kens weel eneuch it’s the Sabbath
day!” And the countryman passing on his way to “meeting,” who, when
asked by a tourist the name of a picturesque ruin in the vicinity,
answered: “It’s no the day to be speerin’ sic like things,” gives the
reader an idea of certain peculiarities (formerly quite prevalent
among Protestants, and still too common for the comfort of those who
have many of the straiter sort for neighbors) which, we believe, are
gradually but surely fading out before the progress of intelligence
and with the wave of superstition and intolerance. For it must be
borne in mind that the same Westminster Confession, relying too on
Scripture, insists on the right and power of the civil magistrate
_circa sacra_, contends that “he beareth not the sword in vain,” and
that kings should be “nursing fathers” and queens “nursing mothers” to
the church. We will do our modern Presbyterians the charity to believe
that in subscribing to this instrument, they do so with some “mental
reservation”; otherwise the cry against union of church and state that
we so frequently hear from them would (when taken in connection with
their former antecedents as a sect and their present professed
standards) be quite unintelligible.
Now, of the mode of keeping Sunday followed by Protestants in
Continental Europe we need not speak, nor of the practice of Anglicans
in the same regard, save in so far as the latter have (principally
through the lower or _evangelical_ division of their body) been
modified and influenced by its former subjection and present proximity
to the Puritan element of the English population. In the countries of
Europe claimed as Protestant, and as a very natural as well as logical
result of the indifferentism taught by the so-called fathers of
reform, Luther and Calvin, it is difficult for the tourist to discern
in Prussia, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, or Norway, save by the greater
number of people at the theatres, concerts, and exhibitions, in the
beer-gardens, taverns, and other places of resort, whether the day be
Sunday or not. Some, of course, attend church on that day, it being
almost the only day of the week on which such service is ever held.
Geneva and the non-Catholic cantons of Switzerland may be passed with
the same description, which completely exhausts Protestant Continental
territory in Europe. Nor of the mode of observing Sunday inculcated by
the Anglicans in England can we say that it is at all overdone or
puritanical. They have, at least, escaped the dismal parody of
asceticism which distinguishes such of their Scotch neighbors as have
any trace of the ancient practice left.[152] Let us glance a moment at
the laws of our Puritan friends of New England, that we may get an
idea of bigotry run mad, and of the deductions that may be drawn from
Vincent Bownde’s book and the teachings of the Westminster divines.
“Having themselves,” as Washington Irving well observes,” served a
regular apprenticeship in the school of persecution, it behoved them
to show that they were proficients in the art.” The Puritans of
Massachusetts thus legislate in regard to the “_Sabbath_” in the
“Plymouth Code”:
“This court, taking notice of the great abuse and many
misdemeanors committed by divers persons profaning the
Sabbath, or Lord’s day, to the great dishonor of God,
reproach of religion, and grief of spirit of God’s people,
do therefore order that whosoever shall profane the Lord’s
day by doing unnecessary servile work, by unnecessary
travelling, or by sports or recreations, he or they that so
trespass shall forfeit, for every such default, forty
shillings, _or be publicly whipped_; but if it clearly
appear that the sin was proudly, presumptuously, and with a
high hand committed, against the known command and authority
of the Blessed God, such a person, therein despising and
reproaching the Lord, SHALL BE PUT TO DEATH, or grievously
punished, at the discretion of the court.”
In support of the same wretched Sabbath superstition the colonies of
Hartford and New Haven issue the following edicts:
21. “No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his
garden or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.”
22. “No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep
house, cut hair, or shave on the Sabbath day.”
23. “No woman shall _kiss her child_ on the Sabbath or
fasting day.”
Omitting, for very shame’s sake, to say anything of No. 38 of Governor
Eaton’s code, the reader will perceive in the above quotations to what
absurd results logical consistency drives the fanatic when he becomes
so by cutting adrift from the safe moorings of God’s church and trusts
his salvation to the puny cockboat of private judgment. These Puritans
had disclaimed the title of the church which originated the Sunday;
they would not, like Cranmer, accept it as “_a mere appointment of the
magistrates_”; so there was nothing left for them but to slur over the
utter vagueness of its mention in the New Testament, and refer the
whole observance back to Moses and the Third Commandment. In doing
this why were they not consistent throughout? Why did they not _let
their lands rest in the seventh year_? Why not observe the _year of
Jubilee_ ordered by the sanction of the same Lawgiver?
As before stated, Protestant practice, like the doctrines from which
it emanates, is Proteus-like in form and phase; nor is the method
followed in the observance of Sunday any exception to the general
rule. But, upon the whole, the offspring of Knox, the descendants of
Bownde, and the adherents of the straiter sects stand up more
strenuously and make a stouter fight (not in argument, but by sheer
persistence) for the rigorous keeping of the “Sabbath” than they have
found it convenient to do for many doctrines and usages which,
logically speaking, were of far more importance to Protestantism as a
system. Our outward and visible life in the United States, in Canada,
and in the British Isles is to this day, in this one matter, largely
tinctured and deeply infected with the plague of stupid and
superstitious keeping of the Sunday, begun in factious opposition to
the English state establishment, propagated by the work of Bownde,
eagerly appropriated by Andrew Melville and the Scottish
politico-religious agitators of his day, and transmitted to us through
the Rump Parliament and the Puritans of New England. The “able and
godly” ministers of these latter, who, in the words of Mr. Oliver,
“derided the sign of the cross, but saw magic in a broomstick,” though
their descendants have recoiled from the teachings of their childhood
into Unitarianism or infidelity; though not one-half the adult
population of New England now belongs to any Christian sect; and
though of all bodies of men that ever existed under a guise of
religion in the face of day they were the most inconsistent, the most
bigoted, the most superstitious, the most intolerant, and the most
relentlessly persecuting, are yet often forced upon our admiration. It
has somehow become the fashion to laud these bigots to the heavens in
annual _palavers_ of New England Societies, Plymouth Rock orators,
Fourth of July and other spread-eagle speakers; and though their other
doctrines and practices have vanished, leaving on their chosen ground
scarce a trace behind, yet we are reminded of their spirit and
_quondam_ influence by the shackles of legal enactment in regard to
Sunday observance; by the tumult that rises from certain classes of
Protestants as silent custom or outspoken enactment from time to time
sweeps out of existence some one or other of the trammels with which
Puritanism, in its day of power, enthralled us. With what persistent
zeal do they not agitate in the newspapers and petition authorities,
municipal, State, and federal, against the running of the horse-cars,
the rail-cars, and the mail steamers on the Sabbath! How terrible, in
their eyes, are the Sunday excursions of the laboring people of our
large cities! How clearly do they not perceive that liberty is a good
thing only so long as everybody thinks and acts exactly as they do!
Did they not prove that we lost the day on a famous occasion during
the civil war by delivering battle on Sunday? How insanely anxious are
they not to have the Almighty (their Almighty, that is to say) in some
way constitutionally harnessed to the already hard-racked instrument
which consolidates the government of these States! It is true that
these men are the _têtes montées_ of fanaticism of this sort, and we
are far from affirming that a majority of their co-religionists go
with them. Indeed, we know, from daily observation, that in many of
the sects there exists but little of the spirit indicated, and that
what remains is fast disappearing. But there exists enough of the
embers to render walking amid them very annoying, and, with the
assistance of a good breeze from the preachers, these embers may
easily, and on small provocation, be fanned into a flame! Has not
fanaticism displayed an unexpected vigor in connection with the
question of opening our great Centennial Exposition on the only day on
which the industrious poor can have the chance of seeing it without
manifest injury to their temporal interests?
Our Protestant friend of the stricter sort awakes on the Sunday
morning, bethinks himself of the day, dresses (having shaved himself
provisorily on Saturday night), schools his countenance into the most
malignantly orthodox cast, takes in hand the Bible, Baxter’s _Call_,
or Boston’s _Fourfold State_, and descends to the parlor; that is, he
would descend but that he hears one of his boys whistling in an
adjoining room, who must at once be reproved therefor, to be more
fully punished next day.
“To Banbury came I, O profane one!
There I saw a Puritane one
Hanging of his cat on Monday
For killing of a rat on Sunday.”
Having thus effectually “borne testimony” and quenched the spirits of
the juvenile members of the family, who, fully knowing what Sunday
means to them, have learned experimentally that
“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage,”
he sits down gazing at his book, fancying, in some vague way, that he
is doing God service (though how or to what end would seem indistinct,
since, according to his most cherished doctrine, there is no merit
whatever in good works). He hears with disgust the bell of the
irreligious milkman, sees the unsanctified horse-car pass his door,
the irreverent baker make his round, and notes the profane newsboy cry
the Sunday papers. This last is the most afflictive dispensation of
all, and the one against which he has most vainly and frequently
petitioned, never thinking that, even on his own grounds, the real
gravamen is in the papers of Monday morning, the work for which must
necessarily be done on Sunday. Breakfast comes at length—eaten in
solemn silence—the children being “hard up” for an apposite moral or
religious observation, and fearful lest, should they say anything, it
might be something mundane. Nor can the mother help them to diminish
the gloom of the occasion, having been herself furtively engaged in
eking out the shortcomings of the servant in preparing the meal, and
painfully aware that, according to the family scheme of orthodoxy, she
has not been sanctifying the Sabbath. Family worship (on this day
longer in the prayer than usual) adds in no way to the general
cheerfulness. Each boy and girl, supplied with a Sunday-school book of
the stereotyped pattern and contents, and given to understand the
enormity of even the desire to take a walk on that day, longs in the
inmost heart that the day were over. Church time comes, when, with a
warning that they will be expected to answer on the text, the sermon,
and an admonition against drowsiness, all are trooped off to meeting,
the parents bringing up the rear. Then ensues an hour and a half of
dreary listening to what most of them cannot, by the remotest
possibility, comprehend. More than likely some of them may have been
overcome by sleep; in which case even the negative pleasure of apathy
is taken away, and its place supplied by a fearful looking-for of
judgment, either by rebuke or castigation. The dinner is, in want of
hilarity, a repetition of the breakfast; for no secular idea may be
expressed, and the spirit does not move the younger branches, in any
special degree, to an interest in the rather languid remarks of the
paterfamilias upon the theological tendencies of the sermon; said
observations being delivered in his Sunday tone, compared with which a
gush of tears would be exhilarating. Books are retaken; no cheerful
game or romp among the children; no free play or interchange of ideas
between the parents. To write a letter would be a crying sin for the
father. It is a heinous fault when his mind spontaneously wanders to
that note of his due on Wednesday next; and although the mother had
the interesting and enlivening lucubrations of _Edwards on the Will_
in her hands, yet there is much reason to believe that the washing of
to-morrow has more than once intervened to prove Edwards in the right;
not to mention the occasion on which she caught herself recalling the
trimmings of Mrs. X—‘s bonnet in the front pew. No visit from, none
to, any family of their acquaintance; either would be a sin against
the sanctity of the Sabbath! We need not visit the Sunday-school, to
which the superstitious folly of the parents, fear of their fellow
church-members, the Mrs. Grundyism of sects, or an unfounded belief
that something valuable is learned there compels the parents to send
their children. Probably most of our readers know how these things are
managed; what is the _causa causativa_ of a Sunday-school
superintendent; what is the calibre of the young men who teach, and
the object which takes them there. We all, of course, know and
recognize the high moral aims as well as the literary and theological
ability of the misses who form the grand staff of instructors in those
institutions! But we must not be diverted from our sabbatarian Sunday.
Then follows a dreary tea, meeting and sermonizing again, from which
two of the children, having gone hopelessly asleep soon after the
exordium, are brought home in a dazed state, nor does a protracted
bout of family worship much assist in arousing them therefrom; and
then to bed! We suppose the father to be honest. Many such men are. We
doubt not but many of the Puritans were sincere, and slit the ears of
the Quakers with the serenity of good men engaged in the performance
of a virtuous action. But let us put the question squarely to
reasonable men: Will it be a matter of surprise if this man’s
children, when they grow up, loathe and abhor all religion, thinking
it all of a piece with that in which they were brought up—if they turn
out, in short, what the descendants of the Puritans have become? Why,
the writer is acquainted with a school, kept by a well-meaning man, in
which, by tedious Bible-reading, hymn-singing, and long-winded prayers
at the school opening and closing, the teacher is unwittingly the
cause of more of what _he_ would consider sacrilege, in an hour, than
is heard of profanity among all the hackmen of New York on the longest
day of the year; and his great object, which is to bring up
Presbyterians, is thereby rendered as utterly futile as though he were
an ingenious man doing his utmost to make infidels of them.
Curiously enough, people of this kind (we refer to the strict keeping
of Sunday) are never satisfied with the liberty they enjoy (and which
nobody wishes to curtail) of observing the day just as rigorously as
they may desire. Not at all. There is no happiness or ease of spirit
for them until by legal pains and penalties they can force you, me,
and all their neighbors to their own peculiar way of thinking and
acting. This was well illustrated by the Scotchman who, in telling how
pious a people he had got among, said: “Last Sabbath, joost as the
kirk was skailin’, there was a drover chiel comin’ alang the road,
whustlin’ an’ lookin’ _as happy_ as gin it was the middle o’ the week.
Weel, sir, oor lads is a _God-fearin’_ set o’ lads, an’ they wur joost
comin’ oot o’ kirk. Od! they yokit on him, an’ amaist kilt him.” This
is, after all, the point of the matter. We neither can, by right,
ought to have, nor have we any objection to any observance of the
Sunday, however rigid or however much (to our mind) it may seem
strained, overdone, and even ludicrous. That is the affair of the man
himself, and should lie between his own conscience and his Creator,
where we have no right to interfere. But we all want and have a right
to the same privilege for own conviction, or want of conviction, that
we cheerfully accord to him. Now, this such people as he never will
accord to us so long as they can possibly prevent it. They never have
done so in the history of the world, and, taking experience for our
guide, we have no reason to suppose that they ever will. They prate
largely of liberty of conscience, but that phrase means in their mouth
liberty to think as you please, _so long as you think with them_.
Though he is my neighbor, may not my daughter play the piano on Sunday
on account of his tender conscience? Must I not, because he fancies
the Sunday thereby desecrated, practise the flute? I do not attempt to
interfere with his drone of family worship; why should he be eternally
petitioning to stop the delivery of my letters, or to prevent my going
down-town in the horse-cars on that day? I insist that he has as much
as he is called on to do in attending to the affairs of his own
conscience; that the contract is quite as much as he can conveniently
and creditably get through with and I object (I think with reason) to
giving up mine to his charge. I want a keg of beer in my cellar, or,
it may be, a basket of champagne. _Because he is virtuous, shall there
be no more cakes and ale?_ Shall his being scandalized because I think
proper to take a walk on Sunday confine me all that day to the house?
Must his scruples of conscience prevent myself and family from
entertaining our friends on Sunday? In short, must I always be on
tenterhooks to know how his conscience regards every act of mine on
that day? It would seem, though, as if that were just what my neighbor
and his atrabilious friends have been aiming at. For, now that I think
of it, they have been since ever I remember the self-same people, who
have all along got up meetings, been active in urging petitions, and
done their utmost to thwart every convenience or facility that for the
past twenty-five years has been contrived for public accommodation on
Sunday.
On further reflection, they are the identical individuals who have
publicly and privately been marplots in every matter in our vicinage,
during the same length of time, which did not fully recognize their
little _Ebenezer_ or _Bethel_ as its fount and origin; and though they
are possibly not to be convinced, yet it is highly important for these
people and all their class to learn once for all that the days of
Puritanism are gone, and that nowadays every man is responsible for
his own acts to his Creator, and not to Mr. Jones next door, nor to
the congregation with which he worships. We do not wish Mr. J—— to
read his letters on Sunday, nor will we force him to patronize the
street-car on that or any other day; but we want him and his friends
to cease from making laws that interfere with our freedom, while
thrusting upon them nothing which, _willy nilly_, they are bound to
accept.
Thus it will be seen that our objection is not to our friends of the
various illiberal “schemes of salvation” as individuals, nor to their
practice of a peculiar and, to us, by no means an alluring primness of
speech and gait on Sunday; but to their unwillingness to allow us, who
see things differently, to follow our own convictions, and to their
manifest determination that we shall, in the event of their ever
having the power, be forced to adapt ourselves to their views and
practices. This overbearing spirit seems to be inseparable from their
pharisaic practice and its resultant prejudices, so that our dislike
to both is well founded. As to the sanctification of the Lord’s day,
they have an indisputable right to celebrate it just as austerely as
may best suit them, though we think them grossly and foolishly wrong
therein. They may call the day _Sabbath_, if they please, though we
know that word to signify Saturday, and nothing else. But in return
for this (not _concession_, for it is their right) we wish to suggest
mildly that _we_ also have certain inalienable rights; that among
these, according to a highly-respectable and much-lauded document of
which we sometimes hear, “are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness”; and we modestly venture the additional suggestion that the
municipal and other laws which already exist, and those which these
people would fain enact, touching an enforced observance of the Sunday
after _their_ fashion, interfere largely with our _just liberty_ and
militate strongly against our chances of success in the _pursuit of
happiness_.
Finally, which method of observing the day seems the more in accord
with right reason? And here we wish the Protestant to lay aside a
moment, if he can, the prejudice engendered by the tyranny of early
education, surrounding usage, and personal habit. Our having been
accustomed from early youth to a specific article of diet, clothing,
or to a habit of any kind, physical or mental, does not necessarily
make an entirely different usage wrong or the direct reverse _sinful_.
If it be a command of God that Sunday shall be observed after the
fashion of the ancient Jews with their Sabbath, we have nothing to
say, except that even _then_ we object to its observance being made a
matter of legal enactment. No man was ever yet driven to the Almighty
by fear of temporal pains and penalties; nor is any worship acceptable
to our Creator unless it be a free-will offering of the heart. But
when Protestants admit with us that the Mosaic dispensation is past
and the type done away with in the fulness of that which it
prefigured, we certainly cannot consider the law of the Pentateuch any
more binding upon us in this respect than in regard to the rite of
circumcision, the usage of polygamy, or the obligation of a brother to
marry his deceased brother’s wife. But there is, in the New Testament,
no warrant at all for the change of the day, much less any rule for
its special observance; and consequently, on Protestant principles,
any day in the week—indeed, any one in ten days, a fortnight, or a
month—would answer the purposes of religion equally well; and as there
is no Scriptural command, the mode of observance is purely of human
invention.
We of course do not speak here of the Sunday, or of any one day in
seven, employed (apart from religious purposes) solely for the purpose
of recruiting the jaded physical energies of him who toils on the
other six days in the week. The necessity for a periodical suspension
of toil and labor depends on physical laws to which no reference is
now made; and as the turmoil of trade and the competition of labor go
on increasing, the necessity for the regular recurrence of a day of
rest becomes more and more evident. The laboring classes are too
numerous and too deeply interested in the preservation of the stated
holiday for it ever to die out. In this view of the question—the
purely physical one—the mode of observance would be simply a matter of
discretion and utility, and would not come within the purview of the
civil law at all; though the actual appointment of the day might, for
the sake of uniformity and for many other reasons, very properly be
considered as pertaining to government. We, however, speak of the day
as a divine or an ecclesiastical institution, in which light its
observance will depend upon the direct word of God or command of his
church; but in no case will the civil law have any right to interfere
either by dictum or permission.
But even supposing, for argument’s sake, what we by no means
admit—viz., that the Sunday should be observed in accord with the
prescriptions of the Pentateuch—we do not see how it follows that
innocent and healthful recreation should be denied on that day, either
to the young, for whom it is absolutely necessary, or to the
middle-aged and the old, to whom it is at least desirable. There is a
great and palpable distinction between recreation and labor. The
latter is forbidden on the Sabbath in the Decalogue; but does the
former stand in the same case? The words are: “_On it thou shalt not
do any work._” It does not say: “On it thou shalt take no recreation,
nor shalt thou play.” It is one thing to say to the hod-carrier or the
navvy that he shall not mount the ladder with the heaped hod or ply
the mattock and spade; and it is another and quite a different thing
to say to either that he shall not take a walk in the suburbs, go with
his family on an aquatic or rural excursion, or visit the “Exhibition
buildings” on a Sunday. It is against such superstitious abuses, which
had, in course of time, grown up on the authority of the sophistical
Rabbins touching the Sabbath, that our Saviour so frequently and
pointedly protests; and against the same or similar illiberal
practices we now protest.
We Catholics say that the Sunday is like other holidays of obligation,
of the same enactment, and on the some footing with them—_i.e._, they
are all instituted by command of the church. Now, with the Sunday, as
well as with the other church festivals of obligation, comes the duty
of hearing Mass and refraining from servile labor; but the law of the
church ceases at that point, and “where there is no law there is no
transgression.” The Catholic believes the other days ordered by the
church to be observed just as binding as Sunday; but it never enters
his head to attempt to coerce Protestants either into the same belief
or observance. His Protestant friend says to him in effect: “I have a
very tender conscience touching the observance of this day. Your
cheerfulness interferes with my devotional feelings; your Sunday
recreations, walks, visits, and travel scandalize me, and offer a bad
example to my rising family. On last Sunday morning yourself and
family rode out in the horse-cars to the park; in the afternoon you
entertained a houseful of visitors, during which time you, with the
flute, accompanied your daughter on the piano. The Sunday previous you
took the train for an adjoining city. The Sunday papers are frequently
taken at your house. You write, post, receive, and read letters as
unconcernedly on the Lord’s day as though it were the middle of the
week. When we had the power you would have been _firstly fined_, then
_whipped_, and for stubborn persistence _put to death_ for this; but
in these degenerate days all I can do is to put every legal and social
obstruction in your way that our decaying numbers but ever persistent
determination will enable us to do. Alas for the days that are gone!”
Now, with the parents on either side we have little to do. The mind of
the Catholic is made up; his conscience is informed from the precepts
and instructions of the church; and we have no desire to change his
views or practice in the premises. And, in the case of his opponent,
there are few tasks so hopelessly wanting in results as that of
convincing a man against his will; as that of trying to surmount
religious prejudice in the adult. But we put it to fair reason, to
common sense, to the community (which has a manifest interest that its
members shall be under the influence of some religion, and not utter
infidels), to answer: In which of the two families exists the stronger
likelihood that the children will grow up stanch and ardent believers
in religion? Will any one tell us that it will be in that in which a
dark, overshadowing pall, under the name of piety, was made “to press
the life from out young hearts”; in which every thoughtless, merry, or
exuberant word or act of theirs was represented as sin “_deserving
God’s wrath and curse for ever_”; in which no memory of youth
connected with religion can be other than sombre, dismal, and
remorseful? Or will it be in the Catholic family, where the child is
taught, not merely in words, but in fact, that “_my yoke is easy and
my burden is light_”; where, as he grows up, religious observance
constantly appeals to him as a privilege, not as an infliction; where
cheerfulness, mirth, and jollity are by no means considered hostile
to, but rather the concomitants of, true religion; and where no day of
the week is definitely consecrated to unnatural gloom and false
(because enforced, and consequently hypocritical) devotion?
The answer is plain. Statistics of the result, with children brought
up under each set of influences, bear us triumphantly out; and, in
fine, thankful as we are for the daily and yearly decrease in numbers
and influence of those who maintain this rigorous observance of the
Sunday, we shall be still better pleased, and it will be a happy day
for this and the other English-speaking peoples among whom they ever
existed, when the quibbling, narrow-minded, and sophistical principles
and practices represented by such persons shall have been entirely
stamped out beneath the onward march of tolerance and Christian
charity.
[152] Not having had an opportunity of extensive travel
in Scotland, we cannot speak of anything but Edinburgh
and Glasgow; but on the few Sundays that we passed
there, if there was any more specific and noticeable
observance of the day than by _more copious drinking_,
we failed to see it.
THE ETERNAL YEARS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”
CONSUMMATION.
We have spoken of the way in which the arch-enemy, the seducer of
God’s children, is aping the mysteries of the still hidden future,
according as his subtlety and his enmity direct him. But while his
rage and cunning are devising new deceits for those who are not
enlightened by divine truth, or who have hid their light under a
bushel, our attention is called in a special manner to her whose
office it is, and ever has been, to crush his head. Whenever and
wherever the deceits of men and devils are putting out the light and
wrapping the soul of man in darkness, there does the Virgin Mother
come more openly and more directly to counteract the fatal influence.
It has been reserved for the cold, matter-of-fact, utilitarian last
half of the nineteenth century to see awakened in the multitude the
simple and romantic faith in pilgrimages and in the childlike,
pathetic histories of Mary’s appearances upon earth that lent such
charm to the ages of faith. If the enemy of mankind seems to have more
power allowed to him in the evil days on which we have fallen, so the
Mother of fair love, from whose pure hands the divine odyle streams,
is deigning to speak to children and childlike souls, showing herself
to be the great channel of special graces, the medium of divine
communications, and the sure refuge against Satan’s acted prophecy and
pantomime of God’s loving intentions. “We will come to him, and dwell
with him”—and Mary is the precursor and the channel now as she was
then to his first coming, when he took flesh in her womb. The promise
to the individual soul is the promise to the church: and _vice versa_.
The revelation of God in the church is also the life of God in the
soul—the two are bound up in one. The life of the church is the
guarantee of the life of the soul; it is the only sure foundation of
such life; and the golden house, the _domus aurea_, of that life is
devotion to the divine Mother. For as her presence, her sweet virginal
life, was the necessary preliminary to the first coming of Christ, so
will the Son of God not appear on his glorious second mission till
Mary has come in the hearts of her people as an army with banners; all
her prerogatives known and worshipped, all her position, flowing from
her rights as the mother of the God-man, acknowledged and understood,
and her court of angels following in her mystic footsteps upon earth,
even as the bees follow their queen wherever she may choose to alight;
and so preceding the second coming of our dearest Lord and ushering in
the new glories of the kingdom of God upon earth.
The Holy Ghost could only be sent by Jesus glorified. The sacrifice of
the cross needed to be accomplished and the precious blood shed,
before the promised Paraclete could come. And thus between the one
stupendous event and the other there lies an epoch of forty days, when
he had not yet ascended into heaven, and when therefore his risen
glory was in a measure incomplete. At the beginning of that dread
time, full of the deepest mystery, of which we but imperfectly
comprehend the meaning, he was seen first by Mary Magdalene in the
garden. And as she fell at his feet with extended hands, he said,
“Touch me not.” We have probably all of us at some time meditated
sadly on those repelling words.
Time was when she might touch those blessed feet, not with her hands
only but with her lips. Does he love her less now that her repentance
is complete, and her salvation accomplished? Do not her rapid thoughts
go back in one rush to the time when she sat at his feet unrebuked,
whiling away the contemplative hours as she listened to his words and
heard him say she had chosen “the better part”? Does she not with a
pang of wounded love recall the moment when she wiped the precious
ointment with her hair from the feet she had bathed with it and with
her tears? But now he says, “Touch me not!” Yes, there is a change.
But, O loving heart! it is not a change of loss but of gain. It is
true there is an interim in which our beloved Lord is shrouded from us
in too much glory for our human sense. The cradle-time of his sweet
infancy is past, the grace of his youth, the glory of his manhood, and
all the bitter-sweet ignominies of his cross. He has passed somewhat
beyond our ken. He is risen, but not yet ascended. The first Mass[153]
had not then been offered. The bloody sacrifice was over; the
Eucharistic Sacrifice had not been celebrated by mere priestly hands,
only by his own divine hands on Holy Thursday. Until Mass had once
been said, there was something as it were incomplete in the condition
of the church. The next touch, the only touch possible for us (save by
a special command to St. Thomas and his faltering disciples), was in
the Blessed Sacrament.[154] Now we touch him daily, and fear no
rebuke. Jesus is ascended, and the Paraclete has come, and is ever
coming more and more; and as the Holy Dove sheds the light of his
wings upon the church and speaks through her utterance, so the
privileges and the status of Mary are more revealed and more
developed. We know more of our queen, and we are learning more of her
court, and when both have taken their place in the hearts of men and
have prepared for the reign of the Holy Ghost, when the angels have
accomplished their mission, the far-off glories of which are hardly
dawning on us, then will he make us know all that lies hidden in the
deep mystery of his second coming, and God and man and angels will be
united in the sweet bonds of Jesus, and through the mediation of her
who is clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet, and a
crown of twelve stars on her virgin head.
This is the divine progression, and this is leading to the divine
consummation.
* * * * *
Our task is drawing to a close. It has been our endeavor to encircle
the whole creation with the chain of faith, and to bind each to all in
endless links of the divine love. We have dared to glance back before
time into the bosom of eternity. We have beheld time, as it appears to
our human ken, in a manner detach itself from eternity, and seem to
become an entity—which indeed it is in a certain sense. We have
marvelled at its slow-flowing course and its distant results, as
compared with our own rapidity of thought and grasp of imagination.
And we have seen that time is patient because it is the offspring of
eternity, and because it is the mode and vehicle of God’s revelation
of himself to us. God is patient because he is almighty and
omniscient. For a little space we have strained our endeavors to look
upon the flowing stream as God sees it, and not as we break it up into
moments and hours. Our motive for doing this has been to realize so
far as is possible the continuousness of God’s action with the
indivisibility of his being as he is in himself, and to prove that
this indivisibility and intrinsic unchangeableness lie at the root of
all his manifestations of himself through the _nunc fluens_ of time.
Wherever we have fancied a contradiction to exist, or even a
disparity, the error has lain in our partial vision and not in any
shadow of change in the great God. He meant always what he means now,
but mankind could not always equally bear that meaning. Therefore, as
pitying his creation, he has condescended in past ages to pour the
divine waters of revelation in diverse colored vessels; so that at one
time the limpid liquid seemed to us of a different hue from what it
assumed subsequently, until at last the waters of life were held in
the crystal vases of the church, pure and white as they. We perceive
and understand that the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob is the
same God as our God of Bethlehem and Calvary. And the unity of God’s
nature becomes ever more and more obvious to us as we study the
characteristics of his government. At no period and in no place has
the loving Creator forgotten the work of his own hands. And lest we
could not find him, he has adapted the light he poured upon us to the
weakness of our sight. In the unity of God and in his unchangeableness
we find our own link to the past, and discover how we are the
inheritors of former ages and the heirs of the years to come. We have
indicated (we could do no more) the great fact that all is because God
is; that he has and can have no other end than himself; and that it is
exactly in that great truth that lies all our hope and all our
salvation. For he is absolute goodness as certainly and as necessarily
as he is absolute being. This being so, it is impossible for us to
wish anything that he has made not to be. Dreadful as is the thought
of hell, we could not wish hell were not—we cannot wish evil to exist.
But we find it there, and we are silent because he has permitted it.
We hate it, because, though he permits it, he hates it. But we see how
it grows out of the free will of men and angels; and that, as all
merit lies in deliberate choice, there could be no choice if virtue
were a necessity. Evil is not, like good, an original and universal
principle. It is the negation of that; and required, to give it an
actual existence, the free power of deliberate selection, like that of
the devils when they fell. We see as we read the history of the world,
in the light thrown by the knowledge of God, that evil works greater
good. And as we can see this in part, we believe that it exists in the
whole, though our perception is limited. We know that good must
triumph in the end. If we thought otherwise, we should make the devil
stronger than God, and the scheme of redemption a comparative failure.
As we enumerate all these things, what is the result we arrive at
except one of illimitable joy and confidence—exultation beyond all
expression in the might and majesty of our God—a hopefulness that
exceeds language—a courage too large for a narrow heart, and a
boundless, passionate yearning towards all living souls, that they may
learn how great a God is our God, and how good and grand a thing it is
to be alive and to serve him?
We can only measure life with any accuracy by the amount of thought
which has filled it—that is, by the quantity of our intellectual and
spiritual powers which we have been able to bring to the small
aperture in the camera obscura by which to contemplate the
ever-flowing eternity that lies beyond, and cut it up into the
sections we call time.
Another example will show us how plastic is the nature of time. Take
the life of an animal. We are inclined to give the largest possible
and reasonable importance to the brute creation. It is an open
question in which we see great seeds of future development, all
tending to increased glory to the Creator and to further elucidation
of creative love. Nevertheless it is obvious that brutes perceive
only, or chiefly, by moments. There is, as compared with ourselves,
little or no sequence in their perceptions. There is no cumulative
knowledge. They are without deliberate reflection, even where they are
not without perceptions of relations and circumstances, past or
future. Consequently, they are more rigorously subjected to time than
ourselves. Therefore, when we deprive an animal of life we deprive him
of a remainder of time that is equal to little more than no time, in
proportion to the degree in which his power of filling time with
perception is less than our own.[155] All we have said tends to prove
that time has in itself only a relative existence; it is a form or
phase of our own being.[156] It is an aspect of eternity; the aspect
which is consistent with our present condition.
From the way in which we have seen that God has made use of different
races to work for the establishment and development of his church, we
have opened a glorious vista of hope in the future, and we have
rejoiced over the work to be done, and the laborers who at the
eleventh hour shall be called into the vineyard, until even the
fragments that remain shall be gathered up, so that nothing may be
lost. We have dared to maintain, against all those who cavil at the
evil days on which we have fallen, that Christianity has infiltrated
its influence in regions where it is blasphemed, or, as in the past
Roman Empire, where it was denied. We have endeavored to impress on
our readers the importance, and in a certain sense the sacredness, of
matter, as the vehicle of God’s demonstration of himself. For, as
Fénelon says, “God has established the general laws of nature (which
involve all the laws of matter) to hide under the veil of the
regulated and uniform course of nature his perpetual operation from
the eyes of proud and corrupt men, while on the other hand he gives to
pure and docile souls something which they may admire in all his
works.” In proportion as we honor God’s laws, so should we honor the
means of their manifestation, the substance through and in which they
work, and without which they would fall back into the abstract and
have no existence outside God himself. We say in proportion, because
the manifestation is second to the principle manifested, and the
_modus operandi_ is inferior to him who employs it. We have as much
difficulty in conceiving of God apart from his operations as we have
in realizing eternity apart from time. And therefore is all honor due
to the vast creation whereby we see the evidence of things not seen,
and everything becomes to us “holy to the Lord.” It is for this reason
that the true and intelligent love of nature is essentially the
offspring of the Christian faith. The ancients cannot be said to have
had it in any degree beyond a remote possibility in their intellectual
nature. To them nature was a weird enchantress, hiding her terrible
secrets with a jealous care. The silence and solitude of the forests
and the mountains were full of a sense of horror. The separate trees
held a lamenting and imprisoned spirit; the gay, sparkling streams
were a transmuted nymph, which, like the perfumed shrubs and flowers,
told some tale of the anger of the gods and their swift revenge. All
that was inanimate inspired sadness. And when their pastoral tales
rose into cheerfulness, it was that the lowing herds and bleating
sheep formed a part. The sounds and motion of at least animal life
were essential. The solitudes of nature were simply awful and
terrific; for nature was then only a mystery to unredeemed humanity.
She held deep secrets in her bosom, but the curse had set its seal
upon them all, and she waited in long mournful silence for the hour
when the human feet of the Creator should press her varied fields, and
by his thrilling touch break the iron bars of her captivity, and teach
her to tell of him in the whispered music of her thousand voices. In
truth, her secrets were his, nor dared she break silence until he had
come to set free the mystery of love for which she was created and
instituted. But when Love himself had walked the earth, and mingled
his tears—ay, and his precious blood—with the dews of his own
creation, then the dark melancholy of nature grew into sweet pathos,
and her solitudes were filled with secrets of his presence.
But what was then hidden from the pagan world could hardly be so to
the first father of our race, he who out of the vast stores of his
infused science named all created beings. When Adam saw the corn
growing bright in thick array, and the vine bending down with purple
fruit, surely he understood, as in a prophecy, the great symbol of the
bread of life and of the Holy Eucharist. The body and blood of the
Incarnate God, albeit unbroken and unshed, must have been present to
his ardent expectation as he beheld their antitype in the garden of
Paradise. The rose with her mystic bosom deep enfolded must ever have
awakened some passing thought of the _Rosa mystica_. And when to sad
Eve, after her exile beyond the gates guarded by the flaming sword of
the cherubim, the rose appeared bearing thorns among her five or seven
leaved foliage, she guessed at the sacred crown and the divine wounds
of the God-man, and at the sevenfold desolation of the mother who bore
him. And what to us are the bright autumn hedgerow leaves dabbed with
blood, not red now but tawny? Are they not tokens that he has trod
that way and left the traces of his past glorious passion—past,
because that blood was shed once for all, but still and for ever
remaining; while the scarlet poppy takes up the theme, and in every
corn-field, on barren tracks, and meeting the way-worn traveller by
the road’s dusty side, reminds him that the sacrifice is renewed hour
by hour the wide world over, fresh and life-giving as ever? Can the
rich woodlands fail to bring before us the thought of him who gathered
from the forests of his own creation the wood for his own cross? Can
we sit beneath the dappled sunshine of the flickering boughs without
remembering how it dared to lay its quick vibrating touch upon his
sacred head, as he walked amid the olive groves of Gethsemane, but
withdrew itself, and gave place to the cold moon before the scene of
his great agony?
Surely these shadows are full of uncreated light; and from time to
time the church retrims her lamps of dogmatic theology, and each time
the light streams further down into the still, dim, uncertain regions
of natural science, another precious secret is revealed, another
ancient doubt dispelled; and matter and natural laws prove themselves
each more and more to be the depositories of divine truth and the
faithful creatures of the omnipresent Creator.
While acknowledging the force of law, we have denied that law can have
an independent existence apart from a self-existing, self-conscious
lawgiver, of whom it is the exponent. We have asserted the same as
regards force, which is but another name for law, or, rather, which is
law _in posse_. And we have stated that as science proves the absence
of all direct contact in the material world, the world of atoms, so
the only real contact is that of spirit on matter, of the divine
Creator on his own creation. For he is nearer to us than we are to
ourselves. All forces, all active powers, emanate from God. They are
the evidences to us of his existence. They could as little exist
without him as a shadow can exist without light. They are one in their
nature, though they are diverse in their effects, because they are
God’s constant _touch_ on his own creation. He exists formally in all
space and beyond all space. And everywhere he is the same: the
immutable and absolute _Ens_. In his touch on his creation he gives
rise to the active forces which virtually declare his being, and which
are extended throughout space, but under a million varied degrees of
being and a million varied forms. They are virtually everywhere
equally. But their manifestation in mind and degree is as diverse as
all that exists in the vast cosmos, inside and outside of which God
is, infinite and entire.
We have not enlarged upon this theme as we might have done. We have
only pointed out to our readers how God’s touch on his creation is the
only absolute contact that exists, and that science goes to prove the
absence of all other, that is, of all material contact. We have
abstained from trying to demonstrate how this truth sweeps away a
hundred doubts respecting God’s ways towards man, and a thousand
difficulties that might prove stumbling-blocks to our faith. We have
desired no more than to put the thought, nay, we might say the fact,
before them, and leave them to work out all its corollaries in love
and devotion. We are not writing for sceptics but for those who
believe, and would fain believe yet more surely, giving a reason for
the faith that is in them, and dwelling in prayer on thoughts which
reveal more of God’s character to the soul. We are to be perfect as
our heavenly Father is perfect. That is, in our measure and degree, we
are to aim at a faint reflection of the harmony, the proportion, the
justice of God. To do this, and to aim at doing it, we need to form in
our own minds an accurate though but a limited view of the character
of God. And to effect this, we must as it were look at his character
all round—for which purpose the past, the present, and the future are
all-important to us; and we have to view him as he reveals himself to
us in his creation, in his government, and in his promises. We have
ventured to maintain that the whole of his creation is with a view to
his Incarnation; that the Incarnation of the Second Person of the
Blessed Trinity is enhanced by his glorious passion and most precious
death working our redemption; that it is glorified by his resurrection
and ascension; and only completed in his sacramental presence; that as
this sacramental presence is the one great fact virtually enclosing in
itself all the others, as it is the coping-stone of the great mystery
of the Incarnation, its lowest depth and greatest height, so is it the
link that rivets the creation to the God-man, and the keystone to all
the science of matter and dynamic force. For it is the divine epitome
of all the laws that govern both, the reason of their being, and the
last exponent of their rootedness in God. It completes the circle
within whose bounds lies the entire cosmos as a globe environed by the
serpent. It is the golden ring with which the divine Spouse has wedded
himself to his church and to all the world, if they but know it. Words
fail us. We cannot say enough; for these are thoughts too deep for
words, and which seem to be rather darkened than expressed by
language. And, like all that is greatest, they come to us from that
which seems most simple and most hidden of all—a silken-curtained
Tabernacle; and behind the little closed door lies all; every secret
has its solution within the round white limits of the Host, for that
Host is the great ultimatum of the creation, and the absolute
consummation of God’s giving himself to man, while the latter is in
the condition of viator.
We have entreated our readers not to be deluded by the dimness of the
present times, but by prayer and solitary thought to strain their
spiritual vision to behold the brightness of the future which is
coming upon us like the rays of the sun behind a mist; the reign of
the Holy Ghost—the enlargement of the church’s border, and the
spreading of the cords of her tent; the devotion to the Mother of God
taking root in an honorable people; and thus, through the mediation of
her who is the first among all created beings, bringing the whole
outer world nearer to the spiritual world. This, and the future
mission, may be a very distant one, of her messengers the angels, are
all certain because they are written, and even now the signs of the
times indicate their advent. In whatever form they may come, whatever
may be the details filling up the wonderful picture of the future,
whatever, in short, may be the literal working-out of the wonderful
promises of the Gospel, one thing at least is certain: they mean peace
to men of good-will. We may be quite unable to define or explain them;
we are waiting for the hour when the church shall teach us more. But
we cannot exaggerate their importance, nor can we deny that our
blessed Lord has left a rebuke on those who make no attempt to discern
the signs of the times. There are souls among his special servants who
are the men of the future. They are those who are called to stand on
the watch-towers of prayer, and to hear the cry, “Watchman, what of
the night?”
The time of figs was not yet. Nevertheless, he in his eternal justice
cursed the fig-tree that yielded him no fruit, when he deigned to look
up among the broad, scented leaves of its knotted branches. There are
souls who are called to bear fruit out of season as well as in season,
and woe to them if they fail in their higher and exceptional spiritual
vocation. They are to be beforehand with time; they are to be, though
in a silent, hidden way, the spiritual heralds of the future, the
harbingers of God’s coming spring, the pioneers of prayer. They are
the human messengers that are to prepare his way before him, in those
never-ceasing conquests which multiply in proportion as our hearts are
ready to receive him. They are to live, as all the great saints have
done, in advance of their age. St. Francis was centuries before his
time in the refinements of his exquisitely spiritualized nature; St.
Vincent of Paul was the same in the creations of his charity; and St.
Francis of Sales like St. Philip Neri in the blending of deep piety
with the exigencies of modern life. The nearer we approach to the
consummation, the more numerous will become the watchers of the night,
the souls that are looking out for a new dawn, and who meanwhile are
leading an inner life in advance of the present. God alone can know
them, and those on whom he has bestowed the gift, though but
partially, of the discernment of spirits. To others they will appear
as men walking in a dream, visionary and unpractical. It matters not
to them. Even here they have in a measure their great reward, for they
can say, with their divine Master, “I have meat to eat which you know
not.”
We are often tempted to complain that we have fallen upon evil times.
The past seems to us to have been more full of heroism, the future we
believe will be richer in knowledge. We have slid into a period of
prosaic piety mingled with many doubts. Without pausing to argue how
much of this is false, we would remark that the present is an epoch
which may yield a larger amount of merit to those who know how to
profit by it than perhaps any other—we may make a rich harvest of
faith and hope. And we must bear in mind that both these are virtues
that will ultimately be swallowed up in the greater and crowning
virtue of perfect charity. When we see, there will be an end of faith;
when we know, hope will expire in certainty. “There remain now faith,
hope, and charity; but the greatest of these is charity.” In
proportion to the extension of our knowledge, the area of our blind
faith is diminished. “Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed.
Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” There is
a special grace attending these twilight days, when a larger demand is
made upon our faith. The light will gradually increase unto the
perfect day—not only the real absolute perfect day of heaven, but in a
measure here upon earth. The merit of faith will be less, when the
angels are obviously carrying out their mission upon earth, than it is
now, when the good lies so hidden, and the evil is so rampant and
open. We are foolish not more truly to value the advantages of our own
time, and to rejoice that we are called upon to have a greater and a
stronger faith than may be possible in those who will, as it were, put
their hand into the wounded side where beats the Sacred Heart of
Jesus. Whatever has an appearance of discouragement about it is in
fact a fresh demand from God upon our larger faith and deeper trust.
It is as if he said to us, “You are my friends, and therefore I can
count upon you.” We should make haste to lay up a larger harvest of
meritorious faith from every doubt that falls across our path and
every cloud that veils the sunshine, and by this very act we shall
hasten the dawn and bring on the joyous fruition of our prayer. “Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”—for surely
this prayer is intended to be granted in a far greater degree than
anything the world has ever seen from the creation to the present
hour. Remember who taught us that prayer; and remember the centuries
that it has been breathed by all the church of God from infancy to
age. It is not a poetic phrase. It is not a hyperbole. It is God’s
word, expressive of God’s will and God’s intention; and, therefore,
has he made it the universal petition of all his children. It is the
epitome of all he demands in every separate soul, until the many units
have become a large multitude of the faithful, greater than any man
can number.
It is the strenuousness of our faith which will give a greater
distinctness, a more delineated and chiselled clearness, to our
convictions, and even to our opinions. At present they hang loose on
too many of us, and flap about in the high wind of the world’s
contempt and impudent indifference, blinding our sight and hindering
our steps. A firmer, steadier faith will gather tight across our bosom
all our outstanding notions and ideas, bringing them into subjection
to the faith which teaches us to see all things as God sees them—that
is, according to our degree, but in the same light that he sees them,
which is the light of eternity and of his own being. He has bidden us
open our mouth wide that he may fill it. Can, we, then hope too
largely or too earnestly? Can we assign any limits to the grace of
sanctification in its continuous progression, or to the advance of
love in the ever-enduring reign of the Holy Ghost? The God towards
whom we are being so sweetly drawn is infinite, and though each
individual must reach his own appointed measure and degree, yet who
can dare put a limit even in thought to the plenitude of that future?
But for our great and exceeding hope, how barren would our present
life appear! Like Rachel, the church cries incessantly to her Lord,
“Give me children, or I die.” Let us repeat the prayer, and re-echo in
every act of our lives the passionate desire for the spread of truth
and the increase of light; for it is hardly less difficult to guess at
the beautiful and glorious future which God reserves for his cherished
creations—the garment that he has woven for his only-begotten Son—than
it is to form an opinion of the possible glorious future of some souls
as compared with others. And is this all? Have we by any unguarded
expression left on our reader’s mind a notion that we are anticipating
the perfectibility of mankind upon earth, the absence of evil, and a
sort of pious utopia, as the sum and substance of our expectations—a
deifying of the system of nature, a glorification in some distant
future of all the natural laws, as ultimate and final, and which,
because of the beauty of creation, are to content us and be in some
form or other our higher destiny? Not so. The end is not in that,
neither is it here. Were Satan bound now, as one day he will be, we
still should as now carry about with us the concupiscence which has
tainted the nature of every human being, save only the Mother of God.
Alas! we need no devil to prompt us to sin, for we carry an enemy
within us. Even mortal sin can be committed without his assistance;
and we are but too apt to paint him blacker by thrusting upon him a
responsibility which is too often all our own. We believe in no
absolutely sinless existence this side the gates of death, except that
of the God-man and his immaculate Mother. But this we do believe, that
“wisdom is justified by her children,”[157] and we venture to
anticipate that all that is holy, beautiful, and fitting in nature
will shine with a renewed glory upon earth as the dawn grows to the
perfect day, before the temporal gives place to the eternal, and the
Son of Man shall have delivered up the kingdom to the Father. “And
when all things shall be subdued unto him, then the Son also himself
shall be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may
be all in all.”[158] We have borne the image of the earthly, we must
also bear the image of the heavenly—when God shall be all in all, when
we shall have ascended by the ladder of the sacred humanity to the
mystery of the Holy Trinity, when we shall look on the Triune God and
be satisfied. Before the immensity of that thought there falls a veil
of light more impenetrable than the thickest darkness. We cease to
think. Our whole being becomes as it were detached from our human
consciousness, and for one moment, one awful, never-to-be-forgotten
moment, we hang over the abyss which is the eternity and the infinity
of God. Towards that we yearn, for it is our last end. Even the
immaculate heart of Mary; even the unutterable endearments of the
sacred humanity; even that which in its mystery and its hiddenness is
the nearest approach to the undivided thought of God—the Blessed
Eucharist—become to us but parts of a whole which must be ours, if we
are to be content. The cosmos rolls away from our sight like a
scorched parchment before that living heat. The history of Bethlehem
and Calvary are manifestations limited in themselves, and indicative
of more. The Blessed Paraclete, whose personality we perhaps sometimes
find it hard to individualize (though we do not say with the Ephesian
disciples that “we have not so much as heard whether there be a Holy
Ghost”), becomes in our thoughts a more intense and absolute idea,
less vague than in the past, and how inscrutably attractive! We have
reached the thought of the Holy Ghost through Jesus. And now we seem
to sink into the bosom of the Father through the Holy Ghost; and, in a
way too deep for words, to be conscious of ourselves only through our
perception of the great God, and to have lost everything save the
immensity and the unity, the eternal being and the eternal love, of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—the three Persons we have
dimly known on earth; and the one God, whom we shall only fully know
in heaven, when we shall have entered on the eternal years.
THE END.
[153] By this is meant the first Mass celebrated by a
mere man.
[154] With ever-yearning love he calls us in the dear
Sacrament of the Altar and before the doors of his
tabernacle that we may touch not only his sacred feet
as Mary Magdalene pressed them to her lips, but his
whole self, his humanity and his divinity in one.
[155] In other words, there is a more imperfect being
than ours. Though whether its imperfection is to
exclude all idea of their having a future fuller
development, whereby and in which they will be
indemnified for their sinless share in guilty man’s
punishment, is still an open question.
[156] Time is the measure of successive existence in
created and finite beings. As a finite spirit cannot
escape from this limit of successive existence, any
more than a body can escape from the limit of locality
and finite movement in space, it is evident that this
statement is not correct in a literal and strictly
metaphysical sense. Eternal existence is the entire
possession of life which is illimitable in such a
perfect manner that all succession in duration is
excluded. It is possible only in God, who is alone
most pure and perfect act, and therefore is at once
all he can be, without change or movement. The created
spirit must ever live by a perpetual movement or
increase in its duration, because it is on every side
finite. It is impossible, therefore, that time should
cease while creatures continue to exist.—ED. C. W.
[157] Matt. xi. 19.
[158] 1 Cor. xv.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE GLORIES OF THE SACRED HEART. By Henry Edward, Cardinal
Archbishop of Westminster. New York: The Catholic
Publication Society. 1876. [Republished by special
permission of his Eminence.]
There are many excellent works on the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of
Jesus. The new one whose title is given above is not a mere repetition
in a new form of the substance of any of these preceding treatises. It
is different from all of them, and quite peculiar in its scope, as
well as in its style, as might be expected from its eminent author.
Its basis is strictly theological. With his usual and characteristic
accuracy of doctrine and lucidity of style, the cardinal makes an
exposition of the mystery of the Incarnation and its consequences,
especially in respect to the deification and adoration of the sacred
humanity of Jesus Christ. The special _cultus_ of the Sacred Heart is
explained in its relation to the deified humanity, to the Blessed
Sacrament, to the sanctification of men, and to the eternal glory of
the elect. This is a book to enlighten the mind of a sincere and
devout reader, and, through the illumination of the understanding, to
awaken a solid, rational, and ardent devotion.
* * * * *
We have received the following books, but in consequence of the
unusually crowded state of our columns must defer notice of them until
later.
TERRA INCOGNITA; OR, THE CONVENTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. By
John Nicholas Murphy. Popular Edition. London: Burns &
Oates. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
SOUVENIRS OF NOTRE DAME: A Collection of Poems and Dramas.
By Mrs. Mary T. Monroe. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society.
JULIAN THE APOSTATE, AND THE DUKE OF MERCIA: Historical
Dramas. By the late Sir Aubrey de Vere. London: Pickering.
MARGARET ROPER; OR, THE CHANCELLOR AND HIS DAUGHTER. By
Agnes M. Stewart. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co.
REAL LIFE. By Mathilde Froment. Translated from the French
by Miss Newlin. Kelly, Piet & Co.
THE WISE NUN OF EASTONMERE, and other Tales. By Miss Taylor.
Kelly, Piet & Co.
SAINT ELIZABETH, THE LILY OF PORTUGAL; SAINT ELIZABETH, THE
MATRON OF ISRAEL; SAINT ELIZABETH, THE QUEEN OF HUNGARY. By
the author of “Life in the Cloister.” Kelly, Piet & Co.
MEDITATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR A RETREAT OF ONE DAY IN
EACH MONTH. Kelly, Piet & Co.
BERTHA: A Historical Romance. By Conrad von Bolanden.
Translated by S. B. A. Harper. New York: D. & J. Sadlier &
Co.
THE NEW MONTH OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS. From the
original French. B. S. P. Philadelphia: Peter F.
Cunningham’s Son.
SCIENCE AND RELIGION. A Lecture delivered at Leeds, England.
By Cardinal Wiseman. St. Louis: Patrick Fox.
LITTLE CATECHISM OF THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE SOVEREIGN
PONTIFF. New York: Benziger Bros.
SPIRITUALISM AND NERVOUS DERANGEMENT. By William A. Hammond,
M. D. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF IMMORTALITY. By Antoinette Brown
Blackwell. G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
CLAREL: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. By Herman
Melville. Two vols. G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS. By the Rev. G. W. Cox, M.A. New
York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.
THE FALL OF THE STUARTS AND WESTERN EUROPE. By the Rev. E.
Hale, M.A. Scribner, Armstrong & Co.
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By Mandell Creighton, M.A. Scribner,
Armstrong & Co.
THE LIFE, LETTERS, AND TABLE-TALK OF BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.
Edited by Richard Henry Stoddard. Scribner, Armstrong & Co.
POEMS. By Christina G. Rossetti. Boston: Roberts Bros.
REVOLUTIONARY TIMES. By Edward Abbott. Roberts Bros.
ACHSAH: A New England Study. By Rev. Peter Pennot. Boston:
Lee & Shepard.
A QUESTION OF HONOR. By Christian Reid. New York: Appleton &
Co.
SPIRIT INVOCATIONS. Compiled by Allen Putnam, M.A. Boston:
Colby & Rich.
* * * * *
In the next number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will be begun a new serial
entitled “Six Sunny Months,” by the author of _The House of Yorke,
Grapes and Thorns_, etc.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIII., No. 137.—AUGUST, 1876.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1876.
THE NEXT PHASE OF CATHOLICITY IN THE UNITED STATES.
The history of the universal church, replete as it is with miraculous
conversions and great moral revolutions, presents no parallel to the
growth and spread of the Catholic faith in this republic; and if we be
allowed to forecast the future by the light of the past, we may
without presumption predict for Catholicity a career of usefulness and
glory, an influence far-reaching and all-pervading, on American soil,
hitherto unequalled, even in the most triumphant days of our holy and
venerable mother.
In the early ages of Christianity whole tribes and nations were won
over bodily to the Gospel, not alone by the superhuman efforts of a
comparatively small number of apostolic men, but incidentally by the
attractions of the purer and higher order of civilization which
everywhere followed their footsteps and resulted naturally from their
teachings. The primitive missionaries were reformers of manners and
governments, advocates of mercy and equity, promoters of peace,
industry, and education, as well as expounders of divine law. They
indeed realized the fabled power of Orpheus, and tamed the brute
passions of paganism by the harmony of their lives and the melody of
their doctrines.
Far different have been the circumstances which surrounded the first
permanent introduction of Catholicity into what is now the United
States. Though we can dwell with commendable pride on the devotion and
self-sacrifice which characterized the Spanish and French Dominicans,
Franciscans, and Jesuits in their arduous labors among the aborigines;
and recall with deep gratitude the beneficent and indefatigable
exertions of the zealous pioneers of our present hierarchy and
priesthood, we cannot help feeling that we have had no national
inheritance in the merits of those extraordinary men of the Old World,
those confessors and martyrs, whose names shine forth with such
resplendent lustre in the calendar of the saints of God.
We look in vain, also, for any great name, distinguished for political
power or intellectual supremacy, among the humble immigrants who first
raised the standard of the cross in the hostile atmosphere of colonial
Protestantism. As in the crumbling yet still luxurious Roman Empire,
the foundations of our infant church were laid on what, in a worldly
sense, may be called the lowest class in the social scale, the poor,
the simple, the neglected and despised. Wealth, fashion, and
self-interest were opposed to it. A people shrewd, intelligent, and in
their own way religious, were in possession of the country, and had
neither the will nor the disposition to yield one jot to the
professors of a faith which they had been taught to regard as debasing
and idolatrous. Only a hundred years ago the Catholics of the United
Colonies consisted of a few isolated groups, principally in Maryland
and Pennsylvania, without influence, authority, or legal recognition.
In the aggregate they counted about one in every thousand of the
population, and, save some descendants of the original Maryland
settlers, and a few private gentlemen who afterwards rose to eminence
in the Revolutionary War, they were alike devoid of wealth and social
standing.
Still, this very obscurity was their safeguard and defence. Though
soon declared free by the fundamental law of the new confederacy,
public opinion, or rather popular prejudice, was against them, and for
many years after the achievement of our independence their numbers
increased with more steadiness than rapidity. Recruits came from all
quarters. Attracted by the guarantees presented by the Constitution,
Catholics of various nationalities hastened to place themselves under
its protecting ægis. The hurricane of revolution which swept over
France and the greater part of Europe, and reached even the West
Indies, drove many pious priests and exemplary laymen to our shores.
On the north the French Canadian crossed the frontier, while as our
southern boundaries were enlarged so as to embrace the valley of the
Lower Mississippi, the inhabitants of that large region, who were
nearly all of one faith, helped materially to swell the Catholic
population of the Union. At that period Ireland had not begun to pour
in her myriads, but a small, steady stream of emigrants was setting in
from other ports as soon as it was ascertained that the new nation of
the west had discarded the penal code of England when it had thrown
off her authority.
In 1810 the Catholics within the limits of the United States were
estimated at upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand, and the clergy
numbered eighty, or double the number reported in 1800. Twenty years
afterwards the laity had increased to 450,000 and the clergy to 232.
The hierarchy, which only dated from 1789, at this time reckoned
thirteen bishops.
From 1830 may be dated the extraordinary growth in numbers, influence,
and activity of the Catholic Church in this country. The tide of
European immigration, which has flowed on with undiminished volume
till within a year or two, then fairly began. Between that year and
1840 over 300,000 arrivals were reported from Ireland, 58,000 from
France, Spain, and other Catholic countries, and 150,000 from Germany,
a strong minority of whom may also be credited to the church. All
these accessions, added to the native-born and already adopted
element, brought the Catholic strength in the latter year to over one
million, and swelled the ranks of the priesthood to 482, or one for
every 2,000 souls.
Satisfactory as were these results, the next decade was destined to
witness an advance much more magnificent as to numerical strength, and
infinitely more salutary when we reflect on the quarter from which
some of that strength was drawn.
The Oxford movement, as it was called, had already spread
consternation among the Anglicans. Many of the ablest and most erudite
scholars of Oxford University, wearied and dissatisfied with the
contradictions and pretensions of English Protestantism, had sought
peace and rest in the bosom of the church. Their writings and example
produced a profound sensation wherever the English language was
spoken, and nowhere a more decided one than in this country. Men who
had formerly exhibited nothing but contempt or indifference for
Catholicity, and some even who had displayed a marked hostility to the
faith, eagerly read the works of such thinkers as Newman, and, as a
consequence, guided by Providence, abandoned their favorite heretical
notions and became reconciled to the church. This spirit of
investigation and submission pervaded all classes, particularly the
more studious, conscientious, and influential. Judges, journalists,
artists, authors, physicians, ministers, and doctors of divinity
openly declared their adhesion to the Catholic faith, and arrayed
themselves beside the contemned and obscure Irish immigrant and his
children. Many of the ablest publicists of to-day, not a few of the
most energetic of the clergy, and at least one illustrious member of
the hierarchy are the fruits of this sympathetic movement which had
its origin in the cloisters of the once Catholic university.
Another cause which helped to swell the Catholic census about the same
time was the annexation of Texas, which eventually led to the
acquisition of New Mexico and California. The population of those
Territories could have scarcely numbered less than two hundred
thousand, nearly all of whom were Catholics. By a strange coincidence
the sons of the Puritans, who claimed the land and the fulness thereof
as theirs, were brought into the same fold and under the same
jurisdiction simultaneously with the native Mexican, whose ancestors
were Catholics before the keel of the _Mayflower_ was laid.
German immigration, also, had assumed large proportions. From 1840 to
1850 the arrivals were 440,000, of whom it may be safely said
one-fourth, or 110,000, were Catholics. This stalwart element sought
what was then considered the far West-Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the
Territories—where to-day we find them and their descendants among the
most devoted children of the church.
But all these influences combined did not equal in effect that
produced by the tremendous exodus of the Irish people—a spontaneous
movement of population unexampled in modern times. Though immigration
from Ireland had steadily increased from the beginning of the century,
it was only during the latter half of the decade of 1840-50 that it
assumed its phenomenal proportions. Notwithstanding its political
servitude, that remarkable island in 1845 presented the spectacle of a
population as happy, moral, and law-abiding as any in Christendom. Her
people had increased from year to year in a ratio unknown to less
virtuous and more pampered lands. The voice of her great leader could
at any time call together hundreds of thousands of her enthusiastic
sons to listen to the story of their wrongs or to descant on the near
approach of legislative independence, and dismiss them to their homes
with the promptitude of a general and the authority of a parent.
Father Mathew, of blessed memory, had exorcised the demon of
intemperance, and counted his followers by millions. Agrarian crime
and faction fights, those twin children of misgovernment, were almost
unknown, and the soil, as if in unison with the general spirit of
peace and harmony, never put forth such an abundance of agricultural
wealth. In one night, it may be said, a blight came over all those
fond hopes and bright anticipations. The food upon which three-fourths
of the people mainly subsisted was destroyed, and Famine, gaunt and
lean, suddenly usurped the place of generous abundance.
The destruction of the potato crop of Ireland in 1846-7-8 was
undoubtedly the act of an inscrutable Providence; the misery,
suffering, and wholesale sacrifice of human life which followed were
the work of man. At the worst times of the famine there was always
more than enough cattle and grain in the country to feed the entire
population. Under a wise or just government a sufficiency of these
would have been retained to supply the primary wants of the people; as
it was, they were exported and sold in foreign markets to satisfy that
most insensate and insatiable of all human beings, the Irish landlord.
Appalled by the suddenness and extent of the calamity, the peasantry
at first stood mute, and before assistance could reach them many
hundreds had actually lain down and died of starvation. Then, when
public and private charity was exhausted; when pestilence was
superadded to want, and all earthly succor seemed to have failed; when
nothing but death or the poorhouse threatened even the best of the
middle class, the people, with, it would appear, one accord, resolved
to give up home and kindred, rushed like a broken and routed army to
the nearest sea-ports, and abandoned a country apparently doomed to
destruction. Many crossed to England and Scotland, others fled even to
the Antipodes, but the great mass looked to the United States as their
haven of refuge. Thenceforth every day witnessed the arrival of
crowded immigrant ships in our harbors, while the streets of our large
cities were literally thronged with swarms of strange and emaciated
figures. From 1840 to 1850 over one million Irish immigrants arrived
in the United States, one-fourth of whom landed at New York during the
last three years of that period.
Never were a people less prepared to encounter the difficulties and
dangers which necessarily beset strangers coming into a strange land
and among a community so different from themselves in manners, habits,
and methods of living. Unlike the Germans and other Europeans, who had
had leisure and means to organize emigration, the Irish of that
memorable epoch acted without concert and without forethought. They
had fled precipitately from worse than death, and brought with them
little save the imperishable jewel of their faith. Fortunately, this
proved to be for them even better than worldly store; it was their
bond of unity and best solace in the hour of trial and disappointment
which awaits most of those who come among us with exaggerated ideas of
the wealth and resources of this country. Numbers of those helpless
strangers paused upon the threshold of their new home, and helped
materially to swell the already overcrowded population of the large
towns and cities; but very many, the majority perhaps, sought the
manufacturing villages of New England, the mineral regions of
Pennsylvania, and the Western prairies.
Then began in earnest the labors of the resident priesthood, which,
though reinforced by numbers of their brethren from abroad, were still
hardly equal to the herculean task of providing for the spiritual
wants of so vast a mass of people scattered in every direction. Some
means, however, had to be found to reach and minister to those
faithful though helpless outcasts; some roof under which the holy
sacrifice of the Mass might be occasionally offered up and the
essential sacraments of the church administered. The churches already
built scarcely sufficed for the Catholics settled in the country, yet
here was a new congregation arriving in every ship. In the large
centres of population the difficulty was not so great; for with the
increase of priests the number of Masses said in each church was
multiplied, while the sick and the penitent seldom went unattended or
unshriven. In the smaller towns and remote settlements the case was
far different. Private houses, “shanties,” barns, ball-rooms,
court-houses, lecture-halls, markets, and even sectarian
meeting-houses were brought into requisition. Yet, with all these
appliances, there were hundreds of small, isolated congregations who
seldom were enabled to hear Mass oftener than once a month, and in
many cases less often, one priest having to attend four or five such
missions in rotation.
But the clergy had other and scarcely less sacred duties to perform.
Such heterogeneous masses of humanity huddled together for weeks in
the foul holds of rotten emigrant vessels, where was germinated the
seeds of disease sown by famine and pestilence, could not but bring
infection to our shores. From Gros Isle in the St. Lawrence, and along
the Atlantic seaboard to New Orleans, the deadly ship-fever polluted
the atmosphere, and hundreds who, flying from starvation, had braved
the dangers of the ocean, found that they had endured those hardships
only to die within sight of the promised land. One prelate and several
heroic priests fell victims to the dire pestilence, but others were
found equally zealous, not only to soothe the last moments of the
dying with the consolations of religion, but to comfort and care for
the helpless survivors.
At the beginning of the second half of the century we find the
Catholic population of the country estimated at two and a quarter
millions, the clergy at eighteen hundred, or one to every thirteen
hundred of the laity, while the number of dioceses had increased to
thirty-three.
Had immigration entirely ceased at that time, and the growth of the
Catholic population been limited to its natural increase, the labors
of the priesthood in ministering to the spiritual wants of so large
and scattered a body would have more than taxed the energies of a less
devoted class of men; while the pecuniary resources of the laity,
always so generously expended in the building of churches and asylums,
could have to a certain extent borne the unusual draft on their means
which the exigencies of the times demanded. But it did not cease. On
the contrary, it continued for many years with augmented volume. The
causes which had impelled such vast multitudes to renounce home and
country for ever were still active. From 1850 to 1860 the immigration
from Europe was reported as follows:
From Germany, 950,000; ¼ Catholic, 237,000[159]
From France and other Catholic countries,
105,000; ¾ Catholic, 78,750
From Ireland, 1,088,000; 9/10 Catholic, 979,200
---------
Total in ten years, 1,294,950
Thus another million and a quarter were added to the church in
America, making a grand total at the end of this decade of four and a
half millions of souls under the charge of 2,235 priests, or one for
every 2,000 persons. Thus we see that, though the priesthood had
received an accession of 435 members in ten years, the labors of each
individual had been almost doubled.
Incredible as these figures may seem, the next decade showed little
diminution in amount. From 1860 to 1870 the Catholic immigration,
calculating on the above basis, may be set down as follows:
From Germany, 268,000
“ France, etc., 51,000
“ Ireland, 841,000
--------
Total in ten years, 1,160,000
If to this reinforcement be added those who have come among us since
1870, we find that the past fifteen years have increased the Catholic
census by about one and a half millions from abroad, and materially
helped to bring it up to what, on the best authority, it is said to be
in this year of grace, 1876—seven millions, or about one-sixth of the
entire population.
Fortunately for the interests of religion, the increase in the number
of priests kept pace with the wonderful augmentation of the laity. In
1785 there was one priest to every 1,000 laymen; in 1808, one to every
1,500; in 1830, one to every 1,900; in 1840, one to 2,000; 1850, one
to 1,200; 1860, one to 2,000; and in 1875, one to every 1,300, or
5,074 priests of all ranks.
Yet, numerous as had been the accessions to the priesthood in those
years, the duties and responsibilities of the clerical order increased
in greater proportion. The millions of strangers who had sought homes
among us, while they preserved their faith and brought with them the
grand moral lessons learned in the Old World, could not bring their
churches, schools, and asylums. These had to be provided here, and the
American priest thus became from necessity a builder and a financier,
as well as a teacher and instructor of his people. When the abnormal
Irish immigration began in 1847, we had but 812 churches, several of
which were small frame buildings, hastily constructed and totally
inadequate to the wants even of those who erected them. Many of those
have since been pulled down, reconstructed, or rebuilt, and replaced
by substantial brick or stone edifices. This in itself was a work of
considerable merit; but when we reflect that since then no less than
four thousand three hundred new churches have been added to this
number, we are lost in astonishment at the magnitude of the work
performed in so short a space of time. Nor are those modern buildings
generally of that rude and fragile class which were so common fifty
years ago, but, on the contrary, most of them are excellent specimens
of solid masonry and architectural skill. The noble cathedrals
especially which adorn Baltimore, Albany, Buffalo, Philadelphia,
Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Boston, and other sees, are models of design,
durability, and grandeur of which any country or age might be proud.
The same may be said, but with greater emphasis, of the Cathedral of
St. Patrick now nearly completed in New York—that grand epic in
marble, from the tall spire of which the glittering emblem of our
salvation is destined at no far distant day to shine down upon a
million faithful followers of the cross.
Thus it may be well said that the past quarter of a century was the
era of church-building as well as of increase. But the vast energy so
displayed was not employed solely in one direction. While thousands of
temples have arisen to the honor and glory of God, his afflicted
creatures, the sick, unfortunate, and helpless; the foundling infant
and decrepit grandsire; the orphan bereft of its natural protectors,
and the worse than orphaned—the pariah of her sex—all have been cared
for, fed, clothed, consoled, and housed. Eighty-seven hospitals and
two hundred and twenty asylums of various kinds attest the practical
charity and active benevolence of the Catholics of America.
It was formerly said that the Catholic Church could not prosper under
a free government; that it needed the help of kingcraft and despotic
laws to enforce its decrees and sustain its authority. We have proved
the fallacy of this calumny pretty thoroughly—so conclusively, indeed,
as to excite real or pretended alarm among bigots of all sects and of
no sect at all. No people are more at home and thrive better in all
respects in this land of liberty than Catholics.
It has also been asserted that we are the enemies of enlightenment.
Our hundreds of convents and academies, and thousands of parochial
schools, might be considered a sufficient answer to this falsehood.
But, in the providence of God, the time has come when we are called
upon to take a further step and demonstrate that in the domain of the
highest intellectual studies we are a match for the best of our
opponents.
We have no means of ascertaining the exact number of schoolhouses
which have been built during this period; probably one thousand would
not be too high an estimate, and we are inclined to think that there
are even more. In the large cities most of the churches have a
building for educational purposes attached; in the rural districts the
basement is generally used. There are also a number of what are called
charity schools, generally under the charge of some of the teaching
orders, of which New York alone boasts twenty-four, erected at a cost
of four million dollars. There are six hundred and forty academies and
select schools for females, with an average attendance of sixty
thousand pupils, for whose accommodation, as well as for the nuns and
sisters who watch over them, an equal number of buildings, some very
extensive and costly, have been provided.
Though our seminaries and colleges do not show a proportionate ratio
of increase, either in numbers or attendance, the result, if taken by
itself, is highly satisfactory. In the last century only two of them
existed in the United States; up to 1850 ten more were added; in 1874
we had eighteen theological seminaries, attended by 1,375 students,
and sixty-eight colleges with over ten thousand pupils and about six
hundred professors and teachers.
With all this it must be confessed that, as far as human knowledge is
concerned, the Catholics of the United States are as a body behind
their non-Catholic fellow-citizens. We acknowledge this inferiority,
and can satisfactorily account for it. Under the peculiar difficulties
of our position it became a matter of primary necessity that our
co-religionists should first have churches wherein to worship God,
asylums and hospitals to shelter and succor the weak and afflicted,
and free schools for the training of the children of the poor, whose
faith and morals were endangered by the plan of instruction pursued in
the schools of the state. But now that all these wants have been
supplied as far as practicable, and that we may safely confide to
posterity the task of completing the work already so far advanced, our
next duty plainly is to provide for the generation growing up around
us facilities for a higher and more thorough system of education than
has yet been attempted in our colleges and academies, equal in all
respects, if not superior, to that so liberally afforded by the
sectarian and secular seats of learning which so plentifully
besprinkle the land.
Remembering what has been already wrought by the zeal and unswerving
perseverance of the Catholic body in other directions in the past, we
should look forward with undiminished courage and confidence to the
future. If with a disorganized, unsettled people like ours, generally
poor in the world’s goods, and with never-ending personal demands on
their limited resources, we have been able to build and maintain so
many churches, institutions, convents, and schools in so short a time,
what may not be expected from the same class, now that they are
regularly domiciled, and a portion, at least, of the wealth that ever
rewards industry and application is fast becoming theirs?
What is wanted in the first instance, in order to give tone and
direction to the young Catholic mind, is a Catholic national
university, one on a scale comprehensive enough to include the study
of all branches of secular knowledge—law, physics, medicine,
languages, art, science, literature, and political economy. Such an
institution, properly founded and conducted, would find no lack of
public patronage. We are satisfied that American parents, whether the
descendants of the old Catholic settlers or those who have embraced
the faith in later years, instead of sending their sons to Yale or
Harvard, to France or Germany, would much prefer to have them educated
at home in a university where their religion would be neither a scoff
nor an obstacle in the way of their preferment, and where they would
grow up American citizens, in fact as well as in name. The German
element, also, which constitutes so large a portion of the Catholics
of the West, would find in it an adequate substitute for those
celebrated homes of learning they left behind in Fatherland, and,
under its fostering care, would continue to develop that spirit of
profound thought and critical investigation so characteristic of the
Teutonic genius.
But the Irish and their descendants, who will long continue to form
the majority of the Catholic population of this republic, would derive
most benefit from such an establishment. That subtle Celtic intellect,
so acute yet so versatile; fully capable of grappling with the most
difficult problems of human existence and social responsibility, yet
so replete with poetry, romance, and enthusiasm; so long repressed,
yet never dimmed, would, we feel assured, spring into life and
activity beyond the conception of most men, were such an opportunity
presented. In the three centuries following the conversion of the
Irish their schools were unsurpassed throughout Christendom in extent,
numbers, and attendance. The whole island, in fact, seemed to be
turned into one vast reservoir of learning, from which flowed
perennial streams of Christian knowledge over the then sterile wastes
of semi-civilized Europe. The number of missionaries and teachers
which Ireland produced in that most brilliant epoch of her history is
almost incredible, and her zeal and energy in the dissemination of
Catholic doctrine, even in the most remote parts of the Continent,
became proverbial.
Civil wars, long, bloody, and desolating, destroyed her institutions
and scattered her libraries, while penal laws of preternatural
ingenuity and cruelty completed the work of desolation by denying her
even the commonest rudiments of instruction. But as she kept the faith
pure and undefiled throughout the long night of slavery, so she has
preserved the moral tone and vigor of thought which ever follow a
strict observance of the divine code. One generation alone, removed
from the barriers and devices of the oppressor, has been enough to
show that, in mind as well as in body, the Irish race is at least the
equal of even the most favored nations of the globe. In the strength
of pure religious conviction lies the greatness of a people.
Perhaps now is the most fitting time for the beginning of a work such
as we have endeavored briefly to intimate. From all appearances the
flood of immigration which, for twenty or thirty years, has flowed so
steadily yet strongly, is fast receding into its former narrow
channels. We shall have still, we trust, many foreign Catholics coming
among us each year to help to develop the resources of our immense
country, and to find peace and freedom under our Constitution; but we
need not expect, during this century at least, such an influx as was
precipitated upon us by the dreadful Irish famine. The Catholic
population henceforth will present a more stable and homogeneous
character, and will have more leisure to devote a portion of its
wealth and energy to purposes other than erecting buildings and
providing for the necessities of homeless and churchless millions.
Churches and charitable institutions will, of course, continue to be
built to meet the wants of our ever-increasing numbers, but their
augmentation, being the result of a normal growth, will be more
gradual and natural. We will, in other words, have more time to devote
to education and the cultivation of the refinements and
accomplishments of life, without in any wise neglecting the primary
duties of Christians.
We have had our epochs of immigration and church-building, of
extraordinary growth in popular education and incredible effort to
supply the wants of the poor and friendless. We are now entering upon
an era of mental culture, higher, more elaborate, and more general in
its application than it was possible, or even desirable, to initiate
amid the distractions and occupations of the busy past. But, ardent as
is our desire to see such an important step taken in a direction which
we feel would lead to certain success, we only look on it as a means
to definite and ennobling ends, and not as the end itself. Mere mental
training, dissociated from moral tuition and habits of manly thought
and action, would be worse than useless; it would be dangerous alike
to the student, to society, and to the cause of morality and religion.
To develop the intellect merely at the expense of those greater
attributes of the soul in the proper cultivation of which consists the
real ostensible difference between man and the brute creation, would
be to multiply infinitely the number of educated imbeciles of which
the world has already too many.
It cannot be denied that the object of all education ought to be
truth, a knowledge of God and of his works, that in the study of them
we may learn to love and worship his holy name. Though the custodians
of the divine gift of Pentecost are few, as children of the church we
may all become sharers in the ineffable benefaction conferred on the
apostles. Truth is one and indivisible, It is found not only in the
doctrines and discipline of the church, but in every department of
life—in every pursuit, study, and calling incidental to the existence
of accountable beings. The nearer we come to the apprehension of this
truth, the more we are disposed to seek and treasure it when found, no
matter in what sphere of life our lot may be cast.
Unfortunately for religion and civilization, the last three centuries
have been remarkable more for confusion of ideas on this important
subject, and utter perversion of the natural laws, than any other
period in the whole Christian era. The war engendered by the
Protestant Reformation, the atheistic philosophy of the
Encyclopedists, the destructive dogmas of the secret societies, and,
in our own day, the gross materialism of the new school of scientists,
have so clouded and bewildered, so perverted and debased, the human
understanding that the world has come to look upon mere brilliancy of
diction, novelty of opinion, and audacity of assertion as the highest
evidences of intellectual superiority. Modern Europe, from end to end,
is the victim of this lamentable delusion, and our own otherwise
favored country is rapidly falling under its malign influence. Shall
this foul plague be allowed to enshroud us all, and blight with its
deadly breath the future of our young republic?
If such is to be the case, we may read our fate in the past decadence
of the most enlightened nations of the Old World. From the outbreak of
the Protestant Reformation they have gone steadily, almost blindly
downwards, until, as to-day we see, they have ended in blank
infidelity. The favored intellectual lights of the last three
centuries in Protestant Europe have been men without faith and without
conscience, who, with the help of Protestant governments, have sapped
and undermined and utterly destroyed even the remnants of the faith in
Christianity and a divine Creator of this world that still lingered
here and there about the old homes of Christian learning; and
literature may be said to have been given over to the service of the
enemies of Christ and of his church.
If we contemplate the condition of modern art, we witness degeneracy
almost as lamentable. Men wonder that no great sculptors and painters
have arisen since the Italian, Spanish, and Flemish schools of the
middle ages ceased to exist. Since then we have had artists who draw
as well as, and who understood anatomy better than, the best of the
old masters; but the inspiration, the spirit that made the figure on
the canvas seem to live, is wanting.
The best of our modern painters are but copyists of nature, of
landscape, man, or animals. They display no creative power; they are
incapable of producing anything original, anything like the least of
those historic pieces, those almost superhuman groups, which
illustrate in a thousand varieties the incidents in the earthly career
of our Redeemer and his holy Mother. Why? Because the mind must first
be able to conceive in all its integrity and beauty what the hand is
designed to execute. No matter how exact the eye or how deft the
touch, if the imagination be not purified by religion and guided by
truth, it is vain to attempt to represent on canvas or in marble pure,
exalted types of excellence of which we are incapable of forming
within ourselves more than an indefinite conception.
It is thus that the Reformers in England, Germany, and the north of
Europe, and the Revolutionists in France and the southern part of the
Continent, conspired to paralyze, what they could not wholly
annihilate, that splendid fabric of Christian thought and genius
reared by the church after many centuries of toil and anxiety. In this
hemisphere we have suffered from the same malign causes, but our
affection is more accidental and sympathetic than chronic. There is
nothing in the mental condition of this new and cosmopolitan people to
discourage or repel the efforts of those who would earnestly strive
after a higher, purer, and more Christian mental development. But such
efforts, to be successful, must be made within the bosom of the
church. The Protestant sects are incapable of any combined movement in
that direction; for they have neither unity of action or thought, nor
a common standard by which to measure mental excellence and moral
soundness. Clearly the change must originate in the Catholic body.
When we assert this we are well aware of the magnitude of the work to
be accomplished and the apparent paucity of the laborers to execute
it. But our confidence in the future is sustained by experience.
Whoever would have said at the beginning of this century that this
hundredth year of our independence would find the Catholics of the
United States counted by millions, and their priests, churches, and
schools by thousands, would have been looked upon as a dreamer or a
rash enthusiast. Who shall say what the beginning of the next century
may not be destined to usher in?
As the church is the divinely-commissioned teacher of the world, we
desire to see our young Catholic men, the flower of her children,
whether they be destined for the liberal professions or otherwise,
sent forth into society armed at all points, prepared not only to
sustain and defend the faith that is in them, but to demonstrate in
their own persons and by their individual conduct how infinitely
superior is secular knowledge even when based on eternal truth, to the
vague theories and absurd speculations of those who foolishly seek to
fathom the designs and comprehend the laws of God while denying the
very existence of the Creator of all things.
Any system of education which falls short of this would be worse than
none at all. To confer a degree on a student, and allow him to enter
the world with the _éclat_ of a university course to give his opinions
a certain intellectual character, without qualifying him to uphold the
honor of his _Alma Mater_ and the integrity of his creed, would of
course be an act of egregious folly. As well might we uniform a
soldier and send him into action without arms, or entrust our lives
and liberties to the keeping of a statesman of whose loyalty and
fidelity we were not fully assured.
Years ago it was confidently asserted by a prominent dissenting
minister of this city that the United States would eventually become
the battle-field upon which the contest for permanent supremacy
between Protestantism and Catholicity would be waged. We agreed with
his views then, and everything that has happened in the religious
world since confirms the sagacity of the remark. We desire nothing
better than that this struggle, if it have to come, shall take place
here, where both parties are equally free and well matched, though
each has peculiar advantages not enjoyed by the other. The sects, on
their side, have numbers, wealth, social position, political
influence, and possession not only of the public schools and
institutions of the state, but of all the old colleges and
universities. On the other hand, the church in America has all the
energy, hopefulness, and enthusiasm of youth united to the mature
judgment of advanced years; thorough unanimity; and, above and beyond
all, a creed and a doctrine founded on eternal truth, fortified by
tradition, upheld by divine assistance, and guarded by an infallible
authority. The impending conflict will not be one of arms nor of
words, but of works and brains; and as the superiority of our
opponents is material, not spiritual, it is not difficult to foresee
to which side victory would incline.
Since rebellion against God’s law first raised its crest at Worms in
1521, the church has never had so favorable an opportunity of exposing
the hollowness, rottenness, and insincerity of the leaders of dissent
in all its forms as that presented in this country and generation. In
older nations where Protestantism still flourishes it is as the mere
tool of the state, the plaything of royalty, without the support of
which it could not subsist. Supposing the British Parliament, in the
plenitude of its power, should disestablish the Anglican Church,
confiscate its property, and imprison its prelates, as Bismarck has
done to the Catholics of Germany; how long would that luxurious
Establishment remain in existence? The same may be said of Lutheranism
in Prussia and Calvinism in other parts of Europe. They are of the
earth, earthy, and require the aid of the temporal arm to protect them
against their more logical though more destructive offshoots, the
free-thinkers and revolutionists. Here, on the contrary, though the
sects have through their politico-religious combinations an undue
influence in public affairs, they have no appreciable direct state
patronage, and must stand or fall by their own merits.
Now, it is well known and pretty generally acknowledged that sooner or
later the Catholic Church has always suffered from its connection with
the state, even when the alliance seemed to be more than favorable to
her. From the very nature of her organization she cannot long be made
an instrument of despotism or of selfish ambition. In non-Catholic
countries she has generally been persecuted and proscribed: in others
she has been as often the victim of impertinent interference and
injudicious patronage on the part of temporal rulers. In none has she
been free to carry out her divine mission; and, sad to relate but true
nevertheless, on all the broad and fair earth the only spot where the
church of Christ may be said to be unshackled and disenthralled is
this young republic of the West.
This fact is in itself a great gain for us in view of the opposition
we may expect in the time to come; but there are others which, though
less apparent, are well worthy of consideration. Few persons who have
not devoted special attention to the matter can form an estimate of
the radical change which has been taking place, gradually but surely,
in the American mind regarding Catholicity. Fifty years ago there were
hundreds of towns and villages where the professors of our faith, few
and obscure, were looked upon with downright contempt, while a
Catholic priest, because unknown, was regarded as little less than a
monster of iniquity. This gross prejudice, the result more of
ignorance than badness of heart, was stimulated and fostered by local
ministers and itinerant preachers, who, having neither fixed
principles in religion nor definite notions of right and wrong upon
which to descant, have been too much in the habit of entertaining
their hearers with denunciations of the church and her priesthood. In
nearly all those places where formerly so little was known about our
faith are now to be found substantial churches, large and respectable
congregations, zealous and respected priests, and perhaps one or more
educational and charitable institutions.
The rural American, who, with all his deficiencies, is usually a
fair-minded and reflective man, being thus brought face to face with
the things he had been taught to loath, begins to feel the mists of
prejudice lifted from his judgment, and ends by respecting the
devotion and unaffected piety of those he lately contemned. Many other
causes have likewise contributed to this desirable revolution in
popular feeling, such as the annual visit of so many of our wealthy
and influential citizens to Europe, where the ancient splendor of the
church may be seen in all its perfection; while the conduct of the
dissenting ministers, their perpetual quarrels among themselves, and
the open disregard shown by them in so many instances for public
decency, have disgusted many of their most attached followers, and set
them groping after truth and spiritual rest in the direction of the
church.
It may now be justly said that bigotry of the former malignant type
which affected all classes can at present only be found among the
lowest and most ignorant, and that Protestants of a higher grade in
society, convinced of their errors, have gracefully abandoned them. So
far have they advanced in charity that they are now willing to admit
that Catholics may be good citizens, agreeable neighbors, and honest
dealers; but still they cannot be persuaded but that mentally, if not
morally, they are inferior in natural capacity and acquired
information to their own co-religionists. There only remains one thing
more to be done to make persons who think thus sincere friends and
possible allies, and that is to demonstrate to their satisfaction that
there is nothing in the teachings or practices of our religion tending
to dwarf the intellect or weaken the understanding; but, on the
contrary, that the more closely we assimilate human knowledge to the
revealed law of God as expounded by the church, and the more we are
governed by the rules which she has laid down for our mental conduct,
the better qualified we become to stand in the front rank of the
highest social and intellectual movements of the age. This
accomplished, as we fondly hope it soon will be, the future destiny of
our half-converted brethren lies in the hands of a power superior to
that of man.
Every indication of the popular desire for such an educational
establishment as we have foreshadowed points out the present as the
most propitious time for its foundation. By and by it may be too late.
The national character of our people, though not yet definitely
formed, is fast crystallizing, and whatever impress is made on it now
will be defined and permanent. We do not aim to distort or subdue the
intellect of our young men, but to captivate and to cultivate it by
holding up for its ambition the noblest of careers—the pursuit of
virtue and the study of the great truths of religion and of nature. We
would make, if we could, the Catholic laymen of the next generation,
each in his own sphere, leaders in a new crusade against error, not
through the use of force or legal compulsion, but by the greater
purity of their lives and the superiority of their genius.
Herein lies the great future of the Catholic layman. Never before did
such a career open before him. His sires of past ages met the infidel
with sword and spear and the weapons of the flesh, and beat him back
from the then hallowed soil of Christendom. To-day he faces a subtler,
fiercer, and more resolute infidel than the Turk. As the flower of the
Turkish hordes was composed of the janissaries, the perverted children
of Christian parents, so to-day the standard-bearers of infidelity are
the lost children of the cross. The weapons with which this new
crusade is to be fought out are the moral and intellectual forces.
Every portion of the civilized world is a battle-field. All must not
be left to the pulpit, the confessional, the priest. The layman moves
where the priest never penetrates, where the confessional is unknown,
the pulpit mocked. Let him bear his faith with him, and its influence
will tell. Let his wit be keener, his temper cooler, his knowledge
wider and deeper than that of his foe, and infidelity, that brawls
to-day with braggart tongue, will soon learn, if not to repent, at
least to dread an encounter where there can be no doubt as to the
issue.
We cannot have a healthy Catholic literature and a correct standard of
public taste without lay aid any more than we can fill our colleges,
schools of art and science, conservatories and gymnasiums, without
such cordial assistance. Catholic laymen have to a great extent the
destiny of their children and of the church in America in their
keeping; and as their responsibility is heavy, so will be their reward
or condemnation signal, according as they use or abuse the trust
reposed in them by an all-wise Providence.
So far they have shown every indication of a willingness to make all
possible sacrifices for the education of their children, and a
reasonable desire to encourage Catholic literature, much more so than
those can appreciate who do not know our country and the peculiar
difficulties we have had to overcome. Some of our foreign
contemporaries, in England especially, are in the habit once in a
while of drawing pleasing distinctions between the state of Catholic
literature abroad and in this country. In this comparison we naturally
appear to no very great advantage. We are frequently reminded of the
lamentable condition of things that compels us to draw on foreign
sources for our literary stores, while it is hinted that it is almost
time we looked to ourselves for intellectual support. All this, of
course, we take placidly enough, while thoroughly understanding the
spirit that gives rise to it. We are proud to concede the superiority
of the great body of English and other Catholic writers who have done
such service to the church and conferred such honor on the Catholic
name. Still, we do not feel so utterly hopeless of future success in
this line, nor even despondent as to the degree of success to which we
have already attained. And considering the means at our disposal,
glancing back at the century behind us and its fruits, the 25,000
swelled to 7,000,000, the solitary bishop to a great hierarchy, the
few scattered priests to a valiant army, the little out-of-the-way
chapels to a multitude of massive churches and towering cathedrals,
the communities of religious of both sexes, the asylums for the waifs
and strays, the deserted and sorrowing, the maimed, the halt, and the
blind of the world—glancing at all this, we are in a fair position to
say to literary critics: Gentlemen, thus far our hands have been
pretty full. We grant you all the culture you please; may it increase
a hundred-fold! We have not had much time to sit down and study. From
the beginning we have been in the thick of a fierce fight. Peace is at
last coming; the smoke of battle is clearing away; the heavens are
opening and smiling above us. Our dead are buried; our wounded are
gathered in; the prisoners taken from us are being sullenly but surely
returned; our frontier is guarded and respected. Now we turn to the
arts of peace. All that has been accomplished thus far has been done
without any abundance of fine writing. This has been mainly the work
of our faithful Catholic laity under the guidance of a loyal clergy
and episcopacy. To that same laity we look for greater triumphs to
come.
As a people we have no long line of princes and statesmen to defend,
no schism to apologize for, no national outrages against God’s church
to explain away or palliate. We have every confidence in the Catholics
of this country to accomplish, under Providence, whatever they
undertake for the benefit of religion and the spread of Christian
enlightenment. The future of America is for us. While the professors
of the sectarian creeds, in their efforts to force on the public and
on each other their peculiar views, have reached their climax and are
descending into the depths of nihilism and refined paganism, the
church in this republic enjoys the pristine vigor of youth and an
unexampled unanimity both in spirit and in action. In her organization
there is a vast amount of latent force yet undeveloped, a mine of
intellectual wealth that awaits but the master hand of the explorer to
bring it to the surface. Great indeed will be the reward, high the
fame, of him who will help us to utilize this unsuspected and unused
treasure.
[159] The figures showing the gross immigration are taken
from official returns, mainly from the _Reports of the
Bureau of Statistics on the Commerce and Navigation of
the U.S._; the _Reports of the Commissioners of
Emigration_, New York; and _Thom’s Irish Almanac and
Official Directory_, Dublin. The approximate number of
Catholics is our own calculation. Though the
population of Germany is more than one-third Catholic,
we consider it safer to set down the proportion of
Catholic emigrants from that country at one-fourth of
the whole. When the famine began in Ireland,
ninety-two per cent. of the population was Catholic;
and as it was from this portion that our immigration
has since been principally drawn, ninety per cent. is
not considered too much to credit to Catholicity.
THE LIFE AND WORK OF MADAME BARAT.[160]
Madeleine-Louise-Sophie Barat was born on the 12th of December, 1779,
in the little village of Joigny, in Burgundy. Her father was a cooper
and the owner of a small vineyard, a very worthy and sensible man and
an excellent Christian. Her mother was remarkably intelligent and
quite well educated, far superior in personal character to her humble
station, very religious, and endowed with an exquisite sensibility of
temperament, controlled by a solid virtue which made her worthy to be
the mother of two such children as her son Louis and her daughter
Sophie. The birth of Sophie, who was the youngest of her three
children, was hastened, and her own life endangered, by the fright
which she suffered from a fire very near her house during the night of
the 12th of December. The little Sophie was so frail and feeble at her
birth that her baptism was hurried as much as possible, and the tenure
of her life was very fragile during infancy. As a child she was
diminutive and delicate, but precocious, quick-witted, and very
playful. The parish priest used to put her upon a stool at catechism,
that the little fairy might be better seen and heard; and at her first
communion she was rejected by the vicar as too small to know what she
was about to do, but triumphantly vindicated in a thorough examination
by _M. le Curé_, and allowed to receive the most Holy Sacrament. She
was then ten years old, and it was the dreadful year 1789. Until this
time she had been her mother’s constant companion in the vineyard,
occupied with light work and play, and learning by intuition, without
much effort of study. At this time her brother Louis, an
ecclesiastical student eleven years older than herself, was obliged to
remain at home for a time, and, being very much struck with the noble
and charming qualities which he discerned in his little sister, he
devoted himself with singular veneration, assiduity, and tenderness to
the work of her education. This episode in the history of two great
servants of God, one of whom was an apostle, the other the St. Teresa
of her century, is unique in its beauty.
The vocation of the sister dated from her infancy, and was announced
in prophetic dreams, which she related with childish _naïveté_ like
the little Joseph, foretelling that she was destined to be a great
queen. When Sophie was eight years old, Suzanne Geoffroy—who was then
twenty-six, and who entered the Society of the Sacred Heart twenty-one
years afterwards, in which she held the offices of superior at Niort
and Lyons, and of assistant general—was seeking her vocation. Her
director told her to wait for the institution of a new order whose
future foundress was still occupied in taking care of her dolls.
Louis Barat divined obscurely the extraordinary designs of Almighty
God in regard to his little sister, and, faithful to the divine
impulse, he made the education and formation of her mind and character
the principal work of the next ten years of his life—a work certainly
the best and most advantageous to the church of all the good works of
a career full of apostolic labors. He was a poet, a mathematician,
well versed in several languages and in natural science, very kind and
loving to his little sister, but inflexibly strict in his discipline,
and in some things too severe, especially in his spiritual direction.
In a small attic chamber of his father’s cottage he established the
novitiate and school composed of little Sophie Barat as novice and
scholar, with brother Louis as the master. The preparatory studies
were soon absolved by his apt pupil, and succeeded by a course of
higher instruction, embracing Latin, Greek, Italian, and Spanish.
Sophie was particularly enchanted with Virgil, and even able to
translate and appreciate Homer. The mother grumbled at this seemingly
useless education, but the uneducated father was delighted, and the
will of Louis made the law for the household. During seventeen months
he was in the prisons of Paris, saved from the guillotine only by the
connivance of his former schoolmaster, who was a clerk in the prison
department, and released by the fall of Robespierre. Sophie went on
bravely by herself during this time, and continued her life of study
and prayer in the attic, consoling her father and mother, who idolized
her, during those dreadful days, and persevered in the same course
after her brother’s release and ordination, under his direction, until
she was sixteen. At this period her brother, who had taken up his
abode in Paris, determined to take his sister to live with himself and
complete her education. Father, mother, and daughter alike resisted
this determination, until the stronger will of the young priest
overcame, with some delay and difficulty, their opposition, and the
weeping little Sophie was carried off in the coach to Paris, to live
in the humble house of Father Louis, and, in conjunction with her
domestic labors, to study the sciences, the Holy Scriptures in the
Latin Vulgate, and the fathers and doctors of the church. She had
several companions, and the little group was thus formed and trained,
not only in knowledge but in the most austere religious virtues and
practices, under the hand of their kind but stern master, for more
than four years. During the vintage Sophie was allowed to take a short
vacation at home, of which she availed herself gladly; for she was
still a gay and playful girl, submitting with cheerful courage to her
brother’s severe discipline, yet not without a conflict or without
some secret tears. She was a timid little creature, and the
injudicious severity of her brother’s direction made her scrupulous.
Often she was afraid to receive communion; but she was obedient, and
when her brother would call her from the altar of their little chapel,
saying, “Come here, Sophie, and receive communion,” she would go up
trembling and do as she was bidden. Her great desire was to become a
lay sister among the Carmelites, and her companions were also waiting
the opportunity to enter some religious order. Father Barat did not
doubt her religious vocation, but he wanted to find out more precisely
how it could be fulfilled. Her divine Spouse was himself preparing her
for the exalted destination of a foundress and spiritual mother in his
church; and when she had attained her twentieth year, this vocation
was made known to her and accepted with a docility like that of the
Blessed Virgin Mary to the angel’s message.
The history of the origin of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
requires us to go back some years and relate some events which
prepared the way for it. Four young priests, Léonor and Xavier de
Tournély, Pierre Charles Leblanc, and Charles de Broglie, had formed a
society under the name of the Sacred Heart, intended as a nucleus for
the re-establishment of the Society of Jesus. The superior was Father
Léonor de Tournély, a young man of angelic sanctity, and a favorite
pupil of the saintly Sulpician, M. l’Abbé Emery. This young priest
received an inspiration to form a congregation of women specially
devoted to the propagation of the devotion of the Sacred Heart and the
higher education of girls. The first woman selected by him as the
foundress of the new society was the Princess de Condé, under whom a
small community was formed at Vienna, but soon dispersed by the
departure of the princess to join the Trappistines. Soon after Father
de Tournély died, having scarcely attained his thirtieth year, leaving
in his last moments the care of carrying out his project to Father
Varin. Joseph Varin d’Ainville was a young man of good family, who,
after passing some time in a seminary, had left it to join the army of
the Prince de Condé, with whom he made several campaigns. He had been
won back to his first vocation through the prayers of his mother,
offered for this purpose on the eve of ascending the scaffold at
Paris, and the influence of his former companions, the four young
fathers of the Sacred Heart above named. On the very day of the prayer
offered by his heroic mother he was determined to return back to the
ecclesiastical life on receiving communion at Vanloo, in Belgium, when
he had met his four saintly friends, whose society he immediately
joined. Having been elected superior of the society after the death of
Father de Tournély in 1797, Father Varin was persuaded to merge it in
another society formed by a certain Father Passanari under the title
of the Fathers of the Holy Faith, which was also intended as a nucleus
for the revival of the Order of Jesuits. The Archduchess Maria Anna,
sister of the Emperor of Germany, was selected to form in Rome, under
the direction of Father Passanari, a society of religious women
according to the plan of De Tournély, and she went there for that
purpose, accompanied by two of her maids of honor, Leopoldina and
Louisa Naudet. Early in the year 1800 Father Varin returned to Paris
with some companions, and Father Barat was received into his society.
In this way he became acquainted with Sophie, and her direction was
confided to him, to her great spiritual solace and advantage; for he
guided her with suavity and prudence in a way which gave her heart
liberty to expand, and infused into it that generosity and confidence
which became the characteristic traits of her piety, and were
transmitted as a precious legacy by her to her daughters in religion.
As soon as Father Varin had learned the secrets of the interior life
of his precious disciple, and had determined her vocation to the same
work which had been already begun in Rome by the three ladies above
mentioned, three others were admitted to share with her in the
formation of the little Society of the Sacred Heart. One of these was
Mlle. Octavie Bailly, another was Mlle. Loquet, the third was a pious
servant-girl named Marguérite, who became the first lay sister of the
society. On the 21st of November, the Feast of Our Lady’s
Presentation, the little chapel was decorated in a modest and simple
way. Father Varin said Mass. After the Elevation the four aspirants
pronounced the act of consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and
afterwards they received communion.
This was the true inauguration of the Society of the Ladies of the
Sacred Heart, for the attempt made at Rome by the archduchess proved a
failure; the intriguing, ambitious character of Father Passanari was
detected, and Father Varin renounced all connection with him and his
projects. These events occurred, however, at a later period, and for
some time yet to come the little community in France remained
affiliated to the mother-house in Rome.
The first house of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, the one which has
always been called the cradle of the society, was founded at Amiens
one year after the consecration of the postulants in the little chapel
of the Rue Touraine. A college was established in that city by the
Fathers of the Holy Faith, and a visit which Father Varin made there
early in the year 1801, for the purpose of giving a mission and
preparing for the opening of the college, led to an arrangement with
some zealous priests and pious ladies of Amiens for transferring a
small school of young ladies to the care of Sophie Barat and her
companions. Two of these ladies of Amiens, Mlle. Geneviève Deshayes
and Mlle. Henriette Grosier, joined the community, of which Mlle.
Loquet was appointed the superior. This lady proved to be entirely
unfit for her position, and after some months returned to her former
useful and pious life in Paris. Mlle. Bailly, after waiting for a
considerable time to test her vocation, at length followed her first
attraction and left her dear friend Sophie for the Carmelites. Sophie
Barat, with the consent of her companions, was appointed by Father
Varin to the office of superior, much to her own surprise and terror,
for she was the youngest and the most humble of her sisters; and from
this moment until her death, in the year 1865, she continued to be the
Reverend Mother of the Society of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart,
through all its periods of successive development and extension. It
was on the 21st of December, 1802, soon after her twenty-third
birthday, that she was definitively placed in this her true position,
for which divine Providence had so wonderfully prepared her. She had
been admitted to make the simple vows of religion on the 7th of June
preceding, in company with Madame Deshayes. The community and school
increased and prospered, and on the Feast of St. Michael the
Archangel, Sept. 29, 1804, they were installed in their permanent
residence, one of the former houses of the Oratory of Cardinal de
Berulle. The community at this date comprised twelve members,
including postulants. Their names were Madeleine-Sophie Barat,
Geneviève Deshayes, Henriette Grosier, Rosalie-Marguérite Debrosse,
Marie du Terrail, Catharine-Emilie de Charbonnel, Adèle Bardot,
Felicité Desmarquest, Henriette Ducis, Thérèse Duchâtel, Madame
Baudemont, and Madame Coppina. The two last-mentioned ladies
afterwards brought the society into a crisis of the gravest peril, and
finally withdrew from it, as we shall see later. Of the others,
Mesdames Deshayes, Grosier, de Charbonnel, Desmarquest, and Ducis were
among the most eminent and efficient of the first set of co-workers
with the holy foundress herself in the formation and government of the
society and its great schools and novitiates. The final rupture with
Father Passanari had already been effected, and Madame Barat was
therefore the sole head of the society, under the direction of Father
Varin. Twelve years elapsed before the constitutions of the society
were drawn up and adopted, and during this period the first
foundations were made, a most dangerous and well-nigh fatal crisis was
safely passed, the spirit and methods of the new institute were
definitely formed; thus laying the basis for the subsequent increase
and perfection of the vast edifice of religion and instruction whose
corner-stone was laid by the humble and gracious little maiden of
Joigny in the depths of her own pure and capacious heart. St. John of
the Cross says that “God bestows on the founder such gifts and graces
as shall be proportionate to the succession of the order, as the first
fruits of the Spirit.” The whole subsequent history of the Society of
the Sacred Heart shows that this was fulfilled in the person of Sophie
Barat. After the second foundation had been made in an old convent of
the Visitation at Grenoble, Madame Baudemont was made superior at
Amiens, and the first council was held for the election of a
superior-general. Madame Barat was elected by a bare majority of one;
for a party had already been formed under sinister influences which
was working against her and in opposition to Father Varin, and seeking
to change altogether the spirit of the new institute. From this time
until the year 1816 Madame Barat was merely a superior in name and by
courtesy at Amiens, and she was chiefly employed in founding new
houses, forming the young communities, and acquiring sanctity by the
exercise of patience and humility. The new foundations were at
Poitiers, Cuignières, Niort, and Dooresele near Ghent; and of course
the society received a great number of new subjects, some of whom
became its most distinguished members—as, for instance, Madame
Duchesne, the pioneer of the mission to America, Madame de Gramont
d’Aster and her two daughters, Madame Thérèse Maillucheau, Madame
Bigeu, Madame Prévost, Madame Giraud, and the angelic counterpart of
St. Aloysius, Madame Aloysia Jouve. We must not pass over in silence
the benediction given on two occasions by the august pontiff Pius VII.
to Madame Barat and her daughters. At Lyons she had a long
conversation with him, in which she explained to his great
satisfaction the nature and objects of her holy work, and she also
received from his hands Holy Communion. At Grenoble all the community
and pupils received his benediction, and of these pupils eleven, upon
whose heads his trembling hands were observed to rest with a certain
special insistance, received the grace of a religious vocation.
Another incident which deserves mention is the last visit of Madame
Barat to her father. The strict rules of a later period not having
been as yet enacted, she never failed, when passing near Joigny on her
visitations, to stay for a short time with her parents, often taking
with her some of the ladies of her society who were of noble or
wealthy families, that she might testify before them how much she
honored and loved the father and mother to whom she owed so great a
debt of gratitude. On her annual _fête_ she used to send them the
bouquets which were presented to her. During her father’s last illness
she came expressly to see and assist him in preparing for death, and,
though obliged to bid him adieu before he had departed this life, she
left him consoled and fortified by her last acts of filial affection,
and he peacefully expired soon after her departure from Joigny, on the
25th of June 1809.
At the first council the spirit of disunion already alluded to
prevented Father Varin and Madame Barat from undertaking the work of
preparing constitutions for the society. A brief and simple programme
of a rule was drawn up and approved by the bishops under whose
jurisdiction the houses were placed, and Madame Barat became herself
the living rule and model, on which her subjects and novices were
formed. Father Varin had resigned his office of superior when Madame
Barat was formally elected by the council of professed members their
superior-general. Another ecclesiastic of very different spirit, who
was the confessor of the community and the school at Amiens, M. l’Abbé
de St. Estéve, was ambitious of the honor and influence which justly
belonged to Father Varin. He obtained a complete dominion at Amiens by
means of Madame de Baudemont, a former Clarissine, who was gained over
by his adroit flattery and artful encouragement of the love of sway
and pre-eminence which her commanding talents, her former conventual
experience, and her mature age, together with the advantage of her
position as local superior, entrusted to her against Father Varin’s
advice, gave a too favorable opportunity of development. M. de St.
Estéve arrogated to himself the title of founder of the society, and
planned an entire reconstitution of the same under the bizarre title
of _Apostolines_, and with a set of rules which would have made an
essential alteration of the institute established by Father Varin. All
the other houses besides Amiens were in dismay and alarm. Madame
Penaranda, a lady of Spanish extraction, descended from the family of
St. Francis Borgia, who was superior at Ghent, separated her house
from the society by the authority of the bishop of the diocese. She
returned, however, some years later, with seventeen of her companions,
to the Society of the Sacred Heart.
In the meantime the Society of Jesus had been re-established and the
Society of the Fathers of the Holy Faith was dissolved, most of its
members entering the Jesuit Order as novices. Father de Clorivière was
provincial in France, and Madame Barat, encouraged by the advice and
sympathy of wise and holy men, waited patiently and meekly for the
time of her liberation from the schemes of a plausible and designing
enemy who had crept under a false guise into her fold. This was
accomplished through a most singular act of criminal and audacious
folly on the part of M. de St. Estéve. Having gone to Rome as
secretary to the French Legation, in order to further his intrigue by
false representations at the Papal Court, he was led by his insane
ambition, in default of any other means of success, to forge a letter
from the provincial of the Jesuits of Italy to Madame Barat,
instructing her to submit herself to the new arrangements of M. de St.
Estéve, which he declared had been approved by the Holy See. In this
crisis Madame Barat submitted with perfect obedience to what she
supposed was an order from the supreme authority in the church, and
counselled her daughters to imitate her example. Very soon the
imposture was discovered. Mesdames de Baudemont, de Sambucy, and
Coppina left the society and went to join another in Rome, and the
rest of the disaffected members of the community at Amiens, although
not immediately pacified, made no serious opposition to Madame Barat,
and not long after were so completely reconciled to her that all trace
of disunion vanished. There being now no obstacle in the way of
forming the constitutions, a council was summoned to meet in Paris, at
a suitable place provided by Madame de Gramont d’Aster, and its issue
was most successful. It assembled on the Feast of All Saints, 1815,
and in the chapel which was used for the occasion was placed the
statue of Our Lady before which St. Francis de Sales, when a young
student, had been delivered from the terrible temptation to despair
which is related in his biography. It was composed of the Reverend
Mothers Barat, Desmarquest, Deshayes, Bigeu, Duchesne, Geoffroy,
Giraud, Girard, and Eugénie de Gramont. Father de Clorivière presided
over it, and Fathers Varin and Druilhet, previously appointed by him
to draw up the constitutions, were present to read, explain, and
propose them to the discussion and vote of the council. The whole work
was completed in six weeks. The Reverend Mothers Bigeu, de Charbonnel,
Grosier, Desmarquest, Geoffroy, and Eugénie de Gramont were elected as
the six members of the permanent council of the superior-general,
arrangements were made for establishing a general novitiate in Paris,
the society was placed under the government of the Archbishop of
Rheims as ecclesiastical superior, who delegated his functions to the
Abbé Pereau, a solemn ceremony closed the sessions on the 16th of
December, and early in January the reverend mothers returned to their
respective residences. The constitutions were received with unanimous
contentment in all the houses, including Amiens, approved by the
bishops in whose dioceses these houses existed, and, finally, a letter
of congratulation, expressed in the most kind and paternal terms, was
received from his Holiness Pope Pius VII. From this period the
authority of Madame Barat was fully established and recognized,
harmony and peace reigned within the society, and a new era of
extension began which has continued to the present time. The society
with its constitutions was solemnly approved by Leo XII. in a brief
dated December 22, 1826, which was received at Paris in February,
1827, during a session of the council. By the authority of the Holy
See an additional vow of stability was prescribed for the professed,
and the dispensation from this vow reserved to the pope. The rules
were made more strict in several respects, and a cardinal protector
was substituted for the ecclesiastical superior. The royal approbation
for France was at this time also solicited, and granted by Charles X.,
then reigning. In 1839 another effort was made to give a still greater
perfection to the statutes and to provide for the more efficacious
government of the institute, now become too great for the immediate
government of the superior-general, by a division into provinces under
provincial superiors.
At this time the society passed through another dangerous crisis, and
for four years was in a disturbed state which gave great anxiety to
the Rev. Mother Barat, diminished seriously her influence over her
subjects, and even occasioned a menace of suppression in France to be
intimated by the government. The cause of this trouble was an effort
made by a number of persons both within and without the society to
transfer the residence of the superior-general to Rome, and to modify
the rules in a way to make the society as far as possible a complete
counterpart of the Society of Jesus. In 1843 this difficulty was
finally settled by the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff, who
annulled all the acts and decrees which had been passed in the
councils of the society looking towards innovation, and determined
that the residence of the superior-general should not be removed from
France. Happily, not a house, or even a single member, was separated
from the society by this disturbance, and when it passed by the
venerable and holy foundress was more revered and loved than ever
before, and her gentle but strong sway over the vast family which she
governed was confirmed for ever, never again to suffer diminution.
Some of the proposed changes were, however, absolutely necessary for
the order and well-being of the society, and were provided for in the
year 1850 by Pius IX., who decreed the establishment of provinces
under the name of vicariates, each one to be governed by the superior
of its mother-house with the rank and title of superior-vicar, subject
to the supreme authority of the superior-general. At the close of
Madame Barat’s administration, which ended only with her life, on
Ascension Thursday, 1865, there were fifteen vicariates. Since then
the number has been increased. There are three in the United States,
one in British America, one in Spanish America; and in these five
vicariates there are about eleven hundred religious of the first and
second profession, including lay sisters. The number of houses in
various parts of the world is about one hundred, and the total number
of members four thousand. Madame Barat herself founded one hundred and
fifteen houses, and many others have been established since her death.
But of these some have been suppressed in Italy and Germany, and
others were given up or transferred by the superiors of the order.
Madame Goëtz, who was vicar-general to Madame Barat during the last
year of her life, succeeded her as superior-general, and was succeeded
after her own death, in 1874, by Madame Lehon, the present
superior-general.
Our limits will not permit even a succinct narrative of the events
which filled up the half-century during which Madame Barat governed
the Society of the Sacred Heart, from the memorable council of 1815
until 1865. We cannot omit, however, some brief notice of the
foundation of the American mission and the ladies who were sent over
to establish it. The first American colony was composed of three
ladies and two lay sisters: Madame Duchesne, Madame Audé, Madame
Berthold, Sister Catharine Lamarre, and Sister Marguérite Manteau.
Madame Philippine Duchesne was a native of Grenoble, where she
received an accomplished education, first at the Visitation convent of
Sainte-Marie-d’en-Haut, and afterwards under private tutors in the
same class with her cousins, Augustin and Casimir Périer. At the age
of eighteen she entered the Visitation convent as a novice, but was
prevented by the suppression of the religious orders in France from
making her vows. During the dark days of the Revolution her conduct
was that of a heroine. After the end of the Reign of Terror she rented
the ancient convent above mentioned, and for several years maintained
there an asylum for religious women with a small boarding-school for
girls, waiting for an opportunity to establish a regular religious
house. Her desire was accomplished when Madame Barat accepted the
offer which was made to her to receive Madame Duchesne and her
companions into the Society of the Sacred Heart, and to found the
second house of her society in the old monastery of Ste.-Marie-d’en-Haut.
Madame Duchesne had felt an impulse for the arduous vocation of a
missionary since the time when she was eight years old, and this
desire had continually increased, notwithstanding the apparent
improbability of its ever finding scope within the limits of her
vocation. She was about forty-eight years of age when she was
entrusted with the American mission, and lived for thirty-four years
in this country, leaving after her the reputation of exalted and
really apostolic sanctity. Madame Eugénie Audé had been much
fascinated by the gay world in her early youth, and her conversion was
remarkable. Returning one evening from a _soirée_, as she went before
a mirror in her boudoir, she saw there, instead of her own graceful
and richly-attired figure, the face of Jesus Christ as represented in
the _Ecce Homo_. From that moment she renounced her worldly life, and
soon entered the novitiate at Grenoble as a postulant. Even there, her
historian relates, “on souriait de ses manières mondaines, de ses
belles salutations, de ses trois toilettes par jour! Même sous le
voile de novice qu’elle portait maintenant, elle laissait voir encore,
pas sans complaisance, l’élégance de sa taille et les avantages de sa
personne. On ne tardera pas à voir ce que cette âme de jeune fille
changée en âme d’apôtre était capable d’entreprendre pour Dieu et le
prochain.” This great change was wrought in her soul during a retreat
given by Père Roger on the opening of the general novitiate at Paris
during November, 1816. When called to join Madame Duchesne two years
later, she was twenty-four years of age, and, after a long period of
service in the United States, was finally elected an assistant general
and recalled to France. Madame Octavie Berthold was the daughter of an
infidel philosopher who had been Voltaire’s secretary. She was herself
educated as a Protestant, was converted to the faith when about twenty
years of age, and soon after entered the novitiate at Grenoble. She
volunteered for the American mission, animated by a desire to prove
her gratitude to our Lord for the grace of conversion, and was at this
time about thirty years of age. “Caractère sympathique, cœur
profondément devouée, intelligence ornée, spécialement versée dans la
connaissance des langues étrangères, Mme Octavie était fort aimée au
pensionnat de Paris.”
Mgr. Dubourg, Bishop of New Orleans, was the prelate who introduced
the Ladies of the Sacred Heart into the United States. It was during
the year 1817 that the arrangements were completed at Paris. On the
21st of March, 1818, the five religious above mentioned embarked at
Bordeaux on the _Rebecca_, and on the 29th of May, which was that year
the Feast of the Sacred Heart, they landed at New Orleans, where they
were received as the guests of the Ursulines in their magnificent
convent. Their own first residence at St. Charles, in the present
diocese of St. Louis, was as different as possible from this noble
religious house, and from those which have since that time been
founded by the successors of these first colonists. Madame Duchesne,
in her visions of missionary and apostolic life, never dreamed of
those religious houses, novitiates, and pensionates, rivalling the
splendid establishments of Europe, which we now see at St. Louis,
Manhattanville, Kenwood, and Eden Hall. Her aspirations were entirely
for labor among the Indians and negroes, and, to a considerable
extent, they were satisfied. She began with the most arduous and
self-sacrificing labors upon the roughest and most untilled soil of
Bishop Dubourg’s diocese, and one of her last acts was to go on a
mission among the Pottawattomies, from which she was only taken by the
force of Archbishop Kenrick’s authority a little before her death. The
present flourishing condition of the two vicariates of New Orleans and
St. Louis is well known to all our readers. The foundation at New York
was due to the enlightened zeal of the late illustrious Archbishop
Hughes, although the first idea originated in the mind of Madame Barat
many years before. In the year 1840 the celebrated Russian convert,
Madame Elizabeth Gallitzin, a cousin of Prince Gallitzin the priest of
Loretto, and assistant general for America to Madame Barat, was sent
over to establish this foundation and to make a general visitation, in
the course of which she died suddenly of yellow fever at St. Michel,
on the 14th of November, 1842.
The first residence in New York was the present convent of the Sisters
of Mercy in Houston Street, from which it was removed, first to
Astoria, and afterwards to the Lorillard estate in Manhattanville,
where is now the centre of an extensive vicariate comprising eight
houses in the States of New York, Rhode Island, Ohio, and Michigan,
about five hundred religious, a novitiate containing at this moment
forty-eight novices exclusive of postulants, and flourishing schools
both for the education of young ladies and the instruction of the
children of those parishes which are adjacent to the several convents.
It is not necessary to describe for the benefit of our American
readers with more detail the history and present condition of the
Society of the Sacred Heart in this country. Our European readers
would no doubt be interested by such a history; but, besides the
imperative reason of a want of space in the present article, there is
another which imposes on us the obligation of reserve in respect to
works accomplished by the living, to whom has been transmitted the
humility as well as the other virtues of their holy foundress. There
is one venerable lady especially, now withdrawn from the sphere of her
long and active administration to a higher position in the society,
who is remembered with too much gratitude by her children, and honor
by all classes of Catholics in her native land, to require from our
pen more than the expression of a wish and prayer, on the part of
thousands whose hearts will echo our words as they read them, that she
may resemble the holy mother who loved her and all her American
children so tenderly, as “_sa plus chère famille_,” in length of days,
and in the peace which closed her last evening.
We have already alluded briefly to the blessed departure of Madame
Barat from the scene of labor to the glory which awaits the saints, in
the eighty-sixth year of her age and the sixty-sixth of her religious
life, on the Feast of the Ascension, 1865. The narrative of a few
salient events in her life, and of the principal facts in the history
of the foundation of the Sacred Heart, which we have thought best to
present, meagre as it is, in lieu of more general observations on her
character and that of her great works, for the benefit of those who
cannot, at least for the present, peruse the history of M. Baunard,
leaves us but little room for any such remarks. The character of this
saintly woman must be studied in the details of her private and public
life, and in the expression she has given to her interior spirit in
the extracts from her vast correspondence published by her biographer.
No one could ever take her portrait; and we are assured by one who
knew her long and intimately that the one placed in front of the
second volume of her life is not at all satisfactory. How can we
describe, then, such a delicate, hidden, retiring, subtile essence as
the soul of Sophie Barat in a few words, or give name to that which
fascinated every one, from the little nephew Louis Dusaussoy to
Frayssinous, Montalembert, and Gregory XVI.? Extreme gentleness and
modesty, which, with the continual increase of grace, become the most
perfect and admirable humility, were the basis of her natural
character and of her acquired sanctity. In the beginning her modesty
was attended by an excessive timidity, so that Father Varin gave her
the name of “_trembleuse perpetuelle_.” This was supplanted by that
generous, affectionate confidence in God which shone out so luminously
in the great trials of her career. In all things, and always, Madame
Barat was exquisitely feminine. She conquered and ruled by love, and
this sway extended over all, from the smallest children to the most
energetic, commanding, impetuous, and able of the highly-born,
accomplished, and in every sense remarkable women who were under her
government in the society, to women of the world, to old men and young
men, to servants, the poor, fierce soldiers and revolutionists, and
even to irrational creatures. With this feminine delicacy and
gentleness there was a virile force and administrative ability, a
firmness and intrepidity, which made her capable of everything and
afraid of nothing. Her writings display a fire of eloquence which may
be truly called apostolic, and would be admired in the mouth of an
apostolic preacher. Besides the great labors that she accomplished in
the foundation and visitation of her numerous houses, and in the
government of her vast society, Madame Barat went through several most
severe and dangerous illnesses, beginning with one which threatened
her life in the first years at Amiens; and was frequently brought, to
all appearance, to the very gates of death. Besides these sufferings,
and the great privations which were often endured during the first
period of new foundations, she practised austerities and penances of
great severity, to the utmost limit permitted by obedience to her
directors. With her wonderful activity she united the spirit of a
contemplative; and there are not wanting many evidences of
supernatural gifts of an extraordinary kind, or proofs of her power
with God after her death. Mgr. Parisis has publicly declared that her
life was one of the great events of this century, and comparable to
those of St. Dominic, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catharine of Siena,
and St. Teresa. There is but one, universal sentiment in respect of
her sanctity, and one, unanimous desire that the seal of canonization
may be placed upon it by the successor of St. Peter. A prayer under
her invocation has been already sanctioned by Pius IX., and the cause
of her beatification has been introduced, the issue of which we await,
in the hope that we may one day be permitted and commanded to honor
the modest little Sophie Barat of Joigny—who went away weeping in the
coach to Paris at sixteen to found one of the greatest orders of the
world—under the most beautiful and appropriate title of _Sancta
Sophia_.
When we consider the work of Madame Barat as distinct from her
personal history, we observe some peculiar and remarkable features
marking its rise and growth. It came forth from the fiery, bloody
baptism of the French Revolution as a work of regeneration and
restoration. Many of its first members had been through an experience
of danger, suffering, and heroic adventure which had given them an
intrepidity of character proof against every kind of trial. The stamp
thus given to the society at the outset was that of generous loyalty
to the Holy See, and uncompromising hostility to the spirit and maxims
of the Revolution.
Another fact worthy of notice is that so many small communities,
private institutes for education, and persons living a very devout and
zealous life in the world, were scattered about the territory over
which the destructive tornado of revolution had passed, ready to be
incorporated into the Society of the Sacred Heart, and furnishing the
means of a rapid growth and extension.
New orders are not absolutely new creations. They spring from those
previously existing, and are affiliated with each other more or less
closely, notwithstanding their differences. Many of the first members
of the Society of the Sacred Heart had been previously inclined to the
orders of Mt. Carmel and the Visitation. The spirit of the Carmelite
Order was largely inherited by the new society, and from the Order of
the Visitation the special devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was
received by the same transmission of mystic life. The organization was
produced by the engrafting of the principles of the constitutions of
St. Ignatius on the new and vigorous stock. From this blending and
composition sprang forth the new essence with its own special notes,
its original force, and its distinct sphere of operation. Cardinal
Racanati thus expresses his judgment of its excellence: “My duty has
obliged me to read the constitutions of almost all ancient and modern
orders. All are beautiful, admirable, marked with the signet of God.
But this one appears to me to excel among all the others, because it
contains the essence of religious perfection, and is at the same time
a masterpiece of unity. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is at once the pivot
around which everything moves, and the end in which everything
results.” Pope Gregory XVI. said that the Rule of the Sacred Heart was
in every part the work of God. Although not an exact counterpart of
the Society of Jesus, the Society of the Sacred Heart is nevertheless,
in its government and method of discipline, modelled after a similar
type, with equally efficacious means for producing in its subjects, in
a manner proportionate to their feminine character, all the highest
religious virtues of the mixed state of action and contemplation. The
only important differences between the Society of the Sacred Heart and
the older orders of women are the absence of the interior cloister and
of the solemn vows. The first, which is obviously an advantage
considering the nature of the occupations in which the Ladies of the
Sacred Heart are engaged, is compensated for by the extreme strictness
of the rules governing their conduct in regard to intercourse with the
world, and the obligation of going at a moment’s warning to any house,
in any part of the world, where they may be ordered by the superiors.
In respect to the second, as the final vows can only be dispensed by
the pope, the completeness and sacredness of the oblation for life are
not diminished, but only a prudent provision for extraordinary cases
secured by the wisdom of the Holy See, which is beneficial both to the
order and its individual members. In respect to poverty, self-denial,
regularity, and all that belongs to the beautiful order of conventual
life, the written rule of the Sacred Heart, which is actually observed
in practice, is not behind those of the more ancient orders. In
respect to the extent and strictness of the law of obedience, it is
pre-eminent among all, and its admirable organization may justly be
compared to that acknowledged masterpiece of religious polity, the
Institute of St. Ignatius. The more humble occupations to which so
many admirable religious women in various orders and congregations
devote themselves form an integral part of the active duties of the
society. A large portion of its members are lay sisters, and a great
number of the religious of the choir are engaged in the instruction of
poor children or domestic duties which have no exterior _éclat_. The
specific work of the society is of course the education of young
ladies, with the ulterior end of diffusing and sustaining Catholic
principles and Catholic piety, through the instrumentality of the
_élèves_ of the Sacred Heart, among the higher classes of society.
There cannot be a nobler work than this, or a more truly apostolic
vocation, within the sphere to which woman is limited by the law of
God, human nature, and the constitution of Christian society. What an
immense power has been exerted by the daughters of Madame Barat in
this way as the auxiliaries of the hierarchy and the sacerdotal order
in the church, is best proved by the persecutions they have sustained
from the anti-Catholic party in Europe, and the fear they have
inspired in the bosoms of tyrannical statesmen like Prince Bismarck,
who tremble with apprehension before the banner of the Sacred Heart,
though followed only by a troop of modest virgins. It is after all not
strange. The women of the revolution are more terrible than furies led
on by Alecto and Tisiphone. Why should not the virgins of the Catholic
army resemble their Queen, who is “terrible as an army set in array”?
It is with great regret that we abstain from setting forth the
enlightened, sound, and thoroughly Christian ideas of Madame Barat,
and the various councils over which she presided, in respect to the
education of Catholic girls in our age. We are obliged also to omit
noticing the charming sketches given in the book before us of the
first pupils of the Sacred Heart, and the noble part which so many of
them played afterwards in the world. We must close with a few words on
the merit of the Abbé Baunard’s work, and an expression of gratitude
to the distinguished ecclesiastic who has furnished us so much
pleasure and edification at a cost of such very great labor to
himself. He has been fortunate in his subject and the wealth of
authentic materials furnished him for fulfilling his honorable and
arduous task. His illustrious subject has been fortunate in her
biographer. The _History of Madame Barat_ deserves to be ranked with
Mother Chauguy’s _Life of St. Frances de Chantal_ and M. Hamon’s _Life
of St. Francis de Sales_. We trust that an abridged life by a
competent hand may furnish those who cannot afford so costly a book,
or read one so large, with the means of knowing the character and
history of the Teresa of our century. There are also materials for
other histories and biographies of great interest and utility in the
rich, varied contents of this most admirable and charming work, which
we hope may not be neglected.
[160] _Histoire de Madame Barat, Fondatrice de la Société
du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus._ Par M. l’Abbé Baunard,
Aumonier du Lycée d’Orleans, Docteur en Théologie,
Docteur es Lettres. Paris: Poussielgue Frères. 1876.
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER I.
“CITTÀ VECCHIA!”
A comfortable family party came Romeward one May morning from Turin.
They had the railway carriage quite to themselves, and occupied it
fully. Mr. Vane lay stretched at length on the front seat, with a
travelling-bag and two shawls under his head. It was his first visit
to Italy, consequently his first approach to Rome, but he declined his
daughters’ invitation to look out. He would prefer, he said, to admire
the country when he should feel more in the mood. “Besides,” he said,
“to look at scenery when one is going through it behind a locomotive
irritates both the eyes and the temper. If you wish to see a near
object, no sooner have you fixed your eyes upon it than it is whisked
out of sight, and your pupils contract with a snap; if a distant one,
the moment you perceive that it is worth seeing, some sharp bit of
foreground starts up and enters like a bramble between your eyelids.
It’s a Sancho Panza feast, and I’ll none of it. You children can look
out and tantalize your tempers, if it please you.”
“Oh! thank you,” his daughter Isabel said dryly, availing herself of
the permission.
Presently she addressed him again: “Papa, if I could find a fault in
you, it would be that you are such a very unreasonably reasonable man.
You have always so many arguments in favor of every proposition you
lay down, there isn’t a handle left to take it up by.”
“Thank you!” the gentleman echoed. And then there was silence for a
little while—a silence of tongues; but, with a ceaseless whirr and
buzz, the flying train was casting the north behind, and plunging into
the south like a bee into a flower.
Mr. Vane’s two daughters, twenty and twenty-two years of age, sat
opposite him, each at a window, Isabel moving frequently, glancing
here and there, and speaking whenever the spirit was stirred; Bianca,
the younger, seeming to be in a trance. These two girls were as unlike
in appearance as it is possible for two persons to be who have many
points of resemblance. Both had fine dark eyes, dark hair, complexions
of a clear, pale olive, and features sufficiently regular. Bianca was
a trifle taller and finer in shape, and her manner had a gentle
dignity, while her sister’s was lively and positive. Bianca’s mouth
was fuller, sweeter, and more silent, and her voice softer. She had a
more penetrating mind than most persons were aware of, and thought and
observed more than she said. Isabel caught quickly at the surfaces of
things, and had a clever way of weaving other people’s ideas into her
talk that sometimes made her appear brilliant. It might be said that
the impressions of the elder were cameo, those of the younger
intaglio. For the rest, let their story speak for them.
The father was a large, leisurely, middle-aged gentleman, whom
critical people like to call indolent. He certainly had, as his elder
daughter intimated, the faculty of finding a great many excellent
reasons why he should not exert himself unnecessarily, and it is
probable that he might never have been brought to the pitch of a
trans-atlantic voyage but for Miss Isabel’s politic arguments in
urging the matter.
“In Europe one can be so quiet,” she said. “One can live there without
being tormented by the idea that one should be doing something for
somebody. It isn’t considered necessary to have a mission. Everything
happens half an hour or so after time, and everybody goes to sleep in
the middle of the day—in the middle of the street, too, if they like.
I’ve heard people say that it’s just delicious the way the clergy take
their promenade there. Two of them will walk slowly along a few
minutes, then stop and carry on their conversation a little while, as
if they were in the Elysian Fields, then resume their walk, and so on,
walking and pausing, in the most delightfully leisurely way. Fancy
that in New York! Why, our idea of walking is to get one foot before
the other as quickly as we can. Going out, we see only the spot we
start from and the spot we arrive at, and we shoot from the one to the
other as if we wore percussion-caps on our heads. Marion says that
Italy is the fabled lotos, and that all the dust and dirt people talk
so about is nothing but pollen.”
Mr. Vane, who in America felt himself like a drone in the midst of
bees, could not resist this charming picture, and we accordingly find
him in the land of the lotos.
“Bianca,” her sister said presently, “do you remember the Goldsmith’s
history of Rome we studied at school? I’ve forgotten every bit of it
but the title, and an impression of great uncomfortable doings, and
haranguing and attitudinizing, and killing. I recollect it was always
a wonder to me when I found there were people enough left to begin a
new chapter with. Now we are going to see the places. How glad I am we
shall not see any of the tremendous people!”
She put her head out of the window and added: “I don’t find that the
country looks any better than Massachusetts. But, for all that, I am
enchanted to be here. How I have longed to come!”
“Indeed!” her father said, staring a little. “Why, then, did you not
let us come six months ago, instead of clinging to London and Paris?”
She smiled indulgently on him. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten how, when I
was a child, and when I had mince-pie for dinner, I used to slyly pick
out the large raisins and put them under the edge of my plate to eat
afterward. I recollect your finding me out once, and asking me if I
didn’t like raisins, and I was in terror lest you were going to take
them away from me. I’ve been doing the same thing now—saving the best
for the last. I wished to dispose of everything else first, so that,
when I return to America, I can shut my eyes in Rome, and not open
them again till they see the shores of the New World. And, between
ourselves, papa, isn’t it a dreadfully new world? I wouldn’t own it to
a foreigner, of course; but you’re such a dear, stanch old Yankee!”
And she leaned forward and gave him an affectionate pinch in the
cheek.
The younger sister turned quickly at that. “O Bell! don’t turn
traitor,” she exclaimed. “Newness is not a disadvantage always. When
the world was new the Creator praised it, but there is no record of
his ever having praised it after.”
Mr. Vane looked at his younger daughter with a wistful, lingering
smile. He always looked attentively at Bianca when she spoke.
Isabel lifted her hands in wonder. “Well, really, she is playing
patriot! Who have I heard say that her body was born in America, but
her soul in Italy? Who have I heard say that the children of Israel
were not Egyptians, though they were born by the Nile?”
Bianca smiled to herself softly, and looked out of the window as she
answered: “I am not _playing_ patriot. The feeling was always in my
mind, hanging there silent like a bell in its tower; and now and then
it rang. It always rang when struck.”
“That’s my darling!” her father exclaimed. “Keep your sweet-toned
patriotism in its bell-tower. I don’t like the sort that is always
firing india-crackers under everybody’s nose. By the way,” he added
after a while, rousing again, rather unaccountably, “what an absurdity
it is in us, this coming to Rome in May! To-day is the second of the
month. We should have come in December. I wonder I allowed myself to
be so persuaded. I have a mind to go back at once.”
His elder daughter regarded him tranquilly. “Don’t excite yourself
unnecessarily, papa,” she said; “we are behind a coachman who never
turns back. By the time we reach Rome you will be as contented as a
lamb. Do not you perceive something beautiful in our coming at this
season, with the orange-flowers and the jasmines? We do not arrive, we
simply bloom. Even dear old papa will put on a film of tender green
over his sombreness, like a patriarchal spruce-tree; and as to Bianca
and me—”
She sang:
“Two half-open roses on one twig grew,
Sweet is the summer.
A nightingale sang there the whole night through
Sweet is the summer.”
“Here we are! What a comfort that we have not to go to a hotel nor
search for lodgings! It is very nice to have a friend to prepare
everything.”
In fact, a friend of the family, resident in Rome, who had written and
received a score or so of letters on the subject of this journey, was
waiting outside the barrier at that moment. They saw her a little
apart from the crowd, looking for them as they gave up their tickets;
then a servant took their packages, and they were cordially welcomed
to Rome. This lady has so long been accustomed to hearing herself
announced by the maid-servants of the friends she visits as the
“Signora Ottant’-otto,” from the number of her house, that she will
not be displeased if we continue the title.
A carriage was called, and in a few minutes they had reached the home
prepared for their reception. It was an old-fashioned Roman house,
situated on a high slope of the Viminal where it meets the Esquiline
in a scarcely perceptible dent. The _portone_, entrance, and stairs
were palatial in size, the latter having broad landings lighted by
double windows in the middle of each story; and instead of a mere
passage or small waiting-room, the door of the apartment opened at
once into a noble _sala_. Large chambers surrounded this _sala_, and a
backward-extending wing held smaller rooms and a kitchen. All this
part of the house looked into a garden, where orange-trees stood with
their sprinkle of fragrant snow, and jasmines reared their solid cones
of flowery gold, perfuming every breeze that entered. Beyond the
garden extended an orchard and vineyard, hiding all that part of the
city except the long roof and façade of the church of St. Catherine of
Siena, and the grand old tower that Vittoria Colonna built her convent
walls about. These looked over the rich verdure, standing out dark and
massive against the clear western sky.
“The front rooms are town, the back rooms country,” the Signora said.
“In the front rooms we have the ‘dim, religious light’ that Italians
love; here are silence, except for the birds, sunshine, and flowers.”
The front drawing-rooms were conventional, but the _sala_ and
dining-room had a character quite new to the travellers. The uncovered
brick floors, freshly sprinkled and swept; the faded old screens of
green silk or embroidered satin, set in carved frames; the tarnished
gilt chairs with scarlet velvet cushions; the large sofas, and tables,
and cases of drawers, all finely carved; the walls almost entirely
covered with old oil-paintings of every size, some without frames,
some so dim that amid the haze of faded color a face would look forth,
or an arm be thrust out as from a cloud—all these made up a picture
very different from the rich, toned-down freshness of their New
England home, where they trod on velvet, and would no more have
admitted a chair of scarlet and gold than they would have allowed a
curtain to hang after the sun had made a streak in it.
The girls were enchanted. “How delightfully dingy everything is!”
Isabel cried. “It’s like grandmother’s beautiful cashmere shawl that
is a hundred years old.”
And then the travellers were good enough to say that they were hungry,
and would not be displeased if luncheon should be very prompt at the
hour of noon.
“After this, you see, we shall sail right into your track without a
break,” Mr. Vane said. “Your hours suit me perfectly; and whether it
should be luncheon or dinner at noon does not make the least
difference to me at this season. In cold weather I like a late
dinner.”
“I think you will find the early dinner pleasanter in summer,” the
Signora said; “that is, if you rise early. You will soon learn, if you
have not learned already, to give up the heavy American breakfast, and
so will be hungry by noon. That gives you the fresh of the morning
free, with little digestive work to dull your activity, and the lovely
evenings from five to eight or nine. If you wish to go out romancing
by moonlight, the supper is just enough to content, without clogging.
The next best plan is, coffee on waking, breakfast at ten, and dinner
at four or five after your nap. I have tried all ways, and settled on
the first for this country. Of course it wouldn’t answer for our
indoor, chilly life at the other side of the world.”
“I do not like a four or five o’clock dinner,” Mr. Vane said with
decision. “It is neither one thing nor the other; and I hate to go
from the bed to the dinner-table.”
It was the Signora’s first house-keeping for any one but herself, and
she was full of a pleasant anxiety. What solemn conferences she had
with the _donna_, what explanations, what charges she gave! And how
learned she became in matters to which before she had not given a
thought! In such a dark and narrow street, in a dingy little shop, was
to be found the best chocolate in Rome. In such another place, where
you would least expect, they sold coffee of unimpeachable excellence,
which, of course, one had roasted and ground in one’s own house.
Another journey was made for tea. She became an object of terror to
sellers of meat and vegetables, and fruit-venders trembled before her.
To witness the scorn with which she rejected apricots that had not the
precise cloudless sunset tint, peaches that were of a vulgar red and
green complexion or too pale in hue, mandarins not sufficiently loose
of skin and flattened at the poles, and grapes and figs that could not
answer in the affirmative at least six stern questions, one would have
supposed that she must have been accustomed to such fruits as grew in
the Garden of Eden. As to wine, the story of its getting was an
admirable illustration of moral pulley-power. A friend’s friend’s,
etc., friend had two friends who owned vineyards and made wine, and
one was famous for his white and another for his red. The first power
in this machinery was a semi-weekly cup of tea which a certain
respectable, antique bachelor had taken regularly with the Signora
time out of mind, and, losing which, his life would have been quite
disjointed. The flavor of the tea did not, of course, extend beyond
him, but it influenced certain favors in his power to grant, which, in
turn, moved the next wheel; and so on, quite in order, till a way was
made from certain cool grottos, where the hoarded wines sparkled to
themselves in the dark, to the small dinner-table where our friends in
the old Roman house sat and sipped liquid rubies or sunshine for an
absurdly small price considering the result.
“But you are giving us too much of your time,” the Vanes expostulated.
“We cannot permit you to turn housekeeper for us. How will you be able
to write?”
For the Signora Ottant’-otto was an authoress. “In the first flush of
seeing you I could not content myself to write a line,” she said; “and
by the time I shall have become calm my machinery will be in working
order. After that nothing will be necessary but an occasional warning
word or glance.”
This conversation did not, however, take place till the end of the
first week. The first day the house-keeping seemed to have arranged
itself without human intervention.
As they seated themselves at the luncheon-table the soft boom of the
gun from St. Angelo proclaimed the hour of noon, and immediately
another booming, as soft, but more musical, came from the near
_campanile_ of the Liberian basilica, where the great bell struck the
Angelus, followed by all the bells in the tower in a _festa_ ringing.
“That is Maria Assunta and her four ladies of honor,” the Signora
said, with all the pride of a proprietor. “I may as well tell you that
they and the church they belong to are my one weakness in Rome. I have
been up the _campanile_ to visit those bells, have read their
inscriptions and touched their embossed sides, even while they were
being rung. An Italian boy who was with me exclaimed when I put my
hand to the ringing rim of the great bell: ‘_E un peccato! Ha fatto
tacere Maria Santissima!_’”
They smiled and listened. It pleased them to know what the Signora
liked and how she liked.
“I remember the first time I saw that church,” she said, pleased to go
on. “It was my first Christmas in Rome, and, after having heard a Mass
at Aurora, I went out alone later, to lose myself and see what I would
come to. I wandered into the long street that is now so familiar, and
saw the tip of a _campanile_ peeping at me over the hill in front like
a beckoning finger. I followed, and presently knew where I must be,
though I had carefully refrained from reading descriptions of
anything. The morning was fresh and clear, but inside the church was
quite dim, except that the round window high up the eastern end of the
nave was thrust through by a long bar of sunshine that looked as
though it might make a hole for itself out the other end, it was so
live and solid. I recollected pictures I had seen of the Jewish
tabernacle, with the two bars by which it was carried, or lifted, and
I said to myself, Suppose another gold bar should be put in, and the
whole church, and all who are in it, carried off over hill and dale,
and through the air to some Promised Land fairer than Italy. There was
a man up outside who seemed to be afraid of such a catastrophe; for he
was struggling to draw together the two halves of a red curtain over
the window. It was not easy to do—I presume he was resisted—but
finally everything was shut out but a blush. All that upper end of the
nave was rosy, and pink reflections ran along the inner sides of the
two rows of white columns, like ripples in water, and faded at the
grand altar they had strained to reach. You could fancy they sighed
with contentment when they did reach it. The sacristy-bell rang for a
Mass beginning just as I entered, and I took that as an indication
that I was to go no further till I had heard it. So I knelt close to
the door in a little nook by the tribune. The priest stopped at the
altar in the very farthest corner. I could see him between the
columns, and so far away that I could hardly know when he knelt or
rose. When the Mass was over, I seated myself where the bases of two
columns before the Borghese Chapel form a grand marble throne, and
there I stayed the whole forenoon.”
“Nothing strikes me more in Catholic churches,” Mr. Vane said, “than
to see a worshipper attending to the service from some far nook or
corner, with a crowd of people walking about between him and the
altar. You do not seem to think it necessary to be near the priest or
hear what he is saying. That is one great difference between you and
Protestants. What their minister says is all. Though, to be sure,” he
added, “one wouldn’t always know what the priest were saying, if one
were close to him.”
“It isn’t necessary as long as we know what he is doing,” the Signora
replied rather quickly. “Besides, Catholics, even uneducated ones, do
know very nearly the words he is speaking, without hearing them. It is
a mistake constantly made by Protestants to think that Catholics do
not understand, because they themselves do not. They forget that there
is little variety in the service, and that in all essential parts one
Mass is like all other Masses. An intelligent Catholic, whether he can
read or not, can tell you just what the priest is doing as far off as
he can see him, and knows just what prayers he should offer at the
moment. As for the priest or his assistant not speaking distinctly,
they often do, oftener than not; and when they do not, it is not
strange. The same words, repeated over and over again, even when
repeated with the whole heart, have a tendency to become indistinct,
and to drop the consonants and keep only the vowels. The torso of
sound is all right.”
“Like the foot of your bronze St. Peter, worn smooth with
oft-repeated, fervent kisses,” the gentleman said, with a gravity that
hid a smile.” You may say that it has only the vowel shape of a foot,
the consonant angles quite kissed away.”
The Signora lifted her head a little, and immediately changed the
subject. Decidedly, she thought, it would be necessary to correct Mr.
Vane’s conversation. But it would not be pleasant to do so the first
day.
They lingered at the table nearly an hour, talking over old times and
friends, and who were dead and who were married; till presently, it
having got buzzed about among the select number of flies in the room
that there was fruit at hand, they reminded the company to retire.
“Tea at five and supper at nine,” was the Signora’s parting reminder.
“And now, a pleasant rest to you!”
CHAPTER II.
“AY DE MI, ALHAMA!”
Those who knew little or nothing of Mr. Vane usually fancied that they
knew him perfectly, and were in the habit of describing him with
epigrammatic brevity: A kind, honorable man, indolent of mind and
body, very tolerant, has no strong convictions, and seems, not so much
to live, as to be waiting to live, and waiting quite comfortably—as if
a fish out of water should find itself for a few days in wine and
water.
Those who knew him best hesitated to describe him; but all agreed that
he was kind and honorable. We will not attempt any dissection of his
character.
Twenty-three years before we find him in Rome he married a beautiful
girl born in New Orleans of Spanish parents. He had long admired her,
but had been kept at a distance by her coldness; and when, quite
suddenly, she consented to be his wife, he could scarcely have told if
his delight were greater than his surprise.
“I do not love you,” she said with gentle calmness, “but I esteem you,
and am prepared to do my duty as a wife. I should have preferred not
to marry; but my parents desire that I should, and, as I am their only
child, I do not think it right to oppose their wishes.”
It was scarcely an explanation to satisfy even an accepted lover, and
Mr. Vane could not help asking if there were any one whom she
preferred to him.
The answer was not prompt in coming, and was given with great reserve,
though the lady showed neither confusion nor unwillingness to give it.
She thought gravely for a minute before speaking, her fair, quiet face
all the time open to his study. “I have never had a lover,” she said
then, “and I have never wished to marry any one. I have nothing to
confess nor to repent of in this regard.”
With this he had been obliged to content himself. What unacknowledged
maiden preference, untouched by passion, her words might have
concealed, if any such had been, he could not ask and he never knew;
but gentle, faithful, prompt in every duty, and sincerely desirous to
render him happy as she was, he always felt that there was an inner
chamber in her heart where he had never penetrated, and which she had
even closed to her own eyes. There was no appearance of concealment or
conscious reserve, no hidden pain, but only a something wanting, as if
some delicate spring in her soul had been broken. He had hoped to make
her forget whatever shadow of regret her life might have known, and to
restore her to an elastic joyousness more suited to her age; and, in
the earlier months of their married life, finding his efforts vain, he
had broken out in some slight reproaches now and then. But the blush
of pain and alarm, the anxious inquiries, “In what have I failed?”
“What have I done to displease you?” and the gayety she strove to
assume for his pleasure, made him regret his impatience. Tacitly he
allowed her to renounce an affectation which was the first she had
ever stooped to, and, as time passed on, they settled into a friendly
and undemonstrative intercourse. Isabel seemed to have drawn her
disposition from this lively surface of her mother’s briefly-troubled
life; but the younger showed something of that quiet melancholy which
had succeeded. Mrs. Vane died when Bianca was but six years old, and
her husband had never manifested any disposition to marry again,
seeming to be satisfied with the society of his children.
In religion the daughters followed their mother, who had been a
Catholic. The father was still Protestant.
“Poor papa!” Isabel said when speaking to a friend on the subject, “he
never will be persuaded to study theology. The only way to attract him
to a religion would be by the excellence of its professors; and he
protests that he sees no difference in people in general, that he has
no doubt the Chinese have amiable qualities, and that, if he lived
among the Turks, he should probably become very fond of them. What can
one do with such a man? Bring out all your hard little arguments and
lay them down before him, showing how perfectly they fit into the most
beautiful mosaic for your side, and he listens with the greatest
attention, then mixes them all up, and rearranges them into an
entirely different pattern for the opposite side, and ends by
declaring that both are true as far as they go. You see, he has spent
his life with two excellent women, one Protestant and the other
Catholic—his mother and our mamma—and that has spoiled him for
conversion. I’ve often wished that dear grand-mamma had been the least
bit of a vixen, or had even taken snuff in her old age; but she never
did a thing to spoil the beautiful white halo about her, and died at
last as she had lived. Mamma went as the moon goes, waning, growing
dimmer every day, till you see it like a little silver cloud in the
sky, and then it is gone. But grand-mamma seemed to look up suddenly,
and smile, and disappear, as if some one she thought the world of, and
hadn’t seen for a long time, had come and called her out of the room
for a minute.”
“You ask what you are to do with such a man as your father,” her
friend said. “I answer, you can let him alone, and I strongly advise
you to do so. He is quite capable of thinking and observing without
being teased. He leaves you free; do the same by him.”
“I suppose I must,” the girl sighed unwillingly.
Bianca, who remembered her mother only as the little silver cloud
fading in the sky, had also her pretty tribute to pay to the
grandmother, who had not been many years dead.
“Of course we wished her to be a Catholic,” she said; “but no one
could know her and doubt that she was good. She did not believe our
dogmas because she did not understand them, but she never spoke an
uncharitable word of us. Indeed, I used to think that unconsciously
she believed everything. Her religion was like a rose-bush on which
only one rose bloomed out, and that rose was Christ. All the rest were
just buds with the smallest pink tips showing. She was so dazzled and
wondering over her wonderful one rose that she could not think of the
others. What a blossoming out there will be when she reaches heaven,
if she is not there already!”
While we have been giving this little history, _casa Ottant’-otto_ has
been as tranquil as if it were mid-night instead of mid-day. The rooms
were perfectly dark, except where a chink in the shutter or a loose
hasp let in here and there a light too small to be called a ray, which
made a pale glow in one spot, showing like a blotch on the darkness.
Not a sound was heard within, and scarcely a sound from without; for,
early as it was in the season, the street had its quiet hour, and the
birds, the only noisy people on the garden side, would no more have
thought of singing at noon than of remaining silent in the morning.
But, as the afternoon wore on, something stirred on a red cushion in a
corner of the dining-room. It was a black cat, called, from its color,
the _abate_. This member of the family rose, stretched himself slowly,
first one side, then the other, opened his mouth in a portentous yawn,
and seemed to utter an inquiring “Mew!” but, what with sleepiness,
warmth, and languor, the sound was very nearly inaudible. Looking
about, he saw Adriano, the man-servant, asleep in an arm-chair, his
head, in a little scarlet cap with a tassel, dropped on one shoulder,
his arms hanging down over the arms of the chair. Wakened, perhaps, by
the glance, the man opened his eyes, gathered up his head and arms,
and began, in turn, to stretch himself out of sleep, giving an audible
yawn instead of a “Mew.” The _abate_ then exerted himself so far as to
saunter to the threshold of the door looking into the kitchen.
Annunciata, who had placed her chair in a corner of the room in such a
manner that the walls supported her while she slept, was just
stretching out one foot to pick up the sandal that had dropped off
during her nap. All this the cat saw, doubtless. It was too dark for
any one else to see.
Presently Adriano opened a half shutter in the dining-room, admitting
a faint light; then, passing, with slip-shod feet, into the _sala_,
threw the windows wide open. Instantly all the bright out-doors, which
had been waiting to enter—sunshine, perfume, and west wind—rushed in
together, lit the gilding in a new glitter, reddened the velvet again,
whitened the curtains and set them blowing about, roused a hundred
little winking mischiefs in the carvings, and almost brought a smile
into the many pictured faces on the walls that had been waiting so
long in the dark with their eyes wide open.
After a little interval, the Signora came out of her room; then
Isabel’s bright face appeared.
“I didn’t believe I should sleep a wink on this first day,” she said;
“but I have slept the whole time. One becomes accustomed to
everything. But where can Bianca be? I’m not at all sure she did right
to go out alone, and at this hour. That girl does the most
extraordinary things sometimes, quiet as she seems. I sometimes think,
Signora, that Bianca has great force of will.”
Uttering this last remark, the young woman looked at her friend as if
she expected an astonished denial. The Signora, on the contrary,
replied with a rather significant smile: “Only ‘sometimes,’ my dear?
If your sister had a motive worthy, her will would be strong enough to
oppose the whole world.”
“Bianca!” cried Isabel in astonishment. “Why, she is the softest
creature alive.”
The Signora was arranging tea-cups on a table drawn up before one of
the large sofas, and waited until her hands were free of them before
replying, as she wished to speak with emphasis. “Do you think,” she
said then, “that it is only the positive, opinionated women who have
firmness of character? My experience is that your women who are
constantly driving and directing people in small things can almost
always be themselves driven in great things, while those who do not
like to make a fuss about trifles will stand their ground when it
comes to a matter of importance. If the truth could be known, I
believe it would be found that the world’s heroines of action and of
suffering have been those same soft creatures in ordinary
circumstances. And here’s the child now.”
In fact, the entrance-door opened at that moment from without, and
Bianca Vane came in with cheeks as red as roses. She had begged the
Signora’s permission to go out instead of going to bed, promising to
go no farther than _Santa Maria Maggiore_, which was but five minutes’
walk from the house.
Isabel looked at her sister very gravely while she stood pulling the
great key out of the lock, smiling to herself, and tugging away with
the softest, prettiest hands in the world. The elder sister had been
accustomed to be called, and to consider herself, the stronger of the
two, and she was not altogether certain now that the Signora had not
been jesting.
The great Italian key, large enough for a prison, was got out of the
lock, the door shut, half by the wind and half by the lady, with a
force that made its three little bells and its two immense iron bolts
rattle and ring, and Bianca went straight to the Signora and kissed
her—a somewhat unusual demonstration. “I’ve been so happy!” she
whispered close to the cheek her lips had touched. “How beautiful it
is! You must let me have a ‘weakness’ for your church and its bells,
and all that belongs to it.”
A nod and glance of intelligence were exchanged between the two, and
the girl went to take off her bonnet.
Mr. Vane appeared at the same moment, looking as if he had enjoyed a
most satisfying nap, and tea was prepared. The Signora and the two
girls occupied the long red sofa, over which, on the wall, a stately
Penelope, seated among her maidens, laid aside her often-ravelled web,
and earnestly regarded the Ulysses whom she had not yet recognized,
but could not remove her eyes from. At the other side of the table,
opposite them, a high-backed, ample chair had been placed for the
gentleman of the family, who seemed to feel himself very much at home.
“Has my little girl been asleep?” he asked, looking at his younger
daughter.
“Well, no, papa,” was the reply, “but she has been dreaming.”
No more questions were asked then. Mr. Vane was looking at the picture
opposite him, which had a very pleasant suggestion of perils and
journeys over, and happy reunion after long separation. Suddenly his
glance dropped to the lady beneath, went back to the picture, and a
second time sought the Signora’s face.
“Why,” he said, “that Penelope looks as though you had sat for her to
a not very good artist.”
The Signora gave him his tea. “I assure you,” she said, “that I never
posed for that nor any other Penelope during the whole course of my
life. The character doesn’t suit me.”
Mr. Vane took his cup, and studied over this little speech while he
slowly stirred in his tea two cubes of sugar. He had been quite
correct in his remark. The two faces were strikingly alike—fine in
their oval shape, with dark-blue eyes, and a hint of yellow in the
thick flaxen hair.
Presently he looked up. “I can’t guess,” he said.
The lady laughed. “When it is so plain? Well, in the first place, I am
not so industrious; in the next place, I shouldn’t have let Ulysses go
away without me; in the third place, I haven’t the suitors; and, in
the fourth place, if I had had them, I should have kept them in better
order. I think the places are all taken. And now, Bianca has for a
long time had something on her mind to say. You have the floor, my
dear.”
“Oh! it’s nothing,” Bianca said; “only if you are done talking about
Penelope, I should like to give you all a piece of advice.”
The company were unanimously anxious to hear. Gentle suggestions they
often heard from this young lady; but it was perhaps the first time
they had ever heard her propose deliberately to give advice to any
one, and still less to a company of elders.
“My advice is this,” she said: “whenever any of you take your first
walk in a strange city, look at the house you live in before you go
away from it, and see how it is made, and what number it is, and make
sure of the name of the street; otherwise, though you may find every
place you do not want, you may never find your own house again. That’s
all I have to say.”
“Excellent advice!” Mr. Vane said. “But may I ask what made you think
of it just now?”
“First let me tell you a little story,” said Bianca. “Once upon a time
a young woman I know went to live in a strange city where they spoke a
language she did not understand. The very first day, almost the first
hour, she went out for a walk, and went alone; but her mind was so
full of the place she was going to that she took no note of the place
she was leaving. No matter what a nice time she had before she started
to return; that doesn’t belong to the story, which is entirely
tragical. Her troubles began when she thought that in two minutes she
would be at her own door. Come to think about it, she had no idea
where her own door was, in which of three or four radiating streets it
was to be found, or what the number of it was, nor how it looked. So
she wandered up and down, and to and fro, in the hot sun, and passed
her home without recognizing it any more than the Signora’s portrait
up there recognizes her husband; and at last, when she was just ready
to cry, and to believe that the house and everybody in it had been
bewitched and whisked off to some other continent, and that she had to
go blowing about for ever in that lost way, what do you think
happened?”
The story-teller had reason to be gratified by the expression of
intense interest with which her audience waited for the catastrophe.
“Well,” she continued, “this poor wanderer happened to glance up a
house-front as she was passing, and she saw out of a window a hand
laid on the frame—just the hand of some one who stood inside. It was
very handsome and white, and on one finger of it was a ring that she
recognized. And then the tears of sorrow that she was about to shed
changed to tears of joy, and she said: ‘O darling hand of my papa,
with my own good-for-nothing cameo face on it—’”
And Bianca finished her story by flying up out of her chair, and
rushing to hang on her father’s shoulder, and kiss the hand that had
found her.
“You don’t mean to say that you have been out wandering about Rome all
alone!” Mr. Vane exclaimed, reddening.
“I only went up to the Liberian basilica,” she said; “and it was an
absurd thing in me, getting lost. You didn’t imagine I was going
properly to sleep my first day in Rome, did you? You might as well
have put a flame to bed, and told it to shut its eyes.”
As she spoke, a dash of clear crimson stained her cheeks, as if the
juice of a ripe pomegranate had been flung over them, and her head was
raised quickly and with an air that was almost defiant, though
unconsciously so.
The Signora had seen this gesture and blush once or twice before, and
thought she understood the meaning of them; how the impassioned and
enthusiastic nature hidden under that pensive softness and silence
resented now and then the languid indifference of the father and the
superficial positiveness of the sister, and proudly asserted its own
claim to an individual and untrammelled existence.
Mr. Vane dropped his eyes, and an expression of pain passed
momentarily over his face. He also had seen the look before—seen it in
his wife’s face as well as in his daughter’s. “I do not mean to shut
you up, my dear,” he said gravely. “I only wish that you should come
to no harm. If you like to go about freely, the Signora can, perhaps,
recommend a good, trusty servant, who will protect you without being
intrusive.”
She did not say a word, only leaned close to him, and laid her cheek,
still glowing red, on his hair.
He smiled, and spoke more lightly. “But I should like to have you go
with me sometimes, and kindle my fuel with your fires.”
She embraced him silently and went back to her seat.
The Signora smiled into her teacup over this little scene, in which
nothing had pleased her more than the sweet readiness of the father to
be reconciled, and his quick comprehension of the meaning of his
daughter’s mute caress. “He has certainly great delicacy and
sensitiveness,” she thought. “I wonder if Bianca and he may not be
very much alike!”
“The chief danger in walking out in Rome,” she said, “is from the
public carriages. The traditions are evidently all in favor of those
who drive, not of those who walk, and pedestrians have no rights which
quadrupeds and the bipeds who drive them are bound to respect. For the
rest, I have gone about a good deal alone, and have had no more
annoyance than I should have had in any other large city in the world.
Of course young Italian women have not so much liberty as we take; but
all sensible and honest people here understand that foreigners do not
cross land and sea, and come to the most famous city in the world, in
order to shut themselves up in houses; and, moreover, that it may well
be inconvenient sometimes to find an escort. I told Bianca that she
could go up to the church as well as not, but must go no further. It
was stupid of me not to warn her of losing her way back. And,” she
added, with a sudden change, “it was still more stupid of me not to
recollect the difference between American and Italian bread. You poor
child!” For she had caught sight of Isabel getting quite red in the
face over a roll she was trying to break.
“They do bake their bread so hard here and in France,” the girl
sighed, giving up the attempt in despair. “In Paris I could throw our
rolls all about the room without injuring anything but the furniture.
I didn’t make the smallest dent in the bread.”
The Signora promised them the most American of bread for the future,
but added: “I have become so accustomed to this hard baking that I had
forgotten all about the difference. In time you will come to prefer
it, and to find that the lighter baking will taste raw to you. Indeed,
you will adopt a good many Italian customs in regard to eating, which,
so far as concerns health, I think they understand better than any
other nation. Their prohibitions you must certainly attend to, however
unreasonable they may seem to you; but you are not obliged to eat what
they like. The first year I came here I broke a tooth trying to eat a
piece of cake they brought me on Christmas Eve. They said it was their
custom to eat it at that season, and I obeyed dutifully. It is dark, a
caricature of our fruit-cake, and seems to be made of nuts and
raisins, held together by a tough, dry paste. It was like a piece out
of a badly-macadamized street. Fortunately, I broke only one tooth,
and that saved my stomach; for I do not know what would have become of
me if I had swallowed the stuff.”
Mr. Vane gave a significant “Ahem!” “I should have supposed,” he
remarked, “that any one who had swallowed the Infalli—”
“Papa!” cried Isabel, making a peremptory gesture to silence him.
“—bility—” he pursued calmly.
“O papa!” said Bianca, with soft entreaty. He winced, but
finished—“ought to be able to digest anything that Rome can offer.”
The two girls looked at the Signora. They knew her rather better than
their father did. She was folding her napkin up very carefully, and
considering. After a minute, still smoothing the damask folds, she
spoke. “I have always thought it wrong to ridicule even a false
religion. When I think that on the poor crumbling mythologies of the
world the souls of men have tried to climb to such a heaven as they
had glimpses of, or were capable of imagining, their mistakes become
to me sad, or terrible—anything but laughable. One doesn’t laugh at
sight of a rotten plank that broke in the hands of a drowning man. And
if falsehood, when human prayers have been breathed on it, and human
tears shed on it, and human hearts have clung to it, believing it to
be truth, is something no longer to be ridiculed, how much more should
we treat the truth seriously! The dogma of Infallibility was the
anchor the church dropped when she saw the storm coming, and it is
probable that before we shall have peace again we may hang for a time
on that one rope. Nothing in revelation is more serious to me.”
She rose, without giving any opportunity for reply, and without
looking at any one. “If you like, we will prepare for a drive,” she
added, and left the room quietly.
But in spite of the calmness with which she spoke the Signora was much
agitated, and scarcely refrained from tears when she was alone. To
give such a reproof was only less difficult than to suffer an affront
to the church to pass unreproved; and it was with a little nervousness
that she went out to meet her guest again.
He was in the drawing-room alone, evidently waiting for her, and the
first glance in his face entirely reassured her, so sweet and
untroubled was his expression.
“I am like a great rough elephant who has stepped on the kind lady who
was feeding him with sugarplums,” he said, and offered his hand to her
with a confidence in her good-will which was almost more pleasing than
her confidence in his.
And so ended their first and last quarrel.
The girls, who came presently, with a little timidity, beamed when
they saw the two standing by a window and watching the work going on
across the street. All the space there had once been a palace-garden,
but now nearly every flowery thing had disappeared, and in their place
the foundations of a large building were being laid in a superbly
solid way. Wide walls of stone, on which three men could walk abreast,
had in some places risen a few feet above the outer level, their bases
sunk ten feet, perhaps, below the deep cellar bottom, and the trenches
for founding the partition-walls were being dug in the same manner.
They could see, too, the beginning of the grand stone arches which
were to support the floors. An Italian would have passed all this
without notice; but to one accustomed to the flimsy style of American
architecture the sight was refreshing. In the centre of the space the
building was to occupy still remained a fountain-basin from which the
water had been drawn away, exposing a circle of beautiful round arches
of gray stone. Under these arches the workmen were accustomed to take
refuge when a shower came up, crouching there contentedly, and looking
out at the bright drops as they fell, like swallows out of a row of
nests under the barn-eaves.
“I have wondered whether there ever before was a house on this spot,”
the Signora said. “If there were, a garden has bloomed over it for
centuries, as, perhaps, at some future time, another garden will cover
the ruins of this work of to-day. A few months ago some flowers still
lingered here, but they were trampled or dug away, till at last only
one red poppy was left at the edge of the cellar-wall. I watched it
day after day, blazing there like a heart on fire. Every morning I
looked out I feared to miss it; but there it clung among trampling
feet of men and beasts, with stone-work being built almost over it,
and every sort of destruction threatening, but never falling. When
nearly a week had passed, I could bear it no longer. If at that time I
had seen a foot set upon, or a rock crushing, the flower, I should
have cried out as though I were myself being crushed. I sent Adriano
out to get it for me, and pressed it carefully in the prettiest book I
have—the brave little blossom! Here it is, see! The thin petals are
like faded blood-stains, but the seed-vessel in the centre is firm,
and precisely like a little marble urn with a mossy vine wreathing its
base and running up one side. In that urn repose the dust and the hope
of a long line of scarlet poppies.”
The gentleman listened indulgently to the Signora’s story, and watched
her with interest as she put the relic carefully away.
And then they went down to the carriage that was waiting for them, and
drove through the long street that stretches over hill and valley from
the Esquiline to the Pincio, so that one looks, as through a
telescope, from the sunny brow of the former to the _campanile_ where
_Maria Assunta_ and her maidens
“Sprinkle with holy sounds the air, as the priest with the hyssop
Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them.”
Some one has said of this street that it is like a boa-constrictor
after it has swallowed an ox and stretched itself out to digest him,
and the Quirinal Hill is the ox.
All the world was out that evening, and even the most insensible
promenader spared a glance for the sky. It was Roman form with Gothic
colors, the round arch of the heavens a pale, pure gold, bright, yet
tender as a flower, and against that background, less like a city than
like an embossed picture, Rome, with its great cupola, its crowded
beauties of architecture, its pines and its cypresses. Of the
personages, more or less distinguished, in the circle of carriages
behind them, the new-comers took but little note. The old papal
picture, with its cardinals’ coaches and its prelates’ costumes, was
effaced, and there was nothing in the human part of the scene more
striking than the last Paris fashions—as if some tyro with his coarse
brush should paint over a Titian. If one should seek for royalty in
that crowd, he would not find the angelic old king, clothed in white,
as if already among the blest, beaming on all the faces turned toward
him, and giving benediction right and left as he went. In place of
that might be seen to pass a brutal face, with the color of one
half-strangled, with upturned nose and curled-up moustache, and with
eyes whose glances no respectable woman would encounter. The Roman
people used to say, “When the pope comes out, the sun comes out”; but
no such shining proverb was suggested by this dark and forbidding
face.
The Signora, looking with her friends, seemed herself to behold Rome
for the first time, and to see in swift contrast both present and
past. Was it past, indeed, and for ever, that dominion of centuries,
around which had gathered a glory so _unique_? She stretched her hands
out involuntarily, and sighed in the song of the vanquished Moors:
“Ay de mi, Alhama!”
Mr. Vane turned to her rather suddenly. “I have great confidence in
your sincerity,” he said, “and I believe that you who know the truth
need not fear. Now, setting aside the questions of the right of the
church to possess Rome, and the need she has of it as a base of
operations, and the fact that the great functions are no longer
performed, tell me, do you really regret the old time?”
“You are setting aside a great deal,” she said smilingly; “but I
answer you yes with all my heart. Rome has lost in every way. There
seems no longer in the world a place for tired people to come to. All
is hurry, and fret, and fuss; and comfort is gone. Has it ever
occurred to you to think that many people, especially in progressive
countries, inflict an immense deal of discomfort on themselves and
others in striving for what they call the comforts of life, losing
with one hand what they gain with the other? The contented spirit is
gone, the quiet, the patience, the simplicity, the charity. Poverty
was never before unpitied in Rome, and now the poor not only beg, they
starve. They never starved in the old time. I would not undervalue the
improvements of modern science—I am proud of them; but they are not
all, nor the greatest, glories of life. Such of them as suited the
place would have come in gently and gradually, without disturbing
anything. They have been brought in at the point of the bayonet, and
the bayonet-point has been left in them. We still feel it. I sometimes
pity these progressionists, who are often, no doubt, sincere in their
hopes and aspirations, as well as immensely conceited at the same
time. They feel the pains of life for themselves and for others, and
they fancy that they have found a new solution for the problem that
the church solved centuries ago, and that they can have heaven let
down to them, instead of having the trouble of climbing to it. It’s a
pitiful thing to dedicate one’s life to a great mistake. Yes, Rome is
spoilt, looking at it from a philanthropic as well as from an artistic
and a religious point of view.”
“It was here Lucullus gave his famous supper,” Isabel said, glancing
back at the gardens. “Was that what is called the most costly supper
ever given? I forget.”
Bianca clasped the Signora’s arm and whispered against her shoulder:
“We know a costlier one, don’t we?”
“Speak, darling!” was the answering whisper.
“Where the Host gave himself, and made the feast eternal.”
After a few minutes they looked round to find the drive almost
deserted, and, entering their carriage, drove slowly homeward, making
a few little turns in the neighborhood to familiarize the new-comers
with the location of the house. The _Ave Maria_ was ringing from all
the belfries, great and small, from storied _campanile_, and little
arches set against the sky; workmen and workwomen were going homeward,
and windows were everywhere being shut on the beautiful twilight,
whose air the Italians so fear.
They went up to the _sala_, and, albeit with a sigh, shut out the west
with its crescent now triumphant, and all the sweetness of orange and
jasmine flowers, and all the twitter of subsiding birds.
“I think,” the Signora said, “that the Roman past wishes, to
monopolize the Roman nights, and that the unhealthy air we fear is
nothing but the breath of ghosts who do not desire our company out of
doors. But it’s a pity, besides being very disagreeable of them.”
Annunciata brought in a lamp, and said “_Buona sera!_” in setting it
down.
“They always wish you _buona sera_ when they bring the lamp, and
_felice_ or _felicissima notte_ when they leave you for the night,”
the Signora said. “Impatient as I am with them sometimes, they
constantly conciliate me by some pretty custom. I followed one of
these customs this morning—a beautiful one, too. It is this: When a
priest says his first Mass, any one who will may follow him to the
sacristy, and kiss his hand in the palm and at the back. Isn’t it
beautiful? A young priest from one of the colleges said his first Mass
in the Borghese chapel this morning. An elder priest, whom they call
in such cases the _padrino_ or god-father, stood by him, and two young
fellow-students served the Mass, one of them receiving Holy Communion.
When it was over, I begged and received permission to kiss the sacred
hand that had just consecrated and touched the Holy Eucharist for the
first time.”
They were a little tired that evening, and separated very soon after
supper. The father went to his room, Isabel to hers, and, after their
doors had closed, the Signora stole to Bianca’s to give her one
good-night kiss, and found her just kneeling by her bedside.
The girl gave a tearful smile over her shoulder, but did not rise.
“_Felicissima notte!_” said her friend, and, embracing, left her to
the care of the angels.
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE IRISH HOME-RULE MOVEMENT.
II.
Whatever the ultimate fate and fortunes of the Irish Home-Rule
movement may be, it must be conceded that the projectors of no other
political endeavor witnessed in Ireland for a century past took
greater pains than did its founders to constitute the undertaking as
the work, not of a party or a section or a class, but of the whole
nation.
For three years, from 1870 to 1873, the organization had existed in
the precursory or preliminary character described in the last number
of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Signs which could not be misread had, with
increasing frequency and force, proclaimed that even already it might
well, without presumption, adopt a more authoritative tone; but to the
men who guided its counsels, these things spoke only of the moment
come at last for submitting their work to formal ratification or
rejection by the country.
In what manner, or by what means, could the opinions of the Irish
people best be collected or ascertained for such a purpose? By the
formal and regular, open, public, and free election of parochial,
baronial, or county delegates to a national convention, of course. But
there is a law which forbids such a proceeding in Ireland. Delegates
may be elected, and may sit, deliberate, vote, and act, in convention
assembled, in England, Scotland, or Wales; but if such a proceeding
were attempted in Ireland the parties would be liable to
imprisonment.[161] A formal election of delegates to a national
convention being therefore impracticable, what course would be deemed
next best? Only by _indirect_ means could the results which such a
convention would _directly_ supply be replaced. The votes of the
parliamentary representatives would have been an excellent test of the
public feeling, had those representatives been elected by such free
choice as the present system of vote by ballot secures in Ireland. But
in 1873 it was only at desperate cost the Irish constituencies could
venture to exercise the franchise as conscience dictated. The votes of
municipal representatives, and other popularly elected public bodies,
would come next in importance, yet these were amenable to a similar
objection; although, as a matter of fact, a vast proportion (probably
a large majority) of those representatives, even in 1873, would vote a
protest against the rule of the English Parliament. Summoning classes,
as classes, to sit in Dublin as a national council was not to be
listened to. For a long period these were the questions, the
perplexing problems, which, adjourned from meeting to meeting,
occupied the Home Government Council. At length they decided that
there was nothing for it but to convene by a great National
Requisition, which should be a sort of _plébiscite_ or declaration in
itself, an aggregate conference of delegates or “deputations” from
every county in Ireland. It was urged by some that the requisition
should be an “open” one—merely calling upon the conference to discuss
the Irish situation; but this view gave way before the advantage of
making the requisition itself a more or less decisive pronouncement
from the thousands of influential and patriotic Irishmen who could
not, from one reason or another, be actually present in Dublin. The
form of the document was, in fact, decided only after consultation
with at least a few of the most prominent men in each of the various
sections of national politicians: Repealers, Conservative
Nationalists, “Forty-eight-men,” O’Connellites, Mitchelites, Fenians,
Liberals, etc. The well-known veteran Repealer, O’Neill Daunt,
proceeded to Tuam specially charged to seek the counsel and
co-operation of the great man whose name alone it was felt would be
equivalent to national approval—the illustrious Dr. McHale,
“Archbishop of the West.” If any one living could be fairly assumed to
speak as O’Connell himself would speak if now alive, “John McHale” was
the man. He was the old Repeal cause personified.[162]
Mr. Daunt returned to Dublin bearing the news that not only did the
archbishop approve, but that he would himself head the requisition.
The announcement was hailed with cheers, like the tidings of some
great victory. A few days later, accordingly, the following form of
requisition was circulated for signature:
“We, the undersigned, feel bound to declare our conviction
that it is necessary to the peace and prosperity of Ireland,
and would be conducive to the strength and stability of the
United Kingdom, that the right of domestic legislation on
all Irish affairs should be restored to our country; and
that it is desirable that Irishmen should unite to obtain
that restoration upon the following principles:
“To obtain for our country the right and privilege of
managing our own affairs, by a Parliament assembled in
Ireland, composed of Her Majesty the Sovereign, and the
lords and commons of Ireland.
“To secure for that Parliament, under a federal arrangement,
the right of legislating for and regulating all matters
relating to the internal affairs of Ireland, and control
over Irish resources and revenues, subject to the obligation
of contributing our just proportion of the imperial
expenditure.
“To leave to an Imperial Parliament the power of dealing
with all questions affecting the imperial crown and
government, legislation regarding the colonies and other
dependencies of the crown, the relation of the united empire
with foreign states, and all matters appertaining to the
defence and the stability of the empire at large.
“To obtain such an adjustment of the relations between the
two countries without any interference with the prerogatives
of the crown, or any disturbance of the principles of the
constitution.
“And we hereby invite a conference, to be held at such time
and place as may be found generally most convenient, of all
those favorable to the above principles, to consider the
best and most expedient means of carrying them into
practical effect.”
It was expected that probably between five and ten thousand signatures
might be obtained to this document among the influential political
classes in Ireland, rendering it the largest and most notable array of
the kind ever seen in the country. In a few weeks, however, nearly
_twenty-five thousand_ names of what may truly be called
“representative men” were appended to it! Only those who were in
Ireland at the time can know what a sensation was created by the
appearance of the leading Dublin newspapers one day with four or five
pages of each devoted to what could be after all only a portion of
this monster requisition. Not only was every county represented,
nearly every barony had sent its best and worthiest men. Although most
amazement was at the time created by the array of what was termed “men
of position,” the promoters of the movement valued even more the names
of certain men in middle and humble life, town traders,
tenant-farmers, artisans, and others, who were well known to be the
men in each locality most trusted by their own class. Of magistrates,
members of Parliament, peers (a few), bishops, clergymen (Protestant
as well as Catholic), mayors, sheriffs, municipal representatives,
town-commissioners, poor-law guardians, there were altogether
literally thousands. So general a mingling of classes and creeds and
political sections had never before been known (on a scale of such
magnitude) in Ireland. Yet no effort had been made to collect
signatures after the fashion of petition-signing. The object was to
seek a half-dozen names of really representative men from each
district, and these were applied for through the post-office. In
nearly every case the document, when returned signed by a score or
two, was accompanied by a letter stating that as many thousands of
signatures from that district would have been forwarded if necessary.
Tuesday, the 18th of November, 1873, was the date publicly fixed for
the conference, which was convened “to meet from day to day until its
proceedings are concluded.” As the day approached, the most intense
interest and curiosity were excited by the event, not merely in Dublin
and throughout Ireland, but all over Great Britain. The great circular
hall of the Rotunda was transformed into the semblance of a
legislative chamber, the attendant suite of apartments being converted
into division lobbies,[163] dining-rooms, writing-rooms, etc., while
the handsome gallery which sweeps around the hall was set apart for
spectators.
The English newspapers seemed much troubled by all this. They did not
like that Ireland should in any shape or form take to “playing at
parliament,” as they sneeringly expressed it; and this conference
affair was vividly, dangerously suggestive to the “too imaginative”
Irish. There was, however, they declared, one consolation for them:
out of evil would come good; this same conference would effectually
cure the Irish of any desire for a native parliament, and show the
world how unfit were Hibernians for a separate legislature. Because
(so declared and prophesied the English papers from day to day) before
the conference would be three hours in session, there would be a
“Donnybrook row”; fists would be flourished and heads broken; Old
Irelanders and Young Irelanders, Repealers and Federalists, Fenians
and Home-Rulers, would, it was declared, “fly at one another’s
throats.” At least a dozen English editors simultaneously hit upon the
witty joke about “the Kilkenny cats.”
This sort of “prophesying” went on with such suspicious energy, as the
day neared for the meeting of the conference, that it began to be
surmised the government party was meditating an attempt to verify it.
Signs were not wanting that wily and dexterous, as well as pecuniary,
efforts were being made to incite dissent and disturbance. Admittance
to the conference was obtainable by any one who had signed the
requisition, on recording his name and address; and it was quite
practicable for a few government emissaries, by pretending to be very
“advanced” Nationalists, uncompromising Repealers or anti-tory
Catholics, to get up flourishing disputations and “rows.” Indeed,
anxiety, if not apprehension, on this score seemed to prevail to some
degree on the eve of the 18th. Would there be “splits,” would there be
discord and turbulence and impossibility of reconcilement, or would
there be order and decorum, earnest debate, but harmonious spirit and
action? All felt that the event at hand was one of critical importance
to Ireland.
For four days—the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st of November, 1873—the
conference continued in session, sitting each day at eleven o’clock in
the morning, and adjourning at six o’clock in the afternoon. The
number of “delegates” was 947;[164] and the daily attendance at each
sitting averaged about six hundred. Fortunately, an authentic record
was taken of the composition of the assembly; and it is only on
glancing over the names and addresses of those nine hundred gentlemen
that a full conception of its character can be formed. One of the most
notable features in the scene, one that called forth much public
comment as an indication of the deep public interest felt in the
proceedings, was the crowded gallery of ladies and gentlemen who,
having succeeded in obtaining admission-cards, day by day sat out the
debates, listening with eager attention to all that went forward. The
pressure for these admission-cards increased each day, and at the
final sitting, on the 21st, it was found impossible to seat the
hundreds of visitors who filled the avenues to the gallery.
There was much speculation as to who would be selected as chairman of
the convention. The choice when made known called forth universal
approbation. It was Mr. William Shaw, Member of Parliament for the
borough of Bandon,[165] a Protestant gentleman of the highest position
and reputation, a banker (president of the Munster Bank), a man of
large wealth, of grave and undemonstrative manner, but of great depth
and quiet force of character. He was one of the last men in Ireland
who would answer the description of an “Irish agitator” as English
artists draw the sketch. He was one who had everything to lose and
nothing to gain by “revolution,” yet he had early joined the movement
for Irish self-government, declaring that he did so as a business man
having a large stake in the prosperity of the country, and because he
saw that the present system was only the “pretence of a government”
for Ireland.
Naturally the chief event of the first day’s sitting was Mr. Butt’s
great speech or opening statement on the whole case. It was a masterly
review of the question of Irish legislative independence, and a
powerful vindication of the federal adjustment now under
consideration. He went minutely and historically into every fact and
circumstance and every element of consideration, making his address
rather a great argument than an oratorical display. At the close,
however, when he came to tell how he himself had been led into this
movement—how it began, how it had grown, till now he surrendered it
into their keeping—his voice trembled with emotion. “State trials were
not new to me,” he exclaimed:
“Twenty years before I stood near Smith O’Brien when he
braved the sentence of death which the law pronounced upon
him. I saw Meagher meet the same, and I then asked myself
this: ‘Surely the state is out of joint, surely all our
social system is unhinged, when men like O’Brien and Meagher
are condemned to a traitor’s doom?’ Years passed away, and
once more I stood by men who had dared the desperate
enterprise of freeing their country by revolt.… I heard
their words of devotion to their country as with firm step
and unyielding heart they left the dock, and went down the
dark passage that led them to the place where all hope
closed upon them, and I asked myself again: ‘Is there no way
to arrest this? Are our best and bravest spirits ever to be
carried away under this system of constantly-resisted
oppression and constantly-defeated revolt? Can we find no
means by which the national quarrel that has led to all
these terrible results may be set right?’ I believe, in my
conscience, we have found it. I believe that England has now
the opportunity of adjusting the quarrel of centuries. Let
me say it—I do so proudly—that I was one of those who did
something in this cause. Over a torn and distracted
country—a country agitated by dissension, weakened by
distrust—we raised the banner on which we emblazoned the
magic words, ‘Home Rule.’ We raised it with feeble hand.
Tremblingly, with hesitation, almost stealthily, we unfurled
that banner to the breeze. But wherever the legend we had
emblazoned on its folds was seen the heart of the people
moved to its words, and the soul of the nation felt their
power and their spell. Those words were passed from man to
man along the valley and the hillside. Everywhere men, even
those who had been despairing, turned to that banner with
confidence and hope. Thus far we have borne it. It is for
you now to bear it on with more energy, with more strength,
and with renewed vigor. We hand it over to you in this
gathering of the nation. But, oh! let no unholy hands
approach it. Let no one come to the help of our country,
‘Or dare to lay his hand upon the ark
Of her magnificent and awful cause’
who is not prepared never, never to desert that banner till
it flies proudly over the portals of that ‘old house at
home’—that old house which is associated with memories of
great Irishmen, and has been the scene of many glorious
triumphs. Even while the blaze of those glories is at this
moment throwing its splendor over the memory of us all, I
believe in my soul that the parliament of regenerated
Ireland will achieve triumphs more glorious, more lasting,
more sanctified and holy, than any by which her old
parliament illumined the annals of our country and our race.
As his last words died away the assemblage, rising as one man, burst
into cheers long protracted, and it was only after several minutes
that order was restored.
Mr. Butt had spoken to a complete series of resolutions, which he now
submitted to the conference; he concluded by formally moving the first
of them:
“I. That, as the basis of the proceedings of this conference,
we declare our conviction that it is essentially necessary
to the peace and prosperity of Ireland that the right of
domestic legislation on all Irish affairs should be restored
to our country.”
It was seconded by Mr. Joseph P. Ronayne, M.P. for Cork City, a man as
honest and as just as Aristides; an “advanced Nationalist,” one in
whose honor, sincerity, and earnestness Fenians and non-Fenians alike
implicitly confided. “I did not take part,” he said, “in public life
for the last twenty years, and I hesitated a long time before joining
the Home-Rule movement. I was a simple Repealer, when simple Repeal
was the form in which Ireland demanded the restitution of her
nationality. I was a rebel in ’48.” After this manly avowal of his
position Mr. Ronayne closed a brief but forcible speech as follows:
“I have no quarrel with the English people; their sins
against Ireland are sins of ignorance, not of intention. Our
quarrel is with the government, and against the system which
has prevailed ever since England claimed possession of this
country. The measure of Mr. Butt will solve the difficulties
of the situation. I think we will maintain what is the
sentiment of the Irish people—what they contended for with
England when England and Ireland were Catholic, as well as
when England and Ireland were Protestant and Catholic—that
is, the nationality of Ireland. And I see no way but that
proposed by Mr. Butt by which this great end can be
obtained, consistently with the maintenance of friendly
relations between the two countries.”
A still more important announcement, from what is called the
“Nationalist” as well as the Repeal point of view, was made by the
next speaker, Mr. John Martin, M.P., who moved the second resolution.
He, too, avowed himself by preference a Repealer, and every one knew
he had been a martyr, prisoner, and exile for his share in the events
of ’48. But in language strong, clear, and decisive he gave his
approval to the Home-Rule scheme:
“Because I believe that this measure of home government,
this new arrangement of the relations between the two
countries, will operate sufficiently for the interests—for
all the interests—of the Irish people; because I think, if
carried into effect according to the principles enunciated
in these resolutions, it will be honorable to the Irish
nation, it will be consistent with the dignity of the Irish
nation, and it will be safe for all its interests; and also
because, as to so much of the rights and prerogatives of the
Irish nation as are by this scheme of Home Rule to be left
under the jurisdiction of an imperial parliament, in which
we shall be represented, I consider that those are only the
same rights and attributes that, under the old system, were
practically left together to the control of the English
Parliament and the English Privy Council and ministry.”
The full report of the proceedings at this conference, compiled from
the daily newspapers and published by the Home-Rule League, is one of
the most interesting publications of a political character issued in
Ireland for many years. The speakers exhibited marked ability, and
they represented every phase of Irish national opinion. There was very
earnest debate; amendments were moved and discussed; points were
raised, contested, decided. But the great fact that astounded the
outside public, and utterly confounded the prophetic English
journalists, was that, warm, protracted, and severe as were some of
the discussions, free and full interchange of opinion in every
instance sufficed to bring about conviction, and settled every issue
without resort to a poll of votes. Every resolution was carried
unanimously,[166] and on no question, from first to last, was there
need to take a division. “It is not like Ireland at all,” said an
astonished critic. “What on earth has become of our traditional
contentiousness and discord?”
The following were the principal resolutions of the conference,
besides the first, already quoted above:
Moved by Mr. John Martin, M.P. (Meath), and seconded by Mr. Roland
Ponsonby Blennerhassett, M.P. (Kerry):
“That, solemnly reasserting the inalienable right of the
Irish people to self-government, we declare that the time,
in our opinion, has come when a combined and energetic
effort should be made to obtain the restoration of that
right.”
Moved by the Mayor of Cork (Mr. John Daly), seconded by the Hon.
Charles French, M.P. (Roscommon, brother of Lord de Freyne):
“That, in accordance with the ancient and constitutional
rights of the Irish nation, we claim the privilege of
managing our own affairs by a parliament assembled in
Ireland, and composed of the sovereign, the lords, and the
commons of Ireland.”
Moved by the Rev. Joseph A. Galbraith, F.T.C.D., Trinity College,[167]
and seconded by the Rev. Thomas O’Shea, P.P. (the celebrated “Father
Tom O’Shea,” of the Tenant League):
“That, in claiming these rights and privileges for our
country, we adopt the principle of a federal arrangement,
which would secure to the Irish parliament the right of
legislating for, and regulating all matters relating to, the
internal affairs of Ireland, while leaving to the imperial
Parliament the power of dealing with all questions affecting
the imperial crown and government, legislation regarding the
colonies and other dependencies of the crown, the relations
of the empire with foreign states, and all matters
appertaining to the defence and stability of the empire at
large, as well as the power of granting and providing the
supplies necessary for imperial purposes.”
Moved by Sir Joseph Neale McKenna, and seconded by Mr. McCarthy
Downing, M.P. (Cork County):
“That such an arrangement does not involve any change in the
existing constitution of the imperial Parliament or any
interference with the prerogatives of the crown or
disturbance of the principles of the constitution.”
Moved by Sir John Gray, M.P. (Kilkenny), and seconded by Mr. D. M.
O’Conor, M.P. (Roscommon, brother of the O’Conor Don):
“That, to secure to the Irish people the advantages of
constitutional government, it is essential that there should
be in Ireland an administration of Irish affairs,
controlled, according to constitutional principles, by the
Irish parliament, and conducted by ministers
constitutionally responsible to that Parliament.”
Moved by Mr. Mitchell Henry, M.P. (Galway), and seconded by Mr. W. J.
O’Neill Daunt, Kilcaskan Castle, County Cork:
“That, in the opinion of this conference, a federal
arrangement, based upon these principles, would consolidate
the strength and maintain the integrity of the empire, and
add to the dignity and power of the imperial crown.”
Moved by Mr. W. A. Redmond, M.P. (Wexford), and seconded by Mr. Edmond
Dease, M.P. (Queen’s County):
“That, while we believe that in an Irish parliament the
rights and liberties of all classes of our countrymen would
find their best and surest protection, we are willing that
there should be incorporated in the federal constitution
articles supplying the amplest guarantees that no change
shall be made by that parliament in the present settlement
of property in Ireland, and that no legislation shall be
adopted to establish any religious ascendency in Ireland, or
to subject any person to disabilities on account of his
religious opinions.”
Moved by Mr. C. G. Doran, T.C. (Queenstown), and seconded by Mr. John
O’Connor Power (Tuam):
“That this conference cannot separate without calling on the
Irish constituencies at the next general election to return
men earnestly and truly devoted to the great cause which
this conference has been called to promote, and who, in any
emergency that may arise, will be ready to take counsel with
a great national conference, to be called in such a manner
as to represent the opinions and feelings of the Irish
nation; and that, with a view of rendering members of
Parliament and their constituencies more in accord on all
questions affecting the welfare of the country, it is
recommended by this conference that at the close of each
session of Parliament the representatives should render to
their constituents an account of their stewardship.”
Moved by Mr. George L. Bryan, M.P. (Kilkenny), and seconded by Mr. P.
Callan, M.P. (Dundalk):
“That, in order to carry these objects into practical
effect, an association be now formed, to be called ‘The
Irish Home-Rule League,’ of which the essential and
fundamental principles shall be those declared in the
resolutions adopted at this conference, and of which the
object, and only object, shall be to obtain for Ireland, by
peaceable and constitutional means, the self-government
claimed in these resolutions.”
The remaining resolutions dealt with the constitution of the new
organization thus founded, and decreed an appeal “to the Irish race
all over the world” for funds to assist them in the great struggle now
entered upon.
Thus was established the “Irish Home-Rule League” which to-day holds
so prominent a position in Ireland.
American readers, familiar enough with O’Connell’s demand for Repeal,
will naturally be anxious to learn in what precisely does the above
programme differ from that of the great Liberator. O’Connell, who had
himself seen the Irish Parliament, and, young as he was, sought to
resist its overthrow, grew into life with the simple idea of undoing
the evil which yesterday had wrought; in other words, restoring the
state of things which existed before the “Union.” This was known as
“simple Repeal”—Repeal and nothing more. Such a demand, arising almost
on the instant, or out of the evil act complained of, was quite
natural; but when time had elapsed, and when serious changes and
alterations in the circumstances and relations of the countries had
come about, men had to perceive that simple Repeal would land them, in
some respects, in an antiquated and impossible state of things. Thus
in the Irish Parliament no Catholic could sit, while the act of 1829
admitted Catholics to the imperial Parliament. Again, the franchise
and the “pocket” constituencies that had returned the Irish House of
Commons could not be restored without throwing the country into the
hands of a Protestant minority. Numerous other absurdities and
anomalies—things which existed in 1799, but that would be quite out of
all sense in 1844—might be pointed out. O’Connell saw this, but relied
upon the hope of obtaining not only simple Repeal, but also such
improvements as the lapse of time had rendered necessary; and he
relied further on the necessity which there would be for Ireland and
England, after Repeal, agreeing upon some scheme for the joint
government of the countries; in other words, some shape or degree of
federalism.
But the great blot upon the old system was that, although under it
Ireland had a totally separate legislature and exchequer, she never
had (or under it had the right to have) a separate responsible
administration or cabinet. The cabinet or administration that ruled
Ireland was formed by, and solely responsible to, the _English_
Parliament. The Irish Parliament had not the right or power to remove
a minister; was not able, no matter by what majority, to displace even
an administration actually conspiring against Irish liberties. Without
a separate Irish administration, responsible to the Irish Parliament,
removable by its vote, and liable to its impeachment, it may be said
that the legislative independence of Ireland was a frail possession.
Events showed this to be so.
The Home-Rule scheme has been concisely described by some of its
advocates as offering _beforehand_ the arrangements between the two
countries which under the Repeal plan would have to be laid down
_afterwards_. Instead of first simply severing the Union, and then
going to work to reconstruct everything, the Home-Rulers project their
reconstruction beforehand, and claim that one advantage of this is in
a large degree to allay alarms and avert hostility. Their plan
proposes to secure for Ireland the great advantage of a separate
responsible Irish ministry; offering, in exchange for this, to give up
to the imperial executive such powers as the States in America give to
the Washington Congress and executive, as distinguished from the
powers and functions reserved to the State legislatures and
governments. In fine, the Home-Rule scheme has been borrowed largely,
though not altogether, from the United States of America: Ireland to
rule and legislate, finally and supremely, on all domestic affairs;
all affairs common to England, Ireland, and Scotland to be ruled and
legislated for by an administration and parliament in which all three
will be represented. There are, no doubt, in America many patriotic
Irishmen who think this far too little for Ireland to demand; who
contend she should seek nothing less than total separation and
independence; the price, undisguisedly, being civil war with its
lottery of risks and chances. However this may be, the Irish people,
if ever their voice has been heard for a century, on the 18th of
November, 1873, solemnly and publicly spoke for themselves, and their
demand so formulated is now before the world.
There can be no doubt—it is now very well known—that the proceedings
at the Irish National Conference, especially the unanimity, power, and
influence there displayed, had been keenly watched by the London
government. Mr. Gladstone had been losing ground in the English
by-elections for a year past; but as long as there was a hope of the
Irish Liberal vote remaining he had no need to fear yet awhile. The
conference, however, was read by him as a declaration of war. The
Home-Rule leaders themselves realized the critical state of affairs;
they were confident Mr. Gladstone would dissolve Parliament and strike
at them in the approaching summer; and accordingly they set themselves
to prepare for the conflict. The “Christmas holidays” intervening, it
was the first or second week in January before the newly-formed
Home-Rule League had fully constituted itself and elected its council.
Its leaders, however, scenting danger, went quickly to work, and
arranged for beginning in February a thorough organization of the
constituencies. In February! They were dealing with a man who had no
idea of giving his adversaries six months, or even six weeks, to
prepare. They were doomed to be taken unawares and nearly swept off
their feet by a surprise as sudden and complete as the springing of a
mine.
On the morning of Saturday, January 24, 1874, the people of the
British Islands woke to find Parliament dissolved. No surprise could
be more complete; for Parliament had stood summoned for the first week
in February. At midnight on the 23d Mr. Gladstone sprang this grand
surprise on his foes, English Conservative and Irish Home-Ruler,
hoping to overwhelm both by the secrecy and suddenness of the attack.
And for a while it quite seemed as if he had correctly calculated and
would succeed. The wildest confusion and dismay prevailed. There was
no time to do anything but simply rush out and fight helter-skelter.
In Ireland the first momentary feeling seemed to be one almost of
despair. “Oh! had we but even another month.” Yet no cowardly despair;
only the first gasp of a brave people taken at utter disadvantage.
For the Home-Rule leaders it was a moment of almost sad and certainly
oppressive responsibility and anxiety. They knew how little allowance
would be made for the mere dexterity whereby they had been thus
outwitted, if they should lose the campaign, as it seemed to many they
must. But not a moment did they waste in sighing for what might have
been. There was an instantaneous rush to the council-rooms, and before
the tidings from London were twenty-four hours old there had begun
what may be called a three weeks’ sitting _en permanence_ of the
Home-Rule executive. It is almost literally true that it sat night and
day throughout that time, receiving and forwarding despatches from and
to all parts of the country, by telegraph, by mail, and by special
messenger. The Home-Rulers had always held forth as an object which
they could achieve, or were determined to achieve, in fair time, and
after necessary preparations, the conquest of some seventy seats out
of the Irish one hundred and three. To secure even _thirty_ just now
in this rush was deemed a daring hope. But it seemed as if enthusiasm
and popular indignation at the Gladstonian _coup_ compensated for lack
of preparation or organization. It was a great national uprising.
North, south, east, and west the constituencies themselves set the
Home-Rule flag flying. Ireland was aflame.
This was the first general election under the free and fearless voting
of the ballot.[168] No more complaints by voters of “coercion” or
“intimidation” by “landlord” or “clergy” or “mob.” Neither bullying
nor bribing would any more be of use. At last, for the first time, the
mind of the elector himself would prevail, and the constituencies of
Ireland were free to pass a verdict on the Act of Union.
One drawback, however, threatened to baffle their purpose. Candidates!
Where were trustworthy candidates to be found? The Home-Rule council
had gone upon the plan of refusing to provide or recommend candidates,
thinking to force upon the constituencies themselves the
responsibility of such selection. “We will set up no candidate-factory
here in Dublin,” they said; “it might lead to intrigue. We’ll keep
clear of it; let each county and borough choose for itself.” But this
had to be given up. The cry from the constituencies showed its folly:
“Candidates, candidates! For the love of God send us a candidate, and
we’ll sweep this county for Home-Rule.” As a matter of fact, owing to
the dearth of suitable candidates, no less than a dozen seats had to
be let go by default without any contest at all; while in as many more
cases converts from mere liberalism to Home Rule, whose sincerity was
hardly acceptable, had, from the same cause, to be let pass in “on
good behavior.”
There was, there could be, but little of general plan over the whole
field; it was fight all round, the whole island being simultaneously
engaged. This was Mr. Gladstone’s able generalship: to prevent the
Home-Rule leaders from being able to concentrate their resources on
one place at a time. Nevertheless, they were his inferiors neither in
ability nor in strategy, as the event proved. Upon the vantage points
which he deemed most precious they delivered their heaviest fire, and
in no case unsuccessfully.[169] The contests that, each in some
peculiar way, most forcibly demonstrated the determination of the
people, their intense devotion to the Home-Rule cause, were: Cavan, an
Ulster county, where for the first time since the reign of James II. a
Catholic (one of two Home-Rulers) was returned; Louth, where the
utmost power of the government was concentrated, all in vain, to
secure Mr. Fortescue’s seat; Drogheda, where Mr. Whitworth, a princely
benefactor to the town, and an estimable Protestant gentleman, was
rejected because he was not a Home-Ruler; Wexford, where the son of
Sir James Power, a munificent patron of Catholic charities, was
rejected by priests and people for the same reason; Limerick County,
where a young Whig Catholic squire, whose hoisting of Home Rule was
disbelieved in by the electors, received only about one vote to eight
cast for a more trustworthy man chosen from the ranks of the people,
although the former gentleman was believed in and strenuously
supported by the Catholic clergy; and Kildare, where the son of the
Duke of Leinster, who owned nearly every acre in the county, was
utterly routed!
At length the last gun was fired, the last seat had been lost and won,
and as the smoke of battle lifted from the scene men gazed eagerly to
see how the campaign had gone. The Home-Rulers had triumphed all along
the line! Strictly speaking, they failed as to one, and only one, of
the seats which they contested—namely, Tralee, where the O’Donoghue (a
former National leader, now an anti-Home-Ruler) succeeded against them
by three votes. They had returned sixty[170] men pledged to their
programme, in the late Parliament the Irish representation stood 55
Liberals, 38 Conservatives, and 10 Home-Rulers. It now stood 12
Liberals, 31 Conservatives, and 60 Home-Rulers. The national party
thus outnumbered all others, Whig and Tory, combined; and, for the
first time since the Union, that measure stood condemned by a majority
of the parliamentary representatives of the Irish nation.
Not in Ireland alone was Mr. Gladstone overwhelmed by defeat, his
clever stroke of the midnight dissolution notwithstanding. The English
elections also went bodily against him. In the middle of the fight he
resigned, and the minister who met the new Parliament with the seals
of office in his hand and the smile of victory on his countenance was
Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative leader.
There was considerable uneasiness in England when the Irish elections
were found to be going for the Home-Rulers, until it turned out that
the Disraeli party had a hundred majority on the British vote. “The
empire is saved,” gasped the alarmed Englishmen; “we were lost if such
a Home-Rule phalanx found parties nearly equal in the House of
Commons. They would hold the balance of power and dictate terms. Let
us give thanks for so providential a Tory majority.” There was much
writing in the English newspapers in this strain. They took it for
granted that the Home-Rulers were “balked” or checkmated, for a time
at least, by this unexpected Tory preponderance. It cost them over a
year to find out that no one rejoiced more than did the Home-Rule
leaders in secret over this same state of things; that it was a
crowning advantage to the Home-Rulers as a party to have the Liberals
in opposition for four or five years.
Returning a number of men as Home-Rulers did not necessarily
constitute them a political party. Neither would a resolution on their
part so to act altogether carry out such a purpose. The discipline,
the unity, the homogeneity, which constitute the real power of a party
come not by mere resolving; they may begin by resolution, but they
grow by custom and practice. Men behind the scenes in the Home-Rule
councils knew that serious uneasiness prevailed amongst the leaders
lest their ranks might be broken up or shaken by the prospect or
reality of a return of the Liberals to power _too soon_—_i.e._, before
they, the Home-Rulers, had had time to settle down or solidify into a
thoroughly compact body, and before discipline and habit had
accustomed them to move and act together. Four or five years training
in opposition was the opportunity they most wanted and desired. From a
dozen to a score of their rank and file were men who had been
Gladstonian Liberals, and whose fealty would be doubtful if in 1875
the disestablisher of the Irish Church called upon them to follow him
rather than Mr. Butt. These men would at that time have felt
themselves “Liberals first, and Home-Rulers after.” Even in any case,
and as it is, there are six or seven of these former Liberals among
the Home-Rule fifty-nine who are looked upon as certain to “cross the
house” with their former chief whenever he returns to office. In 1875
these men would have carried a dozen lukewarm waverers along with
them; in 1877 they will not carry one, and their own action,
discounted beforehand, will disconcert or surprise no one, and will
merely cause them to lose their seats on the first opportunity
afterwards.
Quickly following upon the general election, the members returned on
Home-Rule principles assembled in Dublin, 3d of March, 1874 (the
Council Chamber of the city hall being lent to them for that purpose
by the municipal authorities), and, without a dissentient voice,
passed a series of resolutions constituting themselves a separate and
distinct political party for parliamentary purposes. Whigs and Tories,
Trojans and Tyrians, were henceforth to be alike to them. The next
step was to elect a sort of “cabinet” of nine members, called the
Parliamentary Committee, to act as an executive; while the appointment
of two of their body most trusted for vigilance, tact, and fidelity,
to act as “whips,”[171] completed the formal organization of the
Home-Rule members as a party.
Not an hour too soon had they perfected their arrangements. The new
Parliament, after a technical opening a fortnight previously,
assembled for the real despatch of business on Thursday, the 19th of
March, 1874, and next day (on the debate on the Queen’s speech), in
the very first hour of their parliamentary life, the Home-Rulers found
themselves in the thick of battle. Mr. Butt had taken the field at
once with an amendment raising the Irish question. The house was full
of curiosity to hear “the Irish Home-Rulers” and see what they were
like. It was struck with their combative audacity. It frankly
confessed they stood fire “like men,” and that they acquitted
themselves on the whole with astonishing ability. From that night
forward the British House of Commons realized that it had for the
first time a “third party” within its walls. How utterly opposed this
is to Englishmen’s ideas of things proper or possible will be gathered
from the fact that they construct or seat the chamber for two, and
only two, parties; and that they even still make a great struggle to
have it regarded as a “constitutional theory” that there must be two,
and can be no more than two, parties in the house—namely, “Her
Majesty’s Government” and “Her Majesty’s Opposition.” American
legislative chambers, as well as French, German, Italian, Austrian,
are constructed and seated in a semicircle or amphitheatre. The
British, on the contrary, is an oblong hall or short parallelogram,
divided right and left by a wide central avenue running its full
length from the entrance door to the “table of the House” fronting the
speaker’s chair. There are, therefore, no middle seats; everyone must
sit on one side or another—with the ministerialists or Tories on the
right of the chair, or with the opposition or Liberals on the left.
Half-way up the floor there runs (right and left to each side of the
chamber), at right angles to the wide central avenue above referred
to, a narrow passage often mentioned in newspaper reports as “the
gangway.” “Above the gangway” (or nearest the chair) on each side sit
respectively the thick and thin followers of the present or late
ministry. “Below the gangway” (or farthest from the chair) sit on each
side men who would occupy some section of the middle seats, if the
house possessed any—the right and left centres, so to speak. The
Home-Rulers sit in a compact body “below the gangway” on the
opposition side.
In their third session public opinion has now pretty well gauged and
measured the ability and resources of the Home-Rule party. In their
first campaign, 1874, though much praised because they were infinitely
better in every respect than most people expected, they exhibited
plentifully the faults and shortcomings of “raw levies.” Their formal
debate on Home Rule, on the 30th of June and 2d of July, was utterly
wanting in system and management, and would have been a failure had
not the anti-Home-Rule side of the discussion been incontestably much
worse handled. But never, probably, in parliamentary history has
another body of men learned so quickly, and so rapidly attained a high
position, as they have done. By the concurrent testimony of their
adversaries themselves the Home-Rule members are the best disciplined
and best guided and, in proportion to their numbers, the most able and
powerful party in the British House of Commons. In order to have a
complete and accurate conception of all that relates to the Irish
Home-Rule movement, there remains only to be considered the policy or
line of action on which its leaders propose to operate. How do they
expect to carry Home Rule?
At no time have the criticisms of the English press on the subject of
Home Rule exhibited anything but the shallowest intelligence; and many
of the Home-Rule victories have been won because of the stolid
ignorance prevailing in the English camp. The English journalists
disliking the Irish government, believe and proclaim to their readers
only what accords with their prejudices; and accordingly upon them has
fallen the fate of the general who refuses to reconnoitre the enemy
and accurately estimate his strength. On this subject the British
journalist will have it that he “knows all about it,” and has no need
to investigate things seriously. From the first hour of the Home-Rule
movement he has declared it to be “breaking up,” “failing,” “going
down the hill.” It has been so constantly going _down_ that hill in
his story that one never can find out when or how it got _up_ there,
or whether there is any bottom to the declivity which it can ever
reach in such a rapid and persistent downward motion. On no feature of
the Home-Rule question has there been more affectation of knowing all
about it, and more complacent dogmatism as to its inevitable fate,
than this of the Home-Rule plan of action. The way these people look
at the matter explains their consolatory conclusions. They view the
Home-Rulers simply as sixty members in a house of six hundred and
fifty-eight. “Six hundred to sixty—surely it is absurd! Are the Irish
demented, to think their sixty will convert our six hundred?”
This mistake of viewing Mr. Butt and Home Rule just as they view Sir
Wilfrid Lawson and prohibition is just where the English show their
unpardonable and fatuous want of intelligence. Indeed, others besides
English commentators fall into this error. They imagine the
Home-Rulers contemplate working Home Rule through the House of Commons
by bringing in a “Bill” and having an annual “vote” upon it, as if it
were the Permissive bill, or the Woman’s Suffrage, or the Game Law
Bill. The Home-Rulers laugh heartily over all this sort of criticism.
They dream of nothing of the kind. There is another way of looking at
the Home-Rule party and the Home-Rule question in the House of
Commons.
Six hundred men can indeed very easily vote down sixty, and make short
work of their opposition; always supposing these latter to be units
from places wide apart, representing scattered interests or
speculative opinions. The House of Commons deals every year, session
after session, with several such sixties and seventies and eighties
and nineties. But it would be a woful apology for “statesmanship” to
regard the Home-Rule sixty in this light. In _their_ case the
government have to do, _not_ with sixty of their own general body of
British members, but with the Irish representation. The question is
not with sixty members of the House, but with _Ireland_. In any crisis
of the empire, as the English Chancellor of the Exchequer said
recently about the British representatives on the Suez Canal Board,
“_their_ votes would be _weighed_, not _counted_.”
The purpose of the Home-Rulers, for the present at all events, is much
less with the House of Commons than with the country; they operate on
the country through that house. They want to get Ireland into their
hands; and even already they have very substantially done so. They
want to convince and conciliate and enlist the English democracy; and
they have very largely succeeded. With this key to their movements,
the supreme ability and wisdom which they have displayed will be
better recognized. They have taken the whole of the public affairs of
Ireland into their charge. They have taken every public interest in
the country under their protection. Whoever wants anything done or
attended to, whether he be Catholic, Protestant, or dissenter, now
looks to the Home-Rulers, and to them alone. Not the humblest peasant
in the land but feels that, if a petty village tyrant has wronged him,
the Irish party in the House of Commons will “know the reason why.”
They have seized upon every subject deeply affecting the people as a
whole, or important classes among them, and showered bills dealing
with these subjects on the table of the House of Commons. The
distracted premier knows what is beneath all this; he detects the
master-hand of Isaac Butt in this deep strategy. These are not sham
bills, merely to take up time. They are genuine bills, ably and
carefully drawn, and every one of them dealing with a really important
and pressing matter for Ireland. Every one of them hits a blot; they
are nearly all such bills as our Irish Parliament would pass. Some of
the subjects (such as the “Fisheries Bill”) are popular with very
nearly all classes in Ireland; then there are the University Education
Bill, the Land-Tenure Bill, the Grand Jury Bill, the Municipal
Privileges Bill, the Franchise Hill, the Registration Bill, besides a
host of others. Suppose the government give way, and accept one; there
is a shout of triumph in Ireland: “The Home-Rulers have forced their
hand!” and a cry of dismay and rage from the irreconcilable Orangemen:
“The government have succumbed to the Jesuits!” Suppose they resist
and vote down the bill; matters are worse. The Irish people are
inflamed, and even ministerialists sulk and say: “This is bad policy;
‘tis playing the Home-Rule game.” Suppose, again, Mr. Disraeli adopts
a middle course and says: “This is an excellent bill in many respects,
but really we have not time to consider it this year.” A louder shout
than ever greets such a statement: “There is no room for Irish
business. Then let us transact it here at home.”
It is a matter of notoriety that there is growing up among Englishmen,
within and without the House of Commons, a feeling that, even apart
from all political considerations, _something_ must be done to lighten
the work, and remit to other assemblies a large portion of the
legislative business now attempted there. The house is breaking down
under the load laid upon or undertaken by it. So would Congress, if,
in addition to its own functions, it attempted to do the work of the
State legislatures besides. There are hundreds, it may be said
thousands, of influential English politicians who, seeing this, regard
as simply inevitable something in the direction of the Home-Rule
scheme, only, of course “not so extreme,” as they call it. Nothing but
the bugbear of “dismembering the empire” prevents an English cry for
lightening the ship. The Home-Rulers watch all this, and take very
good care that the load which the house prefers to retain shall press
heavily on it. Not that they pursue or contemplate a policy of mere
obstruction, which many persons, friends and foes, thought they would.
Mr. Butt has again and again repudiated this. He knows that such a
course would only put the house on its mettle, and would defeat his
scheme of silently sapping the convictions of the more fairly disposed
Englishmen. He knows that the present system cannot last many years.
He knows that the English people, once their convictions are affected,
soon give way before public exigency. To affect those convictions and
to create that exigency is the Home-Rule policy. It is all very well,
while the skies are clear and tranquil, for English ministers, past
and present, to bluster greatly about the impossibility of
entertaining the Irish demand. It is all very well, while the present
Tory majority is so strong, for both parties to protest their
hostility to Home-Rule. Opinions change wondrously in these cases.
When the Disraelian majority has in the course of nature dropped down
to forty, thirty, twenty, and ten; when the Liberal leaders find they
can attain to office with the Home-Rule vote, and cannot retain office
without it, they will—offer Home Rule? No. Offer palliatives—good
places for Home-Rulers, and “good measures” for Ireland? Probably. But
when these offers are found to be vain; are found to strengthen the
power and intensify the resolution of the Home-Rule party, the
transformation which England went through on so many great
questions—Catholic Emancipation, Church Disestablishment, etc. (each
in its day just as solemnly sworn to be “impossible”)—will begin to
set in; and—all the more loudly if such a moment should happen to
synchronize with deadlock in the legislature, peril abroad, and
popular resentment at home—from England itself will arise the cry that
“Ireland must be fairly dealt with.” At such a moment a British
minister will easily be found to “discover,” as it were most
fortunately, that “the question has hitherto been misunderstood,” and
that it is England’s interest not less than Ireland’s to have it
satisfactorily adjusted.
For it is not with Ireland alone British ministers will have to
settle. Although no reference has previously been made here to the
fact, the strongest arm of the Home-Rule party is in England itself.
Within the past thirty years there has grown up there, silently and
unnoticed, a new political power—hundreds of thousands of Irishmen
who, having settled in the large labor marts, have grown to
citizenship, power, and influence. From Bristol to Dundee there is not
a large city that has not now on its electoral roll Irish voters whose
action can decide the fate of candidates. Coincidently with the
establishment of the “Home Government Association” in Ireland there
arose in England, as a co-operative but independent organization, the
“Home-Rule Confederation of Great Britain.” This body has organized
the Irish vote all over England and Scotland, and holds virtually in
its hands all the vast centres of political thought and action.
Reflecting their sentiments and their influence, Dundee, Newcastle,
Durham, Tynemouth, Cardiff, and more than a dozen other important
English and Scotch constituencies returned English friends of Home
Rule to Parliament. It was not the mere matter of so many votes that
lent such value to this fact; it was the incentive which it gave to
the growing feeling (amongst the English working-classes especially)
that the Irish question was one to be sympathized with. An event which
occurred in England barely a few weeks ago was, however, beyond all
precedent in the sensation which it created. This was the recent
Manchester election. A week previously in Burnley it was found
impossible to return any but a Home-Rule Liberal, and such a man
accordingly headed the poll. In Manchester Mr. Jacob Bright (son of
Mr. John Bright) was the Liberal, and a Mr. Powell the Conservative,
candidate. It became clear that the Irish vote would decide the issue.
One morning the news was flashed through England that _both_
candidates, Liberal and Conservative, had undertaken to vote for Mr.
Butt’s motion on Home Rule! What! Manchester, the political capital of
England, gone for Home Rule? It was even so, and Mr. Bright, being
preferred of the two, was triumphantly returned by the Irish Home-Rule
vote.
All this means that on English ground Ireland now has
hostages—hostages of security that no daring act of armed violence
shall be attempted against her; hostages of friendship, too, as well
as of safety; centres of a propagandism, of conciliation; citadels of
political power. The growth of feeling in England in favor of the
concession of Ireland’s national autonomy is simply incontestable. It
may well be that, as many Irish politicians declare, “the battle of
Home Rule for Ireland will be fought and won on British soil.”
And this is how Ireland stands in 1876—erect, powerful, resolute,
united. What the future may have in store for her, victory or defeat,
is beyond human ken. This effort too may fail, as many a gallant
endeavor in her behalf has failed before. All that can be said is that
so far it has progressed with a success unparalleled in Irish
political annals; that it is wisely guided, boldly animated,
faithfully upheld. Much depends on her own children, at home and in
foreign lands; on their devotion, their prudence, their courage, their
perseverance. May this new dawn of unity, of concord of conciliation
herald the day they have so long hoped to see!
And thou, O mighty Lord! whose ways
Are far above our feeble minds
To understand,
Sustain us in these doubtful days,
And render light the chain that binds
Our fallen land!
Look down upon our dreary state
And, through the ages that may still
Roll sadly on,
Watch thou o’er hapless Erin’s fate,
And shield at least from darker ill
The blood of Conn.
[161] This odious law, known as the “Irish Convention Act,”
was passed by the Irish Parliament in order to forbid
the Volunteers and other friends of Parliamentary
Reform from “overawing the legislature.” Its repeal
has been steadily resisted by the British Parliament,
which finds the restriction now as invaluable as the
Irish people find it oppressive.
[162] Some time previously he had publicly said that Repeal
he understood, but the new programme he did not. Since
that time, however, he gave ample proof that he had
come to understand it clearly.
The clergy of his diocese, the archbishop himself in
one instance presiding at their meeting, had sent in
their formal adhesion, accompanied by large
contributions of money, to the association.
[163] Almost incredible as it may seem to some readers,
_this_ was the only portion of the arrangements never
once required. Throughout the four days of protracted
and earnest debate, as will be detailed further on, no
occasion arose for taking a division.
[164] _List of Conference Ticket-holders—names and
addresses—National Conference, November, 1873._
Dublin: Home-Rule League Publications. 1874.
[165] Since elected (1874) for the county of Cork, along
with Mr. McCarthy Downing. He had been at one time a
Protestant dissenting minister.
[166] There was one dissentient to one of the resolutions—a
gentleman named Thomas Mooney, late of California and
other places.
[167] It is impossible to treat of the Irish Home-Rule
movement without a special reference to this reverend
gentleman, who is one of the most prominent figures in
the group of Home-Rule leaders. He is a man of
European reputation in science, and of the most
upright and noble character. He is greatly loved and
universally respected. Scarcely has Mr. Butt himself
been more instrumental in the success of the movement;
and there are now few names in Ireland more popular
than that of “Professor Galbraith.”
[168] The ballot-voting in Ireland under the act of 1873,
unlike that in America, is strictly secret: there
being no “ticket” to be seen by outsiders. Only on
entering the booth, where the few persons necessarily
present are sworn to secrecy, the voter receives a
paper on which the names of the candidates are
printed. In a secret compartment of the booth the
voter marks a cross alongside the name of the man for
whom he wishes to vote, folds up the paper so as to
conceal the mark which he has made, brings it forward,
and drops it through a slit into a sealed box. He then
quits the booth, and no one, inside or outside (but
himself), knows for whom he has voted.
[169] The defeat of his Irish cabinet minister and former
chief secretary, the Right Hon Chichester Fortescue,
in Louth County, was generally regarded as the
crushing blow of the whole campaign, as Mr. Fortescue
was Mr. Gladstone’s official representative in
Ireland. He was deemed invulnerable in Louth, having
sat for it twenty-seven years, and being brother of
Lord Claremont, one of the largest and best landlords
in the county. The government laughed to scorn the
idea of disturbing him. The Home-Rulers selected for
this critical fight Mr. A. M. Sullivan, editor of the
_Nation_. It was a desperate struggle: but not only
was the Home-Ruler returned at the head of the poll,
but he polled two to one against the cabinet minister.
[170] One of them, in Leitrim, subsequently lost his return,
though in a majority, by a stupid mistake of one of
his agents.
[171] It may be doubted whether there is any man amongst the
Home-Rule members better entitled than their senior
“whip,” Captain J. P. Nolan, to be ranked as next to
Mr. Butt himself in importance and in service. On him
it rests to keep the party on the alert; to note and
advise with his chief upon every move of the enemy; to
have his own men always “on hand,” so that they may
never be caught napping; to keep his colleagues
informed by circular (or “whip”) of all forthcoming
bills or motions of importance; and finally, to act as
“teller” or counter on a division. In fact, if Mr.
Butt is the head or brain of the Home-Rule party,
Captain Nolan is its right hand. He belongs to an old
Catholic family, the O’Nolans of Leix, who in 1645
were put upon allotments beyond the Shannon in return
for their estates in fertile Leix, which were handed
over to Cromwell’s troopers. Captain Nolan is a man of
considerable literary ability. He is a captain in the
Royal Artillery and as a scientific and practical
artillerist stands in the highest repute. He is the
inventor of “Nolan’s Range-finder,” adopted in the
Russian, French, and Austrian armies.
THE VALLEY OF THE AUDE
The Aude is a rambling, capricious river of ancient Languedoc that
rises on the confines of Spain, among the oriental Pyrenees, five
thousand feet above the level of the sea. At first, imprisoned and
half-stifled among the narrow gorges of the mountains, its waters,
clear and sparkling, rush noisily and impetuously along, struggling
for room; but as soon as they find space in the sunny valleys they
slacken their speed as if to enjoy the very verdure they create; they
grow turbid, sometimes the current dwindles away to a mere thread
among poor barren hills, and again at the first storm spreads wide its
course through the rich vine-bordered plain. At Carcassonne it becomes
languid, and, turned eastward by the Montagne Noire, passes along
beneath the sombre line of the oaks, beeches, and chestnuts that cover
the mountains, and when, after being fed by thirty-six tributaries, it
falls wearily into the sea a little above Narbonne, it is no longer
the limpid, dashing stream we met in the mountains, but troubled in
its waters and indolent in flow.
We came first upon the Aude at Carcassonne, where it takes a bend
towards the sea—the Ville-basse, a thriving town in the plain that
dates from the time of St. Louis; the old fortified city on the height
above, historic, legendary, and picturesque. And ancient too, for it
was, according to some ambitious writers, founded by the fugitive
Trojans, or, what is better still, by one of the grandsons of Noe, and
prosperous in the time of the Pharaos. Be that as it may, it was in
the possession of the Romans before the coming of Cæsar. In the fifth
century after Christ it fell into the hands of the Visigoths, who are
said to have brought hither from the sack of Rome jewelled utensils
that came from the palace of King Solomon and the vessels of gold that
belonged to the Temple of Jerusalem, carried away by Titus and
Vespasian. These treasures were long believed hidden in a deep well
still to be seen in the upper city, but during a dry season a few
years ago it was explored without any discovery to confirm the
tradition. They were probably taken to Spain, or carried to Ravenna by
Theodoric the Great, to whom several of the towers of Carcassonne are
attributed. There are two walls around the old city: the inner ones,
with their circular towers of the time of the Visigoths; the outer,
with fortified gateways that date at least from the time of Louis IX.
And then there is a venerable quadrangular castle, with five towers
and a moat that bears the marks of many a hard assault, but now serves
chiefly to give a picturesque look and a pleasing air of antiquity to
the landscape. The square tower next the Aude, if not all five, is
said to have bowed down before the great Emperor of the West. But we
are anticipating.
After the Ostrogoths came the Saracens, flushed with victory, from
Spain, and they had possession of Carcassonne when Charlemagne came
into _Gaule Narbonnaise_ and laid siege to the city, determined to
drive them beyond the Pyrenees. The delightful old traditions of that
day, which are so much better than history, say it then bore the name
of Atax. According to them, the emperor remained beneath the walls
five long years without the slightest success, notwithstanding the
valor of his peerless knights. So astonishing a resistance was solely
owing to Dame Carcas, a mere woman, and a Moor at that, who not only
possessed remarkable courage, but was shrewd to the last degree, as we
are prepared to show. Of course, after a five years’ siege the
provisions had dwindled away to a very low ebb, and the inhabitants
had naturally diminished in proportion. In fact, everybody was at
length dead in the city except stout Dame Carcas, who seemed to have
lived on her wits. This wonderful woman was not discouraged. She acted
on the principle of the inscription over the gates of Busyrane—“Be
bold, be bold, and evermore be bold.” She garnished the walls with
effigies in armor—mere scarecrows—and, making the round of the
rampart, she kept up such a hail of arrows on the enemy, as if she had
the arms of Briareus, that they marvelled, as well they might, at the
resources of so well-supplied and vigilant a garrison. Wishing to
convince Charlemagne that there was no possibility of his reducing the
city by famine, she gorged her very last pig with her last bushel of
wheat, and threw it over the ramparts. It was naturally dashed to
pieces, and its internal economy fully displayed, as shrewd Dame
Carcas intended. The besiegers, astonished to see the very lowest of
animals fed on the purest of wheat, now supposed the supplies quite
inexhaustible, and Charlemagne, as sensible as he was great, at once
raised the siege. Not without regret, however, and, as he turned back
to take a last look at the walls before which he had spent in vain so
much time and labor, wondrous to relate, one of the mighty towers of
the Goths bowed down before him in reverence, and never regained its
perpendicular, as may be seen to this day by any one who goes to
Carcassonne.
Dame Carcas, you may be sure, was on the lookout. Satisfied with
having got the better of the mighty emperor, she called him back,
opened the ponderous gates, and acknowledged his sovereignty.
Charlemagne, full of admiration at her courage and wit, determined the
city should be called after her. Hence the name of Carcassonne. It is
a pity any doubt should be cast over so pleasing a tradition, but some
do say, let us hope without proof, that it bore this name in the time
of the Romans. We do not feel obliged to believe it. People who are
historically as well as religiously “convinced against their will, are
of the same opinion still.” We stick to the Middle Ages, when the
tradition was so fully credited that a bas-relief, a kind of
emblazonry, of the bust of an Amazon was placed over the principal
gate of the city, with the words below: _Carcas sum_—I am Carcas.
According to a popular legend, Charlemagne besieged Carcassonne twice.
The second time it was defended by Anchises, King of the Saracens, who
was aided by Satan himself and an efficient corps of African
sorcerers. However, the demons were routed, and the pious emperor set
up a fortress of the faith, known to us as the cathedral of St.
Nazaire, which is in the southeast corner of the city, built into the
very walls forming a part of the old fortifications. This church is
still the jewel of the place. The crypt alone is of the Carlovingian
age. The nave and aisles of the upper church are of the eleventh
century, in the Roman style, grave and sombre, with small windows,
massive pillars, and thick walls capable of resisting the enemy. These
were blessed by Pope Urban II. in 1096. The present choir was built in
St. Louis’ time, and forms a striking contrast to the heavy gloomy
nave, for it is of the pointed style, light and elegant, with seven
stained glass windows of wonderful beauty, and so close together as to
leave no wall. The arches seem to rest on the eight colonnettes that
frame the windows. In one of them may be read the whole legend of SS.
Nazarius and Celsus, celebrated in Italian art. Titian has painted
them in armor in a beautiful altarpiece of the church that bears their
name at Brescia. St. Saturnin, however, the apostle of Toulouse, first
announced the faith in this region. St. Nazaire is reputed to have
arrived soon after. His mother was a Roman matron converted by St.
Peter, and he himself was baptized by the apostle, who commissioned
him to preach the Gospel. At Milan he exhorted and comforted SS.
Gervasius and Protasius in prison, and was beaten with staves by order
of the governor. Celsus was his spiritual child and co-laborer. At
Genoa they were cast into the sea, which refused to drown them, and
they walked back over the angry billows to land. After their apostolic
journey to Southern Gaul, they were beheaded at Milan just without the
Porta Romana, where a beautiful church still stands to perpetuate
their memory. But it is inferior to St. Nazaire of Carcassonne, which
is at once antique and poetic. What deep shadows in its venerable
aisles! What rainbow lights in its jewelled windows! The rose of the
north transept is composed of twelve lobes, in six of which blue
predominates; in the other six, green—very beautiful in the sunset
light. In the window of the south transept the lobes are in two rows,
so disposed that green is under cramoisie, and cramoisie under green,
producing quite a magical effect.
North of the cathedral, just beyond its ruined cloister, is a donjon
of the thirteenth century, called the Tour de l’Evêque, which contains
a well, an oven, and everything necessary to sustain a regular siege.
Here, through the vines, figs, and almond-trees, is the best view of
the church, with its time-stained turrets, its buttressed walls, and
the fine tracery of its windows. The old city is before us with its
towers and antique walls, on which every storm that has swept over
Southern France has left its trace. Simon de Montfort scaled them
early in the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth, they braved the
Black Prince, who contented himself with feasting on the well-stocked
larders of the Basse Ville and drinking its rich wines, and afterwards
setting fire to the place. In the sixteenth century the city was
invaded by the Huguenots, who tore a statue of the Blessed Virgin from
its niche and dragged it through the streets, which so enraged the
Catholics that they rose in their fury and slaughtered all the
offenders on whom they could lay hands. Then they carried the statue
back to its place in solemn procession. And, when a royal edict of
1562 assigned the Calvinists a meeting-house just out of the city, the
people barred the gates against the returning assembly, and drove them
into the very Aude.
But let us leave these historic details, and, turning back into the
pleasanter paths of old romance, follow the Emperor Charlemagne along
the valley of the Aude. A little south of the direct road from
Carcassonne to Narbonne, we come to the village of La Grasse, of a
thousand souls, in a deep valley of the Orbieu, surrounded by the
rocky heights of the Corbières. This village grew up around a
celebrated Benedictine Abbey that flourished here for more than a
thousand years—one of the most important in Occitania. Its foundation
is so remote that it has become the theme of many popular traditions.
These are embodied in an old romance, said to have been written by
Philomène, secretary of Charlemagne, by the emperor’s order, and under
his inspection, and translated in the thirteenth century by William of
Padua, a monk of La Grasse.
Charlemagne had just taken Carcassonne, where five towers bowed down
before him. He founded several churches, such as St. Nazaire and St.
Saturnin, and appointed Roger, a clerk of noble family, bishop of the
place. Then he marched towards Narbonne, which was in possession of
the Saracens, intending to besiege it. He had with him Pope Leo III.,
most of the cardinals, the patriarch of Jerusalem, Turpin, archbishop
of Reims, and an infinite number of other prelates, abbots, and
priests, together with Roland, Oliver, Oger the Dane, Solomon of
Britanny, and Count Florestan his brother, and other famous paladins,
with dukes, counts, and barons too many to enumerate. While traversing
the valley of the Orbieu, one of the principal tributaries of the
Aude, Archbishop Turpin came across seven hermits, viz., Thomas of
Rouen, Richard of Pavia, Robert Prince of Hungary, Germain of
Scotland, Alayran of Flanders, Philip of Cologne, and Bartholomew, son
of the King of Egypt, who, after completing their studies at Paris,
left the world in search of Christ and were led by angels to this
solitary valley, where they built an oratory in honor of St. Mary the
Virgin. Here they had lived for twenty years on herbs, roots, and wild
fruit, and the people, in view of their thin, wasted aspect, as well
as the arid country, called the place of their retreat the _Vallée
Maigre_.
When Archbishop Turpin brought the emperor and Pope Leo III. to see
these holy eremites, they shed an abundance of tears and rendered
thanks unto God. Charlemagne resolved to erect a superb abbey in the
place of their modest oratory, and so well did he endow it that the
monks he established here were soon able to fertilize the wild valley
to such a degree that its name, at the suggestion of Turpin and the
Earl of Flanders, was appropriately changed to that of _La Vallée
Grasse_.
During the erection of this monastery a series of combats took place
between the Moors and the Christians, each one more marvellous than
the other. First, Matrandus, King of Narbonne, suddenly came upon the
encampment of the valley with a numerous army, but he was defeated by
Charlemagne and pursued to the point where the Niel empties into the
Orbieu. There he heard the sound of a mighty horn. It was the olifant
of Roland, who was coming to his aid. He made the Saracens bite the
dust by thousands, and Matrandus had barely time to take refuge in
Narbonne and close the gates behind him.
Then an enemy far more redoubtable made his appearance. It was
Marcilion, King of all Spain, accompanied by sixteen other kings, with
seven hundred thousand men. Charlemagne had two hundred and forty
thousand. The battle lasted five days. At length the Saracens were
vanquished. Five hundred thousand of their number were slain, together
with the sixteen kings, whereas the Christians only lost thirty-seven
thousand, among whom, however, were five bishops, fourteen abbots,
seven counts, eight hundred barons, and the Abbot of St. Denis, who,
as he was breathing his last, besought the emperor to complete the
abbey and bury him in it. His wishes were not disregarded. The abbey
was completed. A church was built. In the church were many chapels,
and in each chapel Archbishop Turpin, accompanied by many bishops and
abbots, solemnly deposited sacred relics. It was now time to consider
the appointment of the abbot, and while they were discussing the
subject Marcilion reappeared, this time with only three hundred
thousand horsemen, but Roland drove them before him into Roussillon,
where he slew more than one hundred and seventy thousand men.
Then took place a fresh battle with Matrandus, and Roland, in a
hand-to-hand encounter with Tamise, brother of the King of Narbonne,
clove him in two like an acorn with Durandal, his unerring sword. In
vain did the kings of Catalonia league together to avenge the death of
Tamise. They slaughtered, it is true, the seven holy hermits, who,
weary of the tumult in the valley of the Orbieu, had imprudently
betaken themselves to another solitude, but they were repulsed by the
abbot of La Grasse and his sixty monks with considerable loss. And yet
they would rather, they said, have demolished the abbey than taken ten
cities.
Several battles ensued beneath the walls of Narbonne before
Charlemagne took that city, and after, in the course of which Roland
clove in two Borrel de la Combe; Oliver clove in two Justeamundus, the
brother-in-law of Matrandus; and Charlemagne himself performed the
like exploit on Almanzor, King of Cordova. Durandal, Hauteclair,
Joyeuse, and other famous swords mowed down the Saracens like ripe
grain, cutting off heads and arms and legs, and causing such torrents
of blood to flow that the infidels finally renounced all hostilities
against the abbey of La Grasse.
During the night before the consecration of the abbatial church was to
be made by the Pope, the Divine Redeemer, so runs the legend, himself
vouchsafed to come down from heaven in person, accompanied by a
multitude of angels, to consecrate the edifice. The following morning,
when the Pope and Charlemagne and Archbishop Turpin saw the marks of
divine consecration, they, as well as Roland and Oliver and the rest,
shed tears of joy, and blessed God, and, while still weeping, took
leave of the monks, begging to be remembered in their daily orisons.
Charlemagne now departed for Spain, to carry war in his turn into the
country of the infidel, and with what prodigies of valor is known to
all men. The memory of his passage through the valley of the Aude has
never been effaced from the popular mind. The name of Roland, too,
echoes all through this region, like the horn he won from the giant
Jatmund. Not far from La Grasse is a cliff that still bears his name.
It was here the great paladin, when weary of hewing in pieces the
Saracens, used to come to take breath and whet his sword. The iron
ring to which he fastened his steed Brigliadoro is still in its place,
and no hand in these degenerate days is strong enough to wrench it
from the rock. The people of this region, great lovers of the
marvellous, tell how he used to gallop over the Montagne Noire on so
fiery a steed that its feet shook the very mountains beneath them and
left their imprint on the rocks, as may be seen to this day on the old
road between Ilhes and Lastours. And a little higher up is a dolmen
that bears the marks of his sword and the print of his hands. This
dolmen is on a slight eminence near a little stream. The table is in
the form of a disc about seven feet in diameter and one foot thick. It
must weigh several hundred tons, and would require a great number of
men of ordinary strength to place it on its present supports. The
people say Roland, by way of amusement in his moments of leisure,
hewed out this rock with his sword, and then used it as a quoit, which
he threw with careless ease from La Valdous to Narbonne, and from
Narbonne back to La Valdous. The prints of his mighty fingers are
still clearly perceptible. It was he who set this light plaything up
on its huge pillars, and not the Druids, and to this day it is called
the _Palet de Roland_. Near by is a mysterious hole called Roland’s
tomb, where the people insist he was buried, according to his express
wish that he might repose in the place of his innocent amusements.
There are many of these Celtic monuments in this vicinity, the object
of great conjecture among archæologists. The popular imagination is
not so embarrassed, as we have seen. A legend is generally attached to
them, often picturesque and dramatic. At Carnac, every one knows, it
was St. Corneille who changed his pagan pursuers into monumental rocks
by the petrifying influence of his wrathful visage.
On the banks of the Lamouse, a little creek in this region, is a tall
colossus of a rock called the _peulvan_, that stands quite solitary on
a little hill. It is, or _was_, fifteen feet high, a yard and a half
broad, and not more than half a yard thick. The people say it descends
to an inaccessible depth in the earth. If we may believe them, forty
years ago it was no taller than a man, but it has grown higher and
higher every year from some magic subterranean influence.
People who live among lofty mountains and dark forests, by noisy
streams and waterfalls, or even on the borders of peaceful, dormant
lakes whose mists fill the valleys and shroud the neighboring hills,
are apt to be imaginative and dreamy. Here fairies and Undines have
their origin. Here White Ladies, such as Scott has described in the
valley of Glendearg, come forth in floating vapory robes to flit about
the melancholy vales and fade away with the dawn. Such is the legend
of Lake Puivert, according to which Reine Blanche, a princess of
Aragon, issues every evening from her ancestral towers, and descends
into the valley to breathe the freshness of the air. This legendary
queen was no fair young princess who had become an untimely victim to
melancholy—“sweetest melancholy”—but a dethroned queen, so infirm and
decrepit as to have lost the very use of her limbs, and had come to
end her days in the old manor-house of Puivert, where she had been
born. A crowd of servants surrounded her day and night, attentive to
her slightest caprice. Every evening at set of sun a herald ascended
to the battlements of the tower to proclaim the coming forth of Lady
Blanche. No sooner had the echoes of his horn died away than she
appeared at the principal gate, borne on a litter by four stout men.
If the weather was calm and the sky clear, she was taken to a huge
block of marble that rose out of the edge of the lake, where she loved
to breathe the freshness of the night air and the resinous odor of the
old pines that grew on the mountain above. Two pages in purple waved
great fans to keep off the insects. There was nothing to disturb the
delicious solitude but the swallows that skimmed over the surface of
the lake and the murmuring rivulets that came down from the hills, and
here she would remain in silent reverie till the light faded
completely away, when she was borne back to her tower by the light of
torches. It frequently happened, however, that the lake was so swollen
by storms that her marble throne was entirely submerged. Then she went
to the chapel of Our Lady of _Bon-Secours_ to pray the wrath of the
threatening waters might be stayed. One day she conceived the idea of
piercing an immense rock that closed the entrance to the valley,
hoping by this means to let off the surplus waters and keep the lake
always at the same level, but, alas! at the very moment when she
thought her wishes were to be crowned with success, the pressure of
the waters against the weakened base of the rock overthrew it, and,
rushing through the narrow gorge, overwhelmed serfs, pages, and La
Reine Blanche herself. Such is the legendary cause assigned for the
rupture of Lake Puivert in 1279, which destroyed the neighboring town
of Mirepoix. The feudal manor-house, so well known in the history of
the country, escaped, being on an elevation. It is still haunted by
the troubled spirit of Queen Blanche, who, in misty white garments,
may be seen at nightfall flitting about the low valley, wringing her
pale hands over the ruin she caused.
Nor is this Queen of Aragon the only White Lady of the land. The old
people of Limoux tell of women in white who once a year come forth by
night from a crystal palace in the bowels of the neighboring hill of
Taich, and go to the fountain of Las Encantados—the fairies—where with
a golden spatula they beat their linen, after the fashion of the
country, till the dawn of day. These ghostly laundresses are not
confined to the valley of the Aude. In Brittany and Normandy they
likewise haunt many regions, but they beat their linen with an iron
hand, which they do not hesitate to apply to the ear of the curious
intruder.
On the side of a steep hill that descends to the Rebenty, another
branch of the Aude, are three narrow arches to the cave of Las
Encantados—the grotto of the fairies—where, in the depths, the noise
of the turbulent stream is repeated by subterranean echoes, and
changed, now into a soft harmonious murmur and now into a solemn roar,
giving the effect of an organ in a cathedral. Nothing could be more
impressive by night than this mysterious music, which the people
formerly ascribed to some weird influence.
But to return to the royal foundation of La Vallée Grasse. That this
abbey was really founded under the patronage of Charlemagne is proved
by a charter of the year 778, still preserved in the prefecture at
Carcassonne, signed with his own imperial monogram. According to this,
the name of the first abbot was Nimphridius; and the house appears to
have been so well endowed that it held lands and livings and
seigneuries, not only throughout the province, but on the other side
of the Pyrenees. Louis le Débonnaire took it under his special
protection, together with three cells dependent thereon, to wit: St.
Cucufat on the banks of the Aude, St. Pierre on the Clamoux, and La
Palme on the seashore. In fact, favor towards it seemed hereditary in
the Carlovingian race. Louis IX. kept up the tradition, and when in
Palestine wrote to his mother and the sénéchal of Carcassonne,
recommending the abbey of La Grasse to their protection. The kings of
Aragon, too, respected its extensive domains in their realm.
The grateful abbey never forgot its illustrious founder. Every morning
at the conventual Mass the bread and wine were offered by the lord
abbot, or his representative, at the Offertory, for the repose of
Charlemagne’s soul, till authorized to render him the cultus due to a
saint, from which time the twenty-eighth of January was kept in his
honor as a festival of the first class.
It is one of the traditions of this monastery that, when Pope Leo III.
was about to dedicate the church, he received a supernatural warning
that it had been miraculously consecrated, and on approaching the
altar he discovered the marks of the divine hand, which remained
visible till the end of the fourteenth century, when the greater part
of the church was consumed by fire. It was then rebuilt in a style
corresponding to the wealth of the abbey, with numerous chapels, a
choir with rare carvings, and a silver retablo with twelve silver
statues in the niches, all plated with pure gold. The monastic
buildings were surrounded by fortified walls of vast circuit. They
were grouped around an immense cloister, the arcades of which were
supported by marble columns. On the east side were the church,
dormitories, infirmary, and rooms for visitors. At the north were the
abbot’s spacious residence, the granary, bakery, stables, etc. South
and west were the chapterhouse, the large refectory, and houses
appropriated to the aged monks. A hospital, where the poor were fed
and sick strangers received gratuitous care, was further off, near the
principal gate. There was an extensive park, with avenues of
chestnut-trees, watered by the Orbieu, which also turned the
grist-mills, oil-mills, and cloth-mills. The water was also brought
into the abbey. The library now forms part of the public library of
Carcassonne.
The abbey of La Grasse was immediately dependent on the Holy See, in
acknowledgment of which it paid an annual tribute of five gold
florins. And the Bishop of Carcassonne, and the Archbishop of
Narbonne, though the primate, were obliged to recognize its
independence of their jurisdiction before they could obtain admittance
to the abbey. The abbot from the time of Abbot Nicolas Roger, the
uncle of Pope Clement VI., had the right of wearing pontifical
vestments. He held legal jurisdiction over eighty-three towns, besides
which, three other abbeys, three monasteries, twenty-four priories,
and sixty-seven parish churches were dependent on the house of La
Grasse.
This great abbey was suppressed in 1790, after existing over a
thousand years, and before long was transformed into barracks and
manufactories. The church became a melancholy ruin, with its columns
lying among the tall grass, the capitals covered with lichens, bushes
growing in among the crumbling walls, and here and there scattered
mutilated escutcheons of the old lords of the land and the very bones
from their sepulchres.
But the town of La Grasse, that sprang up under the mild sway of the
old abbots, is still queen of the lower Corbières by its population
and historic interest. It is noted for its _blanquette_—a sparkling
white wine, which rivals that of Limoux.
As to the battles in the valley of the Orbieu, it is more certain that
the Saracens, on their way to attack Carcassonne, were met by William,
Duke of Aquitaine, in this valley, where, though defeated, he
performed prodigies of valor, and made the followers of Mahound buy
their victory dearly. They soon withdrew into Spain, carrying with
them rich spoils from Narbonne, among which were seven statues of
silver, long famous in Andalusia, and many marble columns, still to be
seen in the famous mosque of Cordova, on which they forced the vast
number of prisoners they carried with them to labor.
Nor was the abbey of La Grasse the only famous monastery of this
region. There was the Cistercian abbey of Fonfroide, founded in the
twelfth century by Ermengarde, Vicomtesse of Narbonne, to whom Pierre
Roger, the troubadour, gave the mystic name of _Tort n’avez_, and so
well known from the permanent Court of Love she held in her gay
capital. This abbey at one time contained two hundred monks, who were
great agriculturists, and understood drainage and all the improvements
we regard as modern. They brought vast tracts of land under
cultivation, and, by their industry and economy, became wealthy and
powerful. In 1341, this abbey had nineteen thousand two hundred and
thirty-four animals, including sheep, cattle, mules, swine, etc.
Among the celebrated monks of Fonfroide was Peter of Castelnau, whom
the Holy See appointed one of the legates to suppress the heresy of
the Albigenses, and who acquired so melancholy a celebrity by his
conflicts with Count Raymond of Toulouse and his tragical end. Another
member, eminent for his knowledge and piety, of this house was Arnaud
de Novelli, uncle of Pope Benedict XII. He was made cardinal by Pope
Clement V., and sent as one of the legates to England to make peace
between Edward II. and his barons. He died in 1317, and lies buried
under the high altar of the abbey church. Pope Benedict XII. himself
was a monk at Fonfroide, and succeeded his uncle as abbot of the
house. As pope, he is specially celebrated for the part he took among
the theologians of the day in discussing the question of the immediate
state of the righteous after death, and the decretal which he finally
issued in 1355—_Benedictus Dominus in sanctis suis_—in which he
declares that the souls of the justified, on leaving their bodies, are
at once admitted to behold the Divine Essence face to face without
intermediary; that by this vision they are rendered truly happy, and
in enjoyment of everlasting repose; whereas those who die in the state
of mortal sin descend immediately into hell.
The abbey of Fonfroide, after seven hundred years’ existence, was
closed in 1790, but, more fortunate than La Grasse, it is now
inhabited by Bernardins, who seem to have inherited the virtues and
spirit of the early Cistercians.
The tombs of the old vicomtes of Narbonne, who were mostly buried
here, are no longer to be seen. William II., by an act of May 25,
1424, ordered his remains to be taken to Fonfroide, wherever he might
die. He left two thousand livres for his tomb, which was to be of
stone and magnificently adorned, and an annuity of twenty-five livres
as a foundation for a daily Mass for the repose of his soul. He was
killed by the English at the battle of Verneuil, the following August;
his body was fastened to a gibbet, and had to be ransomed before it
could be brought to Fonfroide.
Another noted abbey of the country was that of St. Hilaire, built over
the tomb of its patron saint—not St. Hilary of Arles, who walked all
the way to Rome in the dead of winter, but the first bishop of
Carcassonne, who never walked anywhere, dead or alive—at least, out of
his own diocese. This abbey was built in the good old days of
Charlemagne, who seems to have never missed an opportunity of building
a church or endowing a monastery—if we are to believe all the
traditions of France—and of course endowed this one. However, Roger
I., Count of Carcassonne, enriched it still more. He never went into
battle without invoking St. Hilaire, and to him he ascribed the
success of his arms. In his gratitude, he had the body of the saint
exhumed and placed in a beautiful tomb of sculptured marble, and
promised to furnish the twelve monks—all there were at that time—with
suitable clothing during the remainder of his life, which says very
little in favor of Charlemagne’s endowment. The abbey ultimately
became very prosperous, and, among other possessions, owned the most
of Limoux. It lost its importance, however, in the sixteenth century,
and was finally secularized. In one of the rooms may still be seen the
names of its fifty abbots. The beautiful cloister of the fourteenth
century is well preserved, and the tomb of St. Hilaire, with its
sculptures of the tenth century, representing the legend of St.
Saturnin, still serves as the altar of the church. The abbey stands in
a bend of the Lauquet, that has escaped from the Aude, with its little
village around it, among low hills covered with excellent vineyards.
Here blow alternately the Cers and the Marin, the only two winds known
in the valley of the Aude, shut in as it is between the Montagne Noire
on the north and the Corbières on the south. These winds blow with
alternate violence, like two great guns, the greater part of the year,
and when one dies away the other generally takes up the blast. The
very trees are planted with reference to them. People who would live
according to the Delphic principle of “not too much of anything,”
should not come to the valley of the Aude. The Cers increases in
violence as it approaches the sea, where it seems to put on the very
airs of the great planet Jupiter itself, noted for the violence of its
winds; whereas the Marin waits till it gets away from the sound of
“the jawing wave” before it ventures to come out in its full strength.
However, as people often take pride in displaying their very
infirmities, as if desirous of being noted for something, so the
inhabitants of this valley boast of their winds. They did the same in
the days of Seneca the philosopher, who says that though the Circius,
or Cers, overthrew the very buildings, the people of Gaul still
praised it, and thought they were indebted to it for the salubrity of
their climate. Perhaps they acted on the principle of Augustus Cæsar,
who erected an altar to propitiate the Circius when he was in Gaul, so
much did he dread it.
The canal of Languedoc passes through the valley of the Aude. Of
course the grand idea of uniting the two seas could have originated
with no less a person than Charlemagne himself. Francis the First also
agitated the question. The principle on which canals are constructed
was known in the Middle Ages. That universal genius, Leonardo da
Vinci, was the first to make a practical application of it. In spite
of this, the canal of Languedoc required a century and a half of
profound study on the part of men of talent before it was decided on.
The difficulty of its construction can hardly be realized in these
days. It was not till the time of Louis XIV. the work was undertaken
by M. de Riquet, who brought down waters from the Montagne Noire to
feed the basins in the valley of the Aude. The whole canal was built
in seventeen years, and cost about seventeen millions of livres. He
did not live to see it opened. That satisfaction was reserved for his
sons. The people awaited the day with impatience, and when it was
opened, May 15, 1681, there was one great outburst of joy and
admiration all the way from the Garonne to the Mediterranean. The
intendant of the province, and all the capitouls of Toulouse,
assembled in the morning in the cathedral of that city. The archbishop
officiated. Nor was M. Riquet forgotten amid the thanksgiving. His
sons were present. And at the close of Mass, the archbishop turned and
said: Brethren, let us pray for the repose of the soul of Pierre Paul
de Riquet. Every head bent a few moments in silent prayer for the
benefactor of the country.
A richly carpeted bark, from which floated the national colors, had
been prepared. The Abbot of St. Jernin solemnly blessed the waters of
the canal, and the dignitaries set out amid the applause of the
multitude, followed by two other barks filled with musicians. At
Castelnaudary, Cardinal de Bonzi, with several other prelates and
lords, joined them in a magnificent galley, amid the noise of cannon
and the peal of trumpets, followed by twenty barks full of
merchandise. It was not till May 24 this flotilla arrived at Béziers,
where it was hailed, as all along the way, with salutes and cries of
joy. These demonstrations were warranted by the immense benefit of the
canal to the country, and though now in a great measure superseded by
the railway, it is still of the greatest utility.
Before the Aude reaches Carcassonne, it flows directly through the
pretty, industrious town of Limoux, where the shores are connected by
an old Roman bridge. Four hills enclose the charming valley, on the
sides of which grow the vines that yield the _blanquette_ of Limoux,
which is famous in the wine market. On one of these hills stands a
rural chapel held in great veneration by the people around—that of
_Notre Dame de Marceille_, one of the most frequented places of
pilgrimage in southern France, which has been sung by poets, studied
by archæologists, and sketched by artists. Nothing could be lovelier
than its situation. From the plateau around the chapel you look down
on the Flacian valley, watered by the Aude. To the west are the walls
of Limoux in the midst of its vineyards and manufactories. Further off
are bare cliffs and wooded hills, while on the very edge of the
horizon rise, like an army of giants, the summits of the Pyrenees,
almost always covered with snow or shrouded in mist. What a variety of
temperature and products this landscape embraces—the cold mountain
summit and the heat of the plain, verdant heights and naked rocks, the
frowning hills and joyous valleys, gloomy forests of pines and
frolicsome vines, fresh meadows and fields of golden grain! Through
all this flows the Aude, past old legendary castles now in ruins,
along marvellous grottoes a sibyl might envy, its current spanned by
bridges with their tutelar Madonnas, but not disdaining to turn the
wheels of the petty industries below us, though it has its source amid
impassable gulfs among yonder peaks lost in the clouds.
A paved _rampe_ leads up the hillside to _Notre Dame de Marceille_,
more than six hundred feet long, which the pilgrims ascend on their
knees, praying as they go. Half-way up, they stop to rest beside a
trickling fountain and drink of the water that falls drop by drop. On
the arch above is the inscription in letters of gold:
“_Mille mali species Virgo levavit aqua._”[172]
The present church dates from 1488, but a sanctuary is known to have
existed here as early as 1011. From age to age it has been the object
of ever increasing veneration among the people. It belonged at one
time to the abbey of St. Hilaire, but in 1207 passed into the hands of
the Dominicans of Prouilhe. You enter by a porch, which is supported
by slender columns that give it an air of elegance. On the front is
inscribed:
“Stay, traveller: adore God, invoke Mary.”
And on the sides:
“O Jesus, we have merited thy wrath. Efface from our hearts
every stain of sin, that they may be rendered worthy to
become thy dwelling-place!”
“Spotless Maid, Virgin Mother, on
whom the Almighty lavishes the gifts of
his love, with him, with thee, bring us
by thy prayers to dwell for ever in the
celestial abode.”
Another fountain near the porch bears also its inscription:
_Hic putens fons signatus. Parit unda salutem.
Aeger junge fidem. Sic bibe, sarnus eris._
During the cholera of 1855 more than sixty thousand pilgrims flocked
to this chapel in the space of three weeks. All the priests of the
diocese come here annually to celebrate the mysteries of religion,
especially in the month of September when it is most frequented. Then
the holy hill is covered by the ascending pilgrims, the chapel is
illuminated, the bells are rung, and group after group from different
villages enter to pray and sing their pious hymns, which have a
certain wild flavor that is delightful. Their varied attitudes and
costumes, the rude melody of their voices, the numerous bas-reliefs
and paintings on the walls, the altar of the Virgin hung with
ex-votos, and the robes of the Madonna herself, overloaded with
ornaments of gold and silver which sparkle in the countless tapers,
make up a picture one is never weary of studying.
It was on descending from this consecrated hill we stopped to look
back at the sanctuary whence streamed still the soul-stirring hymns. A
group was gathered about the archway of the fountain. The base was
aflush with the vines. From Limoux came the sound of earthly cares.
Harvests covered the plain. The heavens aglow crowned all. It was here
we took leave of the Valley of the Aude.
[172] By this water the Virgin has cured a thousand ills.
FREE TRANSLATION OF A CHORUS IN THE “HECUBA” OF EURIPIDES.
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
Thou of the ten years’ war!
City of marble palaces—no more
Hard by the mountains art thou throned a Queen,
Beside the sounding shore.
Where is thy crown of olives ever-green?
How is thy regal head with anguish bowed!
Ah! woe is me, enveloped in a cloud
Of leaguering foemen are thy smoking walls,
Blood-stained and desolate thy halls.
In the deep hush of night
Fate fell upon us … in the hour of joy;
In the first flush of our triumphant might,
Glory, and Victory.
The bowl was circling, and the festive floor
With wild flowers sprinkled o’er.
We wove the mazy dance in choral bands,
With eyes responsive and united hands
And thrilling melodies.
My husband on the bed,
Warrior out-worn, was lying; and his breast
Filled with the dewy rest:
For thou, O raven-plumed power,
Wert o’er him waving thy Lethean wings,
Flinging thy poppied odors o’er
His languid breast and eyes;
All grateful rites complete, and pious sacrifice.
But I my ringlets dark
(A young and happy bride)
Was braiding, not unconscious of my charms,
Before the mirror wide:
Now for the first time freed from war’s alarms
To lay me by his side
Whose breast was filled with dreams of peace:—but hush!
A long and piercing cry
Comes ringing thro’ the sky,
A sound of struggling men and clashing arms.
With robe unbound—with hair
Streaming upon the air;
Zoneless as Spartan maid, Pallas, to thee;
O Virgin Deity!
I rush in tearless agony—I bear
The maids’ and matrons’ prayer.
In vain—ah! what availed
Those wild embraces or that mute despair?
Ah! what availed? These eyes, these eyes beheld
The husband slaughtered on the household hearth
In sight of all his gods; but when the wave
With its unheeding rave,
Was bearing me from thee, my place of birth,
As from mine eye down sank high tower and gate,
Ruined and desolate.…
At last my agony
Burst forth into one long and fainting cry—
I fell upon my face—I knew myself a slave.
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER
(FROM THE FRENCH.)
APRIL 22.
Yesterday was the day which the Lord hath made, the day of happiness
and of rejoicing in God. Rose at half-past three, and was at Ste.
Croix before the time. Kneeling by René, my heart overflowing with
felicity, I enjoyed during those too rapid moments all the delights of
the Christian life. The procession and Benediction were magnificent;
everything that has relation to worship, here possesses a unique and
impressive solemnity. Heard two Masses, and then that of the Paschal
Communion of the men. I love this spectacle—these long files of
communicants, so eloquent a protest against the impieties of the age!
Was present at High Mass. Dear Kate! congratulate your Georgina:
taking all together, I spent nine hours yesterday in church. But my
day was much less sanctified in reality than in appearance; I am so
easily distracted. The music transported and the crowds bewildered me.
Monseigneur officiated pontifically at the High Mass, after which we
had the Papal Benediction. The sermon pleased me much. “When Christ
shall be glorified, you also shall be glorified with him.” It was
sweet and comforting to hear, and I was greatly touched. “The measure
of your sufferings here below is the measure of the happiness which
God has in store for you. Our body will be glorified by the absence of
all suffering; our understanding, by the Beatific Vision; our heart,
by the possession of every possible happiness and felicity; our will,
by the accomplishment of its desires. God will to all eternity do the
will of his saints.” Then the Benediction, the procession chanting
the _Laudate Pueri_ and the _In exitu Israël_, the hymn of
deliverance—what splendor! O festival of Easter! so solemn and so
beautiful, how dear thou art to me.
And so Lent is over, and, to indemnify me for my long fast, here is a
letter from my Kate. I read it on my knees, like a prayer, and
afterwards aloud to the assembled family (except, of course, the
private details). It is settled that we are all to be present when you
take the veil. Kate dearest! my elder sister, my second mother, who
have imparted to me so much of your own soul, the blessed thought of
you follows me at every step.
Mme. de T—— has made splendid presents to all her children. I like
this fraternal custom. We had been secretly preparing the prettiest
surprises imaginable, and in the morning saluted each other as they do
in Poland: “Christ is risen!” René has presented me with two beautiful
volumes, a novelty, a marvel—the _Récit d’une Sœur_, by Mrs. Craven,
_née_ de la Ferronays. Call to your remembrance one of our loveliest
days in Italy, at the Palazzo Borghese, where this family long
remained; we have often spoken of it since. This is such attractive
reading that it costs me a great effort to tear myself from the book.
The weather is glorious; we take long walks through gardens full of
lilacs in blossom. O spring! the renewal, the awakening of nature, how
sweet and fair it is, and with what joy I have hailed its coming! The
children are not to be kept within the house any longer; they are
caged birds prettily fluttering their wings against the bars until
they are free in the fields.[173] Little whisperings are made to Aunt
Georgina to receive into her _coupé_ these darling nightingales.
Excursions are to be the order of the week.
Our poor have largely shared in our Paschal rejoicings. I took
Picciola with me to see Benoni. What a festival it was to her kind
heart! She had laden herself with playthings, cakes, and bonbons, and,
in a spirit of heroic sacrifice, with a pretty cage which she sat
great store by, in which sang two canaries. The joy of the poor family
was surpassed by the sweet child’s delight. I watched her with
admiration as she went to and fro in the lowly abode, warbling with
the _brother of the little Jesus_, as she calls the darling. What a
sunbeam in this dwelling! I wish Madeleine were my daughter. Kate
dearest, pray that my wishes may be realized. I am writing to you in
my room, near the open window. A delicious perfume of lilac fills the
air; I love nothing in the world so much as children and flowers.
Lately I have frequently made Alix play. My sister-in-law Johanna has
had a severe cold, and I have laid claim to her pretty family during
their recreations. Marguerite, the eldest of the little girls, is not
more than eight years old, and is always called Lady Sensible, which
makes her cheeks glow with pleasure. Alix is four; she is fresh as a
rose of May. I love to press my lips against her pure forehead, and
imbue myself with the soft innocence which exhales from this young
soul. With her deep-blue eyes, her thick, fair hair, and her
angel-look, Alix is really charming, and it seems to me that if she
were mine I should have floods of tenderness to shed upon her.
Monseigneur is about to leave for Rome. I shall be presented to him
before his departure. _Au revoir_, dear Kate! May God protect us! When
shall I see Ireland again? When shall I return to the land from whence
my ancestors, those sons of a royal race, were banished? The faith is
worth more than a throne.
APRIL 29.
René has undertaken to give you an account of my presentation, dearest
Kate, so I need not say anything about it. Nothing is spoken of here
but the dead and dying. Mme. de St. M—— has lost her two little girls
in two days; it makes one tremble. I have sent Fanny your letter of
Wednesday; it seemed as if I should profane your holy pages by
transcribing them. Our friends wrote to me yesterday; you ought to
have read their letters before I did. Lady W—— tells me that she shall
treasure like a relic the consolations of Kate. Dearest, you say well
that this world could not be fit for our sweet Mary; but your
aspirations after eternity alarm your earthly Georgina. Live to love
me, to be my guardian angel!
You will not read _Le Récit d’une Sœur_, dear, busy one? This book
contains beauties of the highest order; it is like the expression of
the splendor of the beautiful. How those hearts loved, and how much
they suffered! But love like theirs must give strength to bear such
sufferings. How can I describe to you these incomparable volumes? Your
faithful memory has well recalled to you all the personages; imagine,
then, the mutual outpourings of those great souls, the marriage of
Albert and Alexandrine, so closely followed by so much heart-rending
anguish; that family, so numerous and so united, and which appeared to
have so many titles to happiness, seeing death descend upon their
happy home, gradually destroying and pitilessly mowing down those fair
lives. Albert first of all—the gentle, tender, pious, poetic
Albert—dying on the 29th of June, 1836, after two years of married
life and four years of the most pure and sanctified love; then the
Count de la Ferronays, that noble figure, that grand character, a soul
of antiquity moulded in a Christian heart, who died at Rome on the
17th of January, 1842, and obtained immediately a miraculous
conversion—an endless consolation for those who wept for him; Eugénie,
so saintly, so detached from the world, the most loving and devoted of
sisters, died next, far from all her own people, at Palermo, whose
mild climate had failed to restore strength to that fading flower; a
year after, at Brussels, on the 10th of February, the pure and
beautiful Olga; in 1848, on the 9th of February, Alexandrine, the most
attractive heroine of this narrative, the inconsolable widow, mounting
to such heights in the love of God that she would have refused to live
over again the happiness of her union with Albert—an exceptionally
saintly soul, full of heroic devotion, since she offered her life to
God—who accepted the offering—for that of the Père de Ravignan; and,
lastly, Mme. de la Ferronays, the mother, the wife who had been, as it
were, on the cross for so many years, and always serene, always
generous, dying in the arms of her Pauline on the 14th of November,
1848, the same year as her daughter-in-law. By the side of these souls
who have passed away figure several personages of the time: M. de
Montalembert, the intimate friend of Albert, and the ever-faithful
friend of Alexandrine, whom he called his “sister”; M. Gerbet, the
author of _L’Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_;[174] Père Lacordaire, Mme.
Swetchine, Père de Ravignan, Confalonieri, the learned M. Rio—all this
related by _a sister_, Mrs. Craven, of whom Mme. —— spoke to us so
much. Remark these two thoughts from St. Augustine: one, the motto,
is, “We never lose those whom we love in him whom we can never lose”;
the other, written by Albert in his journal and several times
underlined: “All which ends is not long.” There is also this other, of
Alexandrine’s: “I do not believe that affections are injurious to
affections. Our soul is made in the image of God, and in her power of
loving she possesses something of the infinite.” What a family!—an
assembly of chosen souls, all of them winning and sympathetic, all
knowing how to love as those souls only know who love God above all
things. I should like to know Mrs. Craven. I pity and admire her: I
pity her for having seen all those die whom she so loved, for having
witnessed the departure of souls so intimately united that they were
as if melted into one alone; I admire her for having had the power of
retracing so many memories at the same time sweet and distressing, and
which at every page must have renewed her grief. Is not Albert’s
offering of his life for the conversion of Alexandrine the most
admirable type of Christian love?
We are going to _eternize_ ourselves at Orleans, dear Kate. My
mother-in-law finds the _Rue Jeanne d’Arc_ very agreeable; the
children attend some of the cours.[175] We are not too far from the
capital; all say in chorus, It is good to be here! When I say _all_, I
except the gentlemen, who, in their hearts, prefer the country, but do
not say a word to that effect.
A letter from Margaret, charmed to be at Rome, “that fatherland of
sorrow.” Amid the ruins of the queen of cities she walks with her
immense disappointment. Oh! what trial. No woman better deserves to be
loved. Do you remember Mère Athanase saying of Margaret: “Beautiful as
Eve in Paradise, attractive as Rachel, a musician like Miriam the
sister of Moses, she is also learned as Anna Comnena, and a poetess
like Marie de France”? I answered: “May I be the good Samaritan to
this wounded soul!”
_Duchesse_ is much afflicted; a new frock _quite untakable_, as she
says, is the cause. On Marguerite’s gravely asking, “Is not Thérèse
going out again? what misfortune has happened to her?” Arthur replied:
“Lady Sensible, look well at Thérèse; there is a wrinkle on her
forehead. She has lost … her toilette.” And the giddy boy twirled
Marguerite round and round, who cannot understand, serious little
thing that she is, how any one should be in trouble for so small a
matter. This reminds me of the following verses, copied by Hélène in
her journal:
“Un frais cottage anglais, voilà sa Thébaïde
Et si son front de nacre est marqué d’une ridé,
Ce n’est pas, croyez moi, qu’elle songe à la mort;
Pour craindre quelque chose, elle est trop esprit fort.
Mais c’est que de Paris une robe attendue,
Arrive chiffonnée et de taches perdue.”[176]
A thousand kisses to my Kate.
MAY 3.
O month of graces and of heavenly favors, how I welcome your return!
To-day, my beloved Kate, René and I have piously celebrated the
anniversary of your birth. May God bless you, my very dear one, and
may he bless all that you do! Oh! how many times have I thanked God
that he has granted me to receive the love that Joseph had for
Benjamin. Kate, I am too happy. Ask our Lord that I may not lose the
fragrance of these days of peace and gladness; that I may not be an
unprofitable servant; that I may do good, much good; that I may labor
for the salvation of souls. O souls, souls! You know how, when a
child, I cried when I found that I could not be a missionary. I wanted
to be one of the laborers among the _whitening harvests_. I have kept
my desire, and René shares my aspirations. Adrien, who heard us
yesterday talking together, called out: “Quick, quick! a professor of
Hindostani and Chinese for these two apostles.” My mother-in-law was
very much amused by this sally, and the conversation became general. A
good work has come out of it: there were in the house only four
associates of the Propagation of the Faith, and now there are thirty,
and I am chief of the _dizaines_, or sets of ten, by unanimous vote.
It is not to Asiatic idolaters that I am desirous of preaching the
Gospel, but, wherever my duty shall place me, to those who are
ignorant of it; and by way of a beginning I have this winter been
teaching the catechism to three little children, beggars by
profession. I shall continue the same thing in Brittany. Dearest, can
I do too much for Him who overwhelms me with such magnificent
profusion?
The opening of the month of Mary has been very beautiful; the altar
splendidly lighted; lovely hymns. Noted an enchanting voice of a young
girl, which caused me some distractions.… Kate, where is our dear
oratory in Ireland, and my place close to yours? My country, my
country! Some one has said, Our country is the place where we love.
The true country and fatherland of the Christian is heaven. René
speaks like an angel of the love of heaven, and this, too, makes me
afraid. Oh! how well I understand the saying of Eugénie de Guérin,
‘The heart so longs to immortalize what it loves’—that is to say, the
heart would fain have no separation, but life or death with the object
of its love. Dear Kate, to whom I owe my happiness, may this day be
always blest!
I leave you now, as my mother-in-law sends Picciola to request my
company. “If,” says the gentle little ambassadress, “it is to Madame
Kate that you are writing, tell her especially that I love her with
all my heart; and let me put a kiss upon the page.”
By the side of this sweet, pure kiss I place my tender messages, or
rather _ours_, loving you as we both do.
MAY 6.
The spiritual enjoyments of this fairest of months are infinitely
sweet to me, my sister. I had minutely described your oratory to Lucy
and Hélène, and these two affectionate girls have prepared me a
heartfelt enjoyment. In a small, unoccupied drawing-room I found all
my souvenirs of Ireland, … all … excepting only your dear presence, my
devoted Kate. Tell me how it is that so many hearts agree together in
strewing with flowers the path of your Georgina.
The _Odeurs de Paris_, by Louis Veuillot, is much spoken of. This book
is a sequel to the _Parfum de Rome_—a sort of set-off or contrast
between the unseemliness of Babylon and the beauties of Sion. I wanted
to read it, but Adrien dissuaded me, and René read me the preface,
which contains some remarkable thoughts. The modern Juvenal says of
Paris: “A city without a past, full of minds without memories, of
hearts without tears, of souls without love”; and elsewhere: “To paint
Paris, Rousseau discovered the suitable expression of ‘a desert of
men.’” There is also a touching complaint respecting the continual
confusion and, as it were, overturning of this city, which Gabourd
calls the city of the Sovereign People: “Who will dwell in the
paternal house? Who will find again the roof which sheltered his
earliest years?…” Read the _Souvenirs_ of Mme. Récamier, and
_Marie-Thérèse_, by Nettement. The latter is written with a royalist
and Christian enthusiasm which delighted me. My mother-in-law is
passionately fond of poetry, and has selected me as reader. I am
gradually becoming her pet bird; she is so kind and good in her
continual solicitude for _her youngest daughter_! Master Arthur,
_l’enfant terrible_, confided to Picciola that I was grandmamma’s
_spoiled child_. The fact is that, having my time more free than my
sisters-in-law, who are absorbed by their maternal cares, I can occupy
myself more in anything which may please Mme. de T——, whose innate
refinement knows how to appreciate the smallest attentions. Then,
yesterday my mother-in-law sent me a nice little packet, carefully
sealed; guess what I found in it? A Shakspere and a Lamartine, bound
with my monogram, and a choice little volume by Marie Jenna, a name
which pleases me. This is full of heavenly poetry. There are pieces
which are worth their weight in gold, if gold could pay for this
delicious efflorescence of the poet’s soul. How I love Lamartine when
he says:
“Moi-même, plein des biens dont l’opulence abonde,
Que j’échangerais volontiers
Cet or dont la fortune avec dédain m’inonde
Pour une heure du temps où je n’avais au monde
Que ma vigne et que mon figuier!
Pour ces songes divins qui chantaient en mon âme
Et que nul or ne peut payer!”[177]
Ah! yes; no happiness is worth the happiness of loving and praising
God.
Hélène waited for the month of Mary to reveal her beautiful vocation
to her mother—this choice of heaven which will necessarily be at the
same time the glory and the martyrdom of our hearts. None of the
austerities of her future life will take by surprise the newly-chosen
one; she has prepared herself for everything. It is on the 10th, four
days hence, that she will speak.… Help us with your prayers, my
dearest Kate!…
I am hastening off with René to _Sainte Croix_. A thousand loving
messages.
MAY 9.
The evening of the day before yesterday was a beautiful triumph: the
festival of Joan of Arc had begun. All day long the belfry resounded;
a touching and patriotic as well as Christian idea seemed, as it were,
to call back the past to life; and in the evening a large crowd
followed in the torch-light procession, which was beautiful to see
from the memories which are attached to it. With more than four
centuries between, these souvenirs are still living with an
imperishable life. O pure and fair Joan of Arc! my chosen heroine, how
I love the fidelity of Orleans to thy dear memory! Scarcely had the
cortège reached the cathedral when … but let me transcribe for you the
description of these splendors by a more skilful hand than mine—by the
pencil of an artist, and an artist of genius. This is what was spoken
by Mgr. Mermillod, on the 8th of May, 1863: “Yesterday evening,
gentlemen, under the vaulted roof of your basilica, I followed your
priests and your pontiff, who were proceeding towards the portico. The
interior of your church was in silence and obscurity; one little light
alone was gleaming before the tabernacle, announcing the Master’s
presence. When I reached the threshold, tears filled my eyes, while my
heart beat with an indescribable emotion. I had before me, in an
incomparable scene, a vision of your history, of your heroic
splendors, of your providential destinies. You, gentlemen, were there,
ranged in this place; your children, your wives, your aged men, the
great ones and the lowly ones of your city, were present at this
solemn assembly. Suddenly the clarions sound, bands of inspiriting
music fill the air, drums beat, the artillery thunders, the bells
fling into space their triumphant clangor, and the choir of Levites
raises on high the hymn of victory. The standard of Joan of Arc is
advancing, borne by the magistrates of the city, hailed by all the
united voices of the army and the church. Is not this the most
eloquent address, the most moving panegyric, the living incarnation of
an undying remembrance?… Your cathedral becomes radiant; these grand,
sculptured masses light up with sparkling brightness, pennons,
armorial bearings, and banners glitter like stars. Your bishop
descends the steps, the first magistrate advances, and each gives the
other the kiss of peace: I there beheld an apparition of religion and
our country.
“The pontiff invokes the name of the Lord, the multitude answers;
soldiers, priests, and people bend the knee; the benediction falls
upon these souls.… My gaze mounted from earth towards heaven, and it
seemed as if I could perceive above the towers of your basilica forms
more luminous than earthly fires, the ancient witnesses and workers of
the greatness of your France—Ste. Geneviève, Ste. Clotilde, St. Rémy,
St. Michael, Ste. Catherine, Ste. Margaret, Joan of Arc; your own
saints, St. Aignan and St. Euvertus, blessing you by the hand of their
worthy successor. Clergy and people intoned the psalm of thanksgiving:
‘Praise the Lord, ye peoples: praise him, O ye nations! for God hath
remembered his goodness; he hath confirmed his loving-kindness towards
us. The truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise the Lord.’
“I seemed to hear the stones of your cathedral, the ramparts of your
city, your own souls, the saints of heaven, the past, the present, all
your centuries, unite in one immense acclamation, and repeat the song
of gladness: ‘Glory to the Father, who is strength; glory to the Son,
who is sacrifice; glory to the Holy Spirit, who is light; glory to
God, who made worlds for himself, the church for eternity; France for
the church, and Joan of Arc for France!’”
Dear Kate, what can I say to you after this? Who would venture to
speak after Mgr. Mermillod, “write after Châteaubriand, or paint after
Raphael”? Yesterday the town was rejoicing; it was the anniversary of
the deliverance. Was present at the panegyric by M. l’Abbé Freppel,
professor of sacred eloquence at the Sorbonne. He asks for the
canonization of Joan of Arc. His text was a sentence out of the Book
of the Machabees. Divisions: 1. The life of Joan of Arc was marked by
all the virtues which characterize sanctity. 2. She uttered prophecies
and performed miracles. It was very fine and elevated. There was an
imposing assemblage. At half-past twelve we went out and hurried to
the hotel to see the procession pass by. What a _cortège_! All the
parishes, each headed by its banner; the court, the authorities, the
troops, the corporations, and I know not what. It was indeed a day of
excitement. Dearest Kate, in the midst of this _encombrement_[178] I
thought of you. Our drawing-rooms were overflowing with people; from
time to time I went noiselessly away to Hélène, whom a headache
excused from appearing, and we spoke of God and the sweetness of his
service. I am so fond of these conversations. In the evening, Month of
Mary: I would not dispense myself from this for anything in the world.
I am going to read _Sainte Cécile_, by Dom Guéranger. Letter from
Lizzy, who announces a most joyful piece of news: all the M——s are
abjuring Protestantism. “Make haste and sing the hymn of St. Ambrose
and St. Augustine; Ellen consents to say the _Lætatus_; it is Mary who
has obtained this miracle.” When I told you, dear Kate, that one ought
to sing alleluia over her tomb, it was truly a prophetic saying. What
consolation for Fanny and her mother!
I am sending to the post; I wish not to delay your happiness.
MAY 11.
To write to my Kate is the condition _sine quâ non_ of my existence. A
beautiful sermon yesterday by M. Baunard, a young and eloquent curate
of _Sainte Croix_, on visits and conversations, “in which the
Christian ought always to have three charming companions—Charity,
Humility, and Piety.” Went to the museum with René and Adrien, the
most learned and agreeable of _ciceroni_. I was captivated by the hall
of zoölogy, and that of botany also.
To-morrow Hélène will have with her mother the conversation which I
dread. René proposed to his niece to select this day, which will
recall to Gertrude (Mme. Adrien) a remarkable favor due to the
protection of Our Lady of Deliverance. Pray for all these hearts which
are about to suffer, dear Kate. We set out for Paris on the 1st of
June; my mother has taken an entire house there. We are going to
breathe the burning atmosphere of the capital, as Paul says, wiping
his forehead; and your Georgina adds: We are going to see Kate. All
the beauties of the much-vaunted Exposition would affect me little if
you were not in Paris, dear sister of my soul. What gladness to
embrace you, to speak to you! This paper irritates me; it answers me
nothing. It is _you, you_ that I need; I thirst for your presence. And
then a new separation, a new rending away—you will take the veil, and
be no more of this world. Kate, I want not to think of it.
Could you to-morrow have several Masses said at _Notre Dame des
Victoires_? Hélène begs that you will; there she is, near my bureau,
leaning her pretty, pensive head against an arm-chair. Ah! we
understand each other so well; I love her so much, and am scarcely
older than she is. I was mistaken as to her age; she is not yet
eighteen, and was like a sister given me by God to console me for
having my Kate no longer; and she also is now to go away.
May all the angels of Paradise be with you, and may they be to-morrow
with Hélène!
MAY 13.
Thanks, dear Kate! The heavenly spirits were almost visible in our
home during the eventful day. Adrien and Gertrude received, with a
profound faith, the confidences of Hélène, and I know not whether to
admire most the heroism of the parents or that of the young virgin.
Her father’s grief is inexpressible; he had formed the brightest
projects for the future of his daughter. She was his especial darling;
… but he is a Christian of the ancient days, and says with Job: “The
Lord gave and the Lord taketh away …” Gertrude is like Mary at the
foot of the cross, mute and immovable, with death in the heart, and
yet happy at the divine choice. Adrien undertakes to prepare his
mother; … it is for _her_ that I fear most.
“This is my Calvary,” said Hélène to me this morning. “To see them
suffer through me! And I cannot hesitate!…” I have read _Sainte
Cécile_, and I made Gertrude read it, who thanked me with a smile that
went to my heart. René is afflicted. “This,” he says, “is the first
bird that leaves the nest, to reenter it no more. There will be from
this time a great void in our _réunions_, a source of distress to my
brother—a subject we shall fear to touch upon. Georgina, you were
saying that we had not a single shadow in our sky!” Alas! I feel only
too keenly how painful it is, but also how happy Hélène will be!
Thanks for having made me understand this, dear Kate. Gertrude, the
wounded eagle, takes refuge with me to speak about her daughter.
Good-by for a short time, _carissima sorella_.
MAY 15.
A splendid benediction yesterday, on account of the Perpetual
Adoration. The sanctuary was enkindled with light. Behind the altar,
_a cathedral_ of lighted tapers—yes, dear, the towers of _Sainte
Croix_ in miniature; all around it pyramids of lights, clusters of
flowers with long, luminous stems, lustres hanging at an infinite
height, the arches and smaller arcades, etc., illuminated. An _O
Salutaris_ and a _Regina Cœli_ were sung that seemed to carry one
away. I stood on the earth, but my heart was in heaven; and near to me
René, absorbed in God, brothers and sisters, Hélène, Thérèse,
Madeleine, and _grandmother_, who was in tears.… How touched I was!
Adrien had spoken.… It was a thunder-clap! And the choir chanted the
glories of the King of Virgins, and all those beloved countenances
beamed with fervor, as we bent our heads beneath the benediction of
the Almighty!…
This morning Mme. de T—— asked for Hélène. Their conversation lasted
two hours. After _déjeuner_[179] my mother said, smiling: “It is
decided we have a Carmelite!” The children opened their eyes in
wonder. Lucie began to sob; Picciola, pale and trembling, kissed the
happy Hélène a hundred and a hundred times over. The sacrifice is, as
it were, accomplished.
Johanna, the dear Creole, is astonished at the promptitude of this
decision. The babies will no more be persuaded to leave the side of
the tall cousin “who did not know that she was so much loved,” she
says. This morning she received a long, beautiful letter from an
intimate friend inviting her to a marriage. It is impossible to
refuse; this will be the last worldly festivity at which that sweet
face, made to delight the angels, will be seen. The word _marriage_
made Mme. de T—— start, and she afterwards said to me: “I had planned
a brilliant earthly alliance for Hélène; how much there is of _human_
and _material_ within us that I should still regret it when a divine
alliance is secured to her! Here, Georgina, read me again the chapter
on abandonment to God.” I read, and, seeing her meditative afterwards,
I opened a book of Ozanam which Lucy lent me. I will give you the
Christian theory of marriage from this great mind, who too soon
disappeared from a world that wondered at his works: “In marriage
there is more than a contract; above all, there is a sacrifice, or
rather two sacrifices: the woman sacrifices that which God has given
her of irreparable, that which causes the solicitude of her mother—her
first beauty, often her health, and that power of loving which women
only once possess; the man on his part sacrifices the liberty of his
youth, the incomparable years which will return no more, the power of
devoting himself for her whom he loves which is only to be found at
the beginning of his life, and the effort of a first love to make
himself a lot both sweet and glorious. That is what a man can do but
once, between the age of twenty and thirty years, a little sooner or a
little later, perhaps never! Therefore is it that I speak of Christian
marriage as a double sacrifice. There are two cups: in one is found
beauty, modesty, and innocence; in the other, love intact,
devotedness, the immortal consecration of the man to her who is weaker
than himself, whom yesterday he knew not, and with whom to-day he
finds himself happy to spend his days; and it is needful that these
cups should be equally full if the union is to be happy and deserving
of the blessing of Heaven.” Is not this an admirable page? While
reading it I thought of Albert and Alexandrine, those two immortal
types of Christian marriage. What a life was theirs, what happiness,
so short but perfect, and which made the poor widow say, “I have
memories of happiness which seem to me as if they could not be
surpassed”!
Good-night, dearest Kate!
MAY 20.
The house is transformed into a convent, dear Kate; so, at least,
Arthur declares, finding in this fact an excellent reason for Hélène’s
being detained in it. Since her departure has been seriously thought
of, every one is wanting to have the enjoyment of her company, and she
is literally torn away first by one and then by another; and if you
could see her lending herself with her bright smile to all the
exactions of this affection, tyrannical as it has become!
We took a long excursion yesterday into the open country, among the
wheat; the rustling of the ears of corn, the charm of the sunny
solitude, the verdure with its soft lights and shadows, all the
renewal of the spring, the beauty of the landscape, which showed in
the far distance the fine towers of the cathedral—all this smiled upon
us; and yet sadly, like an adieu, we shall return, we shall look again
next year upon this same picture, but without Hélène.… Why is she so
engaging, so sympathetic?
Letter from Margaret, who will be at Paris in June. What joy, dear
Kate! It seems to me that our friend is more tranquil; she describes
like a poet her enthusiasm for Italy and for the Pope. At Florence she
met with our poor mistress Annah, who had some trouble to recognize in
this brilliant lady the pale little girl of former times. Annah is
giving English lessons. Lord William, seeing Margaret’s affectionate
demonstrations, proposed to her to secure the independence of the aged
mistress, which he has done, to the great satisfaction of the two
persons interested. I like that, and am convinced that Margaret
deceives herself.
Another happiness, darling Kate: here is your letter, in the joyful
hands of Picciola, who recognizes your handwriting. Five days without
saying a word to you! René sends you quite a volume. Love always your
Georgina.
MAY 26.
Was present at the ordination. What an imposing ceremony! I had never
seen one, and I followed all the details with the greatest interest.
Sixty young men giving themselves to God, devoting themselves to a
life of sacrifice! I prayed for and envied them: how much good will
they not be able to do! What life is so full as that of a holy priest?
That which most moved me was the moment when priests, deacons, and
subdeacons fell prostrate; then the imposition of hands, the Mass said
by all these voices, which must have trembled with emotion and with
happiness, the kiss of peace, the communion, and, lastly, the _Te
Deum_, that heavenly song. Oh! that all these souls to-day consecrated
to the Lord may one day sing the _Sanctus_ and Hosanna before the
throne of the Lamb.
On arriving yesterday at _Sainte Croix_ (the weather was splendid) I
saw myriads of swallows joyously flying about and warbling among the
towers. René began to hum, “Oh! that I had wings, to fly away to God.”
You dear swallows who have made your nests on the roof of the temple
of the Lord, in the bell-turrets, and among the towers; ye swallows,
my sisters, as said the Seraph of Assisi, you who fly so high, have
you seen heaven? You who in sweet warblings sing the praises of the
Eternal, have you touched with your wing the portals of the celestial
Eden? Sing, and cease not, O gentle swallows! who know not what it is
to offend God.
Gertrude has confided to me that for some time past she had divined
Hélène, and, as she treats me entirely as a sister, she has given me
the journal to read which she wrote whilst her daughter was at the
convent. Observe this passage: “My beloved girl is seventeen years old
to-day; her father and I have duly observed this anniversary as a
festival. Poor dear child! What will be thy will for her, my God? One
of these pure creatures, seraphs left upon earth to sanctify it, whose
life is spent beneath thy watchful eye, in the shade of the sanctuary?
… O my God! Once I thought not that it would be possible for me to
live far from her, no more to rest my gaze on her fresh countenance,
so bright and open. Thou hadst, O Lord! united us so closely that it
seemed as if my soul had passed into hers. Sweet angel, return to
spread your white wings over the maternal nest! Oh! I fear lest you
should be the first of all to leave it; but if you leave us for God,
may you be blessed, my well-beloved!”
O ye mothers! who may sound the depths of your sorrows? Happy as
mothers are in their enchanted life of love and innocence, yet they
are also martyrs, and who knows whether the gall in their chalice does
not absorb the honey?
Beloved, in a few days I shall embrace you.
MAY 29.
God be praised, who is about to bring us together again, dear sister
of my soul! It is settled that we are to return on the 1st of July,
once more to salute Orleans. Hélène will at this date enter the
novitiate at ——. The town is beginning to lose its inhabitants. Hélène
and I traverse it in all directions to have another look at its
curiosities: the fine old houses richly and deeply sculptured,
historic dwellings, which remain standing after their inmates have
disappeared. We are shown the house of Joan of Arc, of Francis I., of
Agnes Sorel, of Diana of Poitiers—names with very dissimilar
associations. One more visit to Benoni, a pilgrimage to Our Lady of
Miracles, a halt at my bookseller’s, and my preparations will be
ended.
Wrote to Sister Louise. I like to return to her twice in the year, to
pay her this tribute of the heart with my tenderest affection. What a
fine nature—an ideal! A soul whom the world never touched who had no
sooner finished her education than she gave herself to God,
sacrificing even her last vacations. A nature so poetic, so rich and
pure, that God reserved it for himself, and at the same time so
charming and devoted that she spent herself wholly in affection upon
those around her. Thus have I known and loved her, like an apparition
from another world.
Good-by for the present, dear Kate. René, my so dear and gentle René,
is more happy because of my happiness than I am myself—happiness
moistened with tears, the tears of sacrifice. “What matters it where
one weeps, or wherefore, since tears buy heaven?”
Hélène has given me a share of her heritage—a paralytic old woman
whose succoring angel she has been. Every morning she went to the
lowly room of the poor invalid, whom she dressed, and then with her
patrician hands she made the bed, swept the room, and prepared the
repast. After this she read to her out of some pious book, conversed
with her a few minutes, and on leaving called a little girl of ten
years old, who was charged to keep the poor woman company. I shall
continue Hélène’s work.… In summer it is a neighbor who, for a slight
remuneration, does all that is necessary; but Mariette, the _femme de
chambre_, who is often employed to carry little comforts to the
invalid, said to me with tears: “Nothing replaces mademoiselle, and
the old woman says, ‘Summer is winter to me, for it takes away my
sunshine!’” What praise, Kate, is it not? Can you not understand how
Gertrude may well be proud of the treasure which is about to be taken
from her? Cannot you understand also how much I sympathize with
her?—for my heart is bleeding from the same wound. Be happy, beloved
Kate; we shall meet again where there are no separations to be feared,
in our true fatherland.
MAY 31.
Our departure is postponed; my mother being unwell, enough so to keep
her bed, and the doctor does not yet know what to say about her. Pray
for us, my sister. René fears inflammation of the lungs. Mme. de T——,
who is very austere with herself, never complains until the last
extremity.
O my sweet Mother in heaven! your beloved month is drawing to its
close, and these lines are the last which I shall trace before the
latest hours of May have fallen into eternity. Oh! I entreat you, you
who are all-powerful with the Heart of your Divine Son, Our Lady of
the Sacred Heart, hear our prayers!
A thousand kisses, dear Kate.
JUNE 3.
A mucous fever has declared itself; the danger is imminent; we are
scarcely alive. Never was mother more adored. She has been delirious;
her wanderings were those of a saint. God, the angels, her dear ones,
both living and dead, pass in turn before her mind; when she recovers
her sense of the reality, she finds the most consoling and heavenly
words wherewith to comfort us. Her room, now haunted by the shadow of
death, is become our universe, and we fraternally share amongst us the
sorrowful sweetness of attending upon this beloved sick one. All our
poor are in prayer; two tapers are continually burning before the
black Virgin. Thanks, beloved! I have read your letter to my mother,
who said to me:
Dear Georgina, I am happy to possess the affection of your good
sister. I feel myself in reality your mother.…” To tell you René’s
distress would be impossible; as for me, I have in the depth of my
heart an unconquerable confidence God will spare her to us!
JUNE 4.
She is as ill as she can be. René proposed to make a vow. Kneeling all
together around this dying bed, with one voice and one heart we have
promised to go to _Notre Dame de la Salette_. Now we wait.… Unite your
vows to ours, we love her so much! Oh! if you could see her, so
weakened, and with only a breath of life, and yet in possession of all
her presence of mind, all her attentive solicitude, thinking of
everything and everybody, pressing me to take a little rest! This
scene reminds me of my mother, her peaceful death, whilst she
commended us to the Father of orphans. Will not God spare her to us?
One cannot lose a mother twice! Picciola has assembled all the babies
for a perpetual Rosary.
Tears choke me; and yet I still have hope. She has received the Holy
Viaticum, and Extreme Unction; it seems as if she were already in
heaven.
JUNE 5.
Always the same hopeless state; extreme weakness, and no life left but
in the look, which beams with love. We are all here, more silent than
shadows, starting at the slightest sound. I did not know that I loved
so strongly this mother worthy of my René. Yesterday evening, seeing
me leaning over her bed, she made a supreme effort to say to me: “You
will comfort him!” O my God, my God! can it be that mourning is about
to darken our youth, and that this first year of marriage should
contain so great a sorrow?
JUNE 7.
Nothing but a breath, … yet I hope still. Something tells me that she
must live.
JUNE 9.
Yes, dearest, she will live; let us thank God. A reaction has taken
place; it is now a resurrection. How happy I am! You would scarcely
recognize René, so greatly is he altered; but he smiles now,
recovering with our beloved sufferer. Your letter of yesterday brought
balm to my heart; and an hour afterwards the good doctor assured us
that all danger was over, though the recovery will be very gradual.
And so this beautiful and glorious Feast of Pentecost finds us all
radiant. My mother has insisted on sending us to the services, but the
others could not refuse to let me remain. “Grandmother and Aunt
Georgina are Ruth and Noemi,” observed Arthur. My mother heard him,
and sighed at the thought of her dear ones dead; and now having
cheered, comforted, and attended to her, I see that she has sunk into
a quiet sleep, and so begin to write to you. My darling Kate, a _Te
Deum_!
They are returned. I went to the door with my finger on my lips, and
now I am alone again.… No, René is by me, light as a sylph, and
together we watch the blessed slumber which will not be the last.
Kate, I am going to pray with my _brother_, who invites me to do so,
and at the same time sends his love to you.
JUNE 11.
What a new and delightful aspect everything has regained! We are now
longing to accomplish our vow. Why are you not here, my sweet one, at
my side, by this beloved invalid, who so touchingly thanks me for
having made my sister love her? You recollect her handsome
countenance, so admirable and harmonious in its lines and contours; it
has become fearfully pale and thin, but what we were dreading was so
terrible that we rejoice without troubling ourselves about anything. I
am writing to you by the side of the reclining chair on which my
mother is at this moment reposing; I do not leave her, but have made
myself her shadow. René is gone to the flower-market; since the
harbingers of summer have made their appearance my room has never been
wanting in decorations and perfumes. Oh! this intimate life together,
the quiet chats in the evenings, the reading, all this richness of
youth and happiness—how fair is earth with all these things!
Picciola enters; my pretty fairy whispers in my ear that she would
very much like to look at grandmamma asleep. She is now kneeling at
her feet, saying her Rosary with the fervor of an angel.
A well-known step, although it makes itself aërial in order not to
disturb this restoring sleep: it is René! He smiles and retires: he
knows that I am writing to Kate. Dear sister of my soul, my better
self, it is to your prayers that we are indebted for this cure! Lucy
is anxious. The pretty baby is cutting his teeth; he cries and
screams, so they are obliged to keep him at a distance from Mme. de
T——‘s rooms; and Lucy is not fond of solitude.
Hélène is impatient to know you. How useful she has made herself to
every one during these sad days! Kate, dearest, may God be our guard.
TO BE CONTINUED.
[173] “_Jusqu’à ce qu’ils aient la clé des champs_”—the
key of the fields.
[174] Sketch of Christian Rome.
[175] Courses of instruction on various subjects.
[176]
“An English cottage is her hermitage;
And if a wrinkle marks her pearly brow,
‘Tis not, believe me, that she thinks on death—
She’s too strong-minded to have fear of aught—
But that, from Paris, an expected dress
Crumpled arrives, and spoiled with grievous stains.”
[177] As for myself, abounding in the good things with which
opulence overflows, how willingly would I exchange this
gold which fortune disdainfully lavishes upon me for one
hour of the time when I had nothing in the world but my
vine and my fig-tree—for those divine dreams which sang
within my soul, and for which no gold can pay.”
[178] The obstructions or impediments attendant upon crowding
together.
[179] _Déjeuner_, late breakfast, is taken about eleven or
twelve o’clock. The early breakfast is simply a cup of
coffee or chocolate.
WAS MILES STANDISH A CATHOLIC?
In the quaint old town of Leyden, somewhere in the year 1619, an
English soldier, who had seen service on the battle-fields of the
Continent, came in contact with a little community of men of his own
country, hard-working, unhappy people, who had left England to enjoy
greater freedom in the practice of their religious ideas than they
could expect at home. But if the people of the United Provinces
harmonized with them in doctrinal standards and principles, their
lives and practice were far from unison with the English refugees, and
these last were planning a settlement beyond the Atlantic.
The soldier did not share their religious views. He did not join the
church at Leyden or swell the number of the worshippers in the church
of the Beguines, which, on the principle of religious liberty as they
understood it, the Dutch had wrested from the Sisters to give to the
strangers. But, how or why no one knows, the hot-tempered,
good-hearted soldier contracted a strong friendship for Robinson, the
pastor of the English flock, and that sturdy upholder of Puritan views
seems to have entertained a warm affection for the soldier.
When the _Mayflower_, after breasting the waves of the Atlantic,
neared at last the shore on which the colony proposed to begin a
settlement in midwinter, daring in the worst season of the year what
many had failed to effect with all the advantages of the balmiest
spring, a compact for civil government was drawn up and signed by the
chief men of the expedition. On the list is the name of Miles
Standish. He landed with them; became their military leader; his
exploits as an Indian fighter are known to all the children in our
schools. He is the type of those who from the beginning of the
seventeenth century have done battle with the red man. He died at
last, at a ripe old age, in the colony he helped to found, but died
without joining the church established by the pilgrims of Plymouth
Rock, though conformity was as a rule required from all.
New England historians and scholars seem puzzled to account for the
fact of his never having joined the church. His life was beyond
reproach. He brought from his experience of camp and garrison no
habits to shock the sober, rigid men with whom his career was cast. It
could not be, they admit, that the Pilgrims found any objection to his
admission. He evidently never sought it. He was no hypocrite to seek
admission as a church-member like Captain Underhill, whose life set
morality at defiance, or like Mayor Gibbons, whose questionable
dealings with pirates show his unworthiness. Contrasted with these
men, Standish stands out as a noble, consistent figure. As Dr. Ellis
remarks: “Of the two captains in the early Indian warfare, and in the
straits of dangerous enterprise, the uncovenanted Standish is to be
preferred.” He is comparing him with Underhill; the comparison will
still hold good in regard to Gibbons or Patrick.
Some years since, the writer threw out in our American _Notes and
Queries_ the suggestion that Miles Standish, the military hero of the
_Mayflower_, of the Pilgrims, and of Plymouth Rock, was a Catholic. A
correspondent, using the initials J. W. T., which seem to denote an
historical scholar of no mean repute in New England, one who has shown
real research and sound judgment, lost all self-command at the
suggestion, and raved in this style: “If Miles Standish was a Roman
Catholic, he was also a hypocrite; till proof of the latter, he must
be considered what the Pilgrims believed him to be—and never before
doubted—a Protestant and an honest man. Miles Standish was not the man
to sail under false colors. He was bold, brave, impetuous, open as the
day, and not double-faced. His memory should have been safe from
insult.”
No distinct assertions are made, and the grave historical scholar
forgot to cite authorities. The language infers that the Pilgrims
believed Standish to be a Protestant, and that he professed to be one.
But there is no evidence at all to sustain this. The late S. G. Drake,
whose acquaintance with the sources of New England history was
certainly very great, expressly says on this point: “I do not remember
ever having seen it stated that he belonged to any church,” and no one
has ever cited an authority that connects him with any Protestant
church. Governor Hutchinson, in his _History of Massachusetts_ (vol.
ii., p. 411), says: “It seems Standish was not of their church at
first, and Mr. Hubbard says he had more of his education in the school
of Mars than in the school of Christ. He acquired, however, the esteem
of the whole colony.” Baylies, in his _History of Plymouth_, says:
“What induced him to connect himself with the Pilgrims does not
appear. He took up his residence among them at Leyden, but never
joined the church” (part ii., p. 21). Palfrey, the author of the
_History of New England_, with all the researches of the present
century, says of Standish: “He was not a member of the Leyden Church,
nor subsequently of that of Plymouth, but appears to have been induced
to join the emigrants by personal good-will, or by love of adventure,
while to them his military knowledge and habits rendered his
companionship of great value” (vol. i., p. 161). Later on in the same
work, Palfrey reiterates the assertion: “Standish was no religious
enthusiast. He never professed to care for, or so much as to
understand, the system of doctrine of his friends, though he paid it
all respect as being theirs. He never was a member of their church”
(vol. ii., p. 407-8). At the laying of the corner-stone of the
Standish monument on Captain’s Hill, Duxbury, Oct. 7, 1872, the Rev.
Dr. Ellis, endeavoring as a clergyman on that day to say all that
could be said, makes him only a sort of “proselyte of the gate,” but
admits distinctly that “he was not a man of ‘professions,’ nor, so far
as we know, of ‘confessions.’ He was never ‘sealed’ or ‘covenanted.’
We are at a loss for the explanation of this fact, considering the
standard and the expectations of his associates.”[180] On the same
occasion, Charles Deane, who certainly did not speak without
examination of his subject, said: “He was not a member of Plymouth
Church, and there are strong suspicions that the doctrine of the
perseverance of the saints had not taken strong hold of him.”[181]
It was not that Standish preferred the platform of Massachusetts Bay.
He went to Boston, but never seemed to harmonize with them or relish
their system of management. He was no adherent of Mrs. Hutchinson,
Roger Williams, or the Baptists; no one ever claimed him as a disciple
of Fox; no treasured Book of Common Prayer or any other proof of
adherence to the Church of England has been preserved to justify
Episcopalians in claiming him.
Where, then, is his Protestantism? He certainly avowed himself a
member of no Protestant denomination whatever, and made no professions
of the kind; so that, if he really was a Catholic, there can be no
charge of hypocrisy, for there is not the slightest tittle of evidence
that he ever pretended to be a Protestant. He was an extremely
valuable man to the little community at Plymouth, and rendered
important services. At that time, to have proclaimed himself a
Catholic would have compelled the Pilgrims to exclude him, and exposed
himself to annoyance when visiting other colonies or England. That the
leaders knew him to be a Catholic, too firm in his faith to be shaken,
would explain much that seems now inexplicable to New England writers.
The question, then, comes up, whether there is any direct ground for
supposing the famous Captain of the Pilgrims to be a Catholic. In his
will, he left to his eldest son, Alexander, “all my lands as heir
aparent, by lawfull decent, in Ormistock, Boscouge, Wrightington,
Maudsly, Newburrow, Crawston, and in the Isle of Man, and given to me
as right heir by lawfull decent, but sereptuously detained from me, my
grandfather being a second or younger brother from the house of
Standish of Standish.”[182]
This gives a clue to his family, and another is found in the name of
the town which he planted—Duxbury. Some of the earlier writers of this
century made a fanciful derivation for this. Duxbury, according to
them, was from _Dux_, captain; that Duxbury meant Captain’s town, and
was an allusion to his position in the colony.[183] But turning to
English authorities, we find at once in Lancashire an ancient family
of Standish, of which there are two branches, Standish of Standish
Hall, and Standish of Duxbury. Their arms—three silver plates on a
field azure—meet you on tombs and on the churches erected by them
centuries ago.
When the young king Richard II. rode out to meet Wat Tyler at the head
of his rebels, John Standish was one of the king’s esquires—the very
one who slew Tyler. A Sir John Standish won fame by his prowess at
Agincourt, and the name occurs frequently during the French wars of
Henry V. and Henry VI. When the eighth King Henry sought a divorce
from his faithful wife, Queen Catharine, Henry Standish, a Franciscan,
Bishop of St. Asaph’s (1519-1535), a most learned man, assisted the
unhappy queen throughout the shameful trial. After the change of
religion, the Standish family adhered to the old faith, one of them
writing vigorously in its defence; and down to this day they are
reckoned among the Catholic families of England. Standish Hall, the
seat of the elder branch, is close to Wigan, twenty miles northeast of
Liverpool; and Duxbury Hall, the seat of the younger branch, is only
two miles distant from Standish Hall. There have been frequent
litigations between the two branches, and in one of these, doubtless,
the immediate ancestor of the Plymouth soldier lost the property
alluded to in his will.
The family remained Catholic, and after the fall of James II. was
among his sturdy adherents. The famous Lancashire plot, formed in 1692
with the object of replacing James on the throne of England, was
hatched in Standish Hall.
The wrong of which the gallant soldier of Plymouth complained was one
that he could have had redressed promptly, even if not in accordance
with the rules of justice. Had he appeared as a Protestant claimant
for the broad acres of an old Catholic house, courts and juries would
have bent law and fact to place him in possession. How the feeling
operates we have seen by instances in our own day. The feeling in
favor of the Tichborne claimant in England was deeply imbued with the
desire to place the heritage of an old and well-known Catholic family
in the hands of one who was to all intents and purposes a
Protestant—one whose Catholicity, if he ever had any, had completely
vanished in a brutalizing Australian life. In the claim of Earl
Talbot, a Protestant, to the earldom of Shrewsbury, so long identified
with the Catholic cause, we see what slight evidence, or show of
evidence, satisfied the House of Peers. Had the circumstances been
reversed, a Catholic claiming a Protestant peerage, the doubts of the
tribunal would have required tenfold proof, and the investigation
lasted a generation.
Miles Standish, by his own avowal, belonged to an ancient Catholic
family, which has clung to the faith to this day. He evidently scorned
to change his religion to enable him to recover what he deemed his
just rights. Such seems to be a position that solves all difficulties.
Among the old Catholic families of the British Isles, after the change
of religion was completed, and the line of distinction between
Protestant and Catholic sharply drawn, it became a matter of honor and
pride to adhere, during the evil days of the penal laws and the
butchery of the clergy, to the faith so heroically retained.
Here and there, one who gave the reins to his wild passions, some man
sunk in vice like Mervyn, Lord Audley, or the Duke of Norfolk at the
close of the last century, would conform to the state church, though
every decent Protestant shrank from contact with them; or some
nobleman deprived of his estates, like Lord Baltimore, would renounce
his faith to recover a province like Maryland, wrongfully detained
from him; or, like Lord Dunboyne, give up the faith, even after
teaching it for years as an honored priest, in order to live as seemed
to become his title; or, led by ambition, to rise at court like
Waldegrave; but for one to join a body of dissenters there is on
record scarcely an example.
Descendants of old Catholic families emigrating to America, like the
Dongans, Townleys, and others, fell away; but in the Old World a sense
of honor made them cling to the oppressed faith when to desert it
seemed to imply cowardice or vice. The opening words of Moore’s
_Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of Religion_ embody this
feeling.
As a necessary consequence, the conversion of one of the members of an
ancient Catholic house by the Protestant party was a triumph, and the
new-comer was well rewarded. The conversion of one of the Standishes
would have found mention somewhere among the events of the day, and
there would be some trace of office or rank bestowed on the man who at
last conformed. Yet the county annals of Lancashire and the memoirs of
the time chronicle no such defection on the part of Miles Standish,
and it is equally evident that no post was bestowed upon him as a
reward.
That Miles Standish was one who, turning his thoughts to the great
religious questions then rife, fell into doubts as to the solidity of
the claims of the Catholic Church, and with all zeal and fervor
embraced some form of Protestantism, is a theory too wild for
consideration. The whole mass of Pilgrim testimony establishes the
fact that he was one who took no interest in the religious systems of
Protestantism; that he was utterly devoid of any such enthusiasm in
them as would mark a convert from conviction.
From what we know of his origin, the presumption is strong that he was
and always remained a Catholic, and we cannot shield his memory from
insult except by adopting this presumption. Neither a life of vicious
indulgence nor ambitious hopes, and certainly no conviction, led him
to renounce the religion of his family and embrace Protestantism.
Let us, then, gather what is known of the life of this Catholic
soldier of early New England annals.
He was born about 1584, at Duxbury, in Lancashire, England, as is
supposed, from the fact that he preserved the name in the town he
established; but was, as he claims in his will, great-grandson of a
second or younger brother of the house of Standish of Standish. This
is a well-known Catholic house in Lancashire, known as early as the
reign of Edward I., the elder branch of two in that county, the other
being the Standishes of Duxbury. With this last he claims no
connection, although the inference is probable that he was born at
that place. As his just inheritance at Standish was, he asserts,
surreptitiously detained from him, it may be that his father, unjustly
deprived of his patrimony, took refuge at Duxbury under the protection
of the other branch. Both branches were Catholic, John Standish being
a distinguished writer against the Reformation. A Robert Standish
figures in Parliament in 1654; Captain Thomas Standish, of the Duxbury
house, was killed at Manchester fighting bravely for the king. The
Standishes of Duxbury, as their genealogy shows, intermarried with the
old Catholic houses of Howard and Townley. Richard Standish was made a
baronet after the Restoration, in 1676.
The estates to which he asserts his rights lay, as expressed in the
will, in Ormistock, Bouscouge, Wrightington, Maudsley, Newburrow,
Cranston, and in the Isle of Man.
The latest history of Lancashire, by Baines, unfortunately gives no
detailed pedigree of the house of Standish of Standish, that of
Duxbury being given to some extent, though not in the line of descent
of the younger sons. As, however, he does not claim at all to have
belonged to the Duxbury branch, it is useless to look there for him.
Standish Hall, the seat of the branch from which he was descended, “is
a large brick house, irregular in form, to which is attached an
ancient Catholic chapel, still used for that purpose” (Baines, _Hist.
Lancashire_, iii., p. 505). Standish forms a parish in the Hundred of
Leyland. “The extensive and fertile township of Duxbury, at the
northern extremity of the parish of Standish, stands on the banks of
the Yarrow, by which the township and parish is divided from the
parish of Chorley” (_Ib._, p. 517).
Ormistock is evidently Ormskirk, an adjoining parish, in which Baines
mentions that there are two Catholic chapels (iv., p. 244). In the
Buscouge of the Plymouth record we easily recognize Burscough, where
once flourished a famous priory, suppressed by Henry VIII. The
Lancashire historian notes that there was formerly a Catholic chapel
at Burscough Hall (iv., p. 256). Of the next place mentioned in
Standish’s will, Baines says: “Adjoining Wrightington Hall stands a
small Catholic chapel for the use of the family” (iii., p. 481);
Mawdsley or Mawdesley is an extensive flat and fertile township
between Croston and Wrightington (iii., p. 404); Newbury and Croston
are in the same Hundred (iii., 171, 391-5).
He was thus of Catholic stock, and born and brought up amid families
where the old faith is still cherished to this day. Almost every place
mentioned in his will is linked with Catholic life in his time and the
present.
Of his early life not a tradition or trace has been preserved. In that
day the younger men of Catholic families constantly went abroad to
gain an education and to seek service in the Continental armies, many
too to study for the priesthood, and return to England, unawed by the
terrible fate that awaited them if they fell into the hands of the
myrmidons of English law.
That Miles Standish should have sought service abroad is therefore
natural. Ignoring his Catholic origin, New England writers have sought
to explain his military career on the Continent. All seem to assume
that he served in the Low Countries. Baylies, in his _History of
Plymouth_ (part ii., p. 21), says explicitly that “he served as an
officer in the armies of Queen Elizabeth in the Low Countries, when
commanded by her favorite, the Earl of Leicester.”
Captain Wyman, at the laying of the corner-stone in 1872, goes
further: “In early life he was trained to the hardships and trials of
war, having been commissioned at the age of twenty a lieutenant in the
army serving in the Low Countries against the armies of the
Inquisition.” The Rev. G. E. Ellis and Charles Deane on the same
occasion limit themselves to the assertion that he served in the Low
Countries (pp. 21, 24).
Palfrey is less positive, as he was writing history, not pronouncing
eulogies. “The ‘cautionary towns’ of the Netherlands had been
garrisoned by British regiments for thirty years, and Miles Standish
had _probably_ been employed on this service” (_History of New
England_, i., p. 161). “_Probably_ while serving in an English
regiment in the Netherlands he fell in with the company of English
peasants” (ii., pp. 407-8).
There seems to be no really authentic foundation for all this theory.
Standish died in 1656, aged 72, and must have been born, according to
this, in 1584. Leicester was sent to the Low Countries with eleven
thousand men in 1585-7; but we can scarcely believe that this
precocious scion of a Catholic house served as an officer in this
campaign when only one year old, or three at the most.
The assertion that the Catholic soldier was commissioned a lieutenant
at the age of twenty, that is, in 1604, when James was ruining the
Catholic families by extorting all the arrears of fines, and producing
the spirit of exasperation which culminated in the Gunpowder Plot, can
scarcely find any support in sober history. The armies of the
Inquisition which James was fighting in 1604 elude research.
Savage, in his _Genealogical Dictionary_, though on what authority we
know not, says that Standish had been at Leyden some years before
1620. All that is positively known is that he had seen military
service on the Continent, and was living in Leyden with his wife Rose
when the followers of Robinson proposed to emigrate. A strong
friendship, not based on harmony of religious views, existed between
Miles Standish and the pastor of the exiles. Writing subsequently to
Plymouth after receiving tidings of Standish’s first Indian fight,
Robinson says: “Let me be bould to exhorte you seriously to consider
ye dispossition of your Captaine, whom I love, and am persuaded ye
Lord in great mercie and for much good hath sent you him, if you use
him aright. He is a man humble and meek amongst you; and towards all
in ordinarie course.”[184] This strong feeling of personal friendship
was reciprocal. In his will Standish writes: “Further, my will is that
Marrye Robenson, whom I tenderly love for her grandfather’s sacke,
shall have three pounds in som thing to goe forward for her two yeares
after my decease.”
Whether he had served in the Spanish armies or the Dutch, or in
English garrison, he was to all appearance simply a resident of Leyden
when this friendship grew up. It evidently led to the proposal or
offer to accompany those of Robinson’s flock who were to venture to
make the first attempt at colonization in North America.
His wife Rose, of whom we know only her name, agreed evidently to join
him in the voyage. True wife of a brave man, she was ready to face all
danger and to share all hardships with him. Nothing is recorded from
which to glean whether she was some fair English girl from his own
Lancashire, or some one whom he won on the Continent. Her name, her
faith, and her country are alike unknown. We know that they embarked
together at Delft Haven, and formed part of the memorable body on the
_Mayflower_. Among them Miles Standish was a man of importance. When
the compact for their government in America was drawn up, he signed
it, and the place of his signature shows the esteem in which he was
held and his recognized position among them.
That document is purely a civil one, and contains nothing that could
not be signed by the strictest Catholic.
Reaching in November the poorest, sandy part of the coast, the little
colony had a fearful career of hardship. Standish was one of the
pioneers in exploring the land. After they landed at Plymouth Rock in
December, he saw his companions sink under their hardships and breathe
their last. Though his own rugged health triumphed over everything,
his wife Rose sank beneath the unwonted trials, and died on the 29th
day of January, 1621, leaving him alone in the diminishing body of
settlers, without a tie to bind him to them or the settlement which
they had undertaken. But he was not one to falter or easily give up.
During that winter of terrible suffering so heroically borne he was
one of the six or seven who were untouched by disease, and his care
and devotion to the sick and afflicted are mentioned with gratitude.
When spring at last gladdened them, and they resolutely set about the
labors of building, cultivating, and otherwise preparing for a
permanent residence, Miles Standish had been made the first military
commander of the colony, and, as we may infer from some statements, he
turned his engineering skill to a peaceful channel, laying out the
lines of the new town and surveying the plots taken up by the
settlers. The first military organization of Plymouth dates from
February, 1621. It was not formidable in numbers, but it was necessary
to make it as imposing as possible. Standish felt all this. He threw
up defensive works, a little fort on the hill above the dwellings
mounted with five guns, and prepared to make the Indians respect the
power of the settlers.
As the best linguist, he was sent out to meet the deputations of
Indians who came to observe the new-comers; and he was constantly sent
to explore the country or test the feelings of the natives. It was
doubtless a specimen of Standish’s style of correspondence with them
that we find recorded in Governor Bradford’s reply to arrows hid in a
snake-skin which Canonicus sent to the settlement. The snake-skin
filled with powder and ball was an answer which announced to the
savages that Standish was ready to meet them.
The settlements of Weston’s lawless people near them increased
ill-feeling among the Indians, and apparently gave them a poor opinion
of the courage and power of the Plymouth settlements. Standish in his
excursions soon became aware of this, and felt convinced that a
general conspiracy against the colonists was on foot. An attempt on
his own life at Manomet, now Sandwich, confirmed this belief. A
minister named Lyford, who came over, sought to have him superseded in
office, declaring that he looked like a silly boy. And outside the
little community of Plymouth slighting views prevailed of this
offshoot of a fighting race.
From his slight frame, the Weston people at Wessagusset (now Weymouth)
seem to have given Standish the nickname of Captain Shrimp, and the
Indians had taken up the slighting tone and openly braved him. Feeling
that the danger was imminent, Standish went in March, 1623, to
Wessagusset with eight men, to suppress the plot by striking a blow
that would convince the Indians of his prowess and of the force of the
colony. He found the warrior who had attempted to take his life, and
when the Indian taunted Standish, he with two of his men attacked the
Indian party without firearms, and after a desperate struggle Standish
despatched his antagonist with his own weapon wrested from his hand,
and the whole band was cut off. This encounter established Standish’s
reputation. The Weston colony broke up, and an ascendency was soon
acquired over the Indians.
It was on receipt of the intelligence of this first collision with the
natives that Robinson, after deploring the fact that they had not
converted some Indians before killing any, expressed his affection to
Standish, and urged the leaders of the colony not to molest him, as
though there were some ground, which he did not care to express, why
he anticipated that in some way their military leader might not be
altogether at ease in the place.
But Standish seems to have had no idea of abandoning his associates.
The ship _Anne_, bearing the third body of emigrants, had among the
number a young woman named Barbara, whom he subsequently married, and
thus formed new ties in the land. He is said first to have sought the
hand of Priscilla Mullins, but, having sent Alden to open the matter
for him, found that he had acted unwisely, as the lady bade Alden
speak for himself. Longfellow bases on this incident his “Courtship of
Miles Standish.” He was elected one of the governor’s assistants, and
for nineteen years held that responsible position. De Rasiere leaves
us a pen-picture of the colony assembling by beat of drum at
Standish’s door, “each with his musket or firelock. They had their
cloaks on, and placed themselves in order three abreast, and were led
by a sergeant. Behind came the governor in a long robe; beside him on
the right hand came the preacher with his cloak on, and on the left
hand the captain, with his side-arms and cloak on, and with a small
cane in his hand; and so they march in good order, and each sets his
arms down near him. Thus they are constantly on their guard night and
day.” This military organization was Standish’s work.
But his labors were not confined to organizing the colony for military
purposes, or maintaining peace with Indian neighbors or troublesome
white neighbors. In 1625, he was despatched to England to obtain a
supply of goods, and learn what terms could be made to obtain a
release from the English merchants who had advanced money as partners
in the undertaking. He reached London to find it ravaged by the
plague. He negotiated with some advantage for the colony with the
English partners, and in spite of the disordered condition of affairs
he obtained advances, and brought over some goods for trading, and
other most needful commodities as he knew requisite for their use. He
heard, however, of the death of his old friend Robinson at Leyden, and
was the bearer of that sad intelligence to the colony.
We next find him as a trader. To put the settlement on a better
financial footing, after releasing themselves through his exertions
from the London partners, Standish, with seven other settlers, in
July, 1627, entered into an agreement with the colony to farm its
trade for a term of six years. They assumed the debts of the colony,
and agreed to bring over certain goods annually, in consideration of a
small payment in corn or tobacco from each colonist. They put up a
house on the Kennebec, and made it the centre of a prosperous trade.
In 1630, leaving Plymouth, he crossed to the north side of the harbor,
and took up his residence on a spot still called Captain’s Hill, where
his house has stood till our day, and the spring remains as kerbed
with stone in his time. This place, probably after his birth-place in
England, he called Duxbury, a name it still retains.
We find him reducing Morton; marching to defend the Pokanokets, allies
of Plymouth, against the Narragansetts; going to Boston to maintain
his colony’s rights to the Kennebec trade after a collision there with
a Boston trader; sent in 1635 to recover Penobscot from the French;
commanding the Plymouth quota in the Pequot war; engaged against the
Narragansetts in 1651, against the Mohawks and their allies in New
York; and finally, in 1653, when very old, appointed to command the
troops which Plymouth raised in anticipation of hostilities with the
Dutch of New Netherland.
This was his last public service. He died in his house at Duxbury,
October 3, 1656, leaving several sons, and his widow Barbara. His
descendants at the present time must be many. “Nature endowing him
with valor, quickness of apprehension, and good judgment, had
qualified him for business or war. Of his other peculiarities, nothing
has been recorded except that he was of small stature and of hasty
temper. He had no ambition except to do for his friends whatever from
time to time they thought fit to charge him with—whether it was to
frighten the Narragansett or Massachusetts natives, to forage for
provisions, or to hold a rod over disorderly English neighbors, or to
treat with merchants on the London exchange. In the misery of the
early settlement especially, the reader does not fail to reflect what
relief must have been afforded by reliance on a guardian so vigilant
and manful” (Palfrey).
On the 7th of October, 1872, the Standish Monument Association,
incorporated by the State of Massachusetts, laid the corner-stone of a
monument to this Catholic soldier, a round tower, to be surmounted by
a bronze figure of the first captain of Plymouth colony. The Ancient
and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston were there, Freemasons, Odd
Fellows, Good Templars, military delegations, the governor,
magistrates, Protestant clergymen, and citizens; but there is no
record that any bishop or clergyman of the faith professed by the
Standishes of Standish assisted at the ceremony. The Catholic element
was ignored. It should have been safe from insult.
But it may be asked, how can we claim Miles Standish as a Catholic? He
was of a known Catholic family, then, since, and now Catholic. Though
associated with Robinson’s flock, he never became a member of their
church in Leyden, Plymouth, or Duxbury. His Catholic convictions give
the simplest reason for this, which one of the New England historians
regards as “an anomaly in human nature” (Baylies). If amid all the
temptations from the associations around him he thus persistently
declined to connect himself even nominally with the Protestant Church,
it shows that he still clung to that of his family.
But why should a Catholic thus isolate himself from all the
ministrations of the church, and throw himself into a Protestant
community? Deprived of the heritage he claimed, he had to seek his
fortune elsewhere. In England, the number of Catholics in proportion
to the population was less than in Holland; but he probably found life
more congenial with these countrymen of another faith than with men of
the same faith but of another country. Circumstances, too, control our
paths in life. Catholics count in this country by millions, yet there
is many a Catholic thrown almost entirely into Protestant circles.
But Standish, it may be said, married out of the church, and allowed
his children to be brought up as Protestants. So did Gerard, one of
the founders of Maryland, although there were priests in the colony
and no Protestant minister; so did Matthew Carey; so did Chief-Justice
Taney—yet all are regarded as Catholics, though we regret their
indifference to the salvation of their children. It will not do on
these grounds to deny his Catholicity.
There was not, so far as we know, a single apostate Catholic in the
community at Plymouth, not one who, having tasted the pure Gospel,
known the divinely given faith and the divinely instituted worship,
turned to wallow in the mire of man-made creeds and worship devised by
shallow men. Standish cannot be accused of being in league with known
apostates. Yet even had he been guilty of such a step, we cannot judge
him too harshly, for even in our days one may address a notorious and
scandalous apostate in terms of eloquent welcome, and yet be deemed
Catholic enough to lecture before pre-eminently Catholic bodies, and
address the young graduates of our literary institutions as one fit to
guide their future career.
But, it may be said, he must have lived in utter neglect of his duties
as a Catholic. Who can tell this? Like Le Baron, the French surgeon
wrecked and captured on the coast, he may have clung to the faith to
the end, performed his devotions as he might, and died with the
crucifix over his heart. The opportunities for approaching the
sacraments from time to time were given him, and his position gave him
greater ease in embracing those opportunities. The trading-houses of
Plymouth in Maine stood near similar French posts, where Capuchins and
Recollects were maintained. The report of Mgr. Urban Cerri and the
French colonial documents show that, for the benefit of Catholics in
New England, English-speaking priests were sent to those points and
maintained in Canada on the frontiers. Who can say that Standish, who
was frequently in Maine on colonial matters and for trade, meeting
these priests and speaking French, for his powers as a linguist are
mentioned, did not avail himself of the opportunity of hearing Mass
and approaching the sacraments. It is not likely that when he did he
went with a file of soldiers and a drum-beating, or that he made a
special report to the Plymouth government. It would be a fact of which
evidence would not be heralded.
In his last days, 1651, Father Druillettes visited Boston and Plymouth
with his Plymouth friend Winslow, where he must have met the aged
Standish.
His library, it may be urged, as shown by the inventory, contains no
Catholic works, and several devotional and doctrinal works of the
Puritan school. As his wife was a Protestant, we may well suppose this
part of the family library to have been her reading. Surely, when all
New England authorities concur in admitting “that he never cherished
any strong impressions of their religion,” or took any interest in it,
we may put down Rogers’ _Seaven Treatises_, Wilcock’s works,
Burrough’s _Christian Contentment_, Davenport’s _Apology_, and the
_Comentary on James Ball Catterkesmer_, as her reading and not his;
while we readily recognize the soldier’s taste in Cæser’s
_Comentaryes_, Banft’s _Artillery_, the _History of the World_,
_Turkish History_, _Chronicle of England_, _Ye History of Queen
Elizabeth_, _The State of Europe_, the _Garmon_ (German) _History_,
and Homer’s _Iliad_.
The whole case is now before the reader. Miles Standish has been
always classed as a Protestant, but there is certainly grave doubt on
the point. He never renounced the Catholic faith in which he was
undoubtedly born; and therefore, we Catholics have some claim to his
name and fame. No descendant of his, to the writer’s knowledge, is now
a Catholic, but some have been in our day pupils of Catholic
institutions. These will, we trust, follow up our labors, and bring
from the records of the past more conclusive evidence of the lifelong
Catholicity of Miles Standish.
[180] _Historical Magazine_, April, 1873, p. 251.
[181] _Standish Monument_, Boston, 1873, pp. 21, 25.
[182] _Hist. Mag._, March, 1871, pp. 273, 274.
[183] Howe’s _Massachusetts Collections_.
[184] Bradford’s _History_.
VITTORIA COLONNA
Lived in court—
Which rare it is to do—most praised, most loved,
A sample to the youngest, to the more mature
A glass that feated them, and to the graver
A child that guided dotards.
—_Cymbeline._
Twelve miles from Rome, on an almost isolated knoll of the Alban range
of hills, more than thirteen hundred feet above the sea, which
glimmers in the distance beyond the Campagna, rises the picturesque,
mediæval town of Marino. Many quiet Romans spend the _villeggiatura_
there, to enjoy its pure air and the shady promenades and beautiful
views around it; but few foreigners do more than visit, on the way, a
classical spot, a deep and wooded glen at the foot of the hill, where
the representatives of the Latin tribes used to meet for deliberation
on public matters down to the year 340 B.C., and which is noted for
the tragic end of Turnus Herdonius, an influential chief of the
league, who was treacherously accused, condemned, and drowned, at the
request of Tarquin the Proud, in the clear pool of water—called by
Livy _caput aquæ Ferentinæ_—which wells up so innocently from under a
moss-covered rock overspread by an ancient, crooked beech-tree at the
head of the little valley.
We do not intend to sketch the history of Marino or describe its local
monuments, however interesting, but will simply remark that during the
middle ages it passed successively from the Counts of Tusculum to the
Frangipanis, the Orsinis, and, under Pope Martin V., to the Colonnas,
in whose favor it was erected into a dukedom in 1424. The large
baronial palace of the sixteenth century which stands in the middle of
the town is full of curiosities and ancestral portraits of this
powerful family, although the rarer and more interesting ones have
long since been removed to the princely headquarters near the _Santi
Apostoli_, in Rome. The stone-work and towers which still surround
Marino and add so much to its feudal aspect, were raised in the year
1480, and the ruins of the castle, with its battlements and proud
armorial signs upon the walls, are on the most precipitous side of the
town, overlooking the noisy little stream of Aqua Ferentina. It was in
this castle—which, having been made by the Colonnas their principal
stronghold in that part of the Roman States, was then in the pride of
all its freshness and strength of portals, merlons, and
machicolations—that a daughter was born in the year 1490 to Don
Fabrizio Colonna and his wife, the Lady Agnes of Montefeltro. As soon
as possible she was held up at a window to be seen by her father’s
retainers and saluted with the discharge of artillery, peal of
trumpets, and shouts of men-at-arms.
This infant was Vittoria Colonna, who became one of the most
celebrated women of the sixteenth century, and who is even remembered
in Italy to this day for her learning, her poetry, beauty, conjugal
affection, piety, and sorrows; and yet, strange as it may seem,
although hardly singular—for illustrious names of the same period have
fallen into a like obscurity—no date more precise than that of the
year can be assigned to her birth; and certainly one of the benefits
derived by biographers from the reforms which followed the Council of
Trent is the better keeping of baptismal registers, by means of
which—in countries, at least, where the church was not persecuted nor
war made on parochial books—sometimes the very hour, often the day of
the week, always that of the month, of an individual’s birth may be
found.
Vittoria was the eldest, and only female, of six children. Her father
was not only a great nobleman of the States of the Church, but the
possessor of many Neapolitan fiefs; and soon after Charles VIII. of
France, who had attempted the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, began
to experience an evil turn of fortune, Don Fabrizio was detached from
his service by Ferdinand of Spain, who succeeded in driving the French
out of the southern part of Italy. Most of his life was spent in
courts and camps, and but little time was passed in his castles,
whither he went either to enjoy the chase or when called by domestic
concerns, such as this one that gave a daughter to his house. Her
mother was a child of Frederic, Duke of Urbino, head of an illustrious
family which for three centuries had ranked among the lesser
independent princes of Italy. Some of Vittoria’s ancestors of this
line had figured in a conspicuous manner in history, especially as
patrons of letters, and during a certain period the court of Urbino
was the most refined and intellectual of the Italian peninsula. She
felt its influence through her accomplished mother; but her father’s
family was also remarkable for an hereditary genius and aptitude in
every branch of learning; and a long list could be made of men of
erudition, and of writers more or less distinguished, belonging to the
Colonna lineage, at the head of which would stand Ægidius Romanus, or
Giles of Rome, General of the Augustinians, and for his profound
knowledge surnamed _Doctor fundatissimus_, whose work, _De Regimine
Principum_, composed for his pupil, Philip the Fair of France, was the
model in its general subject and didactic form, but without the
immoral maxims, of Macchiavelli’s treatise, _Del Principe_.
According to the custom among the great in that age, Vittoria, while a
mere child, being only four years of age, was affianced to one not
much older than herself. This was Ferdinand Francesco d’Avalos. His
noble family, of Catalan origin, had come over to Italy with the
Spanish invaders in 1442, and risen to considerable importance; Don
Alonzo, son of Inigo, who accompanied Alphonsus I. in his expedition
and died at Naples, having been created Marquis of Pescara, a
fortified town of the Abruzzi at the mouth of a river that empties
itself into the Adriatic. This very honorable betrothal was made at
the suggestion of King Ferdinand, who hoped in this way to attach
Fabrizio more strongly to himself. Except this affair, hardly anything
is known of Vittoria’s early years, nor who were her instructors; but,
judging from subsequent events, she must have been surrounded by
whatever advantages wealth, social influence, and political position
could procure; and the literary ardor which marked the fifteenth
century having passed from colleges and universities into the ranks of
private life, her education was such as to ensure her the highest
mental culture, united with every accomplishment befitting her
station. At the age of five she was transferred to the tutelage of her
future husband’s family and placed in care of her sister-in-law, the
Duchess of Francavila, who was castellan for the king of the fortress
and island of Ischia, at the entrance of the Bay of Naples. This
important charge could only have been entrusted to a woman of superior
talents, and justifies the praises which Vittoria has given in several
sonnets to the “magnanimous Costanza,” as she delights to call her.
The duchess loved study, and cultivated the society of the learned,
being herself well acquainted with Latin, Spanish, and Italian, in
which last language she wrote a work on the misfortunes and trials of
the world—_Degli Infortuni e Travagli del Mondo_. It was in the midst
of enchanting scenery, of the fame of martial deeds, and of an elegant
conversation that Vittoria’s youthful happiness was passed. She grew
up beautiful in person, lovely in mind, and adorned with every grace
of manners. She was tall and of an easy carriage, the blood in her
veins forming over her white skin a delicate cerulean tracery, while
her face was set in a mass of auburn hair which has been sung—such a
color being rare in Italy—by some of the best writers of her day. Of
her personal appearance, those who have mentioned it can never say
enough. That her charms were not the poetical exaggerations of devoted
admirers we know from several sources, and particularly from the very
sober prose of a curious diary[185] kept by a certain Giuliano Casseri
who had occasion to see Vittoria at Naples. She was considered by
all—except, of course, by her own sex—the handsomest woman of the age:
Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave,
Like a broad table did itself dispread,
For Love his lofty triumphs to engrave,
And write the battles of his great godhead:
All good and honor might therein be read;
For there their dwelling was. And, when she spake
Sweet words, like dropping honey, she did shed;
And ‘twixt the pearls and rubies softly brake
A silver sound that heavenly music seemed to make.
—_Spenser._
After a few years passed in this family, Vittoria returned to Marino
to prepare for her marriage, which took place at Ischia in 1507, with
all the pomp and splendor that the two great families and their
numerous friends could command. The list of marriage gifts and the
names of the personages who witnessed the matrimonial contract are
interesting—apart from the subjects themselves—for the light they
throw upon high society in Italy at a period when it easily surpassed,
in the means of luxurious living and all the amenities of social
intercourse, that of any other country in Europe.
The Avalos family, like that of Colonna and Montefeltro, was famous
for its attention to classical literature and its patronage of learned
men. Tiraboschi, in his _History of Italian Literature_, says of this
young Marquis of Pescara that he was no less a diligent student
himself than a munificent patron of learning in others. Tall,
naturally of romantic ardor, he had moved among men who always
inspired him with a taste for the profession of arms, and he rose to
be one of the greatest captains of his age.
The first three years of their married life were spent very happily
either at Ischia or at Naples. Their affection was mutual and tender.
They had ratified the choice of their parents, and their marriage was
one of those which are said to be made in heaven. In fact, between her
betrothal and final engagement, when the brilliant qualities of her
mind and the exquisite beauty of her features began to be the talk and
admiration of every one, several great offers had been made to her
father in hopes of detaching his daughter from Avalos, and among these
suitors were the Dukes of Savoy and Braganza. But while a malicious
pen has told us that the reason they were not accepted is that one was
too old and the other too far away, the gentle maiden herself assures
us that she remained firm to the first love from the purest sentiment
of devotion:
_A pena arean gli spiriti intiera vita,
Quando il mio cor proscrisse agni altro oggetto._
In 1512, when war broke out with France, the young Marquis of Pescara
was summoned to serve his king, and accompanied his wife’s father, who
was Grand Constable of Naples, her uncle, the renowned Prospero
Colonna, and her five gallant brothers to the scene of action.
Vittoria, meanwhile, remained at Ischia; but before many months had
passed she had cause of grief far heavier than that of separation—her
husband was wounded and a prisoner. It was at the battle of Ravenna
(11th of April, 1512), which has been so tersely described by Macaulay
as one of those tremendous days in which human folly and wickedness
compress the whole devastation of a famine or a plague, that Fabrizio,
who commanded the Spanish vanguard, and Pescara, who was master of the
horse, surrendered their swords. The latter was carried to Milan and
placed in the fortress of Porta Gobbia. When the news was brought to
Ischia, Vittoria and Costanza gave way to their grief, but with a
dignified moderation becoming their lofty ideals of sacrifice and
duty, and without any of that wild emotion so common to the tender
sentiment in the sex.
The illustrious prisoner consoled himself during confinement by
composing for his wife a _Dialogue on Love_. His captivity did not
last long, and he was liberated after paying a heavy ransom. He then
returned to his beloved home, where he was welcomed by all classes as
a veritable hero, and a little of the fast-fading glamour of chivalry
showed itself among the Italians in the attention which was directed
to his scarred face, so much so that one of his fair admirers, the
Duchess of Milan, exclaimed that she too would like to be a man, if
only to receive a wound across the cheek, and see how it would add to
a fine appearance. All this is very ridiculous, but that it had a hold
upon certain minds at this age, and may therefore be noted, is shown
from many other circumstances of the same kind; for instance, the
delight of Francis of Guise in being surnamed _Le Balafré_, from a
severe cut received at the siege of Bologna, in 1545.
When Pescara was again called (in 1513) to join the forces collected
in Lombardy against the French, his wife returned to Ischia, where she
continued a diligent course of reading. Besides studying the classics,
she cultivated Italian poetry, from which her fame, in our day at
least, has chiefly arisen, and in her graceful verses displayed a
charm and musical rhythm not equalled since the strains of Petrarch’s
muse were heard.
Her husband sometimes came to see her, but his visits from the camp
could not be frequent, and most of the time she was left alone in the
midst of the little court at Ischia, consumed by that species of
domestic grief so poignant to a loving heart when the marital union
has not been blessed by issue. Vittoria mentions this particular
sorrow, this absence of maternal joy, in a very touching sonnet (No.
22). Finally, despairing of children of her own, she prevailed upon
her husband in 1515 to adopt as his son and heir his young cousin, the
Marquis del Vasto.
In 1521 we find Vittoria at home. The year before she lost her father,
whom Italians delight to mention as having lived a life full of
grandeur and glory; but more impartial writers dispute the
_intaminatis fulget honoribus_, and assert that his desertion of the
losing for the winning party, when he passed over from Charles to
Ferdinand, was done without principle, and merely to save his
Neapolitan fiefs. He was a great friend of Macchiavelli, and the
well-known contempt and hatred of this political fiend for what he was
pleased to call the barbarous domination of the foreigner probably
influenced him to think that it mattered little whether he served
Frenchman or Spaniard, since neither had a right to or deserved his
services. It was to him that the subtle Florentine addressed his seven
books on the _Art of War_. His wife, the lovely and pious Agnes,
survived him only two years, dying after a pilgrimage to Our Lady of
Loretto. One of Vittoria’s most beautiful sonnets is on her mother.
Pescara, being again called to arms, hurried to the north of Italy,
and after the battle of Sessia behaved with exquisite courtesy towards
the wounded and expiring Bayard. At the battle of Pavia, on Feb. 24,
1525, Pescara was grievously wounded. Although he greatly contributed
by his skill and valor to the fortunes of that day, he could not
conceal his disappointment at not being more generously rewarded by
the emperor, and was soon afterwards approached by Morone, the
experienced minister of the Duke of Milan, with an offer of the
kingdom of Naples for himself if he would join a league which was
being formed among the Italian princes to free Italy of foreign
rulers, whether French, Spanish, or German. Historians differ in their
accounts of his conduct in this delicate affair. Writers in the
imperial interest from that time to this assert that he indignantly
rejected the proposal, which involved both treachery and
ingratitude—even although he had not received the full measure of his
merits—and Sandoval says that he showed himself among those
double-dealing Italians “_verdadero Español, Castellano viejo_.”
Certain it is that Pescara used to consider himself more a Spaniard
than an Italian, was prouder of his Spanish blood than of his
Neapolitan title, and often regretted that he was not born in the land
of his ancestors. On the other hand, Italian writers say that he fully
committed himself, and was perfectly willing to abandon and turn
against his sovereign, but that at the last moment he quailed, and
basely betrayed his companions to the vengeance of the emperor, for
which reason the rancorous Guicciardini (xvi. 189) calls him, with
almost incredible insolence, “_Capitano altiero, insidioso, maligno,
senz’ alcuna sincerità_.” More moderate historians say that he was
merely dazzled by the prospect of a crown, perhaps even entertained
the proposition, and would probably have thrown himself into the
movement but for the protest and heroic abnegation of his wife. The
truth seems to be, as Gregorovius remarks, that national antipathy has
biassed the judgment of Italian writers. Immediately after the battle
of Pavia, Charles V. wrote a most flattering autograph letter to
Vittoria. Her answer from Ischia, May 1, 1525, is written in a fair
hand, and preserved among the papers of the Gonzaga Archives at Mantua.
Pescara received three wounds, and lay for some months suffering from
their effects, which he imprudently aggravated by copious draughts of
ice-water. He was too weak to travel, and, growing worse, sent a hasty
messenger to his wife to come to Milan and receive his last breath.
She started immediately, but was met at Viterbo by the fatal
intelligence that he had died on Nov. 25.[186] His funeral took place
on the 30th, and the body was afterwards transported to Naples and
buried in the church of St. Dominic. Paulus Jovius, a contemporary,
wrote his life—_Vita Ferdinandi Davali Pescarii_—in elegant Latin. A
literary memorial of Spanish domination in another extremity of
Europe, and of the days when, the great school of war being
transferred from classical Italy to the Netherlands, the gests of
illustrious soldiers were eagerly studied by military men—although, as
a rule, no longer in the learned language of Cæsar’s _Commentaries_—is
preserved to us in the _Historia del fortissimo y prudentissimo
Capitan Don Hernando de Avalos, Marques de Pescara_, published at
Antwerp in 1570.
Vittoria’s first impulse, following this shock, was to take the
religious habit, but she was prudently dissuaded by the learned
Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras, who was then in Rome, from a measure
which would seem to proceed rather from overwhelming grief than mature
deliberation. She did, however, retire for a time to the convent of
San Silvestro _in Capite_, which was closely connected with the
fortunes of the Colonna family. It was during this pious retreat that
she began that _In Memoriam_ to her dead husband which we will mention
a little further on.
The first seven years of her widowhood were passed in inconsolable
grief. She resided at different periods either with her father’s
family at Rome, Marino, or in some other of their castles, or at
Naples and Ischia with the relatives of her late husband. Being still
in the prime of life, in the bloom of beauty, and well provided for by
Pescara’s will, her hand was sought in marriage by several
distinguished suitors; but she turned a deaf ear to all proposals of
this kind, vowing that her first love still reigned supreme.
_Amor le faci spense ove l’accese._[187]
(Love lit his torch, and quenched it in the flame.)
When the Emperor Charles V. was in Rome in 1536, he made a ceremonious
visit, the more honorable as his stay was so short in the Eternal
City, to the widow of his faithful general. In 1537 she made a tour
among several cities in northern Italy, and was everywhere received
with the greatest distinction. We find her with the Ducal Estes at
Ferrara, with the celebrated Veronica Gambara[188] at Bologna, and
with the erudite Ghiberto, Bishop of Verona. From a letter of Pietro
Aretino it appears that she was bent about this period on making a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but was dissuaded by her adopted son and
husband’s heir, Del Vastro, who feared that her health would very
seriously suffer. During this time, also, she assisted Bernardo Tasso
(father of the poet), who acknowledges the benefit he received from
her religious sentiments.
In 1538 she was back again in Rome, and one of the most interesting
episodes of her life—her friendship with Michael Angelo—was then
begun. The austere artist, who was sixty-four years old, felt animated
by a fervent but chaste affection, such as he had never before
experienced. It brought him the poet’s crown to add to his other
crowns of painter, architect, and sculptor; for it is chiefly upon his
sonnets to Vittoria that his literary reputation rests. The few years
of this sacred friendship were the happiest in his life; and it is no
small part of our heroine’s reputation to have inspired in this
wonderful man a muse so chaste and powerful. His poetic addresses to
her, though marked, says Harford, by the highest admiration of her
mind and heart, are throughout expressive of the most reverential
respect. They gratefully acknowledge her condescending courtesy, and
the beneficial influence of her piety and wisdom upon his own
opinions, fluctuating between vice and virtue, but he never presumes
even to refer to her personal attractions. It was only after her
death, and then but in a single sonnet, that he relaxed in a slight
degree his habitual reserve and sang of her earthly beauty. But the
strain is still elevated far above the expressions of carnal love, and
describes a celestial countenance not unworthy of the Beatrice of
Dante.
How highly she was esteemed by all classes is shown, among many other
sources, from the words of an unprejudiced foreigner then in Rome, the
Spanish artist d’Olanda, who says in his journal that she is one of
the noblest and most famous women in Italy and in the whole world;
beautiful, chaste, a Latin scholar; adorned with every grace that can
redound to a woman’s praise; devoting herself since her husband’s
death to thoughts of Christ and to study; supporting the needy; a
model of genuine piety. From a letter of Cardinal Pole, dated April 2,
1541, we learn that she visited Ratisbon, but neither the motives nor
any details of this long journey have been discovered; only it is
known that she was received with honor by the emperor _and by the
citizens_. Her fame, then, had already passed the Alps. On her return
from Germany she rested for a while in the convent of San Paolo at
Orvieto, whence she wrote to Cardinal Pole, expressing how much
delight she found in the rules and society of the sisters, whom she
calls “a company of angels.” It was while in this holy place that the
apostate Ochino sent her a letter, in which he tried to explain and
apologize for his conduct; but she indignantly forwarded it to Cervini
at Rome, to be lodged with the ecclesiastical authorities, as it was
unbecoming in her to receive any communication from such a reprobate.
With fine womanly tact she had long before discovered the weak points
in the character of this gifted but miserable man, consumed by pride
and lust, and, after hearing him preach, she used often, as though
struck by some vague apprehension of a hidden conflict in that
eloquent soul, pray for his final perseverance.
And yet it is from her intercourse with several persons—Valdez,
Ochhino, Vermigli (Peter Martyr), and some others, who _afterwards_
became heretics, that her English biographers especially have striven
to make her out a Protestant! There is not one sentence in her
voluminous writings which can be honestly made to bear an uncatholic
sense. But we perceive everywhere a love of the church, a respect for
the pope—whom she styles, in the most orthodox language, “the Vicar of
Christ”—an admiration for celibacy and the religious life,[189] and,
finally, a tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. If this be
Protestantism, Protestants are welcome to it; and God grant they may
make the most of it! Cardinal Pole, who was many years her junior,
used to honor her as his mother, and assiduously cultivated her
friendship. She left him a legacy of 10,000 scudi in her will, but he
made it over to her niece. At Viterbo she displayed a lively interest
in all matters of education, and took the greatest pleasure in
teaching the pupils entrusted to the religious community of St.
Catherine.
Vittoria returned to Rome at the beginning of the year 1547, and
retired to the palace of Julian Cesarini, who was married to Julia
Colonna. While here she fell very ill, and, feeling her end approach,
she was filled with the pious sentiments of one of her own sonnets,
composed but a short time before, and which will show her constant
preparation for death and serve as a specimen of her style. The
translation is by Harford:
“Would that a voice impressive might repeat,
In holiest accents to my inmost soul,
The name of Jesus; and my words and works
Attest true faith in him, and ardent hope;
The soul elect, which feels within itself
The seeds divine of this celestial love,
Hears, sees, attends on Jesus; grace from him
Illumes, expands, fires, purifies the mind;
The habit bright of thus invoking him
Exalts our nature so that it appeals
Daily to him for its immortal food.
In the last conflict with our ancient foe.
So dire to nature, armed with Faith alone,
The heart, from usage long, on him will call.”
—Sonnet 29.
She died towards the end of February, 1547—the exact date is not
known—in the odor of sanctity, as one of her Italian biographers says.
By her will she made Ascanio Colonna her heir, left one thousand scudi
to each of the four convents in which she had so often lived, provided
for all her servants, and disposed of a large sum in charity, besides
making other pious bequests. Her signature to this instrument is in
Latin, in these words: _Ita testavi ego Vitoria Columna_.
Strange it is, perhaps, but yet a worthy ending of a life of humility
and mortification, even in the midst of the glories of the world, that
no monument is raised over her remains. In fact, her body cannot be
identified; for having requested to be buried in the religious habit
of the nuns of _Sant’Anna de’ Funari_, and in their midst, it was
committed to the common vault of the community, where it lies
undistinguished from the others that repose there.
Her poetry may be classified into a series composed during her
husband’s life and the first years of her widowhood, and another
written when she had devoted herself to a stricter manner of living.
The former is taken up with conjugal love, descriptions of nature, and
miscellaneous subjects; the latter is exclusively given up to
religious ideas: one is the profane, the other the sacred, series. As
an example of the lofty energy with which her mind poured its whole
current of feeling into the channel of Christian devotion, we present
her 28th sonnet in Harford’s translation:
“Deaf would I be to earthly sounds, to greet,
With thoughts intent and fixed on things above,
The high, angelic strains, the accents sweet,
In which true peace accords with perfect love;
Each living instrument the breath that plays
Upon its strings from chord to chord conveys,
And to one end so perfectly they move
That nothing jars the eternal harmony
Love melts each voice, Love lifts its accents high,
Love beats the time, presides o’er ev’ry string;
Th’ angelic orchestra one signal sways.
The sound becomes more sweet the more it strays
Through varying changes, in harmonious maze;
He who the song inspired prompts all who sing.”
As an impartial critic we must confess that, however refined the
language, beautiful the sentiments, and learned the imagery, there is
too much classical grandiloquence in her love-songs to permit us to
forget the head that composed, and allow us to think only of the heart
that inspired, them. When Pescara went forth on his first military
expedition, she described her grief in a long rhymed letter of
thirty-seven stanzas, in which all that is heroic in ancient Greece
and Rome is summoned to witness her disconsolate state. The opening
address—_Eccelso Mio Signore!_ (My high-engendered Lord!)—while it
shows the reverential homage which the wife in those days was expected
to offer to her husband, and which, with all its formalism, was better
than the disrespectful familiarity of a later age, is the prelude to a
style altogether too much like that of the eccentric Margaret, Duchess
of Newcastle, whose biography of her husband—her Julius Cæsar, her
thrice noble, high, and puissant Prince, as she used to call him—is
the acme of connubial admiration. After the death of Pescara, Vittoria
depicted her own grief and his great, good qualities in a flow of
verses full of beauty, dignity, and pathos. Upwards of one hundred
sonnets are devoted to his memory. Trollope, with the conceit of his
class, calls these touching expressions of sorrow “the tuneful
wailings of a young widow as lovely as inconsolable, as irreproachable
as noble”; but the more generous feelings and, doubtless, the Catholic
instincts of her French biographer discover in this exquisite threnody
a form of prayer to God for peace to the living and eternal rest to
the dead. After seven years of widowhood a great change took place in
her nature. She gave herself up entirely to higher influences; and the
difference of style is remarkable between her worldly and her
religious poems. The first are, as we have said, devoted to the love
of a mortal object; the second to a divine dilection. This series is
entitled _Rime Spirituali_. She begins it:
“Since a chaste love my soul has long detained
In fond idolatry of earthly fame,
Now to the Lord, who only can supply
The remedy, I turn …”
—Sonnet 1.
And again we observe in the following production her resolve to
abandon pagan allusions and confine her poetry to sublimer subjects:
“Me it becomes not henceforth to invoke
Or Delos or Parnassus; other springs,
Far other mountain-tops, I now frequent,
Where human steps, unaided, cannot mount.”
All writers on Italian poetry are agreed that for delicacy and grace
of style Vittoria ranks next to Petrarch.
Several medals and portraits have perpetuated her features at
different periods of life. Of the former, two were made while her
husband was living—both heads being represented—and two during her
widowhood. A most beautiful medal was struck at Rome in 1840 on
occasion of the marriage of Prince Torlonia to Donna Teresa Colonna,
but the face is more or less ideal. Several portraits were painted
during her lifetime, but it is difficult to trace them all. Some are
lost, and others are doubtful originals. The thoroughly genuine one
(say the Romans) is that in the Colonna Gallery. It is a fine type of
chaste and patrician beauty. It was taken when she was about eighteen;
although how it can in this case (and it certainly represents her
still in her teens) be ascribed to Muziano, as it is by Mrs. Roscoe,
we cannot understand, because this artist was born only in 1528, when
Vittoria was already thirty-eight years old. The fact is that the
artist is unknown; but there should be some acuteness even in
conjecture. Although it would be highly flattering to the vanity of
her race, and of the Romans in general, to believe that her portrait
was sketched by Michael Angelo and painted by Sebastiano del Piombo,
they reject with horror the celebrated picture by their hands in the
Tribune at Florence in which others see her face and figure. The best
judges, however, call it simply “A Lady, 1512”; and our ideal of
Vittoria revolts from the voluptuous features and disgusting pectoral
development of this portrait; but if it were possible to determine it
in her favor (?) we should have to exclaim:
“Appena si può dir, questà furosa.”
All writers on Italian literature mention our heroine at considerable
length; but of separate biographies the principal ones are the
following: Gio. Batt. Rota, _Rime e Vita di D. Vittoria Colonna,
Marchesana di Pescara_, 1 vol. 8vo, 1760; Isabella Teotochi Albizzi,
_Ritratti_, etc., Pisa, 1826 (4th ed., copy in Astor Library); John S.
Harford, _Life of Michael Angelo Buonarotti_ … _with Memoirs of …
Vittoria Colonna_, 2 vols., London, 1857 (Astor Library); Cav. P. E.
Visconti, _Vita di Vittoria Colonna_, Rome, 1840; Le Fèvre Deumier
published a memoir of her in French in 1856; T. A. Trollope, _A Decade
of Italian Women_; Mrs. Henry Roscoe, _Vittoria Colonna_, 1 vol.,
London, 1868. In 1844 the _Accademia degli Arcadi_ at Rome decreed to
have a bust of Vittoria made and placed in the museum of the Capitol.
It was inaugurated with great pomp on May 12, 1845; and thirty-two
poems in Latin and Italian were written to celebrate the event, and
afterwards collected into a volume and published. The following is the
simple inscription beneath the bust:
A. Vittoria Colonna.
N.MCCCCXC. M.MDXLVII.
Teresa. Colonna. Principessa. Romana.
Pose.
MDCCCXLV.
[185] Published only in 1785.
[186] Philippe Macquer, in his esteemed work, _Abrégé
Chronologique de l’Histoire d’Espagne et de Portugal_
(1759-65), 2 vols. 8vo, says that there is ground for
believing that he was poisoned by his enemies, which
we think is very likely to have been the case.
[187] 18th Sonnet.
[188] One of the most distinguished females of the age, and
for love of letters and literary success ranking next
to Vittoria. She was born in 1485; her father, the
Count Gianfrancesco Gambara of Brescia; her mother,
Alda Pia of Carpi; her husband was Ghiberto, Lord of
Correggio. She died in 1550.
[189] Writing to Michael Angelo from the convent of
St. Catherine at Viterbo, as late as 1543, she calls
the nuns, her companions, “the spouses of Christ.”
ALLIES’ FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM[190]
The appearance of the third part of Mr. Allies’ great work offers an
occasion for expressing the interest with which we have regarded it
since the publication of the first volume in 1865. The author is well
known on both sides of the Atlantic, and the present work has been
noticed from time to time in this magazine.
It consists of a series of historical lectures grouping and
classifying the leading features of that wonderful movement which
began shortly after the foundation of the Roman Empire, and has
survived its downfall more than a thousand years.
Mr. Allies proposes to examine minutely and accurately into these
facts. Those who are familiar with his other works will fully
appreciate his ability to cope with his present task, while the need
of a calm and studious presentation of this period of history is
sufficiently evident.
The religious movement of the sixteenth century boasts, and not
without reason, of having been a radical departure from the spirit of
the age which preceded it. It broke with the past; first, in regard to
particular questions, concerning which it took issue with existing
belief. But the separation which ensued in the religious sphere soon
extended to the whole range of man’s spiritual faculties. The
followers of the new prophets were associated together in communities
and nations, and became entirely estranged from the ancient system.
This isolation was bound to produce in a short time wide divergence of
sentiment, and an ever-increasing estrangement from the past.
Americans going abroad find themselves constantly misinterpreting and
being misunderstood by foreigners.
We live in another era, and under circumstances so different that it
is only by earnest and thoughtful preparation that we can qualify
ourselves to judge of other nations.
Any person who will pause for a moment will realize the difficulty of
conceiving what the present state of the world would have been had the
movement towards a high material development, which preceded
Protestantism, been conducted under Catholic auspices alone. Of
course, such a conception is impossible to the common ignorant
Protestant; but even enlightened minds outside the Catholic Church
must acknowledge that it is not easy to acquire a full sympathy with
the intellectual epoch which preceded Protestantism. Wherever the new
religion became dominant, a thorough break was effected between past
and present. The American freeman resembles his English
great-grandfather far more closely than the Protestant of the
seventeenth resembles the Catholic of the fifteenth century. The
French communist still speaks the language in which the feudal tenant
addressed the seigneur of the last century; but it would be rash to
affirm his capacity to understand the sentiments of his peasant
grandfather.
The change wrought by the sixteenth century extends throughout the
world, and affects the deepest, most powerful, and most mysterious
range of sentiment. This change occurred just as the literature of
modern times had begun to take shape and form. Everything has borne
the stamp either of its action or of the reaction against it. It was a
veritable Lethe; and those who passed through it forgot the images,
expressions, and thoughts of preceding generations.
The results of this tendency were entirely overlooked by the partisans
of Luther and Calvin. But the most superficial student of history
nowadays perceives in them irrefragable proof of two things: first,
that the movement of the sixteenth century was something altogether
new in the world; and, secondly, that it was completely subversive of
the entire order which preceded it. To deny either of these
propositions is to bid defiance to truth and farewell to reason. And
whereas Catholics have been abused for predicting these facts, there
are not wanting Protestants who glory in acknowledging them, now that
they can no longer be controverted.
However, we do not wish to bring them forward in our condemnation of
Protestantism, but simply to illustrate another fact which is equally
true.
Protestantism, amongst other evils, has brought a spirit of scepticism
into historical research which is one of the most ghastly symptoms of
its present stage of dissolution. We do not mean a spirit which
demands proof, but a spirit which no amount of proof can satisfy—which
denies facts unquestionably true, and endeavors to cast discredit upon
the most authentic records.
It is not hard to perceive the cause or to trace the development of
this spirit.
The cause is that Protestantism was in every sense a break in history.
It was an abnormal and morbid occurrence. The consequences of its
denial—its protest—extended into every order of truth. But nowhere was
their influence more fatal than in the domain of history. It lost the
thread of sacred history by denying the authority of the Roman Church.
But the isolated position into which it was thrown soon rendered it
unfit to interpret any tradition. In fact, it had no tradition; it was
obliged to make one in accordance with its own needs. At first its
doubts were all directed against the Papacy, because the Papacy was
irreconcilable with its existence. Then the histories of the saints
were condemned, because Protestantism had nothing of the kind to show.
But the irreverent critic of the claims of the Sovereign Pontiff at
last attacked the Scripture, which was thrown to him as bearing its
own credentials. Far worse than this—the Bible having been destroyed,
the sacred person of the Author of Christianity has been exposed for
dissection. Nothing is deemed too blasphemous either to deny or assert
of him. But now that he has been judged by the high-priests of the new
religion, and condemned as an impostor, something has to be done with
that vast system which civilized the world and endured for sixteen
centuries, on the theory that Christ was what he proclaimed himself to
be—the Lord of all things, and that his revelation was true.
After practically demonstrating that Protestantism is a denial of
Christianity, we might expect the age to pause in its career of
denial. This, however, at present seems to be expecting too much.
Having denied the authority which Christ has commissioned, the
revolution soon came to deny Christ. Having denied him, it has
proceeded to deny him from whom Jesus was sent.
It only remains to deny every other fact which conflicts with the
negative theory. It is, therefore, considered necessary to express
doubt with regard to every historical fact connected with
Christianity. A notable instance of this is before our eyes in Mr.
Hare’s _Walks in Rome_, a book quite free from the more offensive
forms of Protestant vulgarity. Mr. Hare has spent many years in Rome,
and learned from its antiquarians the history of its secular
traditions. He knows that the scene of St. Peter’s imprisonment is as
well attested as any other which he describes in his work. In the
course of his remarks on the Mamertine Prison, he says:
“It was by this staircase that Cicero came forth and announced the
execution of the Catiline conspirators to the people in the Forum by
the single word _Viverunt_—‘they have ceased to live!’ Close to the
exit of these stairs the Emperor Vitellius was murdered.”
He discusses the age of the structure, and cites Ampère to prove it to
be the oldest building in Rome. The author further says: “It is
described by Livy and by Sallust, who depicts its horrors in his
account of the execution of the Catiline conspirators. The spot is
shown to which these victims were attached and strangled in turn. In
this dungeon, at an earlier period, Appius Claudius and Oppius the
decemvirs committed suicide (B.C. 449). Here Jugurtha, king of
Mauritania, was starved to death by Marius. Here Julius Cæsar, during
his triumph for the conquest of Gaul, caused his gallant enemy
Vercingetorix to be put to death. Here Sejanus, the friend and
minister of Tiberius, disgraced too late, was executed for the murder
of Drusus, son of the emperor, and for an intrigue with his
daughter-in-law Livilla. Here, also, Simon Bar Givras, the last
defender of Jerusalem, suffered during the triumph of Titus.”
Thus far the writer is dealing with facts of pagan tradition, which
has been dead for centuries. Observe the change of tone when he comes
to facts of the living Christian tradition—facts which he is evidently
inclined to believe, but which must not be spoken of with the
confidence appropriate to pagan narrative:
“The spot is more interesting to the Christian world as the prison of
SS Peter and Paul, _who are said_ to have been bound for nine months
to a pillar, which is shown here.” A little further on: “It is hence
that _the Roman Catholic Church believes_ that St. Peter and St. Paul
addressed their farewells to the Christian world” (pp. 94-96).
The testimony of the Egyptian hieroglyphs is unquestioned. The most
fabulous antiquity is readily admitted for Indian and Chinese history.
It is gratuitously assumed that the time of stone implements was not
coincident with the use of metals in other nations, though the
contrary may be witnessed on our own frontiers. If human remains are
found along with those of extinct animals, it is assumed that they
died together. No demand upon belief is too great unless it be in
connection with Christianity. This tendency is to make men imagine
that the era of our Saviour’s advent was purely mythical, and that the
events of his time are as obscure as those of the siege of Troy.
We think that we have accounted for the existence of this tendency in
the nature of Protestantism, as developed in Strauss and the “more
advanced” German speculators. But after having created this artificial
cloud in history, the same parties seek to give the impression that
Christianity was but a natural development out of the union of Eastern
with Western thought. Having endeavored to reduce it to a myth by
denying or questioning history, the process is reversed, and history
is appealed to in order to prove that Christianity was a purely
natural phenomenon which can be readily explained.
It is, according to these rash theorists, a syncretism of the best
thoughts of Egypt, India, and Greece, produced principally by the
agency of the Alexandrian schools. This explanation is mainly
satisfactory to them because it would explain the rise and
establishment of Christianity without a miracle.[191] The hypothesis
was eagerly embraced for this reason. Just so Strauss leaped for joy
at the hypothesis of Darwin, because it professed to account for the
existence of men without creation. But just as Darwin, while able to
produce both specimens and remains of man and ape, could never find
the intermediate animal, or even any trace of him, so this forged
account of the origin of Christianity breaks down in the very fact
which is necessary to give it even the semblance of value, viz., the
warrant of historical facts. In order still further to misrepresent
the origin of Christianity, it is necessary to observe the testimony
of history as to the moral condition of the pagan world. Tacitus and
Suetonius are pagan authors, therefore it will not do to impeach their
writings in the same manner as the Gospels and the Christian Fathers.
Being heathens, their works are certainly genuine, and they are to be
held as truthful men—a presumption to which the Evangelists and
Fathers are in no way entitled. But we notice the tendency to overlook
the frightful picture presented by these historians, and the attempt,
by a judicious comparison of the best specimens of paganism with the
worst scandals or most austere characters of church history, to draw
conclusions injurious to Christianity.
This whole process of doubting the records, misstating the origin, and
denying the real nature of early Christianity, is a fraud which will
not bear scrutiny; it is maintained by men who avow their willingness
to accept any hypothesis which conflicts with the ancient faith, and
to lend the prestige of their talents to any effort against it.
The historical warfare has been vigorously carried on in Germany by
both sides. The movement has penetrated into the English universities.
Its echoes have been heard in our own midst, in the utterances of
certain writers who, being possessed by the spirit of snobbishness,
cleave to outlandish modes of thought because of their foreign or
novel character.
Mr. Allies’ work is a thoughtful and profound exposition of facts, and
brushes away the cobwebs with which hostile criticism has sought to
envelop the history of Christianity. The author does not aim at a
connected narrative. The chapters of his work are lectures, each one
of which is an essay, complete in itself. The reader is presumed to be
acquainted with the general outlines of history, and the author
directs his efforts to answer such questions as naturally arise with
regard to the introduction of Christianity and the foundation of that
order which appeared under the title of Christendom in the Middle Age.
Accordingly, after giving his idea of the philosophy of history, Mr.
Allies draws a graphic picture of the state of the Roman world. The
civil polity of the Augustan age, the majesty of the Pax Romana,
appear in their splendid proportions. The reader is brought face to
face with all that is known of that epoch. Its ideas of manhood and
morality are set forth from the testimony of eye-witnesses. Then
follows a sketch of the work to be accomplished by Christianity,
entitled the New Creation of Individual Man. This is succeeded by a
series of lectures viewing the results which were to be expected from
the influence of Christianity upon human character. Here we find also
the testimony of eye-witnesses of the growth of the new religion, and
an instructive comparison between Cicero and St. Augustine,
illustrative of two most important ages of history. The fifth lecture
of this first volume is on the New Creation of the Primary Relation
between Man and Woman; and the seventh lecture deals with an equally
Christian doctrine, viz., the Creation of the Virginal Life.
A recent German writer, laboring under a delusion not uncommon in his
country, doubts whether the improved morality which appeared after the
introduction of Christianity was really due to that religion or to the
German race. This characteristic doubt is left undecided by the
writer, but will probably soon be settled adversely to Christianity by
some more adventurous Teuton. The public, for whose benefit these
speculations are likely to be extended, will do well to read a little
history, and will not find Mr. Allies’ chapters amiss.
The second volume, which appeared in 1869, treats of the developments
of that spiritual society which sprang into existence with the
original ideas of Christianity and from the same source. The peculiar
characteristics are traced of that hierarchical order which, after
three centuries of bloody persecution, came forth from its
hiding-place in perfect organization, to receive at once the homage of
Constantine and to become the guide of civilization and the supreme
ruler of nations for more than a thousand years.
The position of the church at the time of Constantine was that of
complete victory. The portent in the sky which appeared to that
emperor was not more miraculous than the spectacle afforded by
Christianity. Starting from a distant point in an obscure race,
without means, without facilities of communication, it had not only
revolutionized the pagan world but it had maintained its own unity as
a corporate body in the face of wholesale treason from within, and
intense intellectual opposition, accompanied with three centuries of
proscription, from without. Three centuries ago another movement
started in our modern world. It had all the prestige of the
civilization which germinated along with it. It has had the support of
the civil power. It has had the best blood and most vigorous races to
work for it. No earthly element of success has been refused to it.
What is the result? Where is its unity? The very idea is abandoned.
Where are its original convictions? Not one remains. What is its
present influence? It has none. What is its prospect in the future?
Entire destruction.
Nothing is better calculated to give us a correct idea of the
difference between Protestantism and Christianity than this sort of a
comparison. Such, however, is not Mr. Allies’ design. He aims, in his
second volume, to show that Christianity had a definite theory and
constructive spirit with regard to society. As he contrasts in his
first volume the pagan notion of individual man with the Christian
ideal, and shows a creative power in the latter producing results
undreamed of in the heathen character, so the author traces, in his
second volume, the social ideas brought in by Christianity.
The unity of the church, as taught and described by the fathers, was
an idea no less remarkable in its marvellous working than in its utter
novelty. This conception was based on the fundamental principle of
Christianity, that its divine Founder had authorized a corporate body
to teach the world those truths which he came to bring, and that the
power of God was pledged to the infallibility of his church. This
doctrine is the only constructive idea that has ever been broached
with regard to society. Protestantism was a direct assault upon the
very nature of Christianity, and is to be held responsible for the
absence of this idea in modern civilization.
Mr. Allies develops the history of this Christian idea with great
accuracy, filling out his comparison between Christian and pagan
thinkers in all departments of thought, and establishing the claims of
the new faith to be a creation fresh from the Author of all things,
and not a development out of the putrescent civilization of the
ancient world.
That Christianity produced a type of character wholly distinct and
peculiar, is a fact of which there can be no doubt on the part of
those who have the slightest disposition to consult authentic records.
That it possessed a vitality and organizing power of which there is no
other instance, is equally certain. But we often hear the sayings of
Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and the later Stoics quoted, as exhibiting
a tone of thought almost equal to that of Christianity, and by the
enemies of religion vaunted as something far above the morality of the
Gospel. No reader of Plutarch can escape the impression of his gentle
and refined philosophy. Though full of grievous errors, it has a
flavor of truth, a respect for purity, and an appreciation of virtue
which are not to be found in the earlier historians.
The great error of those who would make Christianity a development of
heathen thought is simply, then, mistaking the cause for the effect. A
great change was undoubtedly to be expected from the blending of Greek
and Roman speculation with the Jewish and Egyptian religions. This
change actually took place. But its product was acted upon by
Christianity, and did not become a factor of the new religion. Mr.
Allies gives us the summary of ancient philosophy, which he traces
down to its contact with Christian truth. We are able to see the
vanity of that false reading of history which seeks to represent
Christianity as a mendicant receiving crumbs from Plato, Pythagoras,
Philo, and the Stoics. We perceive from their writings and the tone of
their disciples the barrenness and emptiness of Attic thought, up to
the time when it received the few corrections and additions from
Christian doctrine which enabled it to appear for a short time as a
rival of heavenly truth.
The author goes with laborious scrutiny through that labyrinth of
error which is included under the title of Neo-Platonism. Outside the
Catholic Church, few scholars have read even the principal works of
St. Thomas Aquinas. Charles Sumner was said to possess them; Disraeli
the elder and George Eliot refer to them. But the former never showed
that he understood their contents, and the last-named writers show
that they have not. Although such a study is absolutely necessary
towards acquiring a correct knowledge of the intellectual life of the
Middle Age, it is rarely undertaken by non-Catholics. To study the
remains of Neo-Platonism is a task of equal subtlety, and yet nothing
is more common than to hear shallow speculators on history affirm that
Christianity was greatly affected by the Alexandrian school. But the
difference is no less marked when we come to find out what the views
of the leading Neo-Platonist actually were. This “distracted chaos of
hallucinations” was the highest effort of paganism. It was an attempt
to reconcile and weld together all the elements of the old world, as a
barrier to the new and irresistible power which was everywhere gaining
ground. It was the development which was to have been expected. It was
the fusion of East and West to which Christianity has been credited.
But, instead of acting upon, it was radically affected by,
Christianity; and, instead of bringing forth Christianity, it was the
deadliest foe of the Gospel. It is from this old armory of Alexandria
that modern error draws and refurbishes the clumsy weapons which
dropped thirteen centuries ago from the hands of the first opponents
of Christianity. It is a good place to go for this sort of
bric-à-brac. It contains a sum of all the aberrations of the human
intellect. Here, stripped of its modern garb, we find the cosmic
sentimentalism of Strauss. Here the absolute being of the German
pantheists stares us in the face. Here, from Iamblichus and Porphyry,
we hear the same mournful and unhealthy drivel which is printed and
sewed up in gilt morocco by enterprising and philanthropic publishers
of the present day. On rising from the perusal of Mr. Allies’ third
volume, we see clearly the end of that wonderful and brilliant
Hellenism which, while ever occupied “either in telling or in hearing
something new,” slighted the real truth which had come into the world,
and served but as a pit to its own pride.
Too much praise cannot be given to Mr. Allies for the labor bestowed
upon his history of the actual development of the philosophy of Greece
in the Roman Empire. He has traced each school of thought from year to
year, and reproduced a correct summary of its beliefs. The Neo-Stoic
philosophy, which is especially vaunted by the enemies of
Christianity, is studiously delineated. The points of agreement and
difference are clearly noted between its four great chiefs—Seneca,
Musonius, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The analogies and contrasts
between the developed Stoic school and the Christian teachers who were
its contemporaries, are also brought into relief.
In order to portray the effect of the Neo-Pythagorean doctrines and
the revived Platonism, the author gives a complete analysis of that
most singular and interesting character, Philo the Jew—singular, in
that he was the only one of the ancient Hebrew race who became a great
philosopher; interesting, because he shows us the precise difference
between Platonism and Jewish belief, and the immeasurable superiority
of the unreasoning Jew, who believed only that which he had received
by tradition, over the highest flight of heathen genius unaided by
revelation. The lecture on Philo closes with a summary of the interval
between his time and Plutarch’s, and the change during that epoch from
the old Roman world of Cicero, together with the cause of this change.
Following this, another lecture presents the state of the pagan
intellect and the common standing ground of philosophy, from the
accession of Nero to that of Severus.
Towards the close of his reign, under the auspices of the Empress
Julia and from the labors of Philostratus, came forth the new gospel
of paganism in the life of Apollonius of Thyana. This work, upon the
strength of which modern infidels have sought to attribute a mythical
origin to the Gospels, was a counterfeit of the truth, in which
paganism sought to construct an ideal teacher, to oppose to that
Master who was now beginning to be known throughout the world. This
sketch of Apollonius of Thyana is very complete, and shows a new phase
of thought yet more strikingly affected by that hated and persecuted
power which was daily growing in the midst of the Roman world. Having
completed his study of pagan belief and sentiments as far as the reign
of Severus, the author is fully prepared for the difficult and
thankless task of reviewing the struggle between Neo-Platonism, as
represented by Iamblichus, Porphyry, and Plotinus, and their
followers, against divine truth. The third volume closes with a
graphic summary of the intellectual results from Claudius to
Constantine, and a comparative glance at the relative power of the old
order and the new to reconstruct a society in stable and harmonious
proportions.
With this lecture, which seems to foreshadow the contents of a fourth
volume, Mr. Allies’ work stops for the present. Its publication in
parts has placed it at a great disadvantage, inasmuch as ten years
have passed since the first volume appeared. It may seem premature to
review a work not yet complete, but enough has been published to
establish the claim of the author to a most useful and successful
contribution to the needs of the time. He has grown into his task, and
has accumulated both facts and reflections. There is little reason to
fear that the remaining volume will not be equal to the three which
have preceded it.
The style is unpretending, and the whole work extremely modest. In
this respect, it will not meet the approval of those who prefer
rhetoric to exact truthfulness. Historical works must be plentifully
illustrated, either by the engraver or the imagination of the author,
to make them popular nowadays.
But the intelligent reader who will take pains to examine carefully
Mr. Allies’ volumes will be well repaid, and the author himself can
rest in the conviction that he has written a solid and useful book,
which deserves a place in every library.
[190] _The Formation of Christendom._ By T. W. Allies. Part
Third. London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer. 1875.
[191] It is also necessary on account of its vagueness, and
eminently fits in or rather mixes with the confusion of
mind which is so marked a characteristic in this school of
speculators.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._ FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
X.
In that portion of the attic of Whitehall Castle looking toward the
west they had, according to the king’s orders, erected an altar in
order to celebrate Mass. Three persons had assembled there, and were
reflecting on the singularity of the hour and the choice of the place
where they found themselves called by this religious ceremony.
Lady Berkley, seated upon a high cane chair, had carefully gathered
about her feet the long train of her silk dress, to avoid having it
sweep over the floor covered with dust, and she observed with great
attention the old tapestries, which had been nailed all around the
altar in order to conceal as far as possible the unsightly appearance
of the rafters of the roof.
Heneage, with his arms crossed, not far from her, waited, having
nothing to do, while Dr. Roland Lee, invested with the pontifical
vestments, kneeled on the step of the altar, inwardly grieved at this
new whim of the king, which he found as inconvenient as disrespectful;
but being very pious, he endeavored to pray to God and occupy himself
only with the holy sacrifice he was going to offer up.
They had waited very nearly an hour in this position, when Norris
entered with a light in his hand.
“The king,” he said in a loud voice.
The assistants immediately arose to their feet, and the king appeared,
followed by Lady Boleyn, with Anne Savage carrying her train, gleaming
with embroidery.
On entering she cast a glance upon the surroundings of this improvised
chapel, and she was far from finding them to her liking. But Henry
VIII. gave her no time for reflection; he placed two chairs in front
of the altar, and, putting himself in one, he made a sign to her to
kneel upon the other; then, having called Sir Roland, he announced to
him that he had to proceed with the marriage.
Although he had presaged nothing good from the singular preparations
he had seen made in this attic chapel, yet poor Dr. Lee was far from
anticipating such an order as he now received; he found himself in a
horrible state of perplexity, and stood without making any reply.
“Come!” said the king after a moment’s silence, “commence the
prayers.”
But Roland turned toward him, and still continued to stand on the step
of the altar; he said with a great deal of dignity:
“No, your majesty cannot marry, the ecclesiastical authorities not
having yet decided.…”
“What say you, Roland?” interrupted the king brusquely. “God alone has
power to judge the conscience of princes, and mine has decided that I
should marry. Go on and do what I command you now.”
“Sire,” replied Roland, who feared that his days were numbered, “your
majesty has all power over my poor body, and I am your very unworthy
and very devoted subject; but I cannot solemnize your marriage without
having proof that you are at liberty to contract it.”
Henry bit his lower lip.
“Roland!” he said.
“Sire,” replied the other, as if he thought the king had called him.
“The imbecile!” exclaimed Henry VIII. to himself; but he saw it would
be better to dissimulate.
“Roland,” he replied, with an inflection of voice as different as his
new intention, “do you think I would command you to do anything wrong?
I have received from Rome the bulls of our Holy Father, who recognizes
the nullity of my marriage with Catherine, _the wife of my brother_,
and permits me to select for my spouse any other unmarried woman in my
kingdom. However, in order to avoid scandal, he bound me to do it
secretly.”
“Then I have nothing to say,” replied Roland Lee, relieved of an
immense weight; “but your majesty will, of course, first show me the
proofs.”
“Obstinacy!” thought the king. “How, Sir Roland,” he cried, assuming
an air of extreme mortification, “the word of your king, then, is no
longer sufficient? Is it necessary for me to go and bring you a thing
which I affirm to have in my possession? Roland,” he added in a severe
tone, “until now your conscience alone has spoken, therefore I have
not been offended; but take care that, instead of commending your
course, I no longer see in you other than an incredulous obstinacy. I
pledge you my royal word on the truth of what I have stated.… But add
not a word more.”
Roland dared not reply, and, unable to believe the king would dare to
prevaricate in that manner before such a number of witnesses, he
began, although much disturbed, to say the Mass.… But the quiet
solemnity of prayer influences the most obdurate heart: man is so
insignificant in the presence of God.
Henry felt more and more troubled. Queen Catherine’s letter, Norris’
description of her departure, the scene of the previous evening,
passed one after another before his eyes and continued to torture his
memory. The words of the holy daughter of Kent, “The woman you wish to
marry will dishonor your couch and perish on the scaffold,” arose
unconsciously to his lips, and aroused in his soul a gloomy jealousy.
He cast a glance upon Anne Boleyn; their eyes met, and the miserable
woman was terror-stricken at the expression of fury that gleamed from
his eyes. Then he looked around him. The sun had arisen, and brought
into bold relief the old and faded tapestries surrounding the altar.
“Is this place worthy of me?” he thought to himself. “Is it thus I
have prayed with Thomas More?—that quiet, peace, order, and respect?…
There one is happy; here they are consumed, devoured by remorse!
Happiness of the just, I execrate thee, because I have not been able
to attain thee!”… Thus all that was good excited his envy; even
Catherine, whom he had driven from the door of his palace a wanderer
on the earth, seemed to him happier than himself.
But it was still worse when the venerable priest, turning towards him,
began the ancient and solemn rites of marriage between the children of
God, and came to these words: “You, Henry of Lancaster, do confess,
acknowledge, and swear before God, and in presence of his holy church,
that you now take for your wife and legitimate spouse Anne Boleyn,
here present.”
“Ah!” said the king mentally, “hell would be better than the life that
I lead.” He trembled, and answered in a loud voice:
“Yes!”
“You promise to keep to her faithfully in all things, as a faithful
husband should his wife, according to the commandment of God?”
“Yes,” he answered again.
“And you, Anne Boleyn, you also confess, acknowledge, and swear before
God, and in presence of his holy church, that you now take for your
husband and legitimate spouse Henry of Lancaster, here present.”
“Yes,” stammered Anne Boleyn, who had no relatives, no friends around
her—no one except two valets and a _femme de chambre_.
“You promise to keep to him faithfully in all things, as a faithful
wife should her husband, according to the commandment of God?”
“Yes,” she answered more distinctly.
Then the priest took the nuptial ring, and, placing it in the hand of
the king, made a sign to give it to his wife.
Henry VIII., leaning toward Anne Boleyn, gave it to her, seeming
scarcely conscious that he did so. The sight of this ring recalled the
one he had given Catherine on a former and similar occasion, the
sanctity of the engagements he had contracted with her, the love he
then bore her, her youth, her sincerity, her charms, her virtues, the
tranquillity of his own conscience; now, he had dissipated all these
blessings—dissipated them wilfully and through his own fault; he felt
himself despised and despicable. His legitimate wife driven forth and
discarded, while he took another by means of a disgraceful falsehood
which must be very soon discovered. He no longer had children; he had
renounced at the same time all the rights of a man, a father, a
husband, in order to recommence, at his age, a new career, already
branded with disgraceful recollections and shameful regrets.
“May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob unite
you, and may he shower his benedictions upon you! I now pronounce you
man and wife, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost,” said the priest, making the sign of the cross over them.
“Amen!” responded the assistants.
“No benedictions! Don’t talk to me about benedictions, wretches!”
replied Henry in a stifled voice.
“It is truly just and reasonable,” continued the priest, ascending the
steps of the altar and extending his hands towards heaven, “it is
right and salutary, that we return thee thanks at all times and in all
places, O Lord, most holy Father, Almighty God eternal, who by thy
power hast created the universe out of nothing; who in the beginning
of the world, after having made man in thine image, gave him, to be
his inseparable companion, the woman whom thou hast formed from
thyself, in order to teach him that he is never permitted to put
asunder those whom thou hast united in the sacrament thou hast
instituted. O God! thou who hast consecrated marriage by so excellent
a mystery that the nuptial alliance is the figure of the sacred union
of Jesus Christ and his church; O God! by whom the woman is united to
the man, and who givest to this intimate union thy blessing, the only
one which has not been taken away, neither by the punishment of
original sin nor the sentence of the Deluge; O God! thou who alone
hast dominion over the hearts of men, and who knowest and governest
all things by thy providence, insomuch that no man can put asunder
those whom thou hast joined together—”
“When shall I get out of this place?” murmured Henry VIII.
“Nor injure those whom thou hast blessed—unite, we pray thee, the
souls of these thy servants, who belong to thee, and pour into their
hearts a sincere friendship, to the end that they may become one in
thee, as thou art the only true and all-powerful God. Regard with a
favorable eye thy servant, who, before being united to her spouse,
implores your protection. Grant that her yoke may be a yoke of love
and peace; grant that, chaste and faithful, she may follow the example
of the holy women of old; that she render herself amiable to her
husband, like Rachel; that she may be wise as Rebecca; that she may
enjoy a long life, and be faithful like Sara; that the author of
prevarication may find nothing in her that proceeds from him; that she
may abide firm in thy law and in the observance of thy commandments;
that, at last, being attached only to her husband, she defile not the
marriage-bed by any illicit connection.”
“Do you understand what the priest advises you?” said Henry VIII.,
angrily regarding Anne Boleyn, and speaking almost loud enough for her
to hear him.
“That, in order to sustain her weakness, she may fortify herself by an
exact and well-regulated life; that she may conduct herself with such
proper modesty as will ensure respect; that she inform herself of her
duties in the heavenly doctrines of Jesus Christ; that she may obtain
from thee a happy fecundity; that she may lead a life pure and
irreproachable—”
“I will not suffer her to do otherwise,” thought the king.
“That at length she may arrive at the rest of the saints in the
kingdom of heaven. Grant, Lord, that they may both live to behold
their children’s children until the third and fourth generation, and
attain a happy old age, through Jesus Christ our Lord, thy Son, who
liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world
without end.”
“Amen!” responded the assistants.
“It is over at last,” said the king, rising precipitately.
He motioned Anne Boleyn to follow him; but she made no reply, and he
saw that she was weeping, and had put her hands over her eyes to
conceal her tears.
He then left her, and immediately went out.
XI.
On returning to his apartments, the king found in his cabinet Cromwell
and Cranmer, who, pompously invested with the garb of his new
episcopal dignity, came with Cromwell to thank the king for having
conferred on him this exalted position.
The sight of these two intriguers produced a disagreeable impression
on Henry. He was very wearied already by the scene through which he
had just passed, and longed to be alone. Instead of that, he found
himself face to face with two new instruments of torture.
Cromwell regarded the king attentively, and was astonished at the
expression of dissatisfaction visible on every feature of his face.
“What does he want now?” mentally inquired this unprincipled man.
“Have we not procured the accomplishment of all his desires? Is he not
now the very legitimate spouse of the brilliant Anne Boleyn,
Marchioness of Pembroke?” But he thought it advisable under existing
circumstances to let the king speak first, and contented himself with
a profound salutation.
“What more do you want of me?” asked the king very brusquely.
“He is not very approachable this morning,” thought Cromwell; “but
never mind, he will not escape us for all that.”
“We come,” replied Cromwell, “to congratulate your majesty on the
clemency and magnanimity you displayed yesterday evening towards that
daughter of Kent; and Dr. Cranmer has come to lay at your feet the
assurance of his gratitude and his entire devotion.”
“Yes,” replied the king, happy to attribute his anger to something he
could confess; “you are clever men, and richly deserve to be driven
from my presence for having risked compromising me with that fool to
whom you have made me listen! I am beginning to get tired of your
fooleries; Sir Cromwell, understand that well!” And he emphasized the
last words with a marked intention and an expression of anger and
scorn.
“The marriage has not improved matters much, it would seem,” said
Cromwell to himself; but he considered it proper to display a little
dignity. “I understand,” he replied immediately, “that your majesty
may have at first taken some offence at the insolent audacity of that
woman of Kent; but I am astonished that you should be so unjust as to
think ill of your servants on account of it, and especially since
nothing could have been more fortunate in putting us on the track of
the infamous intrigues of the queen and her partisans.”
“Infamous intrigues! infamous intrigues!” cried the king. “That is a
word which may be very readily applied, and often it is not to those
who most deserve it.”
An angry flush mounted to Cromwell’s pale visage; he felt that it was
time to calm the storm about to burst upon him.
“I implore your majesty to believe,” he replied in an extremely
mortified tone, “that I advance nothing without proof; and I ask now
what he will say when he shall know that the queen, Thomas More, and
the Bishop of Rochester, concealed in the church, assisted with us at
the examination of the holy daughter of Kent, in order to assure
themselves that their instrument resounded loudly in the ears of your
majesty.”
“What do you say, Cromwell? The queen was in the Abbey last night? And
how did she gain admittance there? What! she has heard all? She has
enjoyed my humiliation? Why have I not known it? I would have punished
her audacity and wickedness on the spot; but I will surely have my
revenge.”
“Sire,” replied Cromwell, “the queen is but a woman, and you should
pardon her. The real culprits are the Bishop of Rochester and More,
whose ingratitude toward your majesty exceeds all conception. The
queen’s partisans laud More above the clouds, and publish it abroad
that he has retired from your majesty’s service because his conscience
would no longer permit him to remain there. It is time to put an end
to such excesses, and the honor of your majesty requires that they
shall no longer go unpunished.”
Cromwell intended by this discourse to excite the king’s wrath and at
the same time strike at his ruling passions—pride, and the fear of
losing his authority. Thus he held him in his hands, and changed him
from one to the other, like a piece of soft wax melted before a hot
fire.
“Yes,” cried the king, “yes, I swear it, I will chastise them! The
whole world shall learn what it is to try to resist me!” He was nearly
stifled with rage, which entirely transported him and rendered him
incapable of reflection.
“You will assist me, Cromwell,” he cried, “you will assist me! I shall
have need of you to help me tame this insolent clergy, who will raise
a loud howl when they hear I have banished Catherine and married Anne
Boleyn without their participation.”
“He is caught,” thought Cromwell. “Poor fish! you have too many vices
to hope to escape my nets! I am very happy to see,” he replied with a
satisfied air, “that your majesty has not been cast down or
discouraged by the trifling difficulties you have until the present
encountered. It is time your courage got the better of your
generosity, and that you should throw off the yoke which has been so
long imposed on you.”
“Yes, that is just what I want!” cried the king; “but it is a very
difficult question to deal with.”
“Not the least in the world,” replied Cromwell; “let your majesty
continue as you have begun, and you will very soon see every obstacle
fall before you. Not long since they declared your marriage was
impossible; to-day it is accomplished.… The clergy will not recognize
it!… Make Parliament proclaim it; then demand of them the oath of
fidelity to the new queen, to her children, and to the supreme head of
the church; because we must not lose sight,” continued Cromwell, “of
the fact that there is no longer any necessity for discretion now;
after the injury done to the Sovereign Pontiff of the church, there
remains no other way to proceed than to cast off his authority at once
and substitute another in his place.”
“Softly, softly,” said the king; “unless the necessity be forced upon
me, I do not wish to go to such an extremity.”
“This is not an extremity,” replied Cromwell, who had the plan already
perfectly arranged, and enjoyed in advance all the ecclesiastical
benefits he counted on appropriating to himself; “it is a decisive
victory, simple and easy to carry out. Is it not, Cranmer?”
“I think so,” said Cranmer, who had taken the habit of a bishop only
that he might be better able to serve his ambition and avidity.
“Softly,” continued the king, with an air of importance; “it is very
evident that neither of you are statesmen, and that you are not
experienced in such matters, nor acquainted with their difficulties.”
“I think, however, I know very well how to manage my own,” said
Cromwell under his breath.
“We know quite as much about it as some others,” thought Cranmer.
“It will first be necessary,” continued Henry, “to see if there will
be no means of arranging it otherwise. It is possible that Catherine
may submit, that she may ask to become a _religieuse_, that they may
decide at Rome that it is not necessary to enforce the law so urgently
in my case. At any rate, I wish to try them,” he added in a determined
voice, “by demanding, as is customary, Cranmer’s bulls of the pope.
Afterward—ah! well, we will see.”
“Then, sire,” replied Cromwell, “consider well that, by this act of
submission, you destroy all the terror you have inspired, and that if
Cranmer holds his rank and powers as Archbishop-Primate of England
from any other than yourself, he will be obliged to publicly
acknowledge the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, and to take from him,
as usual, the oath of fidelity.”
“Oh!” hurriedly interrupted Cranmer, who feared that this remark of
Cromwell would make the king hesitate, and retard his installation,
“this oath is only a simple formality, … an ancient usage.… Nothing
could prevent me later from taking another to the king in the form and
tenor adopted.”
“Ah! well; yes, still—” said Cromwell, whose talent above all
consisted in never finding, nor letting the king find, any difficulty
in following his advice.
“These honest individuals!” thought the king; “an oath weighs no more
on their conscience than a gnat on the back of a swallow.”
With this remark his patience was exhausted with them.
“Well, it is all right,” he said; “we will return to this subject
after the council. Go now; I need rest; but keep an eye on Thomas More
and the Bishop of Rochester,” he added, turning toward Cromwell.
They then had to retire, and leave the king by himself, a prey to his
own reflections.
“They are gone at last!” cried Henry, throwing himself into a
_fauteuil_. “I am rid of them! These are, then, the agents of hell
with whom hereafter I must manage the affairs of my kingdom.”
And he angrily pushed from under his feet a footstool, which was
hurled against a chair they called the “queen’s chair,” because she
had shown a preference for it.
Henry recollected it; he arose abruptly, and changed his position in
order to avoid seeing the vacant chair, that annoyed him.
“Always Catherine,” he cried; “nothing but Catherine! I cannot take a
step without being reminded of her! So much trouble, and only to make
myself so wretched!… That doll-baby, Anne Boleyn, was weeping!… A weak
creature, and with no energy!… She is not equal to the position to
which I have elevated her. To weep the day that I married her, when
for her I have torn myself from the arms of the clergy, the people,
the pope, and the emperor!… I shall not be happy with this woman;… she
wearies me already!… It will be necessary to make all this known
before the coronation; … otherwise there will be no time to recede.…
To acknowledge that I have done wrong … it is impossible.… More, could
you, then, have been right? Shall I always be more unhappy in
following my own will than in conquering it?… That wretch! always
calm, always contented.… I see him now, down in his obscurity, seated
quietly in his cabinet, working, loving God, not fearing death, …
smiling at poverty and all the circumstances of life, which, as he
says, have no power to annoy him.… And I—I roll here on these velvet
cushions, with remorse in my heart, despair in my soul; and why, when
I have obtained the object I wanted?… Hell has already begun for me!…
If it is so, I should not, at least, be ashamed to acknowledge it!…
March on!”
The king, rising then precipitately, left his cabinet, and ordered
preparations for a grand hunting party, and for the assembling of the
ladies for a ball and supper in the evening.
XII.
Whilst they were dancing at court, and sought, in dissipation of mind,
to drown remorse of heart, a few leagues distant one of the victims of
Henry VIII. lay on his death-bed, rapidly approaching his end.
The night before some travellers had knocked at the gate of Leicester
Abbey. It was opened, and the Archbishop of York had alighted from his
mule, on which he was no longer able to sustain himself. He was
carried by the good monks to a chamber, and laid in bed, where he
still remained confined and nigh unto death.
All was gloom around this bed; two wax lights only burned on a table
at the extremity of the room, whilst several monks were on their knees
praying for the dying. Not a sound disturbed the silence around them
save the slight noise made by the rosary as they turned it in their
hands, and the labored respiration of the sick man.
“Monsieur Kingston,” he suddenly cried in a broken voice, “I conjure
you, say to the king that I have never betrayed him, that my enemies
have misrepresented me, that I have always been faithful to him!… Tell
him this, I conjure you!—ah! tell him this.”
But Sir William Kingston, lieutenant of the Tower, had left the room
and returned to the lower hall among his guards, with whom he had been
sent, by order of the king, to seek his prisoner at the castle of the
Count of Shrewsbury, and bring him to the Tower.
Fatigued by the journey, some of them were stretched on the floor,
while others slept on their arms, leaning against the wall, as if
death still required them to guard their prey.
Wolsey receiving no reply, turned himself over with a groan, and saw
the shadow of a man standing near his bed.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“It is I,” replied Cavendish, still remaining behind the curtain, and
who endeavored in silence to conceal his tears.
“How are you now?” said Wolsey.
“Well, my dear lord, if your grace was well also,” responded the
faithful servant.
“Ah! my dear friend,” replied the cardinal, “as for me, I am very
sick. I am rapidly approaching my end; but what most distresses me is
to have nothing to leave you, and not to be able to assure you of a
subsistence.”
“Do not trouble yourself about that,” said this devoted servant, who
approached and took the trembling hand of the dying man; “in a few
days you will be better, and we shall not lose you.”
“What time is it?” said Wolsey.
“Midnight.”
“Midnight!” replied the archbishop. “How short the time is! Before
eight o’clock I shall have to leave this world. God calls me to
himself, and I can remain no longer with you. Monsieur Vincent,” he
continued after a moment’s silence—“Monsieur Vincent, say to the king
that it was my intention to have left him all my property; but he has
himself deprived me of that pleasure, since they have seized, by his
orders, everything that I possessed.”
On hearing his name called, Monsieur Vincent hurried to the bedside;
but at these last words he shook his head in token of incredulity and
impatience. He was an employé of the king’s treasury, and his heart
was as hard as the coin he had charge of.
Having learned that Wolsey was very sick when he left the castle of
the Count of Shrewsbury, and fearing he might die on the road, the
king had despatched this man in all haste to secure the money and
valuables he supposed Wolsey might have concealed among his friends.
“I have told you the truth,” replied the archbishop, who remarked his
movement. “I have nothing left in London, and but for the assistance
of Monsieur Arundel I should have died of starvation at Asher. I
implore you, then, that the king may have compassion on my poor
servants, and allow them the wages now due them.”
“We will see, my lord,” said the dissatisfied scribe, who was waiting
for an avowal which he had continued to solicit, without any
consideration, ever since his arrival; “we will see. But the treasury
is so very much impoverished at this time!… However, we will do what
we can. We will ask the king, if it is convenient.”
“Monsieur Vincent, I implore you!” replied the cardinal.
“Master Vincent,” said Cavendish, “I beg you to leave the room; your
presence annoys and excites him. Have mercy, then, and leave him in
peace.”
The scribe hesitated, but he did not go; he returned to the corner of
the chamber and began to write as before.
Cavendish followed him with a look of indignation. It seemed very hard
that his master could not even be permitted to die without this
avaricious surveillance.
“Cavendish,” asked the archbishop immediately, “do you think she will
come?”
“They expect her every moment, my dear lord,” he replied; “she will
remain three days here.”
“O Cavendish!”
“My dear master!”
And he fell on his knees by the bed. He bathed with tears the hand of
the archbishop, which he held in his own.
“She will not see me, my son! She will not forgive me!”
“Ah! my dear, my beloved lord.” He could say no more, being entirely
overcome by grief.
“Remember, my son, remember,” continued Wolsey, “that it was my
infernal policy that persuaded the king of the possibility of his
divorce! Is that she? I hear a noise. My God! I am dying. Spare me,
that I may ask her forgiveness; yes, her forgiveness, even as God has
forgiven me. O my God!” he cried suddenly, fixing his eyes on a
crucifix he had made them hang on the wall in front of him,” had I
only served thee as faithfully as I have served this prince in whom I
have placed all my hopes and centred all my affections! Weak mortal
like myself, what had he to offer me that I should attach myself to
him? Vain splendor of an ephemeral power, where have you led me? O
man, crowned with a diadem! cast a glance upon the bed of a dying man,
and reflect. Why have I not despised your favors and the gifts you
have offered me? How fatal they have proved to me! To-day, solitary
and alone, I must appear before my God, with hands empty and void of
all those virtues and merits which you have prevented me from
acquiring. Why have I not come here in my youth, among these humble
monks, and learned to extinguish the pride that has governed my entire
life? Listen, all you who are here present! Come and behold my
emaciated limbs; see the flesh that covered them already destroyed by
the breath of death, that has struck them! And my tongue that now
speaks to you, and which was thought capable of dictating the decrees
of conquerors, will soon be silenced for ever.”
But exhausted by so violent an effort, he sank into a state of
insensibility.
Seized with terror, the monks gathered around his bed, recalling the
power and _éclat_ with which the name of Wolsey was surrounded, and
which had so many times resounded even through the most remote walls
of their solitude.…
Yes, it was she—it was indeed Queen Catherine. She had reached this
monastery, where she intended remaining several days before deciding
on the place of her retreat. Henry VIII., in order to entirely prove
that she had become to him an object of perfect indifference, had not
even offered her an asylum.
“She is free,” he said; “let her do what she pleases. That is the
widow of my brother, the Princess Dowager of Wales. Hereafter she must
bear no other name.”
However, they had opened all the gates, and the father abbot, preceded
by the cross and followed by all his _religieux_ carrying lighted
torches, went before the queen and conducted her into the
chapter-hall, which had been prepared for her reception.
There she found carpets, cushions, an arm-chair covered with velvet,
and everything the good monks could imagine would be agreeable and
testify their devotion.
Catherine felt touched to the heart by these testimonials of respect
and affection.
She seated herself a moment in order to thank them; then, rising with
that calm and majestic dignity which so eminently characterized her,
she said:
“Good fathers, it is no more your queen whom you receive in your
midst; it is a fugitive woman, an outraged mother, separated from all
that she holds most dear in the world. Do not treat me, then, with so
much honor. I have more need of your tears and prayers than of your
respect and homage.”
“Alas! madam,” replied the father abbot, “life is very short, and the
judgments of God are inscrutable. You come beneath the shadow of this
sanctuary to seek an asylum, while the first author of all your woes,
a man of whom you have had great cause to complain, has sought here a
refuge to die.”
“What!” said the queen. “Venerable father, explain yourself!”
“Yesterday, madam,” replied the abbot, “the Archbishop of York arrived
here in a dying condition. He was accompanied by Cavendish, his
servant, and the lieutenant of the Tower, who is conducting him to
London, there to be tried on the charge of high treason.”
“He here!” cried the queen, overwhelmed with astonishment. And
Catherine, a Spaniard and a mother, felt the hatred she had borne
Wolsey revive in her soul with extreme violence. The feeling she had
vainly sought to extinguish rekindled with renewed strength every time
she received a new outrage, or when the name and conduct of the
minister who had sacrificed her to his political views and interests
was brought to her recollection.
A sudden tremor seized her.
“Wolsey here!” she repeated. “No matter where I go, this man follows
me!… Here!” she said again.
“Yes, madam,” replied the father abbot, “here, dying, but more worthy
of pity than hatred; he weeps, he bemoans his past life, he implores
God’s mercy. It is sufficient to see him to be touched with
compassion. For two days we have watched him by turns; he has not
ceased to pray God, and I know that to see you will be a great
consolation to him.”
“See him?” replied the queen. “No! oh! no, never. God forgive him the
injury he has done me; but I will never see him.”
“Will Queen Catherine forget the charity of Jesus Christ?” replied the
father abbot in a severe tone. “Can that virtue be more than a vain
appearance which is stranded by coming in contact with a resentment,
just, perhaps, but none the less criminal?… I conjure you, madam,” he
continued, falling on his knees before the queen, “refuse not to see
him. Already, without doubt, he knows that you are here. He desires to
see you and ask your forgiveness. All of our brothers ask it with
him.”
Catherine remained silent, but she advanced a step forward, which the
father accepted as a mute consent; and passing immediately before her,
he conducted her into the chamber where Wolsey was lying.
She advanced to the middle of the room, and was struck by the
spectacle presented to her view. Cavendish supported the dying man in
his arms, and wiped the cold sweat from his face, now as white as the
sheet on which he lay. A convulsive movement agitated occasionally his
extended limbs, and it was from that alone they saw that life was not
yet extinct.
Catherine approached at once, and remained standing in silence, in the
face of this enemy, heretofore so powerful and so formidable.
She made no movement, and her eyes only were fixed on the dying. “And
I too will die!” she said in her heart. “The day will come when I
shall cease to suffer. O material life which envelops me! cease also
to burden _my_ soul, and let it flee into eternity. Let me find a
refuge even in the bosom of the tomb.”
* * * * *
“My daughter, my daughter!” she suddenly cried, as though beside
herself; “give her back to me, you who have torn her from my arms!”
A shudder passed over the form of Wolsey; he had heard that voice. It
seemed as though a burning fire had touched him. He rose up in his
bed, and, gazing at the queen with wildly staring eyes, “Your
daughter, madam!” he cried, “your daughter!… Alas! it is I who have
done all. You accuse me, and yet, as God is my judge, I threw myself
at the feet of the king, and tried to turn him from his evil
intention; but it was too late, and I had not foreseen the fatal
consequences of a policy which I believed would be advantageous and
beneficial. Alas! how differently I regard it at this terrible hour.
Pardon me! pardon me!… I conjure you, that I may not bear to the foot
of the throne of the Sovereign Judge the fearful weight of the
malediction of the widow and the orphan!” And he stretched towards her
his hands, which he was no longer able to raise.
“May God forgive you,” responded the queen, “may God forgive you! But
what can there be in common between you and me, unless it is
suffering? You will soon be delivered from your woes; but I—I must
live!”
“Ah!” cried Woolsey with expressions of the most profound
wretchedness, “you hear it, brothers, already the voice of God
punishes me by the mouth of this woman. And thus,” he continued,
fixing his terrified gaze on the queen, “I die at enmity with you, and
you will not have compassion on the condition to which I am reduced!
How can one human being call down upon another without trembling the
vengeance of the Most High? Are we not all formed of the same flesh
and blood? Are you not horror-stricken at the thought of the judgments
I must suffer and the account I must render?”
Catherine felt her blood congealed by the frightful eloquence of this
expiring man—this man whom but a moment separated from death and
eternity.
At the thought of the nothingness of all created humanity, she felt
the hatred she had borne Wolsey entirely effaced.
“Your reasoning enlightens me!” she cried. “Who are we that we should
wish to be revenged?. Weak and blind, should we precipitate ourselves
into the bottomless pit? We have received an injury, and shall we
inflict one in return? Who are we, and what is our duty?”
She then advanced toward him, and, taking in her own the hands of her
enemy, she said:
“I forgive you, I forgive you from the most profound depths of my
heart.… May God, the sovereign Creator of all things, bless you, and
blot out from the awful book of his justice your slightest fault! May
he open to you the mansions of eternal bliss! Then remember me, and
ask of him that my eyes also may soon be closed to the light of that
day which you have rendered insupportable. Tell him that I want to
die, and beg him to recall to himself the soul that he has given me;
say that my eyes are weary with tears, and my heart worn with
suffering; that sorrow has multiplied my days, and that I have lived
during the night, keeping tearful vigils; that I have only enjoyed the
blessings of life long enough to regret them; that I am ready, that I
listen, I wait to hear his voice, in order that I may arise and
depart.”
Wolsey drank in with avidity all of her words, and his eyes followed
every movement of the queen’s lips; but suddenly the fire of his
burning glance was extinguished, his head fell forward on his
breast—he had ceased to breathe!…
What pen can describe, what pencil portray, the terrible and solemn
moment when a man is called to leave for ever the world that gave him
birth—the moment when those who, having surrounded him with the most
constant care, loving words, and affectionate attentions, fall
prostrate around the silent couch, which now contains no more than the
despoiled and lifeless clay which a beloved and cherished being seems
to have cast aside like a soiled garment? Let the cold sceptic come,
and, passing through that throng of afflicted friends, let him place
his hand on the heart that has ceased to beat, and then turn and dare
still to tell them that man has been created to die, and nothing more
remains of him after death!… It is easy in the intoxication of joy,
amid the false glare of vanity and of worldly dissipations, to put our
trust in falsehood and array ourselves against the truth; but the day
and the hour will come when she will appear clothed in dazzling robes
of light, and the splendor of her irradiated countenance will strike
with terror and annihilation the last one of her wretched and
presumptuous enemies.
SOME ODD IDEAS.
“Our intelligence,” says the celebrated Montaigne, “is a kind of
vagabond instrument, daring and dangerous, to which it is difficult to
associate order or appoint limits. It is a hurtful weapon to its owner
himself, if he does not know how to use it discreetly.”
No one can doubt the truth of this observation who has ever studied
the workings of his own individual mind with some little attention.
And even when we cannot perceive the beam in our own eye, how very
evident is the straw in our neighbor’s! Though unsuspecting of the bee
in our own bonnet, how quickly we hear it buzzing in his!
A specimen of some of the extravagant vagaries of human wit may
perhaps interest and amuse. To begin at the beginning: thinkers have
endeavored to imagine what was going on before the Creation.
In the seventeenth century, a mystic writer composed a work on the
occupations of God before the creation of the universe! Nearly all of
it is incomprehensible, but a few sentences will give an idea of its
style:
“To ask what God was doing before the Creation is an impertinence, a
puerility.… It is certain that the eternal God who made this earth by
the power of his word had no need of the world and all the creatures
it contains—he had lived and reigned before Time began, happy and
contented in the paradise of his essence and in the essence of
himself.… He was contemplating his only Son, not made, not created,
but begotten from all eternity; in the eternal Word he contemplated
the archetype, the world of the world, angels, souls, and all things.
In conclusion, we may say that God, before the creation of the world,
did something and did nothing.…”
Singular problems, most daringly resolved, have been presented
respecting the epoch of the Creation. Chevreau, in his _Histoire du
Monde_, 1686, tells us that, according to some writers, the earth was
created in the spring; according to others, equally good authorities,
on a Friday, the 6th of September, at four o’clock in the afternoon!
A learned Italian of the last century, Monsignor Baiardi, in the
course of a conversation with the Abbé Barthélemy, mentioned that he
was about writing an abridgment of universal history, and that he
intended to commence his work with the solution of one of the most
important problems of astronomy and history. His desire was to
determine the exact spot in the firmament in which God had placed the
sun when he made the earth. “And,” says Barthélemy, “he had just
discovered it, and showed it to me on a globe.”
Our common father has been the subject of an infinite number of
curious suppositions, not to say crack-brained fancies. The
Talmudists, for instance, have constructed the following programme of
Adam’s first day of life:
In the first hour, the Creator kneaded the clay of which man was made,
and moulded the outlines of his form.
In the second hour, Adam was perfected and capable of action.
In the fourth hour, God called to him, and commanded him to give names
to the beasts, birds, and fishes.
In the seventh hour, the marriage of our first parents took place.
In the tenth hour, Adam sinned.
In the twelfth hour, the penalty of labor began.
James Salien, a Jesuit of the seventeenth century, tells us in his
_Annales Ecclesiastici_ that, “while man was being created, the divine
hands, ambrosial face, and admirable arms of his Creator were visible
to him.”
The Arabs have a tradition that Adam, when first created, stretched
from one extremity of the earth to the other. But after he had sinned,
God pressed him down with his almighty hand, and thus diminished his
height to nine hundred cubits. The Creator, it is added, did this at
the request of the angels, who regarded the gigantic mortal with
strange fear.
According to Moreri, Adam possessed a profound knowledge of all the
sciences, especially of astrology, many secrets of which he taught to
his children, besides engraving two tables of observations on the
movements of the planets. All the learned doctors of the Middle Ages
are agreed in ascribing the possession of immense science to Adam. The
angels themselves, they say, were inferior to him in knowledge; and
they relate as proof of this that God, having heard them speak of man
with contempt, determined to confound them by asking them what were
the names of certain beasts which he called into his presence at that
moment. The angels could not answer; man, summoned to the task, gave
each animal its due appellation without hesitation.
Adam, being thus endowed with unlimited knowledge, would have been
culpable towards his posterity if he had left none of it behind him.
We are accordingly told that he composed two works, one upon the
Creation, the other upon the Divinity. Having been present, we may
almost say, at the first, and conversed familiarly with the second, he
was able to tell us something interesting about both, and it is our
misfortune that the two works have been lost. It is, however, said
that they survived the Deluge, for a Mahometan author relates that
Abraham, being in the country of the Sabeans, opened Adam’s chest, and
found in it not only our progenitor’s writings but also those of Seth.
Opinions are various concerning the form the tempter assumed to
deceive poor Eve. It has been asserted that Sammaël, the prince of
devils, came to her mounted on a serpent as large in girth as a camel;
and then again it is said that Satan borrowed the form of the serpent,
and made it more seductive by the addition of a sweet maiden’s face!
This tradition has been adopted by poets and painters.
As the name of the forbidden fruit is not mentioned in the Book of
Genesis, conjecture has had full scope. Northern nations believe that
it was an apple; southern people that it was a fig or citron. Rabbi
Salomon thinks that Moses concealed the name of the fruit purposely,
fearing that, if it were known, nobody would ever eat of it.
According to St. Jerome, Adam was buried in Hebron; other learned
authors say on Calvary; either assertion is difficult of verification,
for both Hebron and Calvary only date from the Deluge. “Barcepha
alleges,” says Bayle, “that a highly esteemed Syrian doctor had said
that Noe dwelt in Judea; that he planted in the plains of Sodom the
cedar-trees with which he afterwards built the ark; and that he
carried Adam’s bones into the ark with him. When he came out of the
ark, he divided these bones among his three sons; the skull fell to
the share of Sem, and when the descendants of Sem took possession of
Judea, they buried it in the very spot where the tomb of Adam had once
been situated.” The reader will doubtless feel that Barcepha’s
allegation settles the question!
In 1615, a shoemaker of Amiens published a treatise entitled _De
Calceo Antiquo_. In this history of shoes, the writer begins at the
beginning of the world, and gravely informs us that Adam made the
first pair from the prepared skins of beasts, the secret of tanning
having been taught him by God himself!
In the last century, Henrion, a French Orientalist, and a member of
the Institute of France, conceived the idea of composing an exhaustive
work on the weights and measures of the ancients, and presented a
specimen of his labors to the Academy of Inscriptions, to which he
belonged. It was a kind of chronological scale of the differences in
man’s stature from the epoch of Adam’s creation to the time of our
Saviour.
Adam, he stated, measured one hundred and twenty-three feet, nine
inches; Eve, one hundred and eighteen feet, nine and three-quarter
inches; Noe, one hundred and three feet; Abraham, twenty-seven feet;
Moses, thirteen feet; Hercules, ten feet; Alexander, six feet; Julius
Cæsar, five feet.
He remarked upon this scale that “though men are no longer measured by
their stature, if Providence had not deigned to suspend such an
extraordinarily rapid rate of diminution, we, at this day, should
scarcely dare to class ourselves, with respect to our size, among the
large insects of our globe!”
Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, an attempt was made to
wrest from Adam the honor of being the first man. Isaac de la Peyrère
pulished a work in 1655, entitled _Præadamitæ, seu Exercitatio super
versibus 12, 13, 14 Capitis V. Epistolæ B. Pauli ad Romanos_, in which
he endeavors to prove that there were two creations of men—the first
on the sixth day, when God created _man_, _male and female_; which, he
asserts, means _men and women_ in all parts of the earth, _progenitors
of the Gentiles_. The second creation, he says, did not take place
until some time after, when God made Adam to _be the father of the
Jews_. Those who adopted this idea were called Preadamites. La Peyrère
lived to abjure his opinions at the feet of Pope Alexander VI.
Such are a few of the many odd ideas upon the Creation and the first
man which human wit, that “dangerous instrument” when not kept within
due limits, has been continually devising ever since the beginning of
history. The logic of the nineteenth century rejects them all;
nevertheless, while we laugh at the extraordinary suppositions of our
ancestors, it is pleasant to observe that, even in the most
extravagant about our common father, the sentiment of the first man’s
innate nobleness is always present. Adam always shines forth greater
and grander than his sons—stronger, both physically and mentally. The
old fathers of the church, nay, even the pedants of the Middle Ages,
adhered to the Scripture text, and believed that in the “looks divine”
of the first human pair
“The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severe and pure.”
Is it not curious that the queerest crank of all concerning Adam—that
which strives to prove that he was an ourang-outang—should have been
reserved for our own days of culture, of philosophical research and
science?
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
SPIRITUALISM AND ALLIED CAUSES AND CONDITIONS OF NERVOUS
DERANGEMENT. By William A. Hammond, M.D. 8vo, pp. 366. New
York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1876.
It is evident, from the appearance of this work so speedily after the
publication of a larger volume on _Diseases of the Nervous System_,
that Dr. Hammond has contracted the _cacoëthes scribendi_ in its worst
shape. He is not easy unless the pen is in his hand, and so delightful
must be to him the sensation of a _calamus currens_ that, we fear, he
pauses not to reflect over the fate of the cyclical writer of old
whose long-continued parlurient efforts resulted in the production of
a ridiculously small animal. For all that, he must be quite jealous of
his reputation as a strong-minded and rational man, since he has
undertaken the vindication of reason, even at the expense of
reasoning. We give him credit indeed for research, but of that
doubtful sort which delights in jumbling together facts gathered from
the most opposite sources—
_Rudis indigestaque moles_—
in order that a boastful parade of erudition might impart weight to
his otherwise feather-light conclusions. A certain lack of method in
the handling of his subject is what first impresses the reader of Dr.
Hammond’s latest lucubration, and stamps the writer as illogical in
the last degree. So-called spiritual manifestations are by him
included in the same category as the pious acts of the saints, who
doubtless would reject with horror the fantasies of Katie King and the
_friponnerie_ of Home. Under the head of “curing mediums” we read of
cures wrought by some obscure personage called St. Sauveur, which, if
true, we are willing to accept, but which, like all unauthenticated
cases of the sort, we are free to admit or disallow as the weight of
evidence justifies. But, we ask, what relevancy to the heading of this
chapter can possess the case of a woman laying an egg, or of another
giving birth to two rabbits? If any such there be, we confess our
inability to discover it; for certainly in those cases there is no
question of curing. Neither can we perceive what induced the author to
adopt Kerdac’s absurd division of spiritual agents into “physical
mediums,” “seeing and auditive mediums,” and “curing mediums,” since
clearly the first caption covers the whole ground. This is a sin
against that canon of method which forbids one branch of a division to
overlap another. Then the doctor never can discriminate between
essential differences and accidental resemblances; and if a so-called
medium should, by slight of hand or electro-magnetism, produce
phenomena resembling the miraculous achievements of the saints, pop
they both go into the same category of frauds or victims to a
hallucination. He never dreams as being within the range of possible
things that personal sanctity on the one hand has any power which does
not belong on the other to deception or mental imbecility. It is
refreshing to see how he gets these things mixed together, and with
what complacent readiness he relegates all believers in the
supernatural to the regions of blind ignorance and grovelling
superstition, while he calmly stands on the undimmed hill-tops, or
sublimely soars through the placid atmosphere of pure reason. Dr.
Hammond rejects _à priori_ the possibility of an occurrence not due to
the operation of natural agents, and hence he is necessitated
constantly to indicate or suggest an explanation of what is most
marvellous and obscure. This, of course, is a very difficult
procedure, and hence we need not be surprised at the following
ingenious, if not entirely logical, scheme he has devised for making
straight paths that are crooked, and smooth those that are rough.
Whenever he has in hand the consideration of a general principle, he
illustrates it by reference to a case which the common tenets of
science can readily elucidate. This elucidation he deems amply
sufficient to establish the principle, and then he tacks on, as to be
accounted for in the same manner, a mass of cases of every shade and
degree of intricacy, often having no relation to the principle by the
light of which he pretends to judge them, or to the case he adduces in
illustration of the principle. The chapter on somnambulism will serve
as an example of this sort of paralogism. He divides this exceptional
condition of consciousness into natural and artificial. Somnambulism
produces two typical instances of both. In the one case a young lady
rises in her sleep, dresses herself, goes into the parlor, lights the
gas, and intently gazes on the picture of her deceased mother.
Sulphurous fumes are disengaged under her nose, quinine is placed on
her tongue, the corners of her eyes are touched by a lead-pencil, and
still she remained motionless and insensible. The same person soon
after acquired the power of placing herself in the somnambulic state
by concentrating her attention on a passage of a philosophical
treatise. These cases are, we will grant for sake of reasoning,
explicable on the principle of automatism, but what, we ask, does the
case of St. Rose of Lima possess in common with these, or how can the
principle of automatism be made to apply to her case? This saintly
personage dwelt in a climate where mosquitoes were numerous and
vicious, yet she enjoyed entire immunity from their sting, while
worshipping in a little arbor built by her own hands; and this, she
averred, was done in consequence of a pact by virtue of which the
blood-thirsty little insects agreed to strike their notes in praise of
the divine Being. Either the statement of Görres and its verification
in the bull canonizing St. Rose must be rejected _in toto_, or
admitted without any slipshod attempt at explanation as that which Dr.
Hammond offers. He pretends that if such a thing did happen, it must
be in consequence of the saint’s hypnotizing the mosquitoes, and thus
obtaining control over them. But is it possible that hypnotized
mosquitoes would continue to drone out their peculiar music even to a
livelier measure than usual, or would ferociously attack all other
persons except St. Rose?—for, as Dr. Hammond facetiously(?) remarks,
she was not filial enough to include her mother in the bargain. We
have here, then, a case which differs essentially from that of the
somnambulic lady mentioned, and one that stubbornly refuses to be
accounted for in the same manner. The somnambulic young lady exhibited
a condition strikingly abnormal; there was complete loss of
sensibility and power to observe what was taking place around her,
while the mosquitoes became more tuneful than ever, and followed the
natural bent of their instinct towards all but the little saint, who
made them join her in singing the praises of their mutual Creator. Yet
Dr. Hammond would have us believe either that the story is untrue or
that the mosquitoes were hypnotized. And this is his mode of
conducting warfare against the supernatural: _Doctus iter melius_. The
blunt scepticism of Paine or Hobbes is more tolerable than this
skim-milk reasoning. He does not hesitate even to intimate that the
prophet Daniel possessed this mesmeric power, and thus escaped the
fangs of the enraged and hungry lions into whose den he was cast. The
same inconsequence of reasoning may be traced in the conclusion drawn
from the experiments of Kircher and Czermak; Kircher having noticed
that a hen with tied legs ceased to struggle, when a chalk-line was
drawn before its eyes, in the belief that the line was the string
which tied it, and that so long as the line remained all efforts at
self-deliverance were useless. The good Father Kircher sought no
further explanation of the phenomenon till Czermak, in 1873, proved
that a true state of hypnotism or artificial somnambulism had been
induced. To place the matter beyond doubt, he modified and repeated
the experiment, so that now we cannot but accept this explanation, and
say of Kircher’s merely:
“Si non e vero e ben trovato.”
This hypnotic condition of the lower animals once allowed, Dr. Hammond
rushes to the conclusion that therein is to be sought and found the
only true solution of the control which at times the saints of the
church exercised over them. This is certainly the most perverse logic
that can be conceived of. As well might we infer from the fact that
certain characteristic features attend death by strangulation, and
that these have been scientifically studied, therefore all animals
died this death, and so reject as apocryphal all circumstances
pointing to another possible mode of exit from life’s cares. The
reasoning is entirely parallel to Dr. Hammond’s when he says that
Czermak having demonstrated the hypnosis of hens and craw-fish, and
himself a similar condition in dogs and rabbits, therefore whatever we
read or hear of in reference to a completely different state of things
we must equally set down to hypnosis as the cause. It is on this
account he scouts the notion of bees depositing their honey on the
lips of St. Dominic, St. Ambrose, and St. Isidore, or of following
them into the desert and obeying their commands. If, indeed, we accept
the lamp which science kindly furnishes, and, enlightened by its
light, call those miraculous occurrences the effect of hypnosis, we
may perchance escape the charge of credulity.
In this last sentence we confess to have fallen into an error which,
however, we will not correct for the sake of the salutary reflection
it has stirred up within us. We said: “Unless we accept the lamp which
science kindly furnishes,” etc., thereby seeming to intimate that we
are enemies to science, whereas nothing could be farther from our
purpose. True science is founded on the eternal principles of truth,
and, itself shining out with God’s holy light, can never go astray.
But there is a pseudo-science, a spurious affair, which has donned the
garb of truth and assumed its name, and which men, calling it science,
wonder and are amazed that science and religion so often find
themselves in antagonism. If men were always careful to discriminate
between what is founded on unquestionable facts on the one hand, and
the airy hypotheses of highly imaginative scientists on the other, and
not bestow the dignified appellative of science on these latter, they
would not be so easily captivated by the gilded sophistries of Draper,
or allured by the glitter of Hammond’s showy erudition. This _en
passant_.
In speaking of the cures said to have been accomplished by St.
Sauveur, Dr. Hammond makes this striking and pregnant remark: “If St.
Sauveur had really been the great healer he is said to have been, we
should find his doings recorded in a thousand contemporaneous volumes,
and every school-boy would have them at his tongue’s end. Neither do
facts go begging for believers, nor will they remain concealed in
obscure books.” Now, these two sentences fairly teem with fallacies.
In the first place, the alleged performances of St. Sauveur are by no
means regarded as authoritatively established or widely known, as Dr.
Hammond himself subsequently indicates; how, then, even if true, could
they have found their way into a thousand contemporaneous volumes?
Besides, the age in which St. Sauveur lived differed in this respect
from ours: that the recital of even the most marvellous occurrences
spread very slowly, and never very widely; how, then, even if true,
could the exploits of St. Sauveur have ever obtained much notoriety at
the time? And chief of all, there is that inherent spirit of
scepticism in every man which prompts him, often in the face of the
most positive evidence, to reject whatever is stated to have taken
place in derogation of physical law, or else to assign a purely
physical reason for it. It is this sceptical tendency which will ever
stand in the way of the ready and universal acceptance of supernatural
events, however well attested, and, in this respect, essentially
distinguishes them from facts of the natural order. It is the
operation of this tendency which has driven Dr. Hammond himself into
his illogical position, and will leave him there till he subordinates
this prejudiced feeling to the higher promptings of his intellect.
Long before him Voltaire gave expression to this sentiment when he
declared that he would more willingly believe that the whole city of
Paris had been deceived, or had conspired to deceive, than he would
that a single dead man had risen from the grave. Herein lies the whole
philosophy of Dr. Hammond’s position, if philosophy it can be called.
He sets out with the conviction that a supernatural occurrence is
impossible, and he is consequently determined to reject all testimony
of whatsoever sort, no matter how weighty, and which he would readily
allow in scientific affairs, which goes to support their authenticity.
Historical testimony is of no avail, the good sense and discrimination
of individuals goes for naught, when weighed against the flimsiest and
shallowest so-called scientific explanations. Whenever a saint either
performed a miracle or was himself the subject of a miraculous
affection, Dr. Hammond concludes that he was epileptic or cataleptic,
or suffering from some derangement of the nervous centres. Of St.
Teresa he remarks: “The organization of St. Teresa was such as to
allow of her imagining anything as reality; and the hallucination of
being lifted up, as I shall show hereafter, is one of the most common
experienced by ecstatics.” He thus places the saint in the light of a
feeble-minded woman, of weak judgment and puny intellect, whereas all
writers agree that in the various reforms she introduced into her
religious community she exhibited the rarest good sense, moderation,
and vigor of mind. The same remark is applicable to St. Thomas of
Villanova. But enough. Rational criticism should be expended on other
subjects. The _savant_ who compares Bernadette of Soubirous to the
monks of Mount Athos, who go into ecstasy by placing their thoughts on
God and their eyes on their navel, cannot expect much dignified
criticism. The book is calculated to produce an unfavorable impression
against the church in the minds of sciolists and those who are apt to
be influenced by the authority of a name. We have already expressed
our views on Dr. Hammond’s psychological attainments, and this present
volume, so far from inducing us to alter them, rather inclines us to
think that our strictures were unduly lenient. The comments which our
June article elicited from the press go far to show that the
intelligent portion of the community will not accept as genuine
science a mere jingling Greek nomenclature—_e Græco fonte parce
detorta_—and that, Draper and Hammond to the contrary, commonsense is
not yet so rare as but yet to be common. The style of the book is
good, the English pure, and the description graphic. It is well
adapted, consequently, for popular reading, and will no doubt have a
wide circulation—_tant pis_.
GERMAN POLITICAL LEADERS. By Herbert Tuttle. New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons. 1876.
If Mr. Tuttle were one of the hired scribes of the Berlin Press
Bureau, we should have looked for just such a book as he has written.
A genuine “mud-bather” could not have shown himself either a more
unfair partisan or a more flippant and inaccurate narrator.
Had the book appeared on its own merits, and not as one of a series of
biographies, edited under the supervision of Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, we should have passed it by like any other piece of
book-making; for it is merely a catch-penny performance, and was most
probably never meant to be anything else. This volume is of itself
sufficient to show how utterly worthless is the claim put forth by
Putnam’s Sons that the whole series is to be made reliable in every
statement of fact. Bismarck, we are told, was a youth of very tender
nature, and is even yet a devout and pious Christian. “His domestic
tastes were always strong; his longing for a wife and household of his
own would seem to have been very acute, till in 1847 it was satisfied
by his marriage with Joanna von Putkammer.”
The truth is, Bismarck was a wild and reckless youth, who
distinguished himself at the university by fighting some twenty-five
duels and by taking the lead in the boisterous and riotous debauches
habitual with so many German students. As a young man he continued
this mode of life on his paternal estates, where he was known as Der
Tolle Bismarck—Mad Bismarck. His favorite drink at this time was a
mixture of porter and champagne. His letters to his sister show that
the “acute longing for a wife” is only in the imagination of Mr.
Tuttle. “His whole career,” says this writer, “previous to entering
the Prussian ministry, was one of study and preparation, … at the
university he was a profound and philosophical student of history,
particularly that of his own country.” He never took a degree, and he
was a profound and philosophical student of nothing except fencing,
boxing, and hunting. Mr. Tuttle does not even quote correctly the
sayings of Bismarck, which are known to every newspaper reader.
Bismarck said: “Germany must be made with blood and iron”; and Mr.
Tuttle makes him say: “The battles of this generation are to be fought
out with iron and blood.”
The sketch of Dr. Falk is a still sorrier performance. In an attempt
to sum up the relations of the church and the state in Prussia from
1817 to 1862, he says: “Accordingly the Catholics made grave advances
along the whole line of social, educational, and political interests.…
The church, or the ecclesiastical element, wielded paramount authority
in the public councils” (p. 29). Nothing could be more false, nor
would one who knows anything of Prussian history commit himself to a
statement which can be excused from malice only by being supposed to
proceed from gross ignorance.
We might cite fifty passages from this book in which bitter and vulgar
prejudice against the Catholic Church has led the author into palpable
and unpardonable blunders. Dr. Krementz is the “obstinate and
disobedient bishop of Ermeland.” “The complaints of the Ultramontanes
are both extravagant and absurd.” The leaders of the Catholic party
“as the servants of an infallible spiritual master, were apparently
placed above those restraints of moderation, courtesy, and
truthfulness which apply in secular matters.… They led their hearers
into tortuous mazes of sophistry, they wrapped the subject in clouds
of paltry fallacies, at the command of bishops whose gospel is light.”
Dr. Falk’s courage “has stood the ordeal required of every statesman
who excites the hatred and exposes himself to the vengeance of the
pupils of the Jesuit Mariana. He has been threatened with
assassination quite as often as the emperor and Bismarck.”
The fact that a book written by an American, for Americans, and
published by a leading American house, should evince the most thorough
and earnest sympathy with the relentless persecution of the Catholic
Church in Germany, throws a very unpleasant light upon our
much-talked-of love of fair play and religious liberty.
The will to make martyrs and confessors of the bishops and priests of
the United States is not wanting to Mr. Tuttle or Mr. Higginson, if
the language of this book may be taken as an evidence of their real
sentiments. The only Catholic leader whose biography is given in this
volume is Lewis Windthorst, and this is the character which he
receives: “He would be the most daring and consistent of sceptics if
his interests had not made him the most faithful of believers. Even
his religious professions spring from one form of unbelief. To be a
free-thinker requires the exercise of faith in human reason and in
most of the results of human inquiry, while by espousing the Catholic
religion he proclaimed his disbelief in all positive and uninspired
knowledge. He doubts everything that is true and believes only what is
doubtful.” Since he cannot deny the ability of Windthorst, he makes
him a hypocrite; and then, suddenly forgetting what he has just said,
he supposes Windthorst to be a sincere believer only to declare him a
fool.
We must repeat it. If Mr. Tuttle, during the four years which he has
passed in Berlin, had been a pensioner of the “reptile fund,” he could
not have written more unworthily.
FAITH AND MODERN THOUGHT. By Ransom B. Welch, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor in Union College. With introduction by Tayler
Lewis, LL.D. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1876.
Contrary to the intention of the author, the title of his work is
absurdly tautological, when interpreted by its contents. The
impression conveyed by the title page would lead us to expect, did in
point of fact lead us to expect, at least an orderly and careful
analysis of the subjects chosen. In this we have been disappointed,
not by the good-will with which the author labors, but by his want of
success. The work is composed of six chapters which might have been
published independently of one another. Of these the first is valuable
as an aggressive demonstration of the materialistic and irrational
tendency of certain modern professors. The fifth and, perhaps, the
sixth possess a similar value; while the rest of the book, although
fairly written, is comparatively worthless.
The author is manifestly devoted to Christianity; his mind is
sensitive to the repulsive features of modern heathenism; he seeks to
defend the nobler order of ideas. But the trouble is that his brief is
not full. He does not know his case. His theological speculations are
crude even to rawness, and the _point d’appui_ of his structure is not
only vague and inconsistent, but is shored up with declamation which
serves to impart an additional appearance of insecurity to that which
is already feeble. It is rather ludicrous to behold an evangelical
Protestant, at this late day, endeavoring to undo the whole work of
the Reformation, by trying to make faith appear reasonable, or by
seeking other grounds for it than his own interior inspiration.
Nevertheless, this is a step in the right direction. The writer claims
to be a searcher after truth. If so, we can scarcely imagine that he
will rest satisfied with his present work. The faith which gave to
Christianity its organization, and which converted the ancient world,
is no such vague chimera as the shadowy and subjective persuasion to
which the author clings. The pious wish and conviction to which Dr.
Welch adheres may serve to occupy and quiet his own active mind; but
it is less than impotent to compel the assent of others. Dr. Welch
seeks to call attention to the ideas contained in the Bible. He must
have sense enough to perceive that this very attempt is something
beyond his ability, and implies a living power having the right and
capacity to speak for the Bible. Men will not listen to Dr. Welch in
his well-meant endeavor to obtain a hearing. The inconsequent and
abortive assumption on the part of the author of that duty which used
to be accomplished by the teaching church, and which belongs to her or
else to nobody, and the futile effort to give a coherent account of
how he gets from a conviction of the necessity of revelation to belief
in evangelical Protestantism, will nullify that part of the work which
is good and render it merely another stumbling-block in the way of
thoughtful men. We trust that it will do as little harm as possible,
and that the author will eventually find some other occupation more
congenial to his vigorous and reverent spirit than his present task of
attempting to hold himself and others in unstable equilibrium.
ACHSAH: A NEW ENGLAND LIFE-STUDY. By Rev. Peter Pennot.
Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1876.
This is a capital story, or “study,” as the author very rightly calls
it, of New England life. The character are all _sui generis_, such as
only a small, narrow, sufficiently well-to-do New England town could
produce, while one of them, Deacon Manlius Sterne, is a creation.
Never have we seen that peculiar union of service of God and service
of Mammon, which Christ pronounced to be impossible, so admirably
portrayed as in this typical New England deacon, who himself would be
the first to quote our Lord’s words condemning such service to a
business rival, but who at the same time could very easy satisfy his
own conscience on the matter, and find what he would consider a
religious way out of the difficulty. God’s religion looks a very small
and mean affair among these New England Christians. This very book, we
take it, is a revolt against the sham and littleness of such a life.
The writer seems possessed of the best intentions, though not of the
profoundest knowledge of Christianity. His reflections, for instance,
on the death of Dr. Steinboldt are a little out of place in a
Christian’s mouth. Thus, he apostrophizes death: “Sent of God, to rich
and poor alike, to kings and emperors and peasants, to all nations and
peoples, this good physician comes to fulfil Christ’s crowning promise
of rest to all who are ‘weary and heavy laden.’” To which we say, all
very well; only that in the present instance “this good physician”
happens to come in the form of suicide to a murderer, who, to add to
his delinquencies, was a quack.
It was a mistake of the author, too, to make one of his characters, an
excellent Catholic apparently, attend Protestant service on the
Sunday, instead of going to the Catholic chapel in the town and
hearing Mass. However, he is evidently very favorably inclined towards
Catholics, so we will not quarrel with him on so palpable a slip.
“It has pleased God to give us no very clear idea of the great future,
and so we speculate and wonder and dream, each after the fashion of
his own heart; _and one is quite as likely to be right as another_.
Thank God that he has elevated the mysteries of life and death above
the realms of human reason, and left each to aspire to the future of
his own imagination, to long for the heaven of his own desires.” This
sounds to us little above the Turk’s dream of Paradise, who, by the
bye, according to our author, “is quite as likely to be right” as the
Christian. All this is a mistake. Our Lord has left us something far
more definite to long for than the heaven of our own imagination and
desires.
Again: “Madame Wandl, though a ‘bigoted Catholic,’ was more charitable
than these free and enlightened Dickeyvillians, and, when the two
talked together on matters of religious faith, it was the harmonious
meeting of two extremes of belief, one elevating the humanity of
Christ to the level of godliness, the other reducing the character of
God to the level of a perfect and idealized humanity. Those who read
this page will instantly decide which was right, but out of every ten,
five will decide in one way and five in another; and as for me [the
author], I don’t propose to create a majority one way or the other by
throwing myself into the balance, but shall rest contented if I can
preach Christ’s gospel of love acceptably and intelligently to my
people” (pp. 222, 223).
It seems to us very plain from this and other passages that the Rev.
Peter Pennot is far from having made up his mind as to who Christ is.
He tells us practically, in the passage just quoted, that he will not
say that Christ is at once true God and perfect man. Until he
satisfies himself on this point, it is to be feared that his preaching
of Christ’s gospel of love will not bear much fruit. It is one thing
to preach the Gospel of the Son of God, another to preach the gospel
of a being about whom we entertain great doubts.
We have been led aside by such points as these from the main story.
The author writes so earnestly and honestly that we cannot but look
upon his uncertainty with regret. For the rest, _Achsah_ is as
enjoyable a story as we have read for many a day. The author seems to
us to have all the gifts of a novelist. He has wit, humor, pathos, and
an unforced sarcasm that is very telling. His story runs along without
a halt. There is a pleasant, innocent love-plot, and some highly
sensational matter is introduced in a very unsensational manner.
MEDITATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR A RETREAT OF ONE DAY IN
EACH MONTH. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1876.
This little book has been composed for the benefit of those who have
or wish to have the most excellent practice of putting aside one day
in the month for a religious retreat. Whatever cultivates in us the
habit of serious reflection upon the affairs of the soul is of
inestimable value, since without some practice of meditation and
self-examination it is almost impossible to lead a religious life; and
we know of nothing better adapted to create in us this reflective
character of mind than what is called the monthly retreat. This
devotion is general in religious communities, but it may also be
easily followed by persons in the world without interfering with the
daily routine of life enough to attract the attention of any one. The
collection of meditations before us will, we hope, encourage many to
make proof of the efficacy of the monthly retreat. We would suggest,
however, that in another edition an introduction be added, giving
explanations concerning the nature and practice of this devotion,
pointing out how persons engaged in worldly occupations may most
easily perform these monthly exercises.
SCIENCE AND RELIGION: A Lecture Delivered at Leeds, England.
By Cardinal Wiseman. St. Louis: Patrick Fox, 10 South Fifth
Street. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This lecture is one of the ablest and most interesting lectures of the
late Cardinal Wiseman. It proves in a conclusive and at the same time
most agreeable manner that “science has nowhere flourished more, or
originated more sublime or useful discoveries, than where it has been
pursued under the influence of the Catholic religion.” In
demonstrating this truth, the eminent writer has given a great number
of facts not generally known to the reading public, which prove the
deep indebtedness of science to Catholic Italy for many of its most
valuable truths and discoveries.
The publisher has done his part in a praiseworthy manner.
REVOLUTIONARY TIMES: Sketches of our Country, its People and
their Ways, one hundred years ago. By Edward Abbott. Boston:
Roberts Brothers. 1876.
This is a very interesting and tastefully printed volume of two
hundred pages, containing a great many items of interest with regard
to the habits and customs of our American forefathers in the beginning
of our national history, a glance at the state of literature, the
press, and education, with many entertaining sketches of the
“worthies” of that period.
From the chapter on “Political Geography” we cull the following
extract, which gives an idea of the style of the work:
“The colonization of the West was yet a dream of the Anglo-Americans,
the designs of France and Spain standing in the way of its fulfilment.
The present great State of Ohio had not a white settlement. St. Louis
was a Spanish town. What is now Indiana had but a single settlement,
that at Vincennes. Detroit was a far-distant outpost sheltering a few
hundred pioneers. This whole region was an unbroken waste, saving at
these few scattered points, which were in large measure military and
trading stations. Over all the Indian had free range. Adventurers were
exploring the lakes and the rivers, and currents of emigration were
only slowly setting in; and on the 9th of October, 1776, three months
after the Declaration of Independence, two Franciscan monks,
indefatigable missionaries of the Roman Church, took possession of the
Pacific coast by the founding of their mission of San Francisco, the
germ of the modern city of that name.”
THE NEW MONTH OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS. From the
original French. By S. P. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham
& Son, 29 South Tenth Street. 1876.
This neat and beautiful little manual cannot but be of service to
every lover of the Sacred Heart, especially at this season of the
year. This month is prolonged into thirty-three days, corresponding
with the thirty-three years of our Saviour’s life upon earth, and is
furnished with appropriate meditations and pious practices, calculated
to inspire devotion and excite the love of Christians towards the
Heart of their Divine Lord. It is sufficient to say of this little
work what the venerable Archbishop of Cincinnati says of it in his
recommendation—that “it is perfectly free from all blemish on the
score of faith, morals, and piety.” Truly, a high commendation.
NOTIONES THEOLOGICÆ CIRCA SEXTUM DECALOGI PRÆCEPTUM. Auctore
D. Craisson. Parisiis: Benziger Bros.; New York: The same.
A certain remnant of Jansenistic rigorism among the French clergy is
assigned by the author of this treatise as one of the reasons which
induced him to write on the subjects indicated by the title of his
book. In the work itself we have failed to discover anything of
importance which may not be found in almost any text-book of moral
theology.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIII., No. 138.—SEPTEMBER, 1876.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1876.
THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE UNITED STATES.
The Constitution of the United States has these provisions:
“No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification
to any office or public trust under the United States.”—ART.
VI.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”—FIRST
AMENDMENT.
It is thus the case that, as originally framed, the Constitution
simply provided that “no religious test shall ever be required as a
qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,”
but did not, in terms, prohibit Congress from erecting a state
religion or interfering with the free exercise of religion otherwise
than as regards office. The First Amendment was therefore adopted, in
order that, as amended, the Constitution should forbid Congress from
intermeddling in any way whatever with religious matters; and it has
hence passed into the general understanding that the government of the
United States has no religious character or powers whatsoever, but is
purely a secular organization, contrived and devised for purely
secular ends. As stated in the eleventh article of the treaty of Jan.
3, 1797, between the United States and Tripoli, “the government of the
United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian
religion” (_Rev. Stats. U. S._, “Treaties,” p. 756).
It being thus the case that religious liberty, as we now understand
it, did not spring full-orbed and complete into existence in the
United States, it may be of interest to trace the stages of its
development. The provision that “Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion” owes its immediate origin to the
representations of the conventions of a number of the States upon
adopting the Constitution of the United States (1 _Stats._ 97), such
States being New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia (4 _Journ. Cong._,
1782-8, App. pp. 52, 53, 55). Back of these representations lay a
first cause which can only be understood by a reference to the
condition of the colonies at the outbreak of the Revolution. From _A
View of the Constitution of the British Colonies in North America and
the West Indies, at the time the Civil War broke out on the Continent
of America_—a work published in London in 1783 by Anthony Stokes (a
loyalist Welshman, who, as a barrister in the British West Indies from
1762 to 1769, and the royal Chief-Justice of Georgia from 1769 to
1783, had peculiar opportunities of becoming conversant with his
topic)—we learn that the Church of England was established by law in
most of the colonies in 1776. The _View_ says: “The clergy in America
do not receive tithes, but in most of the colonies before the civil
war (except the New England provinces, where the Independents had the
upper hand) an Act of Assembly was made to divide the colony into
parishes, and to establish religious worship therein according to the
rites and ceremonies of the Church of England; and also to raise a
yearly salary for the support of each parochial minister” (p. 199).
With the exception of South Carolina, our author does not specify by
name the colonies in which this system obtained, but from other
sources we have that information. The charter of New Hampshire
provided “that liberty of conscience shall be allowed to all
Protestants, and that such especially as shall be conformable to the
rites of the Church of England shall be particularly countenanced and
encouraged,” which substantial establishment existed in that colony up
to the Revolution (Town of Pawlet _v._ Clark, 9 Cr. 292). The first
constitution of New York, that of April 20, 1777, recognizes a like
establishment by providing for the abrogation of “all such parts of
the common and statute law, and acts of Assembly, as establish any
denomination of Christians or their ministers.” Dr. David Ramsay, the
contemporary historian of the Revolution, says: “In Connecticut all
persons were obliged to contribute to the support of the church as
well as the commonwealth.… The Congregational churches were adopted
and established by law” (1 _Hist. U. S._, p. 150); also: “The Church
of England was incorporated simultaneously with the first settlement
of Virginia, and in the lapse of time it also became the established
religion of Maryland. In both these provinces, long before the
American Revolution, that church possessed a legal pre-eminence, and
was maintained at the expense not only of its own members but of all
other denominations” (_id._ p. 220). As to the establishment of the
Church of England in Virginia, see also Terrett _v._ Taylor, 9 Cr. 43.
From art. 34 of the first constitution of North Carolina, that of Dec.
18, 1776, which inhibits taxation “for the purchase of any glebe, or
the building of any house of worship, or for the maintenance of any
minister or ministry,” it is inferrible that a like establishment
existed in that colony. In South Carolina Chief-Justice Stokes
mentions the Church of England as established by law (_View_, p. 199),
and the constitution of that State of March 19, 1778, secured “the
churches, chapels, parsonages, glebes, and all other property now
belonging to any societies of the Church of England, or any other
religious societies” (art. 38). In Georgia the Church of England was
established by colonial statute of March 15, 1758 (_Watkins’ Dig._
52). In Massachusetts a colonial statute of 1716 established a
compulsory religious establishment which remained up to the framing of
the State constitution in 1780, the Assembly providing all towns
declining to do so for themselves with “a minister qualified as by law
is provided”—namely, “an able, learned, orthodox minister, of good
conversation”—and imposing taxes for his support (Chalmers’ _Colonial
Opinions_, p. 49; I Ramsay, _Hist. U. S._, p. 150).
From the foregoing it will be gathered that at the outbreak of the
American Revolution some form of church establishment ordained by law
was familiar to the people of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New
Hampshire, New York, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Georgia. “In Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and
New Jersey there never was any established religion” (I Ramsay, _Hist.
U. S._, p. 232). One of the incidents of the religious establishments
in the colonies where they existed was that the clergy thereunder were
governmental appointees. In Massachusetts, under the act of 1716, the
Assembly settled ministers in the unprovided towns; in Maryland the
proprietary had the advowsons (Chalm. _Col. Op._, 42); and in the
provincial establishments or king’s governments, as New Hampshire, New
York, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, the royal
governor had the right of collation or appointment (Stokes’ _View_, p.
199). Another incident was the church rates or taxes, above referred
to. At the outbreak of the Revolution, then, two-thirds of the
colonies were face to face with a religion established or favored by
law; with a clergy appointed by government; and a general taxation to
uphold one and maintain the other. The dissatisfaction thus engendered
is best evidenced by the care which the people of the colonies, then
States, took, in framing their constitutions, to forbid the
continuance of such a system where it then existed, or to prevent its
adoption where it was not as yet known.
The New Jersey constitution of July 2, 1776, provided “that there
shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this province
in preference to another” (art. 19); “nor shall any person within this
colony ever be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or any other rates for
the purposes of building or repairing any church or churches, place or
places of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry,
contrary to what he believes to be right or has deliberately and
voluntarily engaged himself to perform” (art. 18); and so sacred were
these provisions deemed that an oath was prescribed for all members of
the legislature, engaging them never to assent to any law, vote, or
proceeding to annul, repeal, or alter any part or parts thereof (art.
23).
The Virginia constitution of July 5, 1776, declares “that religion, or
the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging
it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force and
violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free
exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, and
that it is the mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbearance,
love, and charity toward each other” (art. 16); and while this does
not in terms equal the New Jersey provisions _ante_, the Supreme Court
of the United States has construed it as equipollent, saying in
Terrett _v._ Taylor, 9 Cr. 43: “Consistent with the constitution of
Virginia, the legislature could not create or continue a religious
establishment which should have exclusive rights and prerogatives, or
compel the citizens to worship under a stipulated form or discipline,
or to pay taxes to those whose creed they could not conscientiously
believe.”
The constitution of Delaware of Sept. 20, 1776, provides: “No man
shall, or ought to, be compelled to attend any religious worship, to
contribute to the erection or support of any place of worship, or to
the maintenance of any ministry, against his free-will and consent.…
Nor shall a preference be given by law to any religious societies,
denomination, or modes of worship” (art. 1, § 1).
The North Carolina constitution of Dec. 18, 1776, provides “that there
shall be no establishment of any one religious church or denomination
in this State in preference to any other; neither shall any person, on
any pretence whatsoever, be compelled to attend any place of worship
contrary to his own faith or judgment, nor be obliged to pay for the
purchase of any glebe, or the building of any house of worship, or for
the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he
believes right or has voluntarily and personally engaged to perform”
(art. 34).
The Georgia constitution of Feb. 5, 1777, says: “All persons whatever
shall have the free exercise of their religion, provided it be not
repugnant to the peace and safety of the State; and shall not, unless
by consent, support any teacher or teachers, except those of their own
profession” (art. 56).
The New York constitution of April 20, 1777, abrogates “all such parts
of the common and statute law, and acts of Assembly, as establish any
denomination of Christians or their ministers.”
The early constitutions of Maryland, South Carolina, and Massachusetts
enunciated substantially the same principles as the other organic laws
above set forth, but did not entirely destroy the connection of church
and state. The Maryland constitution of Aug. 14, 1776, says: “Nor
ought any person to be compelled to frequent, or maintain, or
contribute, unless on contract, to maintain any particular place of
worship or any particular ministry: (yet the legislature may, in their
discretion, lay a general and equal tax for the support of the
Christian religion; leaving to each individual the power of appointing
the payment over of the money collected from him to the support of any
particular place of worship, or minister, or for the poor of his own
denomination, or the poor in general of any particular county).”
The South Carolina constitution of March 19, 1778, says: “No person
shall by law be obliged to pay towards the maintenance and support of
a religious worship that he does not freely join in or has not
voluntarily engaged to support” (art. 38), but in the same article
ordains that “the Christian Protestant religion shall be deemed, and
is hereby constituted and declared to be, the established religion of
this State,” extending this description to “all denominations of
Christian Protestants in this State.”
The Massachusetts constitution of March 2, 1780, says: “No
subordination of any sect or denomination to another shall ever be
established by law” (part i. art. 3), but allowed taxation to support
“public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality in all
cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily” (_id._),
with this qualification, however: that “all moneys paid by the subject
to the support of public worship and of the public teachers aforesaid
shall, if he require it, be uniformly applied to the support of the
public teacher or teachers of his own religious sect or denomination,
provided there be any, on whose instruction he attends; otherwise it
may be paid towards the support of the teacher or teachers of the
parish or precinct in which the said moneys are raised” (_id._)
If we state correctly—as we have not those documents by us—the New
Hampshire constitution of June 2, 1784, provided that “no person of
any one particular religious sect or denomination shall ever be
compelled to pay towards the support of the teacher or teachers of
another persuasion, sect, or denomination, … and no subordination of
any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by
law” (part i. art. 6), but that, subject to these provisions, the
legislature might authorize local taxation to support “public
Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality” (_id._); and the
Pennsylvania constitution of Sept. 28, 1776, provided “that no man
can, of right, be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of
worship or to maintain any ministry against his consent, … and that no
preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments
or modes of worship.” In Connecticut and Rhode Island the royal
charter continued the fundamental law until 1818 in the former and
1842 in the latter State; but, lest it may be thought that in these
States no opposition to an established church was manifested, it is
proper to remark that, upon ratifying the Constitution of the United
States, the Rhode Island Convention suggested as a highly desirable
amendment “that no particular religious sect or society ought to be
favored or established by law in preference to others” (1 Elliot Deb.
334); and in the Connecticut Convention Oliver Wolcott, in urging the
ratification of that instrument, refers to an inclination in that
assemblage to favor a like amendment, and says: “Knowledge and liberty
are so prevalent in this country that I do not believe that the United
States would ever be disposed to establish one religious sect, and lay
all others under legal disabilities. But as we know not what may take
place hereafter, and any such test would be exceedingly injurious to
the rights of free citizens, I cannot think it altogether superfluous
to have added a clause which secures us from the possibility of such
oppression” (2 Elliot Deb. 202).
We may thus say that, upon becoming States, the American colonies
declared with one voice that no religious establishment should possess
a legal pre-eminence in their several jurisdictions. In the Federal
Convention Charles Pinckney proposed to make it a part of the
Constitution of the United States that “the legislature of the United
States shall pass no law on the subject of religion” (_Journ._, May
29), and thus apply to the general government the rule previously
adopted by the States, which proposition failed. Mr. Pinckney then
submitted this proposition: “No religious test or qualification shall
ever be annexed to any oath of office under the authority of the
United States” (_Journ._, Aug. 20), which was unanimously adopted
(_Journ._, Aug. 30), Mr. Madison giving us this much of the debate:
“Mr. Pinckney moved to add: ‘But no religious test shall ever be
required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the
authority of the United States.’ Mr. Sherman thought it unnecessary,
the prevailing liberality being a sufficient security against such
tests. Mr. Gouverneur Morris and Gen. Pinckney approved the motion.
The motion was agreed to, _nem. con._” (5 Elliot Deb. 498). Upon the
final revision the words “the authority of” were struck out (_Journ._,
Sept. 12). When the Constitution was submitted for ratification,
considerable uneasiness was manifested at the failure of Mr.
Pinckney’s resolution that “the legislature of the United States shall
pass no law on the subject of religion,” and upon ratifying the
instrument the New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia Conventions urged
the adoption of an amendment to that effect. The North Carolina
Convention, while declining to ratify at its first session, assigned
the same emendation as desirable, as did also the Rhode Island
Convention upon ratifying; though, as the First Amendment had then
been proposed by Congress and was before the people, the action of
Rhode Island was not one of the causes leading to its submission. The
New Hampshire Convention recommended this amendment: “That Congress
shall make no laws touching religion or to infringe the rights of
conscience” (4 _Journ. Cong._, 1782-8, App. p. 52). The New York
Convention: “That no religious sect or society ought to be favored or
established by law in preference to others” (_id._ p. 55). The
Virginia (_id._ p. 53), North Carolina (_id._ p. 60), and Rhode Island
(1 Elliot Deb. 334) Conventions severally proposed “that no particular
religious sect or society ought to be favored or established by law in
preference to others.” In the Maryland Convention it was suggested as
a desirable amendment “that there be no national religion established
by law”; but, that body concluding to ratify the Constitution without
proposing amendments at that time, no final action was had on the
proposition (2 Elliot Deb. p. 553); and thereupon the change was made.
Thus it became a part of the Constitution of the United States that
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
In many, perhaps we may say most, other particulars the Constitution
was, when framed, an experiment, but in this the fathers of the
republic had the lamp of experience to illuminate their path. While a
myth to us, an established church had been a substantial reality to
them, and their verdict thereupon was, that upon every ground of
justice, interest, and harmony no religious sect or society ought ever
to be favored or established by law in preference to others in these
United States.
The second clause of the First Amendment, that Congress shall make no
law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, is substantially
included in the other provisions cited at the opening of this paper,
and need not be here specifically considered. It is a _casus omissus_
provision which speaks for itself. The provision that “no religious
test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public
trust under the United States” opens, however, another field of
inquiry.
At the outbreak of the American Revolution the colonists were deeply
imbued with the intolerant spirit of their English ancestors as
respects Roman Catholics, infidels, and Jews, and naturally impressed
those feelings on their earlier governmental declarations and
institutions. As the struggle progressed this aversion wore away, and
on the final settlement of the present American system of polity we
find the fathers of the republic formally renouncing their original
prepossessions in favor of religious tests. So far as regards Jews and
infidels, the citations now to be given will need no special comment;
but as respects Roman Catholics, it is proper to premise that the
ancestral antipathy of the colonists to those of that faith had been
particularly sharpened by the old French war, closing by the peace of
1763.
In 1705 the following questions were propounded to the
Attorney-General Northey: “Whether the laws of England against Romish
priests are in force in the plantations, and whether her majesty may
not direct Jesuits or Romish priests to be turned out of Maryland?” In
reply he first takes up 27 Eliz., c. 2, making it high treason for any
British-born Romish priest to come into, be, or remain in any part of
the royal dominions, and says: “It is plain that law extended to all
the dominions the queen had when it was made; but some doubt hath been
made whether it extendeth to dominions acquired after, as the
plantations have been.” He next considers II William III., c. 4,
subjecting any popish bishop or priest who shall exercise any
ecclesiastical function in any part of the British dominions to
perpetual imprisonment, and says: “I am of opinion this law extends to
the plantations, they being dominions belonging to the realm of
England, and extends to all priests, foreigners as well as natives.”
Lastly, he says: “As to the question whether her majesty may not
direct Jesuits or Romish priests to be turned out of Maryland, I am of
opinion, if the Jesuits or priests be aliens, not made denizens or
naturalized, her majesty may, by law, compel them to depart Maryland;
if they be her majesty’s natural-born subjects, they cannot be
banished from her majesty’s dominions, but may be proceeded against on
the last before-mentioned law” (Chalm. _Colonial Op._, 42). And that
this was the accepted state of the crown law as late as May 29, 1775,
appears from an address of that date of the American Congress to the
inhabitants of Canada, wherein they are asked to make common cause
with the other colonies, and told: “The enjoyment of your very
religion on the present system depends on a legislature in which you
have no share and over which you have no control, and your priests are
exposed to expulsion, banishment, and ruin whenever their wealth and
possessions furnish sufficient temptation” (1 _Journ. Cong._, p. 75,
Way & Gideon ed., Washington, 1823). It was also the case that a
number of the royal charters under which the colonists had been
accustomed to live denied religious liberty to Roman Catholics. The
charter of New Hampshire provided “that liberty of conscience shall be
allowed to all Protestants” (Town of Pawlet _v._ Clark, 9 Cr. 292);
that of Massachusetts read: “For the greater ease and encouragement of
our living subjects, inhabiting our said province or territory of
Massachusetts Bay, and of such as shall come to inhabit there, we do,
by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, grant, establish,
and ordain that for ever hereafter there shall be a liberty of
conscience allowed in the worship of God to all Christians (except
papists) inhabiting, or which shall inhabit or be resident within, our
said province or territory” (Chalm. _Col. Op._, 48). The charter of
Georgia, as of force up to 1752, ordains: “There shall be a liberty of
conscience allowed in the worship of God to all persons inhabiting, or
which shall inhabit or be resident within, our said province, and that
all such persons, except papists, shall have a free exercise of
religion” (White’s _Hist. Coll. Ga._, p. 9). The charter of Rhode
Island—which recites that it was granted the petitioners therefor
because “they have freely declared that it is much on their hearts (if
they be permitted) to hold forth a lively experiment that a most
flourishing civil state may stand and best be maintained, and that
among our English subjects, with a full liberty in religious
concernments”; and ordains “that all and every person and persons may,
from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have
and enjoy his own and their judgments and consciences, in matters of
religious concernments, throughout the tract of land hereafter
mentioned, they behaving themselves peaceably and quietly, and not
using this liberty to licentiousness and profaneness, nor to the civil
injury or outward disturbance of others; any law, statute, or clause
therein contained, or to be contained, usage, or custom of this realm,
to the contrary hereof in any wise notwithstanding,” and which, to us,
seems to guarantee absolute freedom of conscience—was interpreted by
the colonial government as excepting Roman Catholics, Dr. Ramsay
saying: “Since the date of the charter the form of the government has
suffered very little alteration. An act was passed, in 1663, declaring
that all men of competent estates and good conduct, who professed
Christianity, with the exception of Roman Catholics, should be
admitted freemen” (1 _Hist. U. S._, p. 156).
With this much we come to the Continental Congress which met at
Philadelphia Sept. 5, 1774, to consider the relations of the colonies
to the parent state. It at once became apparent that one prime
grievance alleged against the crown was the act of Parliament (14 Geo.
III., c. 83), passed early in that year, respecting the boundaries and
government of the Province of Quebec, as Canada was called after its
cession to England by the peace of 1763, which extended the limits of
that province southward to the Ohio, westward to the Mississippi, and
northward to the boundary of the Hudson’s Bay Company; qualified Roman
Catholics to sit in the provincial council; applied the French laws,
dispensing with juries to civil cases, and the English practice to
criminal; and secured the Catholic clergy their estates and full
liberty in their religion. Massachusetts was particularly indignant at
this statute, and the Congress had scarcely organized before the
following resolution was presented with others from Suffolk County in
that State: “10. That the late act of Parliament for establishing the
Roman Catholic religion and the French laws in that extensive country
now called Quebec is dangerous in an extreme degree to the Protestant
religion and to the civil rights and liberties of all America; and
therefore, as men and Protestant Christians, we are indispensably
obliged to take all proper measures for our security” (1 _Journ.
Cong._, p. 11). On the 10th of October Congress, having considered
“the rights and grievances of these colonies,” “_Resolved_, N. C. D.,
That the following acts of Parliament are infringements and violations
of the rights of the colonists; and that the repeal of them is
essentially necessary in order to restore harmony between Great
Britain and the American colonies, viz., … the act for establishing
the Roman Catholic religion in the province of Quebec, abolishing the
equitable system of English laws, and erecting a tyranny there, to the
great danger (from so total a dissimilarity of religion, law, and
government) of the neighboring British colonies, by the assistance of
whose blood and treasure the said country was conquered from France.…
To these grievous acts and measures Americans cannot submit” (_id._
pp. 20-22).
The main work of the Congress of 1774 was the famous “Continental
Association,” which is, in brief, a solemn engagement on the part of
the colonies to break off commercial relations with Great Britain
until such time as divers obnoxious acts of Parliament were repealed.
It opens by arraigning the British ministry for adopting a system of
administration “evidently calculated for enslaving these colonies,”
and proceeds to specify among other instruments to this end “an act
for extending the province of Quebec, so as to border on the Western
frontiers of these colonies, establishing an arbitrary government
therein, and discouraging the settlement of British subjects in that
wide-extended country, thus, by the influence of civil principles and
ancient prejudices, to dispose the inhabitants to act with hostility
against the free Protestant colonies whenever a wicked ministry shall
choose to direct them” (_id._ p. 23). The Congress also resolved upon
addresses to the people of Great Britain, to the inhabitants of the
colonies represented in the Congress, to the king, and to the people
of Canada. That to the people of Great Britain says: “Know that we
think the legislature of Great Britain is not authorized by the
Constitution to establish a religion, fraught with sanguinary and
impious tenets, or to erect an arbitrary form of government in any
quarter of the globe” (_id._ p. 27). It then charges that at the close
of the French war a plan of enslaving the colonies was concerted
“under the auspices of a minister of principles, and of a family
unfriendly to the Protestant cause and inimical to liberty,” and says:
“Now mark the progression of the ministerial plan for enslaving us.…
By another act the Dominion of Canada is to be so extended, modelled,
and governed as that, by being disunited from us, detached from our
interest, by civil as well as religious prejudices, that by their
numbers daily swelling with Catholic emigrants from Europe, and by
their devotion to administration so friendly to their religion, they
might become formidable to us, and, on occasion, be fit instruments in
the hands of power to reduce the ancient, free, Protestant colonies to
the same state of slavery with themselves. This was evidently the
object of the act; and in this view, being extremely dangerous to our
liberty and quiet, we cannot forbear complaining of it as hostile to
British America.… Nor can we suppress our astonishment that a British
Parliament should ever consent to establish in that country a religion
that has deluged your island in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry,
persecution, and murder through every part of the world” (_id._ p.
30). The memorial to the colonists also refers to the Quebec act, “by
which act the Roman Catholic religion, instead of being tolerated, as
stipulated by the treaty of peace, is established,” and says: “The
authors of this arbitrary arrangement flatter themselves that the
inhabitants, deprived of liberty, and artfully provoked against those
of another religion, will be proper instruments for assisting in the
oppression of such as differ from them in modes of government and
faith” (_id._ p. 37). To reassure the colonists, it concludes: “The
people of England will soon have an opportunity of declaring their
sentiments concerning our cause. In their piety, generosity, and good
sense we repose high confidence, and cannot, upon a review of past
events, be persuaded that they, the defenders of true religion and the
asserters of the rights of mankind, will take part against their
affectionate Protestant brethren in the colonies, in favor of our open
and their own secret enemies, whose intrigues for several years past
have been wholly exercised in sapping the foundations of civil and
religious liberty” (_id._ p. 38). The petition to the king represents
as one of the obstacles to a restoration of harmony between the
colonists and the crown the act “for extending the limits of Quebec,
abolishing the English and restoring the French laws, whereby great
numbers of British Frenchmen [_sic_] are subjected to the latter, and
establishing an absolute government and the Roman Catholic religion
throughout those vast regions that border on the westerly and
northerly boundaries of the free Protestant English settlements”
(_id._ p. 47); reminds the monarch that “we were born the heirs of
freedom, and ever enjoyed our right under the auspices of your royal
ancestors, whose family was seated on the British throne to rescue and
secure a pious and gallant nation from the popery and despotism of a
superstitious and inexorable tyrant”; and adjures him “for the honor
of Almighty God, whose pure religion our enemies are undermining,” and
“as the loving father of your whole people, connected by the same
bonds of law, loyalty, faith, and blood,” to withstand the ministerial
plan (_id._ p. 49).
The terrific arraignment of the Roman Catholic religion made in these
various state papers will show to what an extent the colonists were
unfavorably disposed toward that faith at the inception of the
Revolutionary struggle. The fourth and last address, however, adopted
remains to be noticed, and in this appears the first indication of
that spirit of universal religious liberty and toleration which
afterwards became one of the main animating impulses of the American
system of government. The _Journal_, unfortunately, does not disclose
the name of the wise and just man who drew up this document, but the
internal evidence points to John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, who
afterwards prepared the Articles of Confederation (1 _Secret Journ._,
p. 290). Oct. 21, Thomas Cushing of Massachusetts, Richard Henry Lee
of Virginia, and Mr. Dickinson were appointed a committee to prepare
an address to the inhabitants of Quebec, and, as adopted, this urges
the Canadians to make common cause with the other colonists, setting
before them their rights as British subjects, and saying: “What is
offered to you by the late act of Parliament in their place? Liberty
of conscience in your religion? No. God gave it to you; and the
temporal powers with which you have been and are connected firmly
stipulated for your enjoyment of it. If laws, divine and human, could
secure it against the despotic caprices of wicked men, it was secured
before” (1 _Journ._, p. 42). The address then imagines the president,
Montesquieu, urging his countrymen to unite with the English
colonists, and concludes: “We are too well acquainted with the
liberality of sentiment distinguishing your nation to imagine that
difference of religion will prejudice you against a hearty amity with
us. You know that the transcendent nature of freedom elevates those
who unite in her cause above all such low-minded infirmities. The
Swiss cantons furnish a memorable proof of this truth. Their union is
composed of Roman Catholic and Protestant states, living in the utmost
concord and peace with one another, and thereby enabled, ever since
they bravely vindicated their freedom, to defy and defeat every tyrant
that has invaded them” (_id._ p. 44).
May 10, 1775, another Congress met. Blood had been shed; it was seen
the sword must decide the event; and from this time the American
Congress may be said to have remained in permanent session until the
government under the Constitution was inaugurated. May 26, 1775, John
Jay, Samuel Adams, and Silas Deane were appointed a committee to
draught a letter to the people of Canada, which, as adopted, urged
them to unite with the other colonists, declaring “the fate of the
Protestant and Catholic colonies to be strongly linked together”; and
adding: “The enjoyment of your very religion, on the present system,
depends on a legislature in which you have no share and over which you
have no control; and your priests are exposed to expulsion,
banishment, and ruin whenever their wealth and possessions furnish
sufficient temptation” (_id._ p. 75). This failing, Congress came
closer by directing Robert Livingston, Robert Treat Paine, and J.
Langdon, Nov. 8, 1775, to proceed to Canada, and there use their
utmost efforts to procure the assistance of the Canadians in Gen.
Schuyler’s operations, and to induce them to enter into a union with
the other colonies, the instructions mentioning as one inducement to
be held out: “And you may and are hereby empowered farther to declare
that we hold sacred the rights of conscience, and shall never molest
them in the free enjoyment of their religion” (_id._ p. 170). This
also failing, a third effort was made to the same end by appointing
Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton—the
latter not a member of Congress at the time, but selected as a Roman
Catholic (2 Ramsay _Hist. U. S._, p. 65)—commissioners to Canada, May
20, 1776, instructing them: “You are farther to declare that we hold
sacred the rights of conscience, and may promise to the whole people,
solemnly in our name, the free and undisturbed exercise of their
religion; and, to the clergy, the full, perfect, and peaceable
possession and enjoyment of all their estates; that the government of
everything relating to their religion and clergy shall be left
entirely in the hands of the good people of that province and such
legislature as they shall constitute; provided, however, that all
other denominations of Christians be equally entitled to hold offices,
and enjoy civil privileges and the free exercise of their religion,
and be totally exempt from the payment of any tithes or taxes for the
support of any religion” (1 _Journ._, p. 290). This failed in turn,
but the fathers were long loath to relinquish their hopes of the
accession of Canada. The Articles of Confederation provided that
“Canada, acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures
of the United States, shall be admitted into and entitled to all the
advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into
the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States” (art.
11); and guaranteed that each State should be protected in its
religion by the common strength of all (art. 3). It is further
memorable that the King of France co-operated with the Americans in
the attempt to secure the accession of Canada to the Union, and that
in accordance with the royal instructions the Count d’Estaing
published an address on the 28th of October, 1778, in his majesty’s
name, to the Canadian French, adjuring them by every tie of lineage
and religion to make common cause with the United States. The priests,
in particular, were besought to use their influence to this end, and
reminded that they might become a power in a new government, and not
be dependent on “sovereigns whom force has imposed on them, and whose
political indulgence will be lessened proportionally as those
sovereigns shall have less to fear” (2 Pitk. _U. S._, p. 68). This,
however, like all the invitations of the American Congress, was in
vain. The contemporary fact was—and no doubt the British crown
officers took care to have it well known throughout Canada—that while
England was enacting laws to exempt the Canadians from her
anti-Catholic statutes, and to indulge them with full liberty of
conscience in their ancestral Catholic faith, the American Congress
was solemnly resolving and declaring “that we think the legislature of
Great Britain is not authorized by the constitution to establish a
religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets in any quarter of
the globe.” “Nor can we suppress our astonishment that a British
Parliament should ever consent to establish in that country a religion
that has deluged England in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry,
persecution, murder, and rebellion throughout every part of the
world.” So sharp a contrast had a powerful effect on the sixty-five
thousand Roman Catholics who then inhabited Canada, according to
Stokes (_View_, p. 30), and is, in all human probability, the reason
why that extensive country is not a part of the United States to-day.
That invaluable contemporary authority, Dr. Ramsay, assures us that
the predilections of the Canadian masses were in favor of a union with
the other colonies, but “the legal privileges which the Roman Catholic
clergy enjoyed made them averse to a change, lest they should be
endangered by a more intimate connection with their Protestant
neighbors.”
The founders of the republic seem early to have perceived the mistake
of yielding to what they termed in their first overture to Canada “the
low-minded infirmity” of religious prejudice, and the severe recoil of
that error in this case had much to do with their subsequent
prohibition of religious tests.
Recurring now to the States, we find a religious test prescribed as a
qualification to office in a number of the early constitutions. The
New Jersey constitution of July 2, 1776, provides “that no Protestant
inhabitant of this colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil
right merely on account of his religious principles; but that all
persons professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect, who
shall demean themselves peaceably under the government as hereby
established, shall be capable of being elected into any office of
profit, or trust, or being a member of either branch of the
legislature, and shall fully and freely enjoy every privilege and
immunity enjoyed by others their fellow-subjects” (art. 19). The North
Carolina constitution of December 18, 1776, says “that no person who
shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion,
or the divine authority of either the Old or New Testaments, or who
shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and
safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place
of trust or profit in the civil department within this State” (art.
32). The Georgia constitution of February 5, 1777, says that the
members of the legislature “shall be of the Protestant religion” (art.
6). The South Carolina constitution of March 19, 1778, provides for “a
governor and commander-in-chief, a lieutenant-governor, both to
continue two years, and a privy council—all of the Protestant
religion” (art. 3); that “no person shall be eligible to sit in the
House of Representatives unless he be of the Protestant religion”
(art. 13); and “that all denominations of Christian Protestants in
this State demeaning themselves peaceably and faithfully shall enjoy
equal religious and civil privileges” (art. 38). In this State the
governor was sworn “to the utmost of his power to maintain and defend
the laws of God, the Protestant religion, and the liberties of
America” (Grimke’s _Laws So. Ca._, 297). The Delaware constitution of
September 11, 1776, provided the following oath to be taken by all
members of the legislature: “I, A. B., do profess faith in God the
Father, and in Jesus Christ his only Son, and in the Holy Ghost; and I
do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be
given by divine inspiration” (art. 22). The Maryland constitution of
August 14, 1776, provided that “a declaration of a belief in the
Christian religion” (Bill of Rights, art. 35) should be a
qualification to office; and “that every person, appointed to any
office of profit or trust shall, before he enters on the execution
thereof, … subscribe a declaration of his belief in the Christian
religion” (Const., art. 55). The New Hampshire constitution of January
5, 1776, while not expressly prescribing a religious test, is
understood by the provision continuing the body of the colonial law in
force to have required all members of the legislature to be of the
Protestant religion. The spirit occasioning the above tests was
remarkably manifested in the convention framing the New York
constitution of April 20, 1777. An article granting “to all mankind
the free exercise of religious profession and worship” being under
consideration, John Jay, afterwards the first Chief-Justice of the
Supreme Court of the United States, moved to add the following:
“Except the professors of the religion of the Church of Rome, who
ought not to hold lands in, or be admitted to a participation of the
civil rights enjoyed by the members of, this State until such time as
the said professors shall appear in the Supreme Court of the State,
and there most solemnly swear that they verily believe in their
consciences that no pope, priest, or foreign authority on earth has
power to absolve the subjects of this State from their allegiance to
the same; and, farther, that they renounce and believe to be false and
wicked the dangerous and damnable doctrine that the pope, or any other
earthly authority, has power to absolve men from sins described in and
prohibited by the holy Gospel of Jesus Christ, and particularly that
no pope, priest, or foreign authority on earth has power to absolve
them from the obligation of this oath,” which was lost—yeas, 10; nays,
19; one county divided (Sparks’ _Life of Gouverneur Morris_, vol. i.,
p. 124). The Pennsylvania constitution of September 28, 1776, required
members of the General Assembly and civil officers to sign “a
declaration of belief in one God, the creator and governor of the
world, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked,” and
also to make “an acknowledgment that the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament are given by divine inspiration” (Stokes’ _View_, p. 81).
It will thus appear that the early constitutions of New Jersey, North
Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, and New Hampshire made a profession
of Protestantism, and those of Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania
made a belief in Christianity, a qualification for office; and so the
fundamental law of those States remained until after the ratification
of the Constitution of the United States.
In 1787 the Federal Convention met, and, as has already been stated,
while declining to make it a part of the Constitution that “the
legislature of the United States shall pass no law on the subject of
religion,” did insert in that instrument the provision that “no
religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office
or public trust under the United States.” Or, in other words, the
Federal Constitution did not inhibit Congress from creating a
religious establishment, but did forbid it to prescribe a religious
test as a qualification to office; while, _per contra_, the State
constitutions, while prohibiting such an establishment, admitted such
tests. We have seen how the States conformed the Federal Constitution
to their own in the article of the inhibition of an established
church, and are now to inquire how the State constitutions modelled
themselves upon the Constitution of the United States so far as
respects the prohibition of religious qualifications for office.
When the Federal Constitution was proposed for ratification to the
State conventions, considerable opposition was manifested in some of
those bodies to this prohibition. It was alleged that, as the
Constitution stood, the Pope of Rome might become President of the
United States, and there was even a pamphlet published to sustain that
objection (4 Elliot Deb., p. 195). In the North Carolina Convention,
in particular, a hot debate occurred. Mr. Abbott said: “The exclusion
of religious tests is by many thought dangerous and impolitic. They
suppose that if there be no religious test required, pagans, deists,
and Mahometans might obtain offices among us, and that the senators
and representatives might all be pagans” (_id._ p. 192). Mr. Iredell
referred to the deplorable results of religious tests in all ages, and
said: “America has set an example to mankind to think more modestly
and reasonably—that a man may be of different religious sentiments
from our own without being a bad member of society.… But it is
objected that the people of America may, perhaps, choose
representatives who have no religion at all, and that pagans and
Mahometans may be admitted into offices. But how is it possible to
exclude any set of men without taking away that principle of religious
freedom which we ourselves so warmly contend for?… I met, by accident,
with a pamphlet this morning in which the author states as a very
serious danger that the Pope of Rome might be elected President. I
confess this never struck me before; and if the author had read all
the qualifications of a President, perhaps his fears might have been
quieted. No man but a native or who has resided fourteen years in
America can be chosen President. I know not all the qualifications for
pope, but I believe he must be taken from the college of cardinals;
and probably there are many previous steps necessary before he arrives
at this dignity. A native of America must have very singular good
fortune who, after residing fourteen years in his own country, should
go to Europe, enter into Romish orders, obtain the promotion of
cardinal, afterwards that of pope, and at length be so much in the
confidence of his own country as to be elected President. It would be
still more extraordinary if he should give up his popedom for our
presidency. Sir, it is impossible to treat such idle fears with any
degree of gravity.… This country has already had the honor of setting
an example of civil freedom, and I trust it will likewise have the
honor of teaching the rest of the world the way to religious freedom
also. God grant both may be perpetuated to the end of time!” (_id._ p.
193 _et seq._) Gov. Johnston said: “When I heard there were
apprehensions that the Pope of Rome could be the President of the
United States, I was greatly astonished. It might as well be said that
the King of England or France or the Grand Turk could be chosen to
that office. It would have been as good an argument.… It is
apprehended that Jews, Mahometans, pagans, etc., may be elected to
high offices under the government of the United States. Those who are
Mahometans, or any others who are not professors of the Christian
religion, can never be elected to the office of President or other
high office but in one of two cases: First, if the people of America
lay aside the Christian religion altogether, it may happen. Should
this unfortunately take place, the people will choose such men as
think as they do themselves. Another case is, if any persons of such
descriptions should, notwithstanding their religion, acquire the
confidence and esteem of the people of America by their good conduct
and practice of virtue, they may be chosen” (_id._ p. 198). Mr.
Caldwell said: “There was an invitation for Jews and pagans of every
kind to come among us. At some future period this might endanger the
character of the United States.… I think that in a political view
those gentlemen who formed this Constitution should not have given
this invitation to Jews and heathens” (_id._ p. 199). Mr. Spencer
said: “Religious tests have been the foundation of persecutions in all
countries. Persons who are conscientious will not take the oath
required by religious tests, and will therefore be excluded from
offices, though equally capable of discharging them as any member of
society” (_id._ p. 200). Mr. Spaight, who had been in the Federal
Convention, said: “No test is required. All men of equal capacity and
integrity are equally eligible to offices. Temporal violence may make
mankind wicked, but never religious. A test would enable the
prevailing sect to persecute the rest” (_id._ p. 208). Mr. Wilson
“wished that the Constitution had excluded popish priests from office”
(_id._ p. 212). Mr. Lancaster said: “As to a religious test, had the
article which excludes it provided none but what had been in the
States heretofore, I would not have objected to it.… For my part, in
reviewing the qualifications necessary for a President, I did not
suppose that the pope could occupy the President’s chair. But let us
remember that we form a government for millions not yet in existence.
I have not the art of divination. In the course of four or five
hundred years I do not know how it will work. This is most certain:
that papists may occupy that chair, and Mahometans may take it. I see
nothing against it. There is a disqualification, I believe, in every
State in the Union; it ought to be so in this system” (_id._ p. 215).
In the Massachusetts Convention there was considerable debate on the
same clause. Mr. Singletary “thought we were giving up all our
privileges, as there was no provision that men in power should have
any religion; and though he hoped to see Christians, yet, by the
Constitution, a papist or an infidel was as eligible as they” (2
Elliot Deb., p. 44). Several members of the convention urging that the
provision “was a departure from the principles of our forefathers, who
came here for the preservation of their religion; and that it would
admit deists, atheists, etc., into the general government,” Rev. Mr.
Shute said: “To establish a religious test as a qualification for
offices in the proposed Federal Constitution, it appears to me, sir,
would be attended with injurious consequences to some individuals, and
with no advantage to the whole.… In this great and extensive empire
there is and will be a great variety of sentiments in religion among
its inhabitants. Upon the plan of a religious test the question, I
think, must be, Who shall be excluded from national trusts? Whatever
answer bigotry may suggest, the dictates of candor and equity, I
conceive, will be, _None_. Far from limiting my charity and confidence
to men of my own denomination in religion, I suppose and I believe,
sir, that there are worthy characters among men of every
denomination—among the Quakers, the Baptists, the Church of England,
the papists, and even among those who have no other guide in the way
to virtue and heaven than the dictates of natural religion. I must
therefore think, sir, that the proposed plan of government in this
particular is wisely constructed; that as all have an equal claim to
the blessings of the government under which they live and which they
support, so none should be excluded from them for being of any
particular denomination in religion. The presumption is that the eyes
of the people will be upon the faithful in the land; and, from a
regard of their own safety, they will choose for their rulers men of
known abilities, of known probity, of good moral characters. The
Apostle Peter tells us that God is no respecter of persons, but in
every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is
acceptable to him. And I know of no reason why men of such a
character, in a community of whatever denomination in religion,
_cœteris paribus_, with other suitable qualifications, should not be
acceptable to the people, and why they may not be employed by them
with safety and advantage in the important offices of government. The
exclusion of a religious test in the proposed Constitution, therefore,
clearly appears to me, sir, to be in favor of its adoption” (_id._ p.
118).
These utterances form so excellent a commentary on the last clause of
the sixth article of the Constitution of the United States that it is
to be regretted that we know no more of their admirable and sagacious
author than that he was the Rev. Daniel Shute, of Hingham, in Suffolk
County, and voted on what the original journal calls “the decision of
the grand question” in favor of ratifying the Constitution; as did
also his colleague, Major-General Benjamin Lincoln.
Recurring to the debate, Col. Jones “thought that the rulers ought to
believe in God or Christ, and that, however a test may be prostituted
in England, yet he thought, if our public men were to be of those who
had a good standing in the church, it would be happy for the United
States” (_id._ p. 119). Major Lusk “passed to the article dispensing
with the qualification of a religious test, and concluded by saying
that he shuddered at the idea that Roman Catholics, papists, and
pagans might be introduced into office, and that popery and the
Inquisition may be established in America” (_id._ p. 148). Rev. Mr.
Backus said: “I now beg leave to offer a few thoughts upon some points
in the Constitution proposed to us, and I shall begin with the
exclusion of any religious test. Many appear to be much concerned
about it; but nothing is more evident, both in reason and the Holy
Scriptures, than that religion is ever a matter between God and
individuals; and therefore no man or men can impose any religious test
without invading the essential prerogatives of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ministers first assumed this power under the Christian name, and then
Constantine approved of the practice when he adopted the profession of
Christianity as an engine of state policy. And let the history of all
nations be searched from that day to this, and it will appear that the
imposing of religious tests hath been the greatest engine of tyranny
in the world. And I rejoice to see so many gentlemen who are now
giving in their rights of conscience in this great and important
matter. Some serious minds discover a concern lest, if all religious
tests should be excluded, the Congress would hereafter establish
popery or some other tyrannical way of worship; but it is most certain
that no such way of worship can be established without any religious
test” (_id._ p. 149).
In the Conventions of Virginia (3 Elliot Deb., p. 204), and
Connecticut (2 _ib._ p. 202), and in the South Carolina Legislature (1
_id._ p. 312), the same clause was discussed, but more briefly, and
after the final ratification of the Constitution the principle of the
provision seems to have been universally conceded as correct. The
Georgia constitution of May 6, 1789, the first new State constitution
adopted after the inauguration of the government under the
Constitution of the United States, omitted the qualification that
members of the General Assembly should be of the Protestant religion;
the South Carolina constitution of June 3, 1790, the next adopted,
omitted the same test, as also all the former provisions making the
Protestant religion the State faith, and provided that “the free
exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without
discrimination or preference, shall for ever, hereafter, be allowed
within this State to all mankind” (art. 8, sec. 1), and from this time
forward it may be taken as the case that as fast as the States
remodelled their constitutions of the Revolutionary era the
religious-test provisions were formally omitted, and in the interim
passed _sub silentio_.
The immediate cause of this universal abrogation of religious
qualifications for office was, as we have seen, the sixth article of
the Constitution of the United States, but beyond this were some
potent operative causes. The loss of Canada was one. Dr. Ramsay, who
tells us that he had access to all the official papers of the United
States up to 1786, when he ceased to be a member of the Congress under
the Confederation (pref. 2 _Hist. U. S._), says: “The province was
evacuated with great reluctance. The Americans were not only mortified
at the disappointment of their favorite scheme of annexing it as a
fourteenth link in the chain of their Confederacy, but apprehended the
most serious consequences from the ascendency of the British power in
that quarter” (_id._ p. 71). It was felt too late that the indiscreet
utterances of the Congress of 1774 respecting the Roman Catholic
religion had led to this loss.
Another operative cause was the yearning desire of the early statesmen
of the United States to invite and secure foreign immigration. As
early as the address of Congress of Oct. 21, 1774, it was noticed that
the population of Canada was “daily swelling with Catholic emigrants
from Europe”; and after the peace of 1783 showed that Canada was to
remain a British possession, it was seen that to impress an
anti-Catholic character on the government of the United States would
tend to build up that province at the expense of the United States,
and that only by proffering religious as well as civil liberty could
this country hope to divert that emigration to its own shores. Some of
the States had already suffered, when colonies, from legalizing
inequalities in religion, and that, too, had no doubt its weight;
Ramsay telling us that the legal pre-eminence of the Episcopal Church,
and its maintenance at the expense not only of its own members but of
all other denominations in Virginia and Maryland, “deterred great
numbers, especially of the Presbyterian denomination, who had
emigrated from Ireland, from settling within the limits of these
governments” (1 _Hist. U. S._, p. 220).
Another cause operating in favor of a removal of religious tests to
office was the eminent services rendered the States in the
establishment of their independence by two Catholic powers, France and
Spain. It is currently supposed that it was not until after the
Americans, by their capture of Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777, had
demonstrated their power that they received efficient assistance from
those nations; but the contrary is the case. Before the Declaration of
Independence Silas Deane was sent to France for assistance, and
contemporaneous with the Declaration large supplies of money and arms
were furnished by that power. Arms, clothing, and ammunition for
25,000 men and 100 field-pieces were asked by Congress, and the
response of his Christian majesty was 2,000,000 livres in money and
small arms, 200 field-pieces, the best in the royal arsenals, a credit
for 1,000,000 livres with the clothier-general of the French forces,
and the services of Monsieur Coudray, the best military engineer in
the royal army, and as many of his officers as were needed (1 Pitk.
_Hist. U. S._, pp. 387, 500). Spain also assisted the Americans with
1,000,000 livres as early as May, 1776 (_id._ p. 411). Still another
1,000,000 livres were added by France before the treaty of 1778; and
to appreciate fully the various pecuniary aids given by this power to
the United States during the struggle, the reader may well consult the
treaties with that power of 1782 and 1783 (_Rev. Stats._, “Treaties,”
pp. 214-9). Prior to 1778 some 3,000,000 livres were advanced, and
from that time to 1782 some 18,000,000 more were granted and an
endorsement given to Holland for 10,000,000 in addition. In 1783 a
further grant of 6,000,000 livres was made, making 37,000,000 in all.
All expenses of commissions, negotiations, etc., were borne by France
and made a present to the United States, as also all the interest
accrued during the entire war on the debt, and the total principal of
the sums forwarded in 1776, for all of which benefactions the most
lively acknowledgments were made by the United States in the treaties
referred to above. Nor were French fleets and armies wanting. In July,
1778, a French squadron of twelve line-of-battle ships and four
frigates reached the United States under Count d’Estaing (2 Ramsay
_Hist. U. S._, p. 258). In 1779 the same commander appeared off the
Georgia coast with 20 ships of the line and 11 frigates, and some
3,500 French troops, infantry and artillery; and at this time occurred
the bloody assault on the British entrenchments at Savannah, where
Gen. Lincoln, at the head of 600 Continentals, and d’Estaing at the
head of the French infantry, charged side by side, 200 of the
Americans and 637 of the French being left on the field. In July,
1780, still another French fleet arrived at Rhode Island with 6,000
troops (2 Pitk. 117). In 1781 Count de Grasse arrived with 28 ships of
the line and 3,200 French troops under the Marquis de St. Simon (2
Ramsay, p. 427). In 1782 a French fleet of 34 ships of the line,
having on board 5,500, rendezvoused in the West Indies to draw off the
British by an attack on Jamaica, and here sustained an appalling
defeat at the hands of Admiral Rodney. The French troops were so
crowded on the vessels that in one ship alone 400 men were killed, and
the total slaughter amounted to thousands (_id._ p. 5). In the same
year we find 7,000 French regulars at Yorktown; and from the
contemporary accounts the French engineers and artillery were
eminently instrumental in forcing the surrender of Cornwallis,
particularly Major-General du Portail, Brigadier-General Launcy, Col.
Gouvion, and Capt. Rochefontaine, who were thanked and promoted by
Congress and warmly commended to their sovereign (_id._ p. 438; 4
_Journ._ 290).
Nor was Spain backward in her efforts. Before the Declaration of
Independence she sent the Americans 1,000,000 livres (1 Pitk. 411). In
1777 she forwarded several cargoes of naval stores, cordage,
sail-cloth, anchors, etc., from Bilboa (_id._ p. 528). In 1779 she
declared war against Great Britain, and carried on a campaign in
Florida with such vigor as to drive out the British from that
province. In 1780 an immense Spanish armament appeared in the West
Indies to co-operate with the French in creating a diversion in that
quarter, the combined fleet numbering thirty-six ships of the line,
crowded with troops (2 Ramsay, 374). In 1782 a grander attempt was
made in the same field, the combined French and Spanish navies
numbering sixty ships of the line, with an immense number of frigates
and smaller armed vessels, and conveying thousands of land forces. The
first attempt failed by the appearance of a mortal disease which
decimated the Spanish troops, and the latter by the bloody defeat of
the French by Admiral Rodney. In the course of the war the Spanish
navy received a terrible blow at Cape St. Vincent, though the Spanish
admiral, Don Juan de Langara, fought till his flag-ship was a mere
wreck and his fleet was sunk or taken. One vessel in particular, the
_San Domingo_, of 70 guns and carrying 600 men, blew up, and all on
board perished (_id._ p. 372).
To sustain American independence, in short, French and Spanish blood
was poured out like water. The arms, the gold, the ships, the armies
of the two great Catholic powers were given in unstinted measure to
the United States, and on the establishment of the present polity of
the republic it would have been disgraceful beyond measure to have
fixed therein a stigma on the faith of those friends in time of need.
In answering the congratulations of the Catholic clergy and laity on
his first accession to the presidency, Gen. Washington said: “I
presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part
which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution and the
establishment of their government, or the important assistance which
they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is
professed” (_Cath. Al._, 1876, p. 63). Possibly, also, the demeanor of
the French troops may have removed many misapprehensions and
prejudices against their religion. Madison, who was an eye-witness of
their march through Philadelphia, where Congress was then in session,
in 1782, _en route_ to Yorktown, highly applauds their regularity and
decency of conduct in his letters of that date (Mad. Papers); and
speaking on the same subject Dr. Ramsay, also then in Congress, says:
“The French troops marched at the same time and for the same place. In
the course of this summer they passed through all the extensive
settlements which lie between Newport and Yorktown. It seldom, if
ever, happened before that an army led through a foreign country, at
so great a distance from their own, among a people of different
principles, customs, language, and religion, behaved with so much
regularity. In their march to Yorktown they had to pass through 500
miles of a country abounding in fruit, and at a time when the most
delicious productions of nature growing on and near the public
highways presented both opportunity and temptation to gratify their
appetites. Yet so complete was their discipline that in this long
march scarce an instance could be produced of a peach or an apple
being taken without the consent of the inhabitants” (2 _Hist. U. S._,
p. 434). Allies of this character were in high favor with the American
people, and most gratefully remembered at the time of the final
settlement of civil government in the United States, not to speak of
the influence of the Continental soldiery, who, no doubt, bore in mind
their brethren in arms at Savannah and Yorktown, and recalled
Washington’s general order whereby the black cockade of the American
army was mounted with a white relief in honor of Catholic France (2
Ramsay, p. 358).
To conclude, then, the provisions of the Constitution of the United
States bearing on religion are not mere ill-considered generalities,
but positive convictions based upon long and sore experience. The
prohibition of a national religion or of any governmental interference
with spiritual persuasions owes its origin to the actual existence in
former days of church establishments, the hierophants wherein were
appointees of the political power, and the expenses whereof were
compulsorily borne by those of other creeds. And the inhibition of
religious tests for office arises out of the fact that the history of
this country demonstrates it equally impolitic, ungrateful, and
dishonest to require such qualifications in these United States.
ASSISI.
“St. Francis be my speed!”
Think of being taken into Umbria, preternatural Umbria, where every
olive-sandalled mountain is full of mysterious influences, and every
leaf and flower of the smiling valleys seem to breathe out some sweet
old Franciscan legend, by a steam-engine bearing the name of Fulton!
It was hard. Not but we have the highest respect for—nay, a certain
pride in—that great inventor; still it seemed a positive grievance to
find anything modern in what was to us a world of poetry and mediæval
tradition. We wished, if not to gird ourselves humbly with the cord
like Dante, at least to put ourselves in harmony with one of the most
delicious regions in the world, where at every step the lover of the
classic, of art, or of the higher mystic lore finds so much to suit
his turn. The name of Fulton sounds well along the Hudson, but to hear
the shriek of an engine awaken the echoes of the Apennines, and see it
go plunging insensibly through the very heart of poetical Umbria,
along the shores of “reedy Thrasimene,” through “the defiles fatal to
Roman rashness,” was a blow difficult to recover from. It required the
overpowering influences of this enchanting region, as every one will
believe, to restore our equanimity.
Umbria is a mountainous region of the Ecclesiastical States that
gradually ascends from the Tiber toward the Apennines, now called the
Duchy of Spoleto. It is full of sweet, sunny valleys enclosed among
majestic mountains, with a range of temperature that produces great
variety of vegetation, from the pine and the oak to the orange and
aloe, the olive and the vine. Its cliffs are crowned with sanctuaries
which are resonant night and day with prayer and psalmody, or old
towns, each with the remembrance of some saint whose shrine it guards
with jealous care, or some artist or poet whose works have made it
renowned, or some venerable classical recollection that clings to it
like the vine which gives so much grace and freshness to the
landscape. There is Spoleto, whose gates closed against Hannibal;
Arezzo, where Petrarch was born; Cortona, with its “diadem of towers”
and its legend of St. Margaret; _Perugia dolente_, which Totila only
took after a seven years’ siege, and which Charlemagne placed under
the sweet yoke of the Papacy; Montefalco, like a falcon’s nest on the
crest of the mountain, famous for its virgin saint and its frescos of
Benozzo Gozzoli; and picturesque Marni, where the Blessed Lucy when a
child played with the Christorello. We pass Orvieto, with its
wonderful proofs of past cultivation; the lake of Bolsena, with its
isle where a queen died of hunger, and its shores verdant with the
glorious pines sung by Virgil, at the foot of which Leo X., when a
guest at the Farnese villa, used to gather around him the artists and
poets of the day, to indulge in intellectual converse till “the azure
gloom of an Italian night” gathered around them with hues that spoke
of heaven.
But over all hovers especially the grand memory of St. Francis, with
which the whole of this beautiful region is embalmed. Along its
valleys and mountain paths he used to go with Fra Pacifico, the poet
laureate of Frederick II., singing their hymns of praise, calling
themselves God’s minstrels, who desired no other reward from those who
gathered around them but the sincere repentance of their sins. There
is the lake of Perugia, where he spent forty days alone on an island
among the sad olives, fasting in imitation of our Saviour, in
continual communion with God and the angels—a spot now marked by a
convent whose foundations are washed by the waters of the lake. There
is the blue lake of Rieti, to which, in his compassion for God’s
creatures, he restored the fish alive, with the four Franciscan
convents on the hills that enclose it. There is Gubbio, with the
legend of the fierce wolf he tamed, to which the people erected a
statue—an unquestionable proof of its truth. There is the
“Hard Rock
‘Twixt Arno and the Tiber,”
where
“He from Christ
Took the last signet which his limbs two years
Did carry.”
Above all, there is Assisi with his tomb, one of the most glorious in
the world after that of Christ, around which centred all the poetry
and art of the thirteenth century. We caught our first glimpse of it
at Spello—Spello on its spur of red limestone—where we were shown the
house of Propertius, “the poet of delicate pleasures,” in full sight
of Assisi, where was born one who sang of a higher love. Assisi stands
on an eminence overlooking the whole country around, and we could not
take our eyes off it all the way from Spello, till, glancing towards
the valley below, we saw the towers and dome of _Santa Maria degli
Angeli_, which encloses the sacred Porziuncula. We were now in the
very “land of wonder, of miracle, and mysterious influences,” the
first glimpse of which one can never forget. Think of a railway
station close by the Porziuncula! We went directly there on descending
from the cars.
St. Mary of the Angels is a vast church that stands almost solitary in
the plain. It is modern also, and out of keeping with the venerable
traditions of the place, which was a disappointment. The old church
was nearly destroyed by an earthquake in 1854. The present one is of
noble proportions, however, and has been compared to the garments of a
queen that now clothe the humble sanctuary of the Porziuncula which
stands beneath the dome, the first thing to strike the eye on entering
the church. We hastened towards it at once, to pray where St. Francis
so often wept and prayed, and where so many generations since have
wept, and prayed, and found grace before God. It was here Picca, his
mother, often came to pray before he was born, and where his birth was
announced by mysterious songs attributed to the angels. St. Francis
loved this spot above all places in the world; for it was here he was
called to embrace the sublime folly of the cross, and where he laid
the foundations of the seraphic order. It was here, in the year 1222,
he beheld Christ and his holy Mother surrounded by a multitude of
angels, and prayed that all who should henceforth visit this chapel
with hearts purified by contrition and confession might obtain full
pardon and indulgence for all their sins. This was the origin of the
celebrated indulgence of the Porziuncula, which the grave Bourdaloue
regarded as one of the most authentic in the church, because granted
directly by Christ himself. The treasures of the church were not dealt
out so generously in those days as now, and thousands came hither from
all parts of Christendom, in the middle ages, to gain this wonderful
indulgence. When St. Bernardine of Siena came in the fourteenth
century, he found two hundred thousand pilgrims encamped in the valley
around. St. Bridget spent the whole night of one 1st of August praying
in the Porziuncula; and still, when the great day of the _Perdono_
comes (it lasts from the Vespers of the 1st of August till the Vespers
of the following day), thousands flock down from the mountains and
come up from the extremity of southern Italy. The highway is lined
with booths where eatables and religious objects are sold. Processions
come with chants and prayer. The great bell of _Predicazione_,
originally cast for Fra Elias, is heard all over the valley from the
_Sagro Convento_, announcing the indulgence. When the church doors
open, an overwhelming crowd pours in with cries, and invocations, and
_vivas_ for the Madonna and St. Francis with true Italian exuberance
of devotion.
The Porziuncula has wisely been left in its primitive simplicity, with
the exception of the front, on which Overbeck, in 1830, painted the
above-mentioned vision to St. Francis with true pre-Raphaelite
simplicity. The remainder is just as it was in the time of the saint;
only its rough walls have been polished by the kisses of pilgrims, and
hung with pious offerings. Lamps burn continually therein as if it
were a shrine.
Back of the Porziuncula is the low, dark cell St. Francis inhabited,
and where he ended his days. It was here, while he was dying, two of
the friars sang his Hymn of the Sun, which breathes so fully his love
for everything created. And when they ceased, he himself took up the
strain, to sing the sweetness of death, which he called his “sister,
terrible and beautiful,” in the spirit of Job, who said to corruption:
Thou art my father; to the worm: Thou art my mother and my sister.
Then we were taken into the recess where St. Francis so often
chastised his body, which he regarded as his beast of burden that it
behoved him to beat daily and to lead around with a halter. When
dying, he is said to have begged pardon of this old companion of the
way for inflicting so many stripes on it for the good of his soul.
There is also the _Cappella delle Rose_ with the _Spineto_—a little
court once filled with coarse brambles, but now aflush with roses.
Here St. Francis, being tempted to renounce a life in which he was
consumed with watchings and prayers, for his only reply threw himself
among the thorns, which, tinged with his blood, were immediately
changed into roses. They bloom here still, but without thorns, and
their petals are stained as with blood. If transplanted elsewhere, the
stains are said to fade away and the thorns to come forth again. It
was twelve of these roses, six red and six white, the saint bore with
him into the Porziuncula when the great _Perdono_ of the 2d of August
was granted—roses that for ever will embalm the church, and that have
been immortalized by artists all over Italy and Spain.
The immense convent of Observantine friars adjoining is now solitary
and desolate. The Italian government has turned the inmates out of
this cradle of their order, with the exception of two or three, who
are left as guardians of the church. The hundreds of poor, once fed at
their gates in time of need, now take revenge on the passing
traveller, and fasten themselves on him with pertinacious grasp. But
who can refuse a dole where St. Francis has made Poverty for ever
glorious?
From St. Mary of the Angels we went winding up the hill to Assisi. Its
base is clothed with the olive, the vine, and the fig, but its sides
are as nude and destitute as the Bride of St. Francis. Above, on the
right, rises the tall campanile of _Santa Chiara_ over the tomb of St.
Clare. At the left is the fortress-like edifice of the _Sagro
Convento_ on the Hill of Paradise, once known as the _Colle
d’Inferno_, where St. Francis desired to be buried among malefactors.
This monastery against the mountain side stands on a long line of
double arches that seem hewn out of the very cliff. It is one of the
most imposing and most interesting monuments in Italy, and astonishes
the eye by its bold, massive, and picturesque appearance, quite in
harmony with the old mediæval city. It has been called the _Sagro
Convento_ ever since its consecration by Pope Innocent IV. in 1243—the
Sacred Convent, _par excellence_. _Santa Chiara_ and this convent of
St. Francis seem like two strongholds at the extremities of the town
to protect it from danger. Between them it rises in terraces, crowned
by a ruined old citadel of feudal times. The declining sun lighted up
its domes, and towers, and venerable gray walls as we ascended, and
made it seem to our enraptured eyes a seraphic city indeed.
Half way up the hill we came to the Spedalicchio—the ancient ’Spital
where St. Francis so often came to take care of the lepers. It was
here, as he was borne on a litter to the Porziuncula by the friars, a
few days before his death, he begged them to stop and turn him around,
not to take a last look at the city he loved—for the eyes that had
wept so many tears were now blind—but to bless it with uplifted hands,
in solemn, tender words that have been graven over one of the gates:
_Benedicta tu civitas a Domino, quia per te multæ animæ salvabuntur,
et in te multi servi Altissimi habitabunt, et de te multi eligentur ad
regnum æternum._—A city blessed of the Lord art thou, because by thee
many souls shall be saved, and in thee shall dwell many servants of
the Most High, and from thee many shall be chosen to reign for ever
and ever!
With what emotion one enters its gates!… We drove through old, narrow,
ascending streets, silent and monastic, named after the saints; past
old rock-built houses of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with
the holy names of Jesus and Mary over nearly every door; flower-pots
with pinks and gillyflowers in all the windows, even the poorest, or
on ledges, or set in rings projecting from the walls; and women
spinning under the old archways like St. Clare, who, we are told, even
when wasted and enfeebled by her austerities, sat up in bed and span
linen of marvellous fineness.
Our hotel was close to the _Sagro Convento_, and, though extremely
fatigued, we at once hastened to the church, not to examine its
treasures of art, but to pray and find repose of heart overburdened by
the flood of memories that come over one in such a place as Assisi.
Then we returned to our room, and sat at the window looking off at the
setting sun and golden sky, and the shining dome of St. Mary of the
Angels, and the broad plain where was held the famous Chapter of Mats
in St. Francis’ time, with its narrow river winding through it. It was
like the page of a beautiful poem laid open before us. St. Francis
loved these hills clothed with the pale olive, this valley covered
with harvests and the vine, the free air and azure heavens, the
running stream, a fine prospect; and we sat long after the rich,
glorious convent bells rang out the Ave Maria, gazing at the fair
scene before us. Purple shadows began to creep up the rugged sides of
the hill, the golden light faded away in the wrest, the dome over the
Porziuncula grew dim, and the valley was covered with the rising
mists. It was time to close the window.
We spent most of the following day in the church. It is the very
inflorescence of Christian art, a great epic poem in honor of St.
Francis. A pope laid the corner-stone. All Christendom sent its
offerings. The most celebrated architects and painters of the time
lent the aid of their genius. One would think it had grown out of the
hill against which it is built. Its azure vaults starred with gold,
its ribbed arches that bend low like the boughs of a gloomy forest,
the delicacy of its carvings, its marble pavement, its windows with
their jewelled panes, and above all its walls covered with mystic
paintings that read like the very poetry of religion, need almost the
tongue of angels to describe them. M. Taine says: “No one, till he has
seen this unrivalled edifice, can have any idea of the art and genius
of the middle ages. Taken in connection with Dante and the _Fioretti_
of St. Francis, it is the masterpiece of mystic Christianity.” It was
the first Gothic church erected in Italy.[192] It is built in the form
of a cross, in memory of the mysterious crucifixion of St. Francis.
Its walls are of white marble, in honor of the Immaculate Virgin; and
there are twelve towers of red marble, in memory of the blood shed by
the Holy Apostles. It consists of two churches, one above the other,
and a crypt beneath, where lies the body of St. Francis. The upper
church is entered from a grassy terrace on the top of the Hill of
Paradise. The lower one opens at the side into an immense court
surrounded by an arcade. This under church, with its low Byzantine
arches, full of the mysterious gloom and solemnity so favorable to
pensive contemplation and prayer, has often been supposed typical of
the self-abasement and mortified life of St. Francis. Its delicious
chapels, with their struggling light, are well calculated to excite
sadness, penitence, and tears. The crypt beneath, with its horrible
darkness, its damp walls and death-like stillness, and its one tomb in
the centre awaiting the Resurrection, is a veritable limbo; while the
upper church, with its lofty, graceful, upspringing arches, all light
and joy, is symbolic of the transfigured soul of the seraphic Francis
in the beatitude of eternal glory.
But how can we go peering around this museum of Christian art, as if
in a picture-gallery? It would be positively wicked. The knee
instinctively bends before the saintly forms that people the twilight
solemnity of the lower church. It was thus we gazed up at Giotto’s
matchless frescos of the three monastic virtues on the arches over the
high altar, which stands directly above the tomb of St.
Francis—Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience—fit crown indeed for that
“meek man of God.” We remember seeing them during the Forty Hours’
Devotion, when the candles lit them up wondrously; the figures came
out in startling relief; the angels seemed actually hovering over the
divine Host below. The most celebrated of these paintings is the
_Spozalizio_ sung by Dante—the mystic espousals of St. Francis with
Poverty, the lady of his choice.
“A Dame to whom none openeth pleasure’s gate
More than to death, was, ‘gainst his father’s will,
His stripling choice: and he did make her his
Before the spiritual court by nuptial bonds.”
This was not an original conception of Giotto’s or Dante’s. They only
gave a more artistic expression to the popular belief. There was not a
cottage in Umbria that did not believe in these espousals of St.
Francis with Lady Poverty, who had, says the Divine Poet, lived more
than a thousand years bereft of her first bridegroom, Christ; and it
was from the lips of the poor and lowly they gathered the significant
allegory. It was also before their time St. Bonaventura wrote: “St.
Francis, journeying to Siena in the broad plain between Campiglia and
San Quirico, was encountered by three maidens in poor raiment, exactly
resembling each other in age and appearance, who saluted him with the
words: ‘Welcome, Lady Poverty,’ and suddenly disappeared. The brethren
not irrationally concluded that this apparition imported some mystery
pertaining to St. Francis, and that by the three poor maidens were
signified Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, the sum and beauty of
evangelical perfection, all of which shone with equal and consummate
lustre in the man of God, though he made the privilege of poverty his
chief glory.”
Dante with all his pride, and Giotto with his repugnance to poverty,
even when consecrated by religion, chose one of the most democratic of
subjects when they depicted these sacred espousals of St. Francis; for
it was the people he identified himself with in this union. He wedded
for better and worse the sorrows and misery, the misfortunes and
groans, of Italy,[193] and when dying,
“To his brotherhood,
As their just heritage, he gave in charge
His dearest Lady, and enjoined their love
And faith to her.”
The church teaches that the poor are Christ’s suffering members; that
it is he who is hungered and athirst in the sick and destitute; to him
is every alms given. St. Francis gave his whole being to Poverty thus
identified with Christ—a bride chosen only by a few elect souls in
these days of luxury and self-indulgence, but in whom the Christian
philosophers of the middle ages found an infinite charm. Plato
represents Love with bare feet and tattered, disordered garments, to
signify the forgetfulness of self that gives all and reserves nothing.
It is in this sense the choice of evangelical poverty is one of the
highest expressions of love to God in the Catholic Church.
“O hidden riches! O prolific good!” exclaims Dante. And no one ever
understood its value more than St. Francis, the _glorioso poverello di
Christo_, who was, says Bossuet, “perhaps the most desperate lover of
poverty ever known in the church.”
“O Lord Jesus!” cries St. Francis, “show me the ways of thy
dear Poverty.… Take pity on me and my lady Poverty whom I
love with so much ardor. Without her I can find no peace.
And it is thou, O my God! who hast inspired this great love.
She is seated in the dust of the highway, and her friends
pass her by with contempt. Thou seest the abasement of this
queen, O Lord Jesus! who didst descend from heaven to make
her thy spouse, and through her to beget children worthy of
thee, who art perfect. She was in the humility of thy
Mother’s womb. She was at the manger. She had her part in
the great combat thou didst fight for our redemption. In thy
Passion she alone did not abandon thee. Mary, thy Mother,
remained at the foot of the cross, but Poverty ascended it
with thee.[194] She clung more closely than ever to thy
breast. It was she who lovingly prepared the rude nails that
pierced thy hands and feet; she who didst present thee with
gall when thou wast suffering from thirst.… Thou didst die
in her loving embrace.… And even then this faithful spouse
did not forsake thee. She had thy body buried in the grave
of another. She wrapped thy cold limbs in the tomb, and with
her thou didst come forth glorious. Therefore thou hast
crowned her in heaven, and chosen her to mark thy elect with
the sign of redemption. Oh! who would not choose Lady
Poverty above all other brides? O Jesus! who for our sakes
didst become poor, the grace I beg of thee is the privilege
of sharing thy poverty. I ardently desire to be enriched
with this treasure. I pray thee that I and mine may never
possess anything in the world of our own, for the glory of
thy name, but that we may only subsist, during this
miserable life, on that which is given us in alms.”
How foreign this seems to the spirit of our age; and yet it is the
science of the cross, of which we need an infusion to counterbalance
the general worship of Mammon. Coleridge seems to have caught a
glimpse of the beauty and dignity of poverty when he wrote:
“It is a noble doctrine that teaches how slight a thing is
Poverty; what riches, nay, treasures untold, a man may
possess in the midst of it, if he does but seek them aright;
how much of the fiend’s apparent bulk is but a fog vapor of
the sickly and sophisticated mind. It is a noble endeavor
that would bring men to tread the fear of this phantom under
their firm feet, and _dare_ to be poor!”
Giotto represents St. Francis receiving his bride from the hands of
Christ himself. Her head is crowned with roses and light, but her feet
are bleeding from the thorns of the rough way. Her cheeks are hollow
and pale, but her eyes are full of fire. Her garments are worn and in
tatters, but she is beautiful with modesty and love. Hers is the
tempered spiritual beauty of one who has been chastened by misfortune,
but there is nothing of the degradation of human passion. It is the
poverty of country life, free, modest, unabashed, but ennobled by an
expression that religion alone can give. Worldlings attack her with
blows, and a dog, that last friend of the poor, is barking at her with
fury. Angels, beaming with joy and admiration, encircle these
mysterious nuptials. Below, in one corner, are the vices of the times
personified—the rapacity of the nobility, and the greed of monks who
have become unmindful of their obligations. At the left is the
youthful Francis sharing his mantle with a beggar, while an angel
above is ascending with the garment to heaven. The central figure in
the painting is the radiant form of Him who took upon himself the
likeness of the poor, on whose condition he now confers fresh dignity
by perpetuating a love of poverty in the person of Francis and his
order. Over all are angels of sacrifice offering to God the riches
that have been abandoned for the love of him.
Philosophy, poetry, and religion are all in this wonderful allegory,
which has shone here nearly six hundred years as a memorial and a
perpetual admonition to the followers of St. Francis.
Chastity is represented under the veiled form of a maiden who has
taken refuge in the tower of a fortress, defended by a triple wall,
and guarded by Innocence and Fortitude. She is kneeling in the
attitude of prayer, while angels bring her a crown and a palm. Before
the castle gates are depicted the divine means of purifying the human
soul: Baptism, with the cardinal virtues in attendance, and an angel
bearing the robe of innocence; Penance, in her hood and garb of serge,
or, as some say, St. Francis receiving new members into his fold,
among whom may be seen Dante in the habit of the Third Order; and
angels of Expiation consigning unseemly vices to the purifying flames
of a yawning gulf.
_Sancta Obedientia_, the least pleasing of these paintings, is
represented by the monastic yoke placed on the shoulders of a novice.
Prudence and Humility are at his side; the former, entrenched behind a
barrier with mirror and compass, has two faces, one examining the past
and the other considering the future. Humility is bearing a torch. The
old Adam of the human heart, under the form of a centaur, is put to
flight by these virtues.[195]
In the midst of these three priceless jewels is represented St.
Francis radiant with holiness, in a rich deacon’s dress, on a throne
of gold, and surrounded by angels who hymn his praise. Never was
mortal more glorified on earth than the humble St. Francis, out of
whose tomb has grown this richest flower of mediæval art.
On the wall of the left transept is a sublime painting of the
Crucifixion by Pietro Cavallini—one of the most important monuments of
the school of Giotto, who was one of the first to soften the
representations of the awful sufferings of Christ by an expression of
divine resignation and beauty of form. The Byzantine type of the
twelfth century, still scrupulously adhered to, was repulsive and
expressive only of the lowest stage of human suffering, as all know
who have seen the green, livid figures of Christ on the cross by
Margaritone, who died of grief at seeing his standard of excellence
set aside and despised. Cavallini, whose piety was so fervent that he
was regarded as a saint, had scruples, however, about condemning as an
artist what he had knelt before in prayer, though he widely departed
from the old school. Nothing could be more beautiful or pathetic than
the angels in this picture, who are weeping and wringing their hands
with anguish around the dying Saviour.… Among the figures below is
Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens, then (in 1342) at the head of the
Florentine republic, for whom this picture was painted. He is on
horseback with a jewelled cap, clothed in rich robes, and, strange to
say, with a nimbus around his head, which seems to have been a symbol
of power as well as sanctity in those days.
It was one of Cavallini’s Christs[196] that spoke to St. Bridget at
St. Paul’s without the walls of Rome; and he was the architect of the
shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey.
At the foot of the altar beneath the Crucifixion is buried Mary of
Savoy, granddaughter of Philip II. of Spain, a member of the Third
Order of St. Francis, who often came here to venerate his tomb and
seek counsel of St. Joseph of Copertino, then an inmate of the _Sagro
Convento_.
All the chapels of this lower church are famous for their frescos by
noted artists. Simone Memmi, the friend of Petrarch, and painter of
Laura, has covered one with the life of St. Martin, who, like St.
Francis after him, divided his cloak with a beggar, remaining for ever
a symbol of the divine words: I was naked and ye clothed me. The
Maddalena Chapel is covered with the legend of the
“Redeemed Magdalene,
And that Egyptian penitent whose tears
Fretted the rock, and moistened round her cave
The thirsty desert,”
by Puccio Capana, who became so attached to Assisi that he settled
there for life.
The melancholy Giottino adorned the chapel of St. Nicholas with his
usual harmony of color. On the arches of the chapel of St. Louis of
France a Franciscan tertiary, Adone Doni, painted the beautiful Sibyls
which Raphael admired and imitated at _Santa Maria della Pace_ in
Rome. Taddeo Gaddi, the godson and favorite pupil of Giotto, has also
left here many touching and beautiful paintings. In fact, all the
renowned artists of the day seemed to vie with each other in adorning
this monument to the memory of St. Francis, and some of their works
were offerings of love and gratitude. To the artistic eye they are
models worthy of study, but to us pilgrims so many visions of beauty
and holiness.
In the sacristy is the most authentic portrait of St. Francis in
existence, by Giunta Pisano—a lank, wasted form that by no means
reflects the charm the saint most certainly had to attract so many
disciples around him, to say nothing of his power over the beasts of
the earth and the birds of the air. Two marble staircases lead down to
the sepulchral chamber where lies the body of St. Francis. This crypt,
or third church, as it is sometimes called, is of recent construction,
and, though not in harmony with the upper churches, is a prodigious
achievement, dug as it is out of the rock on which the whole edifice
rests. It is of the Doric order, and in the form of a Greek cross, and
lined with precious marbles. It is dark and tomb-like, being lighted
only by lamps around the bronze shrine, which stands in the very
centre. The body of St. Francis had lain nearly six hundred years in
the heart of the mountain, shrouded in a mystery that had given rise
to many popular legends. When brought here in 1230, it was still
flexible as when he was alive, and the mysterious stigmata distinctly
visible. This was four years after his death. It was then shown to the
people in its cypress coffin, amid the flourish of trumpets and the
shouts of the multitude, and put on a magnificent car drawn by oxen
which were covered with purple draperies sent by the Emperor of
Constantinople, and escorted by a long procession of friars with palms
and torches in their hands, chanting hymns composed by Pope Gregory
IX. himself. Legates, bishops, and a multitude of clergy followed. But
the car was guarded by the magistrates of Assisi, and so fearful were
the people lest the body of their saint should be taken from them
that, when it arrived at the _Colle d’Inferno_, they would not allow
the clergy to take possession of it, but buried it themselves in the
very bowels of the earth. Hence a certain mystery that always hung
over the tomb.
It is related that the third night after his burial the mountain was
shaken by an earthquake and surrounded by an unearthly light. The
friars, hastening to the place where they knew their patriarch lay
hidden, found the rock rent asunder and the saint standing on his tomb
with transfigured face and eyes raised to heaven. Gregory IX. is said
to have come to witness the prodigy, and left this inscription on the
wall: _Ante obitum mortuus; post obitum vivens_—Before his death,
dead; after death, living.
It became a popular belief that this body, which bore the impress of
the Passion of Christ, would never see corruption, and that he would
remain thus, ever living and praying, in the depths of his
inaccessible tomb.
In 1818 Pius VII. authorized the Franciscans to search for the body of
their founder. After continued excavations in the rock for fifty-two
days, or rather nights (for they worked in the silence and secrecy of
the night), they came to an iron grate that protected the narrow
recess where lay the saint. It was then the crypt was constructed to
receive the sacred body. The same old grate is before the present
shrine, and the sacristan thrust his torch through the bars, that we
might catch a glimpse of the remains of one
“Whose marvellous life deservedly were sung
In heights empyreal.”
Around this glorious tomb all the Franciscans of Assisi, before they
were suppressed by the present Italian government, used to gather
every Saturday at the vesper hour, to chant, with lighted tapers in
hand, the Psalm _Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi_, sung by St. Francis
when he was dying. It has been set to music by one of the friars in a
grand air known as the _Transito_ because it celebrates the _transit_
of the saint to a higher life. This became one of the attractions of
the place which kings and princes considered it a favor to hear, but
of course it is no longer sung. Let us hope that this forced
suspension is only transitory.
At the door of the crypt are the statues of Pius VII., in whose
pontificate it was constructed, and Pius IX., a member of the Third
Order, who has surrounded it with twelve bas-reliefs representing the
life of the saint.
A long flight of stone steps leads from the lower court to the terrace
before the upper church, which is grassy and starred with daisies.
This church is as lofty and brilliant with light as the other is
gloomy and low-browed. Cimabue and Giotto adorned its walls with
paintings that are now sadly defaced, but they have a fascination no
modern artist can inspire, and we linger over them as over the
remembrance of some half-forgotten dream, hoping to catch a clearer
view before they fade for ever away. Above are scenes from the Holy
Scriptures—a glorious _Biblia Pauperum_, indeed, it must have been
when fresh from the artist’s hands; and this is especially the church
of the people, as the lower one is that of the friars. Below is the
wondrous life of St. Francis, a poem in twenty-eight cantos, by
Giotto, the painter of St. Francis _par excellence_, who never seemed
weary of his favorite subject.
There are over one hundred stalls in the choir, delicately carved by
Sanseverino, with curious intarsia-work representing the popes,
doctors, and saints of the Franciscan Order.
The beautiful lancet windows of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries are “suffused with lessons sweet of heavenly lore,” glorious
in color, which gives marvellous hues to Cimabue’s angels who hover in
the arches with “varied plume and changeful vest.” The lower church is
that of poor mortals who struggle with earth and grope for the light.
This one depicts the glory of the saints, and is a symbol of Paradise.
Connected with the church is the _Sagro Convento_, which is entered by
an arched passage lined with portraits of distinguished Franciscans.
There are four large cloisters, now solitary but for the ascetic forms
painted on their walls, and the silent tombs of the dead friars. Long
corridors, lined with saints of the Order, lead to the narrow cells
intended for the living. Two refectories were shown us, one large
enough to contain two hundred and fifty persons, with _Silentium_ in
great letters on the wall over the fine Cenacolo by Solimena. Opposite
the latter is a Crucifixion by Adone Doni, with Jerusalem and Assisi
in the background, and SS. Francis and Clare at the foot of the cross.
Narrow tables extended around the room, with seats against the wall on
which the _Benedicite_ is carved.
But the most striking feature of this vast monastery is the immense
gallery on the western side, like an arcade on the brink of a
precipice, with a torrent in the depths below. This was constructed by
Sixtus IV., whose statue is at one end. It affords a grand view over
the whole Umbrian valley. Montefalco, Spello, and Perugia are in full
sight; below is the Porziuncula; in the distance the purple Apennines,
with the glorious Italian sky over all. One needs no better book of
devotion than this page of nature.
On the other side of the monastery the windows look down on the garden
of the friars with charming walks on the side of the mountain amid
olives and cypresses.
It was not till the second morning we began to explore Assisi. What
queer old lanes, up and down hill, we passed along, the walls covered
with moss and ferns out of which green lizards darted! The streets
were grassy and noiseless, being mostly inaccessible to carriages.
Coats-of-arms are sculptured over many of the massive old portals,
accompanied, perhaps, with some religious symbol. On one was _Viva
Gesu e Maria!_ Another had _Ubi Deus ibi pax_. Every few moments we
came to a lovely fresco of the Madonna—too beautiful a flower to bloom
on the rough highways of life. Everything was old and quaint, and in
harmony with the traditions of the place; everything redolent of the
middle ages and of the memory of St. Francis. Assisi is full of
monuments that perpetuate some incident of his life. There is _San
Francesco il Piccolo_—Little St. Francis—an oratory on the site of the
stable where he was born, with the inscription:
Hoc oratorium fuit bovis et asini stabulum
In quo natus est Franciscus mundi speculum;
—This chapel was the stable of an ox and ass, wherein was born
Francis, the mirror of the world.[197]
The _Chiesa Nuova_—the _New Church_, but over two hundred and sixty
years old—was built by Philip III. of Spain on the site of the house
of Pietro Bernardone, the father of St. Francis, and has always been
under the protection of the Spanish crown. It is in the form of a
Greek cross, with five domes in memory of the five mystic wounds of
the saint. Over the entrance are graven the arms of Spain. A flock of
white pigeons was around the door. A young friar with mild, pleasant
eyes came forward in his brown habit to show us the church. Some
portions of the original house of Bernardone have been preserved;
among others, a low, round arch with an old door held together by iron
clamps. And at the left is the low cell in which St. Francis was
confined three days by his father for selling some of his goods to
repair San Damiano. In it is a statue of the saint, kneeling with
folded hands, before which we found flowers and a burning lamp. Around
the central dome are statues of celebrated Franciscans: St. Louis of
Toulouse, St. Clare, St. Diego, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary. In the
presbytery is shown St. Francis’ chamber.
In the bishop’s palace is the room where St. Francis stripped off his
garments in the presence of his father, and the bishop covered him
with his mantle. It contains a painting of the scene.
There is an oratory where once dwelt Bernard de Quintavalle, the first
disciple of Francis. Here he saw the saint upon his knees all night,
weeping and exclaiming, _Deus meus et omnia_—My God and my all! and
conceived such a veneration for him that he
“Did bare his feet, and in pursuit of peace,
So heavenly, ran, yet deemed his footing slow.”
The church of St. Nicholas is where they consulted the Gospel to know
what manner of life they should lead.
On our way to all these places, so touching to the heart of a
Catholic, we passed the theatre named for Metastasio, who was enrolled
among the citizens of Assisi, and whose father was a native of the
place. We visited likewise the portico of the temple of Minerva, now a
church, which is one of the finest specimens of Greek art in Italy.
Goethe stopped at Assisi on purpose to visit it, but, like our own
Hawthorne after him, passed by the marvels of art around the tomb of
St. Francis.
It must not be supposed that all this while we have forgotten St.
Clare, the moon in the heavens of the Franciscan Order, of which St.
Francis is the sun, as Lope de Vega, the celebrated Spanish poet, and,
by the way, a Franciscan tertiary, says:
“Cielo es vuestra religion
Y como sol haveis sido,
Quereis que haya luna Clara
Mas que su mismo appellido.”
We now went to visit her shrine, which is in the church of _Santa
Chiara_, on the very edge of the hill at the western extremity of
Assisi. The so-called piazza in front is rather a broad terrace from
which one looks directly down on the tops of the olives below. The
church is of the purest Gothic style of the thirteenth century, with
enormous flying buttresses to preserve it from earthquakes. Its lofty
campanile with open arches is one of the prominent features of Assisi.
Adjoining is the monastery of Clarists, that looks more like a castle
with ramparts and battlements. We entered the sculptured portal
between two lions growling over their cubs, and found ourselves in a
great church without aisles, almost without ornament, cold, severe,
and deserted. It was once nearly covered with paintings, of which only
a few remain. Over the main altar are encircled some of the celebrated
virgin saints who early gave their souls to heaven: Agnes, Cecilia,
Catherine, Lucy, Clare—a _Corona Virginum_ indeed, full of delicacy
and expression, painted by Giottino. In a side chapel is an
interesting old picture of St. Clare, said to have been painted by
Cimabue thirty years after her death. It represents her with noble but
delicate features, a fair complexion and smiling lips, and majestic in
form. In fact, she was of uncommon stature. The body of her sister
Agnes is in a tomb over the altar.
This church was first known as St. George’s, but took the name of St.
Clare after her body was brought here for burial. Here the
canonization of St. Francis took place. Through a grate that looks
into the nuns’ chapel, we saw by the light of a candle the old
Byzantine crucifix—of the tenth century, at least—which spoke to
Francis at San Damiano: _Vade, Francisce, et repara domum meam quæ
labitur_. It is painted on wood, with the Maries and St. John at the
foot, and angels hovering over the arms of the cross.
A broad staircase leads down from the nave to the subterranean chapel
recently constructed for the shrine of St. Clare. Her sacred remains,
by the permission of Pius IX., were, in 1850, taken out of the narrow
recess in the rock where they had lain five hundred and ninety years.
All the bones were found perfect. One hand was on her breast, the
other at her side with the remains of some fragrant flowers. On her
head was a wreath of laurel, the leaves still green and flexible; and
scattered around her were leaves of wild thyme. These remains were
borne solemnly through the city she and St. Francis have made so
illustrious. Children strewed the way before them with flowers and
green leaves, after the fashion of Italy, and young maidens followed
with lilies in their hands. In this manner they were taken to the
_Sagro Convento_, stopping at six convents on the way, and brought
back at night by the light of torches. They are now in a beautiful
Gothic chapel, partly due to the liberality of Pius IX. Two nuns in
gray showed us the shrine. St. Clare lies on a rich marble couch, with
a lily in her hand, and the rules of her rigid order on her breast,
surrounded by lamps. We also saw some of the long, fair hair cut off
at the Porziuncula, and some of the fine linen she spun with her own
hands.
Passing through an old gateway a little beyond _Santa Chiara_, we left
the city and strolled leisurely down the long, steep side of the
mountain, along a charming road lined with hedges and groves of
olive-trees. The fields were bright with poppies, the trees melodious
with birds, and the burning sun of Italy as intense as the soul of St.
Francis, who must often have trod the same path. At length we came to
a Madonna in a niche, at the corner of a group of buildings, with a
few faded flowers before her, and, in a minute more, to an old church
and monastery that looked as if they needed again the restoring hand
of St. Francis. This is San Damiano, homely and simple, but like a
bird’s nest on the mountain-side, half hid among olives which, gnarled
and twisted and split asunder, looked as old as the convent itself. It
seemed a fit dove-cot for the gentle Clare and her companions, whom
St. Francis established here in quietness and solitude.
A small court leads to the church, before which is a portico with a
fresco of St. Clare repulsing the Saracens. These Saracens were in the
employ of Frederick II. On their way to attack Assisi, ravaging the
country as they went, they came to San Damiano, and scaled the convent
walls in the night. The poor nuns, in their terror, took refuge around
the bed of St. Clare, who, though ill, rose by the aid of two sisters,
and, taking the Blessed Sacrament in her hands, she went forth on the
balcony, chanting in a loud voice: “Thou hast rebuked the heathen,
thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever
and ever!” This unexpected apparition in the darkness of night, amid
the light that streamed around the uplifted Host, so terrified the
infidel band that they took immediate flight. All Assisi resounded
with hymns of joy. But a few days after they returned anew, vowing to
take the city. Then Clare and her companions covered their heads with
ashes, and, prostrating themselves before the altar, wept and prayed
till the enemy was dispersed by the valiant citizens. This was on the
22d of June, 1234, on which day the inhabitants of Assisi vowed an
annual pilgrimage to San Damiano in gratitude for their deliverance.
Everything in this convent has been left in its primitive simplicity.
The bell is merely suspended from the wall. The rafters are bare. The
buildings are of unpolished stone. Everything bears the impress of the
evangelical poverty its inmates embraced. But nature supplies what is
lacking in art. The site is delicious. The view from the terrace is
lovely, with the dear Porziuncula in the distance, and the fertile
valley radiant in the sun.
Several steps lead down into the little, sombre church, which is only
lighted by two small windows. There are some old frescos on the wall,
a few votive offerings falling to pieces, tarnished wooden
candlesticks on the altars, and faded flowers, as if fresh ones would
be out of keeping. In an oratory at the right is a miraculous
crucifix, carved out of wood by a Franciscan friar in the sixteenth
century. The head is said to have been finished by an angel while the
artist slept, and, in fact, has a wonderful expression, which changes
with different points of view. On the steps of the altar beneath sat a
child with olive complexion and coal-black eyes, eating a crust. She
looked as if she might have been left behind by the Saracens. Not
another soul was in the church. She had doubtless strayed in from a
neighboring house with the usual liberty of the free-and-easy
Italians, who have nothing of the awe of northern nations in the house
of God.
On the left side of the church are several objects that belonged to
St. Clare—a bell with too sharp a sound for so sweet a saint, her
breviary, and the ivory ciborium, curiously carved, with which she
repulsed the infidel host.
Going through the chancel, we came to the choir of the first Clarists,
precisely as it was in the thirteenth century—small, dim, and of
extreme simplicity. The pavement is of brick. The stalls are plain
wooden seats, now worm-eaten, which turn back on wooden pivots. There
is only one narrow window with little panes set in lead. The decayed
door turns on a wooden bar inserted in grooves. Old lecterns stand in
the centre, and the list of St. Clare’s first companions, who sang
here the divine praises, hangs on the wall. In one corner is the
recess where the wall gave way to hide St. Francis from the fury of
his father. The saint is here painted in the red Tuscan vest of the
time, such as we see in pictures of Dante.
By this time the guardian of the church had arrived, and he took us
into the refectory, which is gloomy and time-stained, with low Gothic
arches, once frescoed. There are two windows with leaded panes, and
worm-eaten tables around the blackened walls, with the place in one
corner occupied by St. Clare. At one end is painted the miracle of the
loaves, now half effaced; for it was here Pope Innocent IV., who had
come to visit the saint, commanded her to bless the frugal repast.
Confused, she knelt down and made the sign of the cross over the
table, which was miraculously imprinted on each of the loaves.
Then we went up the brick stairs, through narrow passages, past the
small cell of Sister Agnes, with its one little window looking down
into an old cloister with a well in the centre, and came to St.
Clare’s oratory, where she performed her devotions when too infirm to
descend to the choir. Close by is the room where she died, poor and
simple, unpainted beams overhead, and the pavement of brick. The lover
of art finds nothing here to please the eye, but to the religious soul
there is a world of moral beauty. Here Pope Innocent IV. came to see
her on her death-bed. “Know, O my soul!” she exclaimed as she was
dying, “thou hast a good viaticum to go with thee, an excellent guide
to show thee the way. Fear not. Be tranquil, for He who created thee,
and has always watched over thee with the tender love of a mother for
her child, now comes with his sanctifying grace. Blessed be thou, O
Lord! because thou hast created me.”
One of the nuns asked to whom she was speaking so lovingly. “Dear
daughter,” replied she, “I am talking to my blessed soul.” Then
turning to another sister, she said: “Seest thou not, my daughter, the
King of Glory whom I behold?” And their eyes being opened, they saw a
great company of celestial virgins clothed in white coming down out of
heaven with the Queen of all saints at their head. And her soul at
once departed to join them.
The death of St. Clare is the subject of one of Murillo’s
masterpieces, a picture that resumes, as M. Nettement says, all the
hopes and fears of Italy. The earth is wrapped in darkness. The
sick-chamber, with its inmates, is veiled in obscurity. But the
heavenly Jerusalem opens, dispersing the gloom and lighting up with
its splendor the face of the dying nun, which beams like a star on
everything around her. Such is the church, threatened on the one hand
by the thick darkness of the world, but cheered on the other by a
never-failing light from heaven like a great hope.
Ave, Mater humilis,
Ancilla Crucifixi,
Clara, virgo nobilis,
Discipula Francisci,
Ad cœlestem gloriam
Fac nos proficisci. Amen
A steep mountain-path through the woods leads north of Assisi to the
_Eremo delle Carcere_, composed of a cluster of houses among the
ilex-trees, and five or six cells hollowed in the cliffs, to which St.
Francis and his first disciples used to retire when they wished to
give themselves up to the bliss of uninterrupted contemplation. No
place could be more favorable for such a purpose. The wooded mountain,
the wild ravine, the profound silence, the solitary paths, the sky of
Italy—and God. What more did they need? There is the cave of St.
Francis with the crucifix, carved with skill and expression, which he
used to carry with him in his evangelical rounds, and the couch of
stone on which he took his slight repose. Near by is the evergreen oak
where the birds, who once received his blessing, still sing the
praises of God. A place is pointed out where the demon who had tempted
him cast himself despairingly into the abyss; and below is the _Fosco
delle Carcere_, where flowed the turbulent stream which so disturbed
the hermits in their devotions that St. Francis prayed its course
might be stayed; and for six hundred years it has only flowed before
some special disaster to the land. As may be supposed, it has not
failed, as we were assured, to flow in abundance ever since the day
Victor Emanuel set his foot in the Pontifical States.
Every branch of the Franciscan Order has a house at Assisi, but most
of these communities have been dispersed by the Italian government.
People are at liberty to dress in purple and fine linen, and indulge
in every earthly pleasure; but to do penance, to put on sandals and a
brown habit, and “clothe one’s self in good St. Francis’ girdle,” is
quite another affair. Besides, the Franciscans are traditionally the
friends of the people, and the influence they once exerted against the
German emperors who oppressed Italy may not be forgotten. Frederick
the Second’s ministers said the Minor Friars were a more formidable
obstacle to encounter than a large army. The tertiaries of the middle
ages exercised great influence in the moral and political world. They
created institutions of mutual credit in the thirteenth century. At
the voice of St. Rose, who belonged to the third order, Viterbo rose
up against Frederick II.
This branch of the seraphic order embraced all classes of society. One
hundred and thirty-four emperors, queens, and princesses are said to
have belonged to it, among whom were Louis IX. of France, the Emperor
Charles V. of Germany, Maria Theresa of Austria, etc. Christopher
Columbus, Raphael, and Michael Angelo were also tertiaries. Princes
assumed the cord on their arms, like Francis I., Duke of Brittany, who
added the motto: _Plus qu’autre_, as if he, more than any one, revered
the saint whose name he bore. Giotto has painted a Franciscan
ascending to heaven by means of his girdle, and Lope de Vega makes use
of the same image in his ode to St. Francis:
“Vuestra cordon es la escala
De Jacob, pues hemos visto
Por los nudos de sus passos
Subir sobre el cielo empireo
No gigantes, sino humildes.”[198]
[192] The upper church is of the Gothic style; the lower
one, Lombard; and the crypt, Grecian.
[193] Ozanam.
[194] Dante’s actual words:
“With Christ she mounted on the cross,
When Mary stayed beneath.”
[195] In this allegory we have followed, in part the
interpretation of M. Ozanam.
[196] This is carved.
[197] Several other saints have had the happiness of being
born in a stable, as St. Joseph de Copertino and St.
Camillo de Lellis; the latter from a pious wish of his
mother that he might come into the world like the Son of
God.
[198] Your cord is the ladder of Jacob; we have seen not
the mighty, but the lowly of heart, mount up by its knots
to the empyreal heaven.
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER III.
A LITTLE PLOT.
The next morning the girls set their possessions in order, brought out
the few books they had thought worth while to take with them, and the
little ornaments they had bought by the way, and scattered them about
the rooms.
Among these objects was a large and populous photograph-book, which
Isabel displayed to the Signora, introducing the strangers to her, and
recalling to her memory the friends whose faces had changed beyond her
recognition.
“This is Louis Marion,” she said; “and I shouldn’t be surprised if we
were to see him here before long. We must introduce him to you—that
is, if he should call on us. He used to be a great friend of ours,
but, for some reason or other, he grew a little cool before we left,
and didn’t even come to say good-by. I never could understand what was
the matter. May be it wasn’t anything; and we were in such a bustle of
preparation and taking leave of everybody that there was no chance to
ask for explanations.”
The Signora looked with interest at this picture; for the person,
though a stranger, had been much in her mind of late. His looks
pleased her. It was a good face, not too handsome, but with fine eyes,
and an appearance of strength softened here and there by some delicate
finish. She had hoped most decidedly that he would come, and a letter
which she had received that morning made her desire his coming more
than before.
“I have no patience with Isabel Vane,” the writer declared
energetically. “She is so wrapped up in herself, and so insensitive,
that delicacy is quite thrown away on her. She is one of those persons
who think no one can talk except those who will interrupt and talk
loudly, and so, with the greatest apparent unconsciousness, she
monopolizes all the attention of their friends, and sets Bianca aside
as if she were a nobody. It never occurs to her that a gentleman may
admire her sister; and yet Bianca is very much admired, in an odd,
provoking kind of way. Most people, you know, attend to the loudest
talker; and in the presence of Isabel her sister was sometimes almost
neglected, even by those who were constantly thinking of her. Anybody
with two eyes could see that Louis Marion liked her, and I am sure she
thought he did, and that there was a sort of tacit understanding
between them. They didn’t talk much together, but I’ve seen them
manage to be near each other, and where they could hear each other’s
voices, and one of them never left the company without glancing back
and receiving a glance in return. At length, I don’t know how it came
about, but Isabel seemed to take his attentions to herself, and may be
she said something about him to Bianca. Then a coldness grew up
between her and Marion, and a thousand little complications helped it
on, and he began to absent himself from the house, and Bianca
pretended not to see him unless he came to speak to her, and so they
separated, and all in consequence of the stupid conceit of a girl whom
I could shake with a good will.”
We need not quote the letter further, though the writer, in the
fulness of her heart, added several pages of amplifications on the
theme, all which the Signora had read and re-read.
Bianca was arranging books on the table when the photograph-book was
opened. She continued her employment a few minutes; but when they
approached the page where Louis Marion’s picture was she turned away,
and when his name was mentioned she was leaning out of the window,
much interested apparently, in something going on in the street.
“Whose photographs are these?” the Signora asked.
“Oh! they are all family friends,” was the reply. “I might say they
are mine, for I asked for the most of them. Neither papa nor Bianca
would have thought of it. But they belong to the firm.”
The Signora prided herself on being a rather exceptionally honest and
straightforward woman; but at this moment a very complicated little
plot was forming itself in her mind. She could guess with how tender
an interest Bianca might regard this photograph, but how impossible it
might be for her to show anything but the utmost indifference to it,
and how, sometimes, it might be a pleasure to contemplate it when she
would not venture to do so. She could guess that it had been really
given for her sake, though she had not been the one to ask for it, and
what faint bloom of a downcast smile the gentleman might have seen in
her face when it was put in its place.
“It is a darkish face, and the least in the world too small for the
place,” the Signora said; “and so is this one next it.”
A word of cool depreciation is enough to take the lustre from a star
with most people, and Miss Isabel Vane was no exception. If one abuses
a person’s friends or ridicules their possessions, they may be stirred
to anger; but that dispassionate, slighting way gives the deadliest of
shocks to friendship.
“It scarcely does him justice,” the young lady owned; “and, as you
say, the photographs are a little too small for their places. I must
ask Marion for another when he comes, if he should come. The other I
do not care about. He was simply put in to fill up. I must buy four
more to put in these vacant places.”
“Stay!” the Signora said. “I have some which are worth more than
merely to fill the vacant places; they will adorn the book.”
She brought from her room a little box of card-photographs, and began
to select from them. “Here is the Holy Father on his knees before what
seems to be the statue of St. Joseph holding the Child; and here are
four cardinals and a patriarch. See how well they fit in! Do you mind
my taking these two out?”
“Oh! no.” Isabel was too much pleased with these notable additions to
her gallery to care for the two indifferent acquaintances who made
room for them. But as the Signora carelessly, and quite as a matter of
course, tossed the two cards into the box where their substitutes had
been, she saw that Bianca had turned from the window and was regarding
them. Even in the half glance she cast she could know that the turning
had been sudden, and that the girl’s head was held very high.
The Signora rose. “Well, children, if we are going to _Santa Croce_ we
must start in an hour. It is a great _festa_ there, and I think there
will be a crowd. Didn’t Bianca promise to braid my hair in a wonderful
new way? I remembered it this morning, and have only given my locks a
twist about the comb, and they are on the point of falling about my
shoulders in the most romantic manner.”
She would not seem to see the faint shade of disturbance with which
Bianca followed her from the room. She well knew that in seeming to
slight the one that tender heart held dear she had chilled the heart
toward herself; but that was not to last long, neither the pain nor
the displeasure. She slipped a white dressing-sack on, seated herself
before the long mirror, and shook her hair down. “Now, my dear, make
me as beautiful as you like,” she said; and, taking the box of
photographs she had brought with her on her lap, began to turn them
over. “You had better take charge of these,” she remarked, laying the
two at the top aside before beginning her survey of the others.
Bianca said nothing, but her hands, combing out the long, fair locks,
were a little unsteady, and her face blushed in the mirror, a swift,
startled blush.
“Three strands, my dear,” the Signora said. “I never fancied a braid
of any other sort for the hair. More than three strands always seems
to me like a market-basket on the head of a market-woman. I always
thought very elaborate hair-dressing vulgar and unbecoming. I like the
way yours is done this morning.”
Bianca’s hair was in a few large satin-smooth curls tied back with a
ribbon of so fresh a green as to be almost gold, and the Signora knew
that, after a careful brushing, five minutes had accomplished all the
rest. There were no curl-papers nor hot irons; it was only to brush
the tress about the pretty fore-finger, and it dropped in glossy coil
on coil.
“Many people do not like curls,” Bianca said. “But it seems a pity to
straighten out and braid curly hair. I think nature meant such hair to
have its own way, just like vine tendrils, though the use may not be
so evident.”
She spoke with a certain quietness, not cold, yet not cordial, and
kept her eyes fixed on the braid her skilful fingers were weaving
rapidly.
The Signora took up the photographs she had laid aside, glanced at
one, and dropped it, then looked at the other for some time in
silence. “What fine, earnest eyes he has!” she said at length. “There
is even something reproachful in their expression, as if he were
looking at one who had doubted him. I do not doubt you, sir. On the
contrary, I am disposed to have the utmost confidence in you.
Moreover, I shall be happy to see you in Rome.”
She laid the photograph carefully on the other, and, closing her eyes,
resigned herself entirely to the care of her pretty handmaiden. There
was silence for a few minutes while the braids were being finished;
then she felt a soft hand slip down each cheek with a caressing touch.
“Open your eyes, _carissima mia_,” said a voice as soft, “and tell me
how these are to be arranged. Will you have them looped or in a
crown?”
The thin ice was quite melted; and when the hair-dressing was
finished, Bianca went off to her own room, bearing the treasure that
had been put into her possession in such an artful manner. “It makes
me feel very twisted to act in such a crooked way; but if it is a
crooked it isn’t a dark way. And the dear child is so happy!” the
Signora thought.
A shower was passing to the south when our party came out of the
church at noon, and the sun was so veiled that they sent their
carriage on, and walked from _Santa Croce_ to St. John Lateran. They
could see a pearly stream of water pouring down far away from a dark
spot in the sky to a dark spot on the earth; but the clouds over their
heads were as tender and delicate as the shadows of maidenhair ferns
about a fountain. They lingered till every one had passed them, and,
when they came to the last mulberry-tree of the beautiful avenue,
there was left only a _contadino_ lounging on the stone bench there.
He was a spectacle of faded rags and superb contentment, and seemed to
have neither desire nor intention to leave the place for hours; but
when he saw them look longingly at the seat, he rose, saluted them
with an indescribably shabby hat, in which were stuck three fresh
roses, and relinquished the bench to them.
Bianca sighed with delight as she glanced about, but said nothing. The
others seemed disposed to talk.
“I heard this morning, Signora, what made me understand your
admiration for the Italian language,” Mr. Vane said. “While you three
were in the church I went outside the door, and presently, as I stood
there, I heard two men talking behind me. Of course I did not
understand a word they said, but I listened attentively. I never heard
such exquisite spoken sounds in my life. The questions and replies
made me think of the beautiful incised wreaths and sprigs on your
candelabra. There wasn’t a syllable blurred, as we constantly hear in
our own language; but I am sure every word was pronounced perfectly.
When the two seemed to be going, I looked round and saw two Capuchin
monks with bare ankles, and robes faded out to a dull brick-color.”
“Those same faded robes may cover very accomplished men,” the Signora
said. “Some of them are fine preachers. I wish we had more preaching
in Rome. One very seldom hears a sermon. The first one I heard made
the same impression on me, as to the language, that the talk of these
monks has made on you. I did not understand, but I was charmed. It
reminded me of—Landor, wasn’t it? writing of Porson:
“‘So voluble, so eloquent,
You little heeded what he meant.’
That was in St. Philip Neri’s Church.”
“Dulness is inexcusable in a Catholic preacher in any language,” Mr.
Vane said. “If they should not have much talent of their own, they
have such a wealth to draw from—all the beautiful legends and customs,
and the grand old authors, and the lives of the saints. A dull
Protestant preacher has the Bible, it is true; but, as a rule, I find
that only the eloquent ones use that source of wealth freely, or know
how to use it. One of the most eloquent Catholic preachers I ever
heard used to make his strongest hits by simply refraining from
speech. I recollect one sermon of his where he spoke of St. Augustine,
whom I thought he was going to describe, but whom he made appear more
brilliant by not describing. ‘His genius,’ he began, then stopped,
seemed to search for words, at last threw his head back and clasped
his hands. ‘Oh! the genius of St. Augustine,’ he exclaimed. Of course
the tribute was more splendid than the most rolling period could have
been. Nearly all his effective climaxes were like that—noble words
breaking up into silence, like a Roman arch into a Gothic.”
“You will have to renounce your Gothic, Bianca,” the Signora said; “at
least, while you are in Rome. You won’t even want to see it here, and
you may lose your taste for it as church architecture. I sometimes
think I have, though I was once enthusiastic about it. Now the single
column or the massive pier, with the round arch above, seems to me the
perfect expression of a perfect and serene faith. It is a following of
the sky-shape. The complications and subtilty of the Gothic are more
like the searching for truth of an aspiring and dissatisfied soul.
When I go from under the noble arches and cupolas of _Santa Maria
Maggiore_ to the church of _St. Alphonsus Liguori_, just beyond it, I
receive an impression of fretfulness and unrest.”
“I should be sorry to give up _Notre Dame de Paris_ and the two
churches at Rouen,” Bianca murmured half absently, her soft, bright
eyes gathering in all the beauty within their ken.
Isabel was differently employed. She was busy noting facts in a little
plethoric book with yellow covers and an elastic strap that she always
carried in her pocket. “Do you know how long and how wide this open
space between the two basilicas is?” she asked of the Signora, holding
her lead-pencil suspended.
“Oh! it is long enough for a nice walk, you see, and broad enough to
see everything at the other side without bumping your eyes. That is
the city wall opposite, you know.”
“I’d like to know how many acres there are,” Isabel said to herself.
“I believe I could measure it by my eyes. Let me see! It’s a foot to
that stone. Five and a half feet make a rod, pole, or perch. Five and
a half that distance would go to the next tree. A rod, then, from me
to the tree. Now for a rood! Sixteen and a half—no! How I do forget!
Three barley-corns make one inch, twelve inches make a foot, five and
a half feet make a rod, pole, or perch, sixteen and a half rods,
poles, or—bah! that isn’t it. Signora, will you be so good as to tell
me how many rods make a rood?—that is, if it is rods that they make
roods of. I used to know it, but there’s a hitch somewhere.”
“How should I know, my dear?” asked the Signora with mild surprise.
“Oh! don’t measure things, Bell!” pleaded her sister. “Remember London
Tower.”
For Miss Vane had presumed to ask the superb “beef-eater” who escorted
them through the Tower how thick might be the walls, the solidity of
which he was enlarging upon, and the cool stare with which he drew the
eyes of the whole party upon her, and the gently sarcastic “I do not
know; I have never measured them,” with which he replied, had silenced
her for the whole afternoon. “That was because I had asked something
he could not answer,” she said, in telling the story. “And his manner
was so imposing that it was hours before I could rid myself of the
impression that I had put a very absurd and improper question. He
didn’t refuse sixpence, though, for a piece of ivy from Beauchamp
Tower,” she added, shrugging her shoulders.
“Bell,” whispered her sister, “I’ll tell you about the rods and roods,
if you won’t measure any more.” Then, having received the promise, she
explained the “hitch,” which has doubtless left its little tangle on
many a youthful memory.
A woman with a white handkerchief on her head came along, and beckoned
to the ragged man with the roses, who was still lounging near, and the
two went off together.
“Did you notice how she beckoned?” the Signora asked. “I always notice
that here. They beckon as if indicating the feet, the palm of the hand
being downward, the fingers toward the ground. We beckon with the palm
and fingers upward, indicating the head. It used to confuse me, and I
fancied myself sent away with a refusal when I was invited to enter.
You will have to learn their signs. A certain shrug and raising of the
eyebrows mean no. Another no—an odious one to me—is to wag to and fro
the uplifted forefinger of the right hand. This is nearly always
accompanied by a compression or puckering up of the mouth. But, my
dear friends, it is time for luncheon. Shall we go?”
They rose slowly, and slowly strolled across the open space where art
and nature lived peacefully together. No busy hands and spades
uprooted the plots of wild-flowers, infantile little pink convolvuli,
snowy daisies, and all their blue and yellow kin, that had sprung up
here and there in the gravelled plain, or the detached tiny plants
that make each its own solitude, spreading its small leaves out over
the pebbles, and raising its delicate head freely, as if to induce the
passer-by to pause and admire for once the exquisite grace of the
weeds he despised.
“I wonder if any one but Ruskin ever stopped to look at weeds!” the
Signora said. “It was he, I think, taught me. I first thought of it on
seeing an illustration in _Modern Painters_. It was a bit of
weed-covered earth seen close, as one would see it when lying on the
ground—only a little tangle of leaves and grasses; but, touched by his
pen and pencil, its beauty was revealed.”
“I sometimes think,” Bianca said, “that it is a mercy we cannot see
all the beauty there is about us; for, if we did, we should do nothing
but stand and stare for ever.”
“One might do worse than stand and stare at beauty for ever,” her
father replied. “I’ve no great opinion of business.”
She slipped her hand in his arm before answering, knowing that
inaction was a subject that always found him a little sensitive. “That
depends, you know,” she said. “When the business is to make your tea
or hem your handkerchief, why it wouldn’t do for me to be going into
trances.”
Isabel took his other arm. “But when the business is measuring places
for the pleasure of knowing and telling how large they are, or when it
is taking the census, or any of those countings of units, then he
despises it.”
“When the business is poking a nose in other people’s business, I
certainly object to it,” he said.
Walking along, he drew the two fair hands that clung to him into his
own, and clasped them together against his breast, smiling down into
the girls’ upturned faces; and for a moment the three, in their mutual
affection and confidence, forgot the Signora. She walked on in front
of them, her eyes cast down, and seemed to desire to remain apart. A
silence fell upon them all—perhaps a sense of the silence about them,
or perhaps that silence that always follows an expression of deep and
tender affection, as when through the light and varied chat of a
company is heard the tone of a musical instrument, and all the talk
ceases for a moment; or, it may be, some touch from within or from
without had reminded them that it was the day of the Holy Cross.
The drive home was very quiet, the Signora pointing out now and then
some object of superlative interest as they passed it. “This is St.
Clement’s, an ancient church over a still more ancient church. Mustn’t
it be delightful to go digging under your house some day to repair a
drain, or do some such thing, and presently come across the arch of a
buried door, then, digging farther, find the whole door, then a mosaic
pavement and a column of verde-antique, and so on, till a whole temple
is revealed where you expected to find only earth and stones? Some
such thing happened here. There is the Roman Forum a little beyond.
Need I introduce this ruin to you?”
She pointed to the Colosseum, and then left them to their reflections.
“Drive through the _Via della Croce Bianca_,” she said to the
coachman, “and under the _Arco dei_ _Pontani_. Then pass _Santa Maria
in Monti_, and go up _Via de’ Santa Pudentiana_.”
She saw them look eagerly at the beautiful fragments of Pallas Minerva
and Mars Ultor she had chosen the route to show them; but they asked
no questions, and she volunteered no explanations.
When they reached home the windows were all closed, and the curtains
and _persiane_ half drawn for coolness, and there was such a fragrance
in the rooms that they all exclaimed. Every tall vase was crowded full
of roses pink and yellow, and every little one held a bunch of deep
purple violets.
“Could any one leave a prettier card?” the Signora asked, displaying
her treasures. “When I find heaps of violets and roses in the spring,
I always know who has been here during my absence. It is Mr. Coleman,”
naming her bachelor friend of the semi-weekly cup of tea. “I bespeak
for him a kind place in your regards. He is faithful, honest,
obliging, and refined. I am under obligations to him for many
kindnesses.”
“Marion says that violets are the Mayflowers of Italy,” Isabel
remarked; “that they come as plentifully at the same time, and are
sold as universally, as the trailing arbutus in New England.”
“And see what a deep blue they are!” the Signora said, leading the
conversation away from Marion. “These came from the Villa Borghese. I
know by the color. Oh! the fields are full of flowers now. You will,
perhaps, see some this evening. There are almost always a few people
come in this night of the week—people who never find me at any other
time. It isn’t a reception, you know. I don’t bind myself. Among them
will be your Italian teacher; so you can arrange when to begin
studying. I sent him a note this morning. And, stay! Apropos of
violets, I have something lovely to show you.”
She opened a little case that the servant had given her as she
entered. “These were left while we were out. I had ordered some
changes to be made in them. See! they are the Borghese violets set in
dew and petrified.”
The case contained a brooch, a pair of bracelets and sleeve-buttons,
all of plain and highly polished silver, in each of which was set a
large, deep-purple amethyst.
“Why did I never think of a silver setting?” Bianca exclaimed. “I
always admired amethysts till they were set; then I found them spoilt.
It was the ugly purple and yellow contrast. These are lovely, and just
suit you, _Signora mia_. How I wish I could wear such things!”
“And why can you not?” Mr. Vane asked, with all the simplicity of a
man who can admire results without understanding what produces them.
“Because they would make me look like a starless twilight,” the girl
replied. “I should be obliged to paint my cheeks if I put on such
colors. Poor me! I could wear only rubies, or opals, or diamonds,
perhaps emeralds set in diamonds.”
Her father’s face assumed that sad and troubled expression a man’s
face always wears when one he loves wishes for something out of his
power to give. “Are you not rather young, my dear, to wear much
jewelry?” he asked doubtfully.
“He thinks I am pining for trinkets,” she said smilingly. “Certainly,
papa, I am altogether too young, and am, moreover, disinclined to wear
it. Don’t look so sad about it! My ribbons and flowers satisfy me
quite. I shall beg some rosebuds of the Signora for this evening, and
you shall see how much prettier they will be than rubies, besides
having perfume, which rubies have not.”
Isabel had arranged the bracelets around her neck, and fastened the
brooch in her lace ruffle.
“They do make one look three shades darker,” she said, and sighed
deeply in taking them off. “I would like to go dressed in jewels from
head to foot,” she added.
But, as Isabel was always sighing to possess every beautiful thing she
saw, and, if it were possible, would have had the Vatican for her
abode and St. Peter’s for a private chapel, nobody took her longings
very much to heart; the less so, moreover, as she managed to live a
very gay and happy life in spite of those unsatisfied longings.
Other pretty things had come in during their morning’s absence: a pile
of books, old copies of the Italian poets newly bound over in white
vellum with red edges to the leaves, a pile of Roman photographs which
were to be sent to America, and a collection of little squares of
marbles, porphyries, and alabasters, a stone rainbow, destined also
for America.
“But we need photographs in Rome,” the Signora said. “Looking at them,
we discover a thousand beauties which we missed when we saw the
original.”
A strange croaking sound drew the attention of the girls to the
windows, and they saw a little caravan of crates carried past on
carts, going from the railway station to the great markets of the
city. Out of the holes in these crates protruded heads and necks of
every sort of fowl—turkeys, hens, ducks, and pigeons. The poor
wretches, huddled and crowded together, seemed to know that they were
on their way to execution, and to implore the pity of the bystanders.
Bianca pressed her lips together and said nothing; Isabel leaned out
and contemplated them with a smile. “Those dear turkeys!” she said
with the greatest affection.
“You like them?” the Signora asked, rather surprised that any one
should choose pets so grotesque.
“Yes, immensely!” was the reply. “They’re so nice roasted.”
And then, obliterating this painful and awkward reminder of what lay
under the surface of their daily comforts, came a piercingly-sweet
chorus of trumpets, twenty trumpets playing together. A regiment was
passing, going from a camp in one part of the city to a camp in
another part. The men were dressed in gray linen, and, in the
distance, were hardly to be distinguished from the street, and their
bearing was not very soldier-like; but the wild and sunny music gave a
soul and meaning to them, and, rising through the hot and silent noon,
stirred even the most languid pulses.
“War will never be done away with till trumpets are abolished,” Mr.
Vane said. “I have no doubt that even I should make a very good
fighter if I had a band of them in full blast at my elbow while the
battle lasted. It wouldn’t do for them to stop, though. Fancy a charge
for which no trumpet sounded! It would no more go off, you know, than
a gun would without powder. Why doesn’t somebody take care of that
child?” he concluded abruptly.
For a soiled little wretch was sitting directly in the street, on a
cushion of dust, and staring contentedly at the soldiers as they
passed, as unconscious and unafraid as if it had been a poppy sprung
up there between the paving-stones, instead of a human being with a
body out of which the soul might be kicked or crushed.
“Somebody is taking care of it,” Bianca said. “Everybody is taking
care of it.”
In fact, the long line of soldiers made a tiny curve to accommodate
this bit of humanity, and the tide of life passing at the other side
made another, like a brook around a stick or stone. At length a woman,
not too much afraid, certainly, snatched the child away, and, in the
face of the world, administered a sound castigation, the meaning of
which, it was to be hoped, the child understood.
“I never saw such countryfied things happen in any other city,” Mr.
Vane said. “It is, perhaps, one reason why life here is so
picturesque. Nobody, except the small class of cultivated people,
behaves any differently in public from what they do in private, and
the common people do not pretend to be what they are not.”
“I wish sometimes that they were a little less sincere,” the Signora
remarked coldly. “One could spare that portion of the picturesque
which offends against decency. They seem to have no respect for public
opinion; though, perhaps,” she added, “public opinion here is not
worthy of much respect. It tolerates strange customs, certainly. The
workmen hammer away and saw stone all day Sunday at the house
opposite, and nobody protests, that I know of. Some clergymen did
think of complaining against the work going on on Sunday in the
_piazza_ above, but it would have been in vain for them, of course.
Let us go to luncheon, please. I am in danger of becoming ill-natured,
so many things here annoy me. Do you remember the old Protestant
missionary hymn about ‘Greenland’s icy mountains’? Two lines of it
often occur to me here:
‘Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.’
I shall think better of them when I have had something to eat. Hunger
makes one critical. I fancy that critics are always badly-fed people.
I’m very sure that if Dr. Johnson had had a comfortable dinner before
he sat down to my last book, he would never have cut it up so—the
book, I mean. A good roastbeef would have taken the edge quite off his
blade. A dinner,” said the Signora, waxing eloquent as she seated
herself at a very pretty and plentiful table—“a dinner is the most
powerful of engines, and wealth is powerful only because it will
procure dinners. A person whom you have fed is obliged to serve you,
and the person whom you are going to feed never finds you ugly or
uninteresting.”
Bianca contemplated her friend with an expression of grieved
astonishment. “How can you talk so with all these flowers in the room
listening to you?” she exclaimed.
“Besides, you are going to feed me, but I never saw you so near being
ugly. I think, indeed, you are a little bit ugly.”
The Signora laughed pleasantly. “If I had known that the dearest
flower in the room was going to find a reproachful tongue for me, I
should never have uttered such shocking opinions. Never shake your
sunny locks at me. It was not I who said it; ‘twas hunger. It was
Bailey’s wolf. You do not know Clive Bailey? He will come this
evening, and I think you may be interested in him. I must tell you
about his wolf. The poor fellow was, at the age of twenty, left poor
indeed; suddenly found himself without a cent in the world, after
having been brought up with the expectation of a competency, and
studiously educated to do nothing. Fortunately, his taste had led him
to read a good deal, and he had also a fancy for writing fiction. It
was being thrown into the sea to learn to swim. He began to write for
the cheap newspapers, always intending to find some other employment;
but what with the necessity of writing a great deal to keep himself
alive, and the shock to his sensitive nature of finding himself in
such a situation, he only succeeded in living the life he had stumbled
into, without power to make another. It was the old story of poor
writers, with, however, a pleasant ending in this case. He managed to
squeeze a fair novel out of intervals in his drudge-work, and that won
him a better market. In the height of his success he gathered those
first sketches into a volume, and published them, giving the name of
the author as A. Wolf, Esq. When somebody, not knowing the book to be
his, asked him what Wolf it was who wrote those sketches, he answered:
‘The wolf at my door.’ And he insists that the same wolf is the most
voluminous writer the world has ever produced, and that the
title-pages of at least half the books written should bear his name.
_Buon appetito!_”
CHAPTER IV.
“A FLOCK OF SHEEP THAT LEISURELY PASS BY.”
Several persons came in that evening from seven to nine. First
appeared Mr. Coleman, a mild-looking, bald-headed man of an uncertain
age. Isabel immediately absorbed him. Next followed a new-comer in
Rome, on whose card was inscribed “Mr. Geo. Morton.” After having seen
him once, the Signora was guilty of dubbing him Mr. Geometrical
Morton. “He is ridiculous, but excellent,” she told her friends while
describing him. “He never laughs, because he thinks there is nothing
laughable in creation, every whim of nature, human or inanimate, being
the result of a mathematical principle, and every disorder only order
under an extraordinary form. Of course this is neither new nor
peculiar; but he announces it as if it were new, and has a peculiar
manner of clapping his measuring instruments on to everything. Not a
bit of cirrus can pass over the sky nor your mind, but instantly he
will tell you the philosophy of it. In fine, he strips everything to
the skeleton, and cannot see that it is a bore, but calls it truth, as
if the flesh and drapery were not truths also, as well as more
graceful. I had a quarrel with him when he was here last—or rather, I
got out of all patience, and scolded him almost rudely, and he
listened and replied with the most irritating patience and politeness.
I suppose he thought there was some mathematical reason for my being
angry, and was studying it out with his great, solemn eyes. He’s kind
and honest, I am sure, and as handsome as a picture. I pity the woman
he will choose for a wife, though. If she should scold, he will bring
out the barometer; if she weep, the rain-gauge; if she should be merry
and affectionate, he will consult the thermometer. Ugh! he makes me
feel all three-cornered.”
This gentleman made his salutations with the most perfect gravity and
courtesy, and, after considering the situation a moment, seated
himself by Bianca.
“Well, what conclusions have you arrived at concerning Rome?” he
asked, after a few preliminary remarks.
“None,” she replied; “but I have made a good many beginnings; or I
might say I have arrived at some fragmentary conclusions.”
“As what?” he persisted gently, desirous to make her talk; for she had
shrunk so shyly from him that her father had come to her other side,
which was _unique_. The young man had not often the opportunity to
study a shy feminine specimen.
“Oh! well,” she said doubtingly, then laughed; “apropos of papa’s
checked clothes, which distress me, I have discovered that the clergy
are the only well-dressed men in Rome. The others do not look like
gentlemen. But the long robe, whatever the color of it, and the cloak
they are always arranging, are so graceful, the hat is so picturesque,
and, above all, the buckles on the shoes please me.”
“Below all, you mean,” her father remarked.
The young man looked the least in the world disconcerted; for he wore
every day a suit of the same objectionable check cloth. Besides, he
was not prepared to take on himself the instruction of a young woman
whose tall father chose to assist at the lessons, and put in his word
in season and out of season.
At this moment Mr. Clive Bailey made his appearance. His bright,
clever face lighted up at sight of the new-comers, whom he had been
expecting with interest, having heard a great deal about them.
“I hope you intend to make Rome your home,” he said to Mr. Vane. “The
Signora has suggested such a possibility.”
“You compliment me more than you do our country,” Mr. Vane replied. “I
have been told that it would be unpatriotic for me to prefer any other
country to America as a residence. People talk that way. At the same
time I should like to stay, and I have an impression that North
America, as a whole, will not be aware of my absence.”
“Oh! I don’t mean to disparage any country,” Mr. Bailey said promptly;
“only the climate is so hard. Those northeast winds whistle through my
button-holes. By the way, a friend of yours asked me to-day if you had
arrived, and would have come up to-night to see, if he had not been
engaged: John Adams. You recollect him?”
“John Adams? Of course I recollect him. But what brought him here? I
never heard him speak of Italy but to abuse it.”
“Oh!” the young man said, lowering his voice a little, and glancing at
the Signora, who was near them, “he was brought by the same reason
that brought him before, and will keep him this winter—to wit, to
woo.”
“To woo! To who?” retorted Mr. Vane.
“Not a whit of your to who!” replied the other with a laugh.
“What are you quoting Wordsworth for?” asked the Signora, overhearing
the last part of their talk.
“Apropos of Mr. Adams, Signora,” Mr. Vane said, looking at her
attentively.
She blushed and seemed annoyed, and, as if about to say something,
finally turned away without speaking. It displeased her to have her
name used in connection with that of any gentleman, and, besides, she
did not mean to marry Mr. John Adams.
Here the door opened with a little breeze and three persons entered: a
bright-eyed, beautiful young lady with a somewhat Jewish cast of face,
who produced the impression that a bird had fluttered in, and,
following her, a young girl of not more than sixteen, and an elderly
woman, evidently a companion.
The Signora met the new-comer cordially.
“My dear countess, I do not know whether you are more welcome or
unexpected.”
“I have but two minutes,” the young lady said in the prettiest
breathless manner. “I am just on my way to dine out, and stop to ask a
favor. But first let me introduce my friends.”
They were a young baroness from the Azores Islands, who had spent ten
years in Egypt with her father, and was now on her way to her native
country to join her husband, and her lady companion.
“She has to leave Rome the day after to-morrow,” her friend explained,
“and wants an introduction to Monsignor M——. She wishes to take some
things from him to a friend of hers; and you know one doesn’t often
have an opportunity to send to the Azores direct. Now, dear Signora,
if you would be so very kind as to introduce her to Monsignor. You
know I am not acquainted with him.”
“I will take her to him to-morrow morning,” the Signora said. “But
they need not go now, if you do.”
“I was going to ask your hospitality for them while the carriage takes
me, for I have to call for cousin Anne. And now, will you do me the
favor to make me acquainted with the friends who have come to live
with you? I must apologize for my abrupt coming and going.”
She made her apologies in the most graceful and simple way, and looked
at Bianca a little lingeringly in meeting her, as if struck by her
face. “I meant to call on you first,” she said to the sisters, “and
will come to-morrow, if you permit me.”
The Signora followed her out to the landing. “I want a glimpse of your
dress,” she said. “You know I never go out after dark; and yet I do so
like to see a lady dressed for the evening.”
The countess smilingly threw back the long white cloak that covered
her from head to foot, and displayed a beautiful silk robe of so pale
a blue as to be almost white. Pink roses fastened the rich lace in the
square bosom and loose sleeves, and looped the braids of dark hair,
and she wore no jewels but some large strung pearls on her neck and
wrists.
“It is lovely!” the Signora exclaimed, and looked admiringly after the
lady as she tripped down the stone stairs, holding her rustling robes
up about her.
Going back, she found Mr. Coleman and Bianca trying to entertain the
rather stupid lady companion, Isabel taking her first lesson in
mathematics, and the girl baroness, a dark, plain, talkative little
creature, chatting away in very good English to Mr. Vane.
“I never saw my husband but once,” she said. “We were always betrothed
since we were babies, but his father, the old Baron of Santa Cruz, had
him sent to school in Lisbon, and I was always in a convent. My mamma
was dead, and I had no brothers nor sisters, and papa was in Egypt. He
has a high office there. Then Pedro came home from Portugal, and I
went to papa. Two years ago we met in Rome and were married, so that I
could go to him later with my companion. Papa couldn’t leave to go to
the Azores, and Pedro couldn’t come again for me.”
She told the story in a very childish, simple way, and seemed to
regard her marriage as quite a business-like and proper arrangement.
“You think that you will like Fayal as well as Cairo?” Mr. Vane asked
kindly, pitying this child-wife who seemed to have so little of family
affection to surround her in the most important time of her life.
“I cannot think, I cannot remember it,” she said. “When I try, it is
Paris or Rome that comes up, and I get confused. If I should not like
it, I shall ask Pedro to take me somewhere else. He has written me
that he will always do everything I wish him to do.”
Mr. Vane scarcely felt a disposition to smile at this perfect trust.
He found it pathetic.
“But I would like to go to your country,” she resumed with animation.
“Pedro’s sister Maria went there for a journey when she married, and
she wrote me the most wonderful things. Perhaps she did not tell the
truth. She may have been writing something only to make me laugh. You
will not laugh if I tell you?”
Mr. Vane promised to maintain his gravity at all risks.
“Well,” she said confidentially, “Maria wrote me that the snow there
is whiter than sea-foam on the rocks, and that one can walk in it and
not be wet, and that carriages drive over and make a solid road of it,
just as if the streets were paved with smooth, white marble, and that,
at the sides, it piles up and stays in shape, like heaps of
eider-down. It isn’t true, is it?”
She looked at him doubtfully and searchingly while he assured her of
the correctness of the picture.
“And, more than that,” he said, “I have seen the snow so deep and
solid that men would cut it in great blocks like Carrara marble, and,
when they were standing in the place they had dug, you couldn’t see
their heads over the top of the drifts. Did you ever see ice?”
“I saw some this morning, but it wasn’t white,” she said. “A carload
of it went past the hotel. It was grayish and crumbly. The men had cut
grass and weeds and piled over it to keep it from the sun.”
Mr. Vane, too, had seen this pitiful apology for the glorious crystal
blocks of New England ice-cutters as he looked from his window that
morning, and had indulged for the moment a feeling of scornful pride.
“Fancy that mat of fresh grass and wild-flowers trembling over one of
our ice-carts or snow-drifts!” he had said to Bianca. “Yes,” she had
replied, but at the same moment had pointed out to him a lovely
compensation for the absence of these frigid splendors in the land of
the sun. Beneath their window passed two men, bearing each on his head
a large basket, one flat, and covered with camellias laid singly, a
pink by a white one, each flower glistening with freshness; the other
deep, and heaped with pink roses and buds, among which might be seen
yellow roses tied in large, nodding bunches. Yes, the snow of the
tropics was a snow of flowers.
The Signora passed near enough to Isabel and her companion to catch a
part of their conversation. “Since you entered this room,” the
gentleman was saying, “you have doubtless, either consciously or
unconsciously, gone through with a good deal of swift reasoning. Some
people you have liked more, others less, and in both cases the
feeling, as you would call it, has been the result of a certain
calculation as exact as anything in mathematics could be. You have
been pleased with one for certain manners, or looks, or for certain
qualities which you believe him to possess; and there are also exact
and mathematically calculable reasons why these things should please
you.”
Isabel looked edified, but puzzled. “If, then,” she ventured, “there
is so much more reason in us all than we are aware of, why need we
correct ourselves? I should think we might be all the better satisfied
with what goes on in our minds, and let them arrange their own
processes without troubling ourselves.”
“No,” he said with earnest gravity. “There are good reasons and bad
reasons; and by knowing why we may correct the bad reasons. For
example, your tooth aches; the reason is because there is a defective
spot in it. You go to the dentist, and the pain ceases. Or you do not
fancy a person; the reason is because that person does not flatter
you, and you are fond of flattery. You correct your inordinate love of
praise, and thus appreciate the worth of one who tells you the truth,
and also make it more easy for him to praise you sincerely.”
“But all this takes so much time,” she said, seeing that he waited for
a response.
“It is for such uses that time was given us,” he replied.
She struggled for another objection, her mind rapidly becoming swamped
in the conversation. “Then you think that we can arrange and order all
our feelings, and make our hearts as regular as clocks; and if we lose
a friend, by examining why he died, and why we grieve for him, we can
reason ourselves into indifference.”
“No,” he said again. “We can undoubtedly subdue the violence of
unreasonable grief by such examination, but there are deep and
ineradicable reasons why we should grieve when we lose those dear to
us.”
The girl’s eyes brightened. “Why,” she said, “it all seems to me only
a difference of terms. You mean just what everybody means, only you
say everything, and others haven’t time nor wit for that. It all
amounts to the same thing in the end. We say, ‘Such and such a thing
is natural,’ where you say it is mathematical, _voilà tout_.”
He began to say something about the natural including both good and
bad, while his meaning was to exclude the bad; but the Signora took
pity on his victim, and stopped his eloquence by offering him a cup of
tea.
“He will take the tea,” she thought, pouring another cup, “because the
beverage is agreeable to the palate and refreshing to the body, and,
by consequence, enlivening to the mind, and he will see the whole
subject worked out to its smallest part as he stirs in the sugar. He
will put in sugar because—because—dear me! I wonder what is the good
reason for putting sugar in tea! How uncomfortable it all is! I should
go mad with such a man about me all the time. And yet how well-bred,
and earnest, and handsome he is! If only it might happen that he would
mellow with time, and learn to take subjects by their convenient
handles, and not spread them out so! He makes me remember that I am a
skeleton, with—pah! How glad I am I don’t know all about my bones!”
“What are you studying out, Signora?” asked Isabel at her elbow.
“I am trying not to see everything crumble at once into its elements,”
she replied distressfully. “My dear, if you will make that man talk
like a human being, I shall be thankful. Find out if he has a heart,
or only a triangle instead; and just watch his fingers to see if there
are little scales and figures marked along the insides of them. He is
worth rescuing. I like him.”
The little baroness went, and more people came in. It was after _Ave
Maria_, and they were obliged to light the candles, and close the
windows and shutters on the street. But the great _sala_ needed not to
be closed, for no one could see into it, and so the exquisite twilight
was left free to enter, with only the soft light of a single hanging
lamp to shame its tender radiance. This inner light, the steady,
deep-hued flame of olive oil, burning in an antique bronze lamp, made
the room softly visible, and, shining out into the garden, turned the
yellow gold of the jasmine blossoms into red gold here and there, and
made the snow-white of the orange-flowers look like a sun-lighted
drift of the north.
TO BE CONTINUED.
A JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF MILLIARDS.[199]
There is much in a title. Many an insignificant if not objectionable
individual is widely welcomed and sweetly smiled upon because he
boasts a “handle to his name”; and that which is true as regards man
is equally so of books. Many a shallow and worthless production, like
the monstrosities produced in the floral world by fancy
horticulturists, becomes “the rage” from its pretentious or, as the
case may be, its unpronounceable name.
There is, then, much in the title of a book; and yet, had M. Victor
Tissot sent into the world his _Voyage au Pays des Milliards_ under
the sober superscription of “Travels in Germany,” although it might
not so immediately have attracted the public eye, it must ultimately
have secured the attention and interest it so justly merits, and which
have necessitated the issue of nine editions in the course of a few
weeks.
This interest is sustained throughout the book by the varied
information it contains respecting facts connected with Prussianized
Germany, which are related not only with that happy fluency of style
which is the gift of most literary Frenchmen, but also with a justice
of reasoning and fairness of appreciation of which one of his nation
dealing with such a subject might not always be found capable.
The work professes to be simply _notes de voyage_ addressed to a
friend; a series of sketches which introduce the reader in a familiar
manner—“looking at everything, listening everywhere”—to this new
Germany, such as she has sprung forth, sword in hand, from the brain
of Herr von Bismarck.
The first part of the book relates to Southern and Central Germany.
France, before the time of her misfortunes, was wont to say with her
old university professors, _Qui non vidit Coloniam non vidit
Germaniam_,[200] but now the proverb is changed, and it must rather be
said, “He who would see Germany must see Berlin.” In the vast Germanic
body, Berlin has alike usurped the place of head and heart; she it is
who conceives, meditates, contrives, commands; she who deprives and
bestows, legislates and executes; and she who distributes glory.
Towards her flow the life and warmth of that Germany which is now no
more the land of picturesque and simple legends, sweet ballads, Gothic
dreams, holy cathedrals, but the land of blood and iron. The knight
Albrecht Dürer no more finds his steps arrested in the enchanted
forest of poetry and art, but rides rough-shod over the high-roads of
Europe, armed with a needle-gun, and with a spiked helmet on his head.
“Had we but known,” sighed France, after the war—“if we had only
known!” Yes, often enough has it been repeated that her ignorance
respecting her neighbors, of all that they were secretly designing and
silently doing, was one chief cause of her disasters.
“Had we but known!” “Well, then,” writes M. Tissot, “for the future
_let us know_! Let us be aware that the Germans ransack our country in
every sense; that they study our language, manners, customs, and
institutions; following us step by step, and spying us everywhere,
until they know France more thoroughly than we know it ourselves. For
thirty years past has their spyglass been busily scrutinizing every
corner of our land.… Let us then learn to do among them what they do
among us: the weak place in the breastplate of the German Colossus is
not very difficult to discover.”
In going forth to repel invasion, Germany has suffered herself to be
carried away by the spirit of conquest, and has returned home with a
rear-guard of vices which before she knew not, and under a despotism
which it had cost her the struggle of centuries to break. Having
departed from the path of humanity and civilization, she has gone back
to her wild forests despoiled of her studious leisure and with the
tradition of her ancient domestic virtues well-nigh lost; while, a
prey to all the material appetites, she forgets God, or else denies
him, and no longer believes in anything except the supreme triumph of
her cannon.
From fear of being attacked by the revolution, she enters into an
alliance with it. In proof of this, we have but to observe with what
gratified attention the socialists, not only in Germany but all over
Europe, watch the moral decomposition which is going on in this
atmosphere of materialism and of pride. They know very well that the
day is sure to come, and is perhaps not far distant, when “they will
make a descent into the arena with their knotted clubs; and that this
argument will suffice to put to flight the gentlemen whose wisdom has
discovered the soul to be composed of cellular tissue, and has shut up
patriotism in a membrane.”
The Catholics also act with energy in the strength of their (for the
most part passive) resistance to an oppressive and unjust power, whose
hypocritical excuses render it as contemptible as its tyranny makes it
odious in the eyes of every upright man, whether Catholic or
Protestant.
“From a distance,” says M. Tissot, “it might be easy to deceive one’s
self into a doubt as to the dangerous nature of so many alarming
symptoms, but on the spot I know for a certainty that an attentive
listener cannot fail to hear the pulsations of a nation disturbed to
its very depths, and ill at ease. Is it,” he asks, “as a means of
escape from impending dangers, and to prepare the minds of the people
for a skilful diversion, that the parliamentary orators and the
official Prussian press keep them in a continual ferment of warlike
excitement, and appear to regret the milliards left behind on the
banks of the Rhone and the Garonne? This is the opinion of thoughtful
minds, for it is on the field of battle only that a reconciliation
between the Catholics and their adversaries can be expected to take
place.”
Before visiting the imperial capital, the traveller on whose work the
present observations are principally based begins with the southern
states, “being desirous of interrogating those ancient provinces which
have sacrificed their autonomy to a gust of glory, and of asking if
the mess of pottage is still savory, or whether, awakening from recent
illusions, there is not some regret for the good old times.”
After visiting Ulm, with its enormously increased fortifications;
Stuttgart, the sunny capital of Würtemberg; and the little university
town of Heidelberg—respecting all which places M. Tissot has much to
say—the impression resulting from his observations is that South
Germany was duped and alarmed into submitting to Prussia. With regard
to Frankfort, no longer the free city of past times, his conviction is
that the real population, quite as much as that of Metz and
Strassburg, detests the sight of the spiked helmets and the sound of
the Prussian fifes and drums (the latter shaped like small saucepans),
constantly passing through the streets.
The particulars of the Prussian occupation of this city in 1866 are
still fresh in the memory of its inhabitants. “The history of those
days,” M. Tissot tells us, “has never been written.” We will give in
his own words the account he received from an eye-witness:
“On the 6th of July, the Senate announced to the townspeople
the impending entry of the Prussians, ‘whose good discipline
was a sure guarantee that no one would be exposed to
inconvenience.’
“In spite, however, of this ‘good discipline,’ all the
banking-houses hastened to place themselves under the
protection of the foreign consuls, and hoisted American,
English, French, or Swiss colors. The streets were as
deserted as a cemetery.
“The Prussians did not arrive until nine in the evening,
when they made a triumphal entry. At their head, with his
sword drawn, rode General Vogel von Falkenstein; music
played, drums beat; there was noise enough to wake the dead.
Billeting tickets had been prepared for this army of
invaders, who, however, preferred to select their own
quarters. The troops divided into squadrons of 50, 70, 100,
or 150 men, and, led by their officers, forced their way
into houses of good appearance. The inmates, who had, in
some cases, retired for the night, ran bewildered through
their rooms. The officers, finding ordinary candles on the
tables, held their pistols at the throats of the women, and
ordered them to bring wax-lights. But their first care was
to demand the keys of the cellar, after which they passed
the night in drinking the best wines, making especial havoc
among the champagne.
“Next day, General Vogel von Falkenstein, surnamed _Vogel
von Raubenstein_, or the bird of prey, caused to be read and
posted up in the streets a proclamation establishing the
state of siege. He suppressed all the newspapers, prohibited
all private _réunions_, and announced moreover a long list
of requisitions.
“On the 18th of July, General von Falkenstein, who the day
before had compelled the town of Frankfort to purchase from
the contractor of the Prussian army many thousands of
cigars, now demanded that there should be delivered to him
60,000 ‘good pairs of shoes,’ 300 ‘good saddle-horses,’ and
a year’s pay for his soldiers—promising, in return, to make
no other requisition upon the inhabitants.… On the 19th they
brought him six millions of florins; but as, in the course
of that same evening, General von Falkenstein was called to
command elsewhere, the Senate received anew, on the morning
of the 20th, a note expressed as follows:
“‘Messieurs the senators of the city of Frankfort are
informed that their town is laid under a contribution of war
for the amount of twenty-five millions of florins, payable
within twenty four hours.
“‘MANTEUFFEL.
“‘HEADQUARTERS, FRANKFORT, July 30, 1866.’”
“Three of the principal bankers of Frankfort were
immediately delegated to present themselves before General
Manteuffel, to remind him of the promises given by his
predecessor, and to entreat him to withdraw this fresh
imposition. All that they obtained was a delay of three
times twenty-four hours.
“‘I know,’ said Manteuffel to them, ‘that I shall be
compared to the Duke of Alva, but I am only here to execute
the orders of my superiors.’
“‘And what shall you do if, between now and Sunday, we have
not paid?’ asked a member of the deputation—‘you will
not——?’
“‘I read the word on your lips,’ rejoined the General;
‘alas! yes, I shall give up the town to pillage.’
“‘In that case, why do you not at once, like Nero, set fire
to the four corners of Frankfort?’
“To this sally General Manteuffel contented himself by
answering: ‘Rome arose only more fair from her ashes.’[201]
“Before quitting the General, the deputation asked whether
this imposition would be the last.
“‘On my part, yes; I give you my word of honor for it; but
another general may come and replace me, with orders of
which I know nothing.’
“The threat of the pillage and bombardment of the city
spread with the rapidity of lightning; the burghers and
bankers contributed together to pay the ransom.
“Five days later, General de Roeder sent for the President
of the Chamber of Commerce, to whom he read the following
telegram, which he had just received from M. von Bismarck:
“‘Since the measures hitherto taken have not been found
sufficient to obtain their object, close, from this evening,
all the telegraph and post-offices, the hotels, inns, and
all public establishments; prohibit the entry into the town
of any persons, and of every kind of merchandise.’
“These few facts, selected from innumerable others of a
similar kind, and which are of warranted authenticity, are
sufficiently edifying.”
We may add, that with memories like the foregoing we cannot wonder
that Frankfort, once the free, is now the irreconcilable, city.
But we hasten on to glance at the capital, where, more plainly than
anywhere else, may be seen the impress of events more recent still.
Space fails us to do more than merely refer to the descriptions given
of the material city, its public buildings, its homely palace, its
long, monotonous lines of streets, “ruled straight by the cane of the
corporal-king,” and built right and left of the pestiferous Spree; the
colossal arsenal, piled with the captured arms of France, and which is
to Berlin what their cathedral is to other European cities. Leaving
all this, and much besides, we will briefly consider the effects of
the late war and of the milliards of France upon the people of
Germany.
On entering Berlin the visitor, as he leaves the railway carriage, is
greeted by the sight of a large placard posted up at the four corners
of the station, and bearing the appropriate warning, “_Beware of
Thieves_.” This is a small indication of a momentous fact; for if,
from her very beginning, Prussia has chosen Mars for her tutelar
divinity, her worship of Mercury since the last war has left him but a
divided throne.[202]
Like the arsenal, the _Bourse_ sums up the recent history of Prussia.
The greed of gain has in fact taken entire possession of the people,
and in no other European city is covetousness so ferocious or the
thirst for gold so ardent as in the Prussian capital. Princes,
ministers of state, and high functionaries of the crown meditate
financial combinations, and launch into speculative investments, from
which they intend to secure large profits; tradespeople and
manufacturers invent skilful falsifications, whether in figures or in
merchandise; students of the university arrange lotteries—all, great
and small, rich and poor, are alike in search of prey.
In a pamhlet published by Herr Diest-Haber, under the characteristic
title of _Plutocracy and Socialism_ (“Geldmacht und Socialismus”) are
to be found revelations which are anything but edifying, and supported
by proofs, respecting the more than questionable probity of certain
ministers of high position in the state. Gustaf Freitag, also, wrote
in 1872: “Great evils have resulted to us from victory. The honor and
honesty of the capital have greatly suffered. Every one is possessed
by a senseless passion for gain: princes, generals, men in high
administrative positions, all are playing an unbridled game, preying
on the confidence of small capitalists, and abusing their position to
make large fortunes. The evil has spread like fire; and at the sight
of this widely extended corruption it is impossible not to fear for
the future.”
The army is also tainted. In 1873, an aid-de-camp of a small German
prince, whose services in the war had brought him nothing, thought
well to indemnify himself, and by forging his master’s signature
pocketed the sum of 300,000 thalers from the coffers of the state.
But the example is set in high quarters, where in everything might is
made to overrule right. Could it be expected that so many thrones
confiscated, without a thought of justice; so many provinces seized,
to form the lion’s share; so complete an overthrow of the most
ordinary moral principles; treaties torn up like false bank-notes; a
policy at the same time so crafty and audacious, could fail to find
sedulous imitators in a people naturally prone to rapine?
The arrival of the five milliards upset the equilibrium of the German
brain. Every form of speculation sprang from the ground like fungi
after a shower; everything—breweries, grocery companies, streets,
roads, canals—was parcelled out in shares. Houses were sold at the
exchange, and in the course of two hours had five or six times changed
their owner. In eight months, the price of tenements was doubled;
fifty or sixty persons would dispute the possession of a garret. In
1872, the average number of persons inhabiting a house of three or
four stories (the usual height in Berlin) was from fifty-five to
sixty-five, or ten persons to a room. Masons made fortunes, worked ten
hours, went in a cab from the stone-yard to the _restaurants_, and
drank champagne in beer-glasses. A simple brick-and-mortar carrier
earned five thalers a day; and small bankers’ clerks, at the present
time out of situation and shoe-leather, paraded in white kid gloves in
the first boxes of the theatre—not to speak of far worse extravagances
still. Societies of share venders fiercely quarrelled with each other
over the purchase of feudal castles in the neighborhood, which were to
be transformed into _casinos_ on a large scale, with theatre in the
open air, artificial lakes and mountains, Swiss dairies, and games for
every taste. But this dream of the Thousand-and-one Nights did not
last a year. The temples of pleasure are bankrupt, and “the police
have seized Cupid’s quiver.” The whole of Germany—“the nation of
thinkers,” as her philosophers love to call her—was dazzled by the
deceitful mirage, and so fierce was the eagerness for gain that at one
time it was scarcely prudent to go to the exchange without a revolver.
Fights were of constant occurrence, and ardent speculators would
collar each other like stable-boys.[203] Before the close of 1872,
nearly eight hundred and fifty different shareholding investments had
sprung up. The middle classes, the representatives of honest and
laborious industry, have been the principal victims of these hollow
speculations; and in a public report made by the Governor of the Bank
of Prussia, January 1, 1873, it was stated that in the course of two
years several millions of thalers had been extorted by unscrupulous
adventurers from the credulous public.
In various ways it is evident that, if France paid dearly for her
defeat, Germany is paying far more dearly for her glory, besides
having so mismanaged matters that peace to her is more costly than
war. Herr Schorlemer-Ast lately declared in the Reichstag that the
financial burdens of the empire, from her system of complete and
permanent armament, are crushing all classes. “The milliards,” he
says, “that we have received are already converted into fortresses,
ships-of-war, Mauser rifles, and cannon; the military budget has this
year increased by nineteen millions of marks, … and into this budget
we cast all our resources, all our reserves, all our savings, but
never can we meet its demands; and thus the land becomes more and more
impoverished.” There is another method, also, by which the “eminently
moral” government of the Emperor seeks to increase its resources, and
this is by lotteries. A Protestant minister observing to his majesty
that these lotteries were a very bad example, the latter replied, “You
are mistaken; they are instituted to punish already on earth the
cupidity of my people: the great prize is never drawn.”
Fresh imposts are also created; but the time for these is scarcely the
present, when, according to the testimony of Germans themselves,
commerce languishes, the manufacturing interest is passing through a
crisis of which it is impossible to foresee the end, and on all sides
arise murmurs and complaints. And yet we hear of proposals like that
of Herr Camphausen in the Reichstag, namely, to “demand more labor
from the artisan and pay him less for it.” A profitable subject,
truly, for communist declamation must this be; and well might Bebel,
the notorious socialist of Leipzig, say, “Prussia is doing our work
for us; we need but fold our arms and wait,” and his colleague,
Liebknecht, declare that “M. de Bismarck has done more for the radical
interest than five socialist ministers could have done. The people see
with bitterness how little has been gained by sacrifices so great. The
expense of living has doubled since the war, but the salaries have not
increased in proportion.… In the manufacturing districts there is
fearful distress.… Families of five or six persons obliged to starve
on a thaler a week! See what the milliards have done for us! No wonder
that month after month sees ten or fifteen thousand Germans emigrate
to other lands.”
We pass over the dark portraiture of “misery and crime” in Berlin, and
also the information respecting the reptile agency of the official
press, the political dye-house of the empire, whose business it is to
color all communications with the hue required by the prime minister.
Nor have we space to dwell on the state of education in Prussia, which
is far behind the rest of Germany,[204] nor the falsification of
history and even geography in its educational books. We cannot,
however, forbear producing the lesson with which the studies of the
day begin in the primary schools.
The master holds up before his pupils the Emperor’s portrait, asking,
“Who is this?”
Making a reverential bow, they answer, “His majesty the Emperor.”
“What do we owe to him?” resumes the teacher, in a grave and
impressive tone.
“We owe him obedience, fidelity, and respect; we owe him all that we
have and all that we possess.”
Would any child, unless a German or a Russian, find its loyalty
increased after two or three weeks of this daily exercise? We doubt
it.
The Catholic clergy proving a hindrance to the government in the
application of its new catechism, the law on secular instruction was
passed to force them out of the schools: the state, henceforth sole
master, can form at the will of Cæsar, not Christians, but soldiers or
slaves, which are more in accordance with its taste—all that is taught
being made to converge to the one end of blind and absolute submission
to secular power.
God being set aside to make way for the Emperor and his Church
trampled under foot for the good pleasure of the prime minister, we or
our children may see the fulfilment of the prediction written thirty
or forty years ago by Heinrich Heine, in which, after announcing the
reconstitution of the Germanic Empire, he says: “The Empire will
hasten to its fall; and this catastrophe will be the result of a
political and social revolution, brought about by German philosophers
and thinkers. The Kantists have already torn up the last fibres of the
past, the Fichteans will come in turn, whose fanaticism will be
mastered neither by fear nor instinct. The most of all to be dreaded
will be the philosophers of nature, the communists, who will place
themselves in communication with the primitive forces of the earth,
and evoke the traditions of the Germanic pantheism. Then will these
three choirs intone a revolutionary chant at which the land will
tremble, and there will be enacted in Germany a drama in comparison to
which the French Revolution shall have been but an idyl.”
[199] _Voyage au Pays des Milliards._ V. Tissot. Paris: Dentu.
[200] He who has not seen Cologne, has not seen Germany.
[201] “I have this dialogue from one who was present.”—_M.
Tissot._
[202] M. Tissot’s book contains some painful pages having
relation to the votaries of Venus also, to which we
need do no more than allude.
[203] The _Tribune_ for August 1, 1872, has the following:
“Never has the liquidation been so quiet as to-day.
Not a single box on the ear was given in full
exchange, nor had the syndic to interfere on account
of abusive language.”
[204] “Prussia is of all Germany the country which contains
the largest number of persons unable to read and
write,” is the testimony of Herr Karl Vogt.
A QUAINT OLD STUDIO IN ROME, A QUEER OLD PAINTER, AND A LOVELY PICTURE
The exterior does not indicate the remotest relationship with a
studio. I must have misunderstood the _père’s_ directions. I wish
these artists would show some consideration for errant humanity, and
number their quarters. Now, that wall which begins on the street and
backs in behind the rubbish-pile might pass for a parapet but for the
green door with a bell-rope dangling from the upper panel, which
compromises its military character at once. It might pass for a
convent wall. Indeed, the little church which seems to have been
pushed entire right out of the farther end might be accepted as a very
respectable declaration to that effect. But a more accurate
observation of the premises is fraught with diffidence in the latter
conjecture. A portion of an unpretentious dwelling-house, which is
incorporated with that part of the wall abutting on the Via del
Colosseo, and the appearance at one of the windows of a fossilized old
woman who proceeds to hang out linen, dispel effectually the monastic
probability intimated above. But why indulge in speculations? The most
summary, and after all most rational, way of solving my doubts is to
approach the green door, pull the bell-cord, enter, and, _si
monumentum quæris_, _circumspice_. Pulling the bell-rope produced an
inquiring bark from a dog within. Then the door opened slowly, and
just wide enough to admit a visiting card, insinuated edgeways. But,
as if not liking my appearance, it closed with a short but very
decisive slam. I took a short survey of my person, with the view of
assuring myself that there was nothing in my dress or carriage which
would excite a suspicion bearing reference to burglary. I had just
come to a conclusion very flattering to my integrity, when a shrill
female voice screamed from across the way, “_Tira! spingi!_”—Pull!
push! I turned my immediate attention to the practical application of
these laconic instructions. Nothing to pull but the bell-rope, nothing
to push but the door. Another tug at the hemp, a canine response from
within, the door opened as before, I pushed, entered, and the slamming
process was repeated. I turned around with the view of confronting the
slammer—a rope, a pulley, and a weight. He has a taste for mechanics,
thought I. At the top of a few steps I saw a friendly-looking
house-dog, who sniffed apologetically, and then whisked himself about,
as if expressing a hearty welcome. If I had not had positive reason
afterwards to arrogate to myself this compliment, I should have gone
away with the conviction that the dog sniffed with satisfaction
because the mingled odor of lemon, of orange, and of a hundred
fragrant flowers which floated on the air was inexpressibly
gratifying. I found myself in a quadrangular enclosure not unlike the
cloister of a convent. The central plot was planted with orange and
lemon trees, and with every kind of vegetable. It only lacked the
traditional well in the centre, with the iron-bound bucket resting on
the edge, and the iron rods for pulley, wrought into the form of a
cross, to make it a perfect little cloister. ‘Tis true that the
resemblance might be impaired by the large chicken-coop in the corner,
which emitted a chorus of cackling suggestive of a prosperous
barnyard. But a flourishing coop is no contemptible accessory to the
effects of a religious community; and as for its encumbering the
cloister, that is very easily explained. The consideration of the
civil power for religious communities has disencumbered them of all
their property outside the walls, and even extended itself to
everything within that is worth taking care of. A marble pavement of
variegated pieces, formed into mosaics of no definable pattern,
extends around the garden. The walls of the house are studded with
fragments of sarcophagi and frieze-work—here the hand of a child,
there a lion’s head, yonder a foot—while these are interspersed with
lamps of terra-cotta, such as are found in the Catacombs; and, high
above all, a row of Roman vases let into the wall as far as the neck
gives it the appearance of a battery of cannon. The well, which, sunk
in the centre of the garden, would have completed the picture of a
cloister, is over against the wall. An attempt had been made to apply
a fly-wheel and a crank, with some other complicated machinery of
ropes and pulleys, to the process of drawing water, but evidently
didn’t approach a success, as the crank is rusty and the rope frayed
with age and exposure. On the other side of the garden stands a large
cistern of water literally alive with gold-fish. The house itself is
built around the garden, save the portion enclosed by the wall. It is
but one story high generally. It seems, however, that the builder,
some time after the completion of the lower story, wanted to try the
effect of another story; so, with an utter disregard of architectural
designs and proportions, he raised the four walls at the fenestral
apertures of which the fossil appeared. I ascertained afterwards that
this addition forms the “apartments” of her antiquity. On the corner
diagonally opposite arises a similar portion, which is reached by
stairs on the outside—evidently the residence of the lord of the
premises. A railing extends around the roof, while vines on trailers
and a great fig-tree, which towers out of the garden and up to the
roof, give the establishment quite an Oriental aspect. We only want a
patriarch taking his evening promenade on the roof, and we have Syria
in the shadow of the Colosseum. While I was contemplating all this the
dog barked impatiently, ran ahead to an open door underneath a pent
roof, and then trotted back, giving me to understand that he was very
impatient to usher me in there. A Maltese cat appeared on the scene,
walked furtively around me, inspected me from head to foot, and
finally came to a halt in front of me and fixed his great, amber eyes
upon me with an inquiring look, as which should say, “Are your
intentions peaceful?” My addressing him by the name of “puss” seemed
to satisfy him, and he trotted on with the dog.
The first object which met my gaze as I entered the door caused me to
start back with a shudder; for I was not prepared for such a sight. On
a table, stretched at full length, lay a human skeleton, with the head
turned towards the door. It seemed to have taken that position of
itself, with a view of seeing who passed in and out. The floor was
littered with cartoons and bits of old lumber. In a corner stood an
ancient-looking painting of a skeleton seated in a meditative
attitude—one bony leg crossed on the other, the elbow planted on the
knee, and the chin resting on the hand. It had not the appearance of a
caricature, for the lipless mouth and fleshless jaws wore a solemn and
awful expression, which the most intemperate and frivolous fancy could
not associate with the ridiculous. The walls, too, were covered with
cartoons of different sizes, some of which were very beautiful. One
especially struck me with admiration. It represented the Eternal
Father gazing out into the chaotic darkness which preceded the great
act of volition, “_Fiat lux_.” The perfection of the _actus purus_ and
_existentia_, which are identical in God, was powerfully expressed in
the intensely active expression of the eyes and forehead. While all
this occurred to me, a consciousness of the spirit of love, which
mellowed and softened the sternness of that face, affected me. Passing
another door, I found myself in a large room painted a Pompeian red.
My first impression was that I had walked into the laboratory of an
alchemist—a very justifiable impression. A long table in the middle of
the room was crowded with vials of all sizes and every variety of
form, containing liquids of the strangest colors. Crucibles, mortars,
glass tubes, bellows, scales, and spirit-lamps were scattered over the
table confusedly. A row of shelves garnished one of the walls, and
upon them were arranged, in something like order, busts of different
sizes and casts in plaster of arms, legs, feet, and hands. From the
beams of the ceiling dangled a number of little cherubs of Berninian
propensities—that is to say, they were very plump, very short, and
kicked and doubled themselves up into the most impossible attitudes
for little fellows of their exaggerated proportions. These, coupled
with several chunks of half-wrought clay tumbled promiscuously into
one corner, and a number of modelling tools, a sponge, and an elevated
stool, would perhaps incline the visitor to the belief that he was in
the sanctum of a sculptor. The other three walls were covered with
pictures representing a variety of subjects, sacred and profane. Here
a muscular, sightless Samson coped with the pillars of the temple of
the Philistines, to the seemingly intense interest of a demure
cardinal on the opposite wall. There Justice poised her scales in
front of a sketch, which the most unpractised eye would have no
difficulty in recognizing as the work of Fra Angelico, portraying the
Last Judgment. The activity of the devils as they scourged the damned
into the bottomless pit is striking. Farther on a “Battle of the
Centaurs” afforded an interesting anatomical study. But the sweetest
picture of all was a little one not over a foot square, which
represented with vivid simplicity the dispute between the two hermits,
St. Paul and St. Anthony. The latter holds up one hand
argumentatively, and points with the other to the untouched loaf,
while his earnest face seems to say: “Paul, take up the loaf and break
it.” Paul looks respectful, but not overcome. He leans upon his long
staff with both hands, and contemplates the loaf with a face
betokening his resolution not to touch it, at least until more
conclusive arguments be adduced; and, after all, it is a quiet,
domestic sort of a picture. Beside this was another of about the same
dimensions—one that pleased the eye not so much as the heart. It was
St. Jerome in the wilderness. The crucifix is suspended high upon a
thin sapling, and the great doctor kneels off at a distance, and prays
with his hands joined before his breast. It is one of those prayerful
pictures which recall Fra Bartolomeo, but the coloring was Timoteo
Vite’s, and none else’s. In the corner of the room nearest the window
I observed a ladder, made of iron bars, fastened into the wall, which
terminated in a trap-door in the ceiling. At the foot of this ladder,
right under the window, stood what seemed to be a sedan-chair. It was
covered on all sides with oilcloth turned wrongside out. Before this
chair stood an easel, on the easel a small picture, which I perceived
was being touched by a brush; and I observed, furthermore, that the
brush was manipulated by a hand of powerful proportions, such a hand
as would have been enough of itself to build up that strange old house
from the foundation-stone. Then a man’s head, adorned with gray locks
and an old cap with a pair of turned-up flaps, emerged from the
darkness, and I saw a pair of dark, bright, benevolent eyes smiling up
at me. The face was bronzed, the beard gray and not heavy, but growing
in a heavy instalment around the mouth and chin, then light on the
under jaws, and developing into a bushy abundance in the direction of
the ears. It was a pleasant, happy face, still possessing the
ingenuous expression of the happy boy. As he worked himself out of the
nook in which he was ensconced, and stood up to welcome me, giving me
at the same time a grip of that powerful hand which I associated above
with the construction of the house, but which then referred me to a
blacksmith-shop, I had an opportunity of surveying his figure.
I should have said, rather, I saw an old dressing-gown of brown stuff
which buttoned closely at the chin, was tied around him with a rope,
and terminated in a pair of heavy brogans. I introduced myself by
stating that the _père_ had requested me to call and see how the
picture was doing. “Ah! there it is,” said the old man, and a smile of
happy excitement mantled upon his face as he looked at the little
picture on the easel, _La Notte del Correggio_. He gazed more intently
than before, and then sank down quietly on one knee and scanned the
face of the kneeling Virgin Mother, in whose face is reflected that
wonderful intense light which concentrated in the face of the Child,
as if desirous of seeing underneath the coloring. “The spirit of
Correggio is here,” continued he in a musing strain; “no man living
possessed his secret of blending colors into one another. I will not
touch the face of the Child.”
“Then you believe,” said I, “that this is an original?”
“I _feel_ it,” added he warmly. “Correggio may repeat himself, but he
cannot be copied, at least in two pictures, his _Giorno_ and his
_Notte_. The dominating, character of Correggio’s paintings in oil,
that something which proclaims him on the instant, is the coloring,
penetrating and brilliant as enamelling—of such a kind that the lights
assume an indefinable splendor, the shadows have a depth and
transparency which no painter, and much less a copyist, ever produced,
save Correggio. There”—and he arose and drew the curtain over the
window, until the room was nearly dark—“you need no light to see that
picture; it has its own light in the divinity which is effulgent from
the face of the Infant. Tell me the copyist who effected this, and I
will venerate him as Correggio’s other self.”
A word of explanation is necessary here. The _Notte_ is a picture
representing the Nativity. The Child is in the arms of the kneeling
Mother. “The radiant Infant, and the Mother who holds him, are lost in
the splendor which has guided the distant shepherds. A maiden on one
side, and a beautiful youth on the other, who serves as a contrast to
an old shepherd, receive the full light, which seems to dazzle their
eyes; while angels hovering above appear in a softened radiance. A
little farther back Joseph is employed with his ass, and in the
background are more shepherds with their flocks. Morning breaks in the
horizon. An ethereal light breaks through the whole picture, and
leaves only so much of the outline and substance of the forms apparent
as is necessary to enable the eye to distinguish objects.” This
picture is at present in the gallery of Dresden, and the foregoing is
the description of it given by Kugler. The same writer adds in a note:
“Smaller representations of this subject, with similar motives and
treated in the same manner as the Dresden picture, exist in various
places. An excellent little picture of the kind is in the Berlin
museum, No. 223, and is there ascribed to the school of Correggio.”
That Correggio himself reproduced smaller representations of this
scene, preserving only the three prominent figures of the Infant, the
Mother, and St. Joseph, is notorious. It was a favorite subject of the
great master’s, as is evident in the very counterpart of the _Notte_,
because of its wonderful light—St. Jerome, or _Giorno_—“Day.” Coindet,
in his _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, speaking of the _Notte_,
says that, on account of the celestial light which emanates from the
divine Child, the picture “has been called ‘Night,’ just as the St.
Jerome is often called ‘Day,’ by the Italians, who thus express the
striking light of that picture. Is it necessary to say that that light
is as harmonious as it is brilliant, and that the celebrity of those
two pictures, ‘Night’ and ‘Day,’ is due above all to the perfection of
the chiaroscuro?”
The picture which the old man was restoring is one of the “smaller
representations” spoken of by Kugler. It required no restoration as
far as the coloring was concerned. That was deep and brilliant as
ever. Not the lights but the shadows needed retouching, and the old
man showed himself a good artist, as well as a reverent admirer, when
he said he would not touch the face of the Child. The wonderful
durability of the coloring, which every one knows to be one of the
grand characteristics of Correggio’s productions, is admirable in the
little picture. M. Coindet says that frequent analyses of some of
Correggio’s paintings, with the view of discovering the secret of this
durability, have produced results more curious than useful. Upon the
chalk, he says, the artist appeared to have laid a surface of prepared
oil, which then received a thick mixture of colors, in which the
ingredients were two-thirds of oil and one of varnish; that the colors
seemed to have been very choice, and particularly purified from all
kinds of salts, which, in process of time, eat and destroy the
picture; and that the before-mentioned use of prepared oil must have
greatly contributed to this purification by absorbing the saline
particles. It is, moreover, commonly believed that Correggio adopted
the method of heating his pictures either in the sun or at the fire,
in order that the colors might become, as it were, _interfused_, and
equalized in such a way as to produce the effect of having been poured
rather than laid on. Of that lucid appearance which, though so
beautiful, does not reflect objects, and of the solidity of the
surface, equal to the Greek pictures, Lomazzo says that it must have
been obtained by some strong varnish unknown to the Flemish painters
themselves, who prepared it of equal clearness and liveliness, but not
of equal strength. The history of the little picture in question is
not known to any precision. It was brought to Rome from Madrid by the
late Cardinal Barili, who received it as a present from a Spanish
nobleman while he was nuncio to the court of Madrid. After the death
of the cardinal it was exposed for sale with many other pictures,
mostly of indifferent merit. The probabilities are that it would have
fallen into the hands of some son of Jewry, and disappeared, perhaps
for ever, into a dark and dingy lumberroom of the Ghetto. A better
fate was in store for the gem. The _père_ saw it, admired it,
purchased it, and rested not until he had placed it in the hands of
the venerable artist in the quaint old studio, of whom no better
eulogium can be pronounced than that implied by the members of the
Academy of St. Luke, who, having been requested by Prince Borghese to
hold a consultation on the restoration of Raphael’s “Deposition,”
unanimously chose the old man to do it. He has since been entrusted
with the delicate and important commission of restoring the principal
pictures in the gallery of the Vatican. That he did justice to the
little _Notte_ requires no proof. He possesses the necessary
requisites for such a task—the skill of an artist, the love of an
artist, and the humility of an artist. The picture is now in New York
City, and, as an old painter once said laconically, in pronouncing his
opinion on a painting, “_ex ipsa loquitur_”—it speaks of itself. But I
have left the old man standing outside the parenthesis, palette in
hand, and a smile irradiating his countenance which would be the
instant destruction of legions of blue fits. He saw me look
inquiringly at the prayerful St. Jerome, and divined my desire of
knowing something, about it.
“Painted by Timoteo Vite,” said he, “and I’m to copy it for the good
_père_ and send it off to America. Going to be in good company, too!”
And he pointed his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the
lightsome “Night.”
Then I turned towards the “Dispute of the Hermits.”
“That was an effort of mine when I was eighteen. I never thought it
would go to the New World when I worked at it.”
Laying down the palette, he asked me if I wished to walk around the
house. I was only too glad of the invitation. As we passed out of the
door he pointed towards the ladder in the corner, and said laughingly:
“Jacob’s ladder when it rains; only there are no angels ascending and
descending. My room is above—an old man’s contrivance.”
As we walked up on the roof, he narrated with the complacency of a
little boy how he built the house himself; how he was somewhat
discouraged in digging the foundation when the folks laughed at him;
how he built the outside wall first, to hide himself from the
observation of the passers-by, and after that he got along finely. At
this juncture I stopped to examine a large cage on the roof. It
contained several white mice.
“They are pleasant little fellows, especially when the moon shines,”
said my host, and, stooping down, he opened the little door, whereat
several of the little creatures ran out into his hand.
Replacing them with some difficulty—for they seemed reluctant to be
shut up again—we went down the stairway and over to the part of the
building opposite the studio. As we passed the door I looked in again
at the grim skeleton, and then turned away quickly. But he laid his
hand gently on my shoulder, and said:
“You young people don’t like the sight of skeletons, because they tell
an unpleasant truth very plainly. I call that skeleton the Naked
Truth; it’s a splendid antidote against a disease called pride.”
As we passed the chicken-coop he had to caress a few favorite
bantlings. Then came an old storeroom, then a carpenter-shop, then a
blacksmith-shop, where he told me he did all his own carpentering and
smithing; then a hole in the wall containing a wheelbarrow, pickaxes,
and spades, with which he amused himself in the evening, as, indeed,
the lovely little garden attested. The gold-fish in the cistern seemed
to be his especial favorites. When he dipped his hand in the water
they all flocked around and nibbled it vigorously. Nor did they evince
the slightest disinclination to be caught. I remarked that the cistern
was large enough to bathe in.
“Precisely,” he answered; “I made it for that purpose—the fish were a
second thought. I learned to swim in there. It is very pleasant on a
warm evening.”
I asked him how long he labored in building up his little home.
“Seven years, like Jacob; only the patriarch had the advantage of me
there, too—he got a Rachel in the end, and I have only—” He paused and
looked about him. The friendly dog and cat had appeared on the scene,
a hen began to cackle boisterously, which left no doubt in the minds
of the neighbors that the great feat of laying an egg had just been
achieved. The little shadow which saddened his face for a moment
passed away in an instant, and he completed the sentence—“this
live-stock.”
“And your art,” I subjoined.
“And my art,” he admitted pleasantly. “Say,” he added, as he saw me
moving towards the steps which led down to the garden door, “do you
think the good _père_ would like to sell that picture?”
I thought not—I was sure he would not; and, with a promise to come and
see him often, I left him. I have gone to the old studio repeatedly
since, and each visit has been a new confirmation of my first
impression—that he was the happiest old artist in the Eternal City.
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.
(FROM THE FRENCH.)
JUNE 13.
What a lovely day, my sister! Everything is singing, around and within
me; my mother is making rapid progress in her convalescence. Baby has
five double teeth, and Lucy is radiant; Adrien, Gertrude, and Hélène
left us this morning to be present at the marriage of which I have
already told you; René and his brothers are gone out; Berthe and all
the darlings in the country; Lucy is going out, and your Georgina is
by the side of the reclining-chair. Poor mother! how sweet it is to
watch her revive. Johanna’s Bengalese birds, brought hither to enliven
our dear invalid, are hopping about gaily in their gilded cage; my
beautiful exotics are flowering in the _jardinière_; everything is
living, animated, radiant. My mother can now converse; all her wishes
are now for her complete recovery, that the _two sisters_ may meet.
But first we shall fulfil our vow, and go to tread the holy mountain
upon which the Blessed Virgin Mary placed her heavenly foot, and hang
our _ex voto_ in the beloved sanctuary. To revisit La Salette without
you, my Kate, will be to me both sweet and bitter.
Hélène has no secrets from me; she permits me to read her
journal—pious effusions of a soul belonging wholly to God. If I did
not fear to be indiscreet, I would transcribe for you these pages, all
palpitating with divine love.
Yesterday I took all the small population to the fair. The displays in
the open air, under gigantic chestnut-trees, made them wild with
delight, but Aunt Georgina willingly shut her eyes and ears. In the
evening there is so much noise and animation, it rather reminds one of
_Vanity Fair_. How sweet is solitude when one returns! Kate, as time
goes on, the more my happiness increases in solidity and depth. René
appears to me still more attractive, more gentle, good, and handsome
than ever. I fear the future, since happiness is an exception.
Margaret tells me to-day of her arrival in Paris; you will see her
before I do. “I can but bless God,” she writes, “for having mingled
wormwood with the honey of my golden cup; I should have loved earth
too well.” Poor Margaret! I persist in my opinion that she is
mistaken, and that her imagination deceives her. Can you imagine what
a whole life would be without sunshine and without love?
Mme. de T—— has long been insisting that I should consent to set out
with René, but I should not forgive myself if I were to leave her
side, feeling that I am necessary to her. It fatigues her to speak,
and I understand her look. How good is God to have given me another
mother! Lucy is going to spend two months with hers. Her communicative
gaiety, her cheerful spirit, and her lively chatter make her valuable
to us, not to speak of her excellent qualities. To amuse our beloved
invalid we got up a little drama yesterday, and some _tableaux
vivants_. It was superb.
Here I have been interrupted to give my mother some music. I played
her the _Symphony in La_.
And hereupon, dear Kate, I make you my best curtsy, and hasten away to
René.
JUNE 16.
Thanks to “this ingenious art of painting speech and speaking to the
eye,” we already know that Hélène has apparently enjoyed herself very
much on her last appearance in the world. Adrien and Gertrude have
despatched quite a volume to my mother. Gertrude will carefully keep
the white and vapory toilette of her daughter, who had, she says, a
charming expression, like that of an exiled angel, in those
drawing-rooms where she was the admired of every eye. They announced
their return for the 18th. It seems to us all as if they had been
absent for months. Separations, departures—these are the real crosses
of life.
Read the _Beatitudes_, by Mgr. Landriot. It is very fine, this
eloquent commentary on the magnificent words of our Saviour. The
_beati qui lugent_ too often finds its application.
The last four days I have been to Hélène’s paralytic. The poor woman
was quite confused at my eagerness, while I was so happy to wait upon
her that I would willingly have done so on my knees. My charities will
not be rewarded in heaven; I have too much sense of pleasure in them,
too much enjoyment. God is present to me in the poor. “May God bless
you, my ladies!” This is the most delightful adieu I have ever heard.
René, to whom I have given a detailed account of my morning, says that
he should be curious to see me doing the house-work for my good old
woman. I have probably done it very badly, but then I shall soon
become used to it. Benoni keeps his sweetest smiles for me, and I am
teaching him your name. A thought of Mgr. Dupanloup often comes into
my mind: “The borders of the Ganges, which send us Oriental pearls,
have not given us simplicity; I have found it in the heart of a
child.” Picciola is rich in it—in this sweet and charming simplicity
which is the sister of innocence. “Would you not consent to give her
to me?” I said yesterday to Berthe. This morning the pretty dove came
leaping into my room, exclaiming, “Now I have two mammas!
Good-morning, mamma!”
Adieu for the present, my sweet one.
20.
Dearest, we set off to-morrow. My mother declares that she will not be
completely cured except at La Salette. Hélène is enthusiastic about
it. What a festival! What joy!
I am pressed for time. We are packing up. All is commotion; every one
coming and going; everybody calling everybody else. Picciola runs from
room to room with outstretched hands, offering her services. I send
you a kiss. Unite yourself to us. René will write to you when we are
in the train; an impossibility to me. I shall pray for Ireland.
LA SALETTE, June 20.
Why cannot we die here, dear Kate? It is truly the vestibule of
heaven. I have no need to describe to you the landscape, the chapel,
my emotion on finding myself again in the same place where we had
prayed together so much. My mother is making wonderful progress, and
would fain not set out again any more. René, to whom I had described
it all, assures me that the reality surpasses my poetic pictures. How
sweet and good a thing it is to pray together, and to be at the very
well-spring of graces! Hélène is overflowing with joy. Adrien and
Gertrude weep no more.… And we are soon to see and embrace you again,
to spend a month near to you. I think we shall be in Paris on the 12th
of July. Dearest Kate, I regret you here! Oh! the inconstancy of my
poor heart, so happy to give up to God the better part of itself, and
then desiring to take it back again. The gifts of the Lord alone are
without repentance. O sweet, delightful, perfect friend! nothing can
separate our souls, always fraternally united in the adorable Heart
which gave itself for us.
La Salette! La Salette! To say to one’s self that here, where we
tread, Mary has passed; that her voice, more melodious than all the
harps of Eden, has been heard upon these heights; that this sky has
beheld her tears, her propitiatory and beloved tears, mysterious
pearls which should be gathered up by a seraph; to pray here, where
the Mother of the Saviour has herself taught prayer; oh! what
felicity: _Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum!_
Beloved, I have prayed for you, and soon now I shall see you. “Dear
Georgina,” my mother said to me yesterday, “may God reward you for the
sacrifice you have made for me!” Between this super-excellent mother,
René, Hélène, and myself there passes a continual interchange of
thoughts and feelings, and I could even say amongst us all.
Yours now and always, my sister.
* * * * *
AUGUST 12, 1867.
What, already? so soon? and we must resume our correspondence! Again I
have quitted you, my Kate, my visible angel guardian … Hélène is also
gone. The heavenly Spouse has placed in his own garden this delicate
and charming flower, for which this world had no dew that was pure
enough. “Let us be saints,” she writes to me; “it is only at this
price that we may purchase heaven.” And I answer her: “It is also only
at this price that this life is endurable; that the departures, the
separations, the pain of absence, too sensible an image of death, can
be courageously accepted.” Dear Kate, where shall we find each other
now? May God protect you! Brittany enchants me. I walk along the
beach; make people tell me all the legends of the country; hunt with
René; but most often slip away into the little village church, or into
the chapel of the château. We have an organ, and consequently superb
festivals. Our almoner is a college friend of my brother’s; he has
been kind enough to undertake Arthur’s education for a time, and we
are all very glad of this arrangement; this good _abbé_ is really a
learned man; the little girls are profiting largely by his stores of
information, and we are busy with collections, botany, maps, etc. This
_savant_ is moreover a traveller: he is lately returned from the new
world! And hence we have stories of most exciting interest. My
Picciola dreams about them. In short, the new-comer has already turned
all the heads of the infantine world, and our Breton life will be at
the very least as animated and joyous as our life at Orleans.
I am expecting Margaret, who says that she is coming to visit me,
without naming the day. Our habitation is beautiful, antique, vast;
with halls like those described by Sir Walter Scott. It is surrounded
by immense woods, and brightened by a profusion of flowers. There too
is the sea, blue and profound, image of life, with its waves and
hidden rocks. I never look at it without an inexpressible longing to
pass over it to behold again my Ireland. Kate, Kate, what a charm do
not memories possess!
René is writing to you. I have not described to you my rooms, so
exquisitely ornamented according to my own taste. Let us praise God,
my sister!
AUGUST 13.
An unexpected visit; some Irish friends, the W——s. “We come to
reconcile ourselves,” said Lady Helen gracefully to me. My
mother-in-law gave them a most cordial reception, and they remained
with us two days. You may imagine how happy I was. What details we had
to communicate! Marie de S—— is at rest in God; no one had written to
tell me. Beautiful and holy soul, remember us on high! The old men,
almost centenarians, whom we left in our dear native place, are living
yet, and death has stricken down another victim, in the brightness of
youth and future prospects, George D——, only six days older than I am,
and who died far from his home. He was brought back by his mourning
family to the vault at V——, where his brother already reposed. He died
a really holy death, … that is a consolation. They say that his father
is distracted with grief. Dear Isa, whose aspirations tended towards
the cloister, is giving up her happiness to remain in the world, there
to pray, suffer, and comfort her family in their sorrows. Gerty is
grown even prettier than she was—a lily. How much I have been
questioned about my Kate!
A letter to-day from Lizzy who lovingly reminds me of my promise. It
will be for next spring, I think. I took our guests to the village,
the presbytery, the church, the asylum, and the hospital; all of which
are either founded or supported by the liberality of Mme. de T——. A
carriage!…
It was Margaret, dear Kate; not my Margaret of former times,
warmhearted and open, talkative and gay, but Margaret pale, suffering,
and yet finding again a spark of joy as she pressed me in her arms. I
am going to devote myself entirely to her; she must be cured, and if
possible undeceived. Aid me with your prayers!
AUGUST 25.
This dear festival of St. Louis makes me want to write to you. It is
five o’clock; René is sleeping soundly; I have slipped on a
dressing-gown, and now, after a prayer, I come to you, my beloved
Kate, my sister by nature and affection. A balmy breeze reaches me
through the half-open window, the aërial concerts are beginning, the
universal prayer ascends to God. My soul is glad, like nature. After
many hesitations, much feeling my way, and on René’s advice, I
addressed myself to Lord William himself.… It was a very delicate
matter, and my timidity was up in arms; but Margaret’s life was in
question. How I set about it I do not in the least know; my good angel
was with me. The excellent lord thanked me almost with tears; the
melancholy of our friend was too evident to him, and he had tried in
vain to break through the wall of ice that had grown up between them.
All is now at an end; and we have convinced Margaret, who is reviving
again to happiness. I know not what evil tongue had so poisoned the
golden cup of “_the prettiest woman in England_.” The truth is that
Lord William’s brother wanted to marry the young, portionless maiden
of whom I spoke to you, whose views were above this world and fixed on
heaven. Filial piety keeps her where she is, for she attends upon her
grandfather—blind, like Homer and Milton, and like them a poet, says
Lord William, who, being himself enthusiastic about poetry, was a
frequent visitor to his relative, the aged bard, and thus
unconsciously gave rise to the absurd story too easily believed by
Margaret. How she regrets not having sooner sought into the truth of
the matter! I am enchanted at this explanation, and also because my
mother insists that our “dear English” shall not leave us for a month.
We are planning excursions without end. Lord William and René are
inseparable; my sisters dispute as to which shall have Margaret, who
is more ravishingly beautiful than ever. Her fine voice rings
majestically in the chapel; yesterday we went _en masse_ to surprise
Mme. de T—— because it was her _fête_. You cannot imagine the effect
of our choirs. René, Adrien, Edouard, everybody, the English peer too,
sang. Your Georgina played the organ—not without tears of emotion.… My
mother said she was _in heaven_. All day long bouquets and _hommages_
were arriving; these good Bretons are so grateful, so pious! To-morrow
we go to Auray, next week to Solesmes, … a long way, … but I would
willingly go to the world’s end.
Margaret almost worships the babies. Alix scarcely leaves her; Gaston
has his private and his state visits to her. My Picciola is so
intelligent that English has soon become easy to her. I converse with
her in my mother’s tongue; we pray together. Am I not happy, dear
Kate? Everything smiles upon me. Often I meditate upon the benefits
which I have received from an all-merciful Providence, and especially
upon my happiness in my friends. Apropos to this subject, I recollect
a sad but charming remark of Louis Veuillot’s upon departures, those
great sadnesses of life: “There are flowers of friendship that we have
sown, and which spring up, but which we must abandon when their
fragrance is sweetest!”… He goes on to speak of forgetfulness; the
mourning wreath thrown by the oblivious world on the tomb of vanished
friendships, and sorrowfully says, “All the flowers of human life are
perishable!” Is it an illusion of my youth to believe that my
affections are like the flowers of heaven, inaccessible to decay,
strong against storms?… After the love of God, the first and greatest
good, the surest element of even terrestrial happiness, I have
friendship, and I rejoice in it with enchantment; then I have the love
of my good René, so pure and Christian a love, which makes of our two
souls one single being, in an indissoluble union; then reading, with
its varied emotions, study, the faculties of enthusiasm, of
admiration, of comprehension.… Oh! how fair is life. When I speak of
friendship, it is the tender affection of my Kate that is especially
in my mind—a tenderness to which I owe all that I am. Dearest and best
beloved, I sometimes ask myself how it is that you have been to me a
sister so _unique_, and finding no other motive for this choice
affection than your loving charity, I bless God, who has permitted
this to be in his merciful designs, which I cannot sufficiently adore.
When I make my thanksgiving after communion, I am fond of taking a
_general survey_ in my heart, so as to include in it names and
memories, and after speaking to Jesus of all the souls in whom I am
interested, I never fail to ask our rich and mighty Sovereign to
bless, together with me, all who love or have ever loved me.…
God guard you, _carissima_!
AUGUST 29.
News from Ireland: Ellen is in great trouble; her son has a mucous
fever which leaves small hope of his life. Alas! everywhere there is
mourning and death. Poor friend! so Christian and so pious, so
courageous under trials, how she must suffer, in spite of her
fortitude and resignation! Have you often met with people so
sympathetic as this amiable Ellen?—a heart of gold, full of tenderness
and devotion, in so delicate a frame. It seems to me as if the tears
which she drives back by her mother’s bed of suffering (who is still
in great danger, as Margaret has written you word), and by the cradle
of her beautiful little Robert, fall on my heart. Let us pray for her!
René is telling you about our pilgrimage to Auray. What happiness to
be there with these good and dear friends, and with my mother, whose
health is most satisfactory! Why are not you also here, dear Kate? Oh!
I never cease to miss you, although I repeat to myself that nothing is
wanting to my felicity.
Yesterday was the feast of St. Augustine, the great doctor of love.
Would that I could love like him!… M. Bougaud has written the life of
St. Monica, which I am told is very fine. Adrien left the book at
Orleans. I had read the introduction, which is written in an excellent
and elevated style. “It is the poem of the most incomparable love that
ever was.” O Saint Augustine, pillar of the church, defender of the
faith! pray for those who fight; obtain for them that love which
purifies and sanctifies suffering, that holy and perfect love which
alone is the life of the soul! I have a special affection for St.
Augustine. His was so ardent and enthusiastic a nature; his lofty soul
so great, so indomitable, and so athirst for happiness; then, after
his conversion, how courageous was his faith, how apostolic his
eloquence, and, above all, how mighty was his love of God, which, as
it were, consumed him! In all this we behold with admiration the
infinite mercy of the Creator. Do you recollect Ary Scheffer’s lovely
picture of St. Monica and St. Augustine by the sea? One could spend
hours before those already transfigured countenances, studying their
thoughts, which are rendered almost visible by the genius of the
artist.
Read a letter by Mgr. Dupanloup on the death of Cardinal Altieri. We
still live in the times of men like Borromeo and Belzunce; the church
never grows old. Cardinal Altieri was Bishop of Albano. The cholera
broke out in that small town with such violence that a hundred persons
died in a night. Mgr. Altieri assembled his servants and asked if they
were willing to follow him to Albano. He set out, accompanied by one
alone, and his almoner, and taking with him his will, to which he
added a codicil. After three days, spent in heroic acts of charity and
devotedness, he was attacked by the malady, and died in the arms of
two other cardinals, who, happening to be at Albano when the scourge
appeared, had not quitted the post of honor. This death is a great
loss to the church. Mgr. Altieri was Camerlinga of the Roman Church,
the highest dignity after the Pope. Louis Veuillot, in his biography
of Pius IX., says: “There is no name and no character more Roman than
that of Altieri.” The cardinal was only sixty-two years of age. Pius
IX. at once desired to find him a successor. A messenger of the Holy
See was sent to Mgr. Apollini: “It is necessary to set out immediately
for Albano.” “I am ready,” was Mgr. Apollini’s reply. Is it not fine?
What page of Homer equals this page in the history of the church? The
Zouaves are also doing wonders of charity at Albano: making themselves
_Gray Sisters_ for the living, and burying the dead; they are sublime.
May God have pity on poor Italy! Mgr. Dupanloup concludes his letter
by a few words full of sadness and apprehension. O my God! will not
the eloquence of genius, the supplications of thy saints, the
sufferings of thy martyrs, disarm thine anger? By the side of these
solemn scenes yesterday’s paper contained a curious article: the
“miracles” of the Zouave Jacob, of whom you must have heard, dear
Kate. What times we live in! On the one hand we have spiritism,
magnetism, all sorts of communications with demons, and on the other
the wonderful development of noble thoughts, institutions of all kinds
in aid of every form of misfortune, men of the highest genius raising
imperishable monuments to the glory of God and the church! If our time
is one of great errors and many troubles, it is also a time of great
virtues and noble acts of devotion. Margaret told us that when passing
through Périgord she stopped at Cadouin, where the holy _Sudarium_ of
our Lord is offered to the veneration of the faithful. Before this
august relic she prayed with indescribable emotion for our
incomparable Pontiff, who is following in the footsteps of our Saviour
up Mount Calvary. The revolution is about to march against Rome; what
will be the consequence? “_Tu es Petrus._” … With this word one can
understand the peace, serenity, and confidence of Pius IX. Suffer not,
O Lord! that so many wandering and guilty sons shall die fighting
against their own Father!
* * * * *
SEPTEMBER 6.
The sacrifice is consummated: Ellen has witnessed the death of her
baby—her joy and pride. “Her husband comforted and sustained her like
a Christian,” Lizzy writes. The paroxysm of her maternal anguish was
fearful.
A child should never die before its mother; it is against nature, and
is almost more than the heart can endure; the help of God is
necessary; let us pray for her, my Kate. This dear, much-tried,
heartbroken mother thought of me in her sorrow, and sent me a few
lines. You will read them and will weep with me over this page of woe.
I seem still to see that charming group: Ellen coaxing Robert to try
and take his first steps, and he sending us kisses. All these joys,
that golden dawn, those earliest days—who can bring them back to
Ellen? May God console her, and may the sweet angel who strengthened
Jesus at Gethsemani tenderly wipe away her tears! Margaret is as
grieved as I am. Our trip to Solesmes is somewhat delayed; we are
expecting more guests. I have just finished a splendid chasuble, which
I take the liberty of sending to your address, my dearest Kate—in the
first place, that you may admire it, and, secondly, that you may
kindly let Mme. G. know about it, as she will have to complete my
work. Have I mentioned to you a letter from the Bishop of Orleans to
the faithful of his diocese on the festivals of Rome, and the
approaching opening of an œcumenical council? It is splendid; there is
magic in his style.
You do not forget Zoë de L——? Margaret met her in Paris, _poor_, and
looking terribly aged. Through some inexplicable folly, she made an
absurd marriage, and the change of position, her unexpected
disappointment, the trials of heart and mind she has undergone, have
altogether upset her. “It was ten minutes,” Margaret writes, “before I
could recognize her.” Perhaps you could see her, dear Kate, and cheer
her up a little. _La belle Anglaise_ and I want to be of service to
her, and you must be our medium; René is writing to his banker, to
place the necessary sum at your disposal. I will enclose the card on
which Margaret wrote the address of this unfortunate Zoë.
Dearest Kate, pray for Ellen. There is, then, no such thing as perfect
happiness in this world. If it were not for the compassion I feel for
those whose troubles affect me so deeply, I should be too happy. How
kind René is! He is angelic! I cannot note down to you, or I should
have to write volumes, the thousand intimate and charming details
which make my life a paradise.
Hélène rarely writes; when she does, it is as a seraph might. She is
happy; she has entered into the place of repose which she has chosen,
in the _hollow of the rock_, where the dove loves to hide; she has
found her ideal. Gertrude reads on her knees the poetic effusions of
her child.
Dear Kate, may all heaven be with you!
SEPTEMBER 15.
My dear one, excursions are robbing me of all my leisure, but not of
the time to think of you. A pouring rain has interfered with our
projects for to-day, and all the children have fled to _Mme.
Margaret_, who takes a lively interest in these juveniles. Yesterday
was the birthday of this delightful friend. We busied ourselves in
preparations, whilst, at my request, Lord William drew his somewhat
wondering Margaret away to the park. A solitary little drawing-room
was rapidly transformed; it looked so pretty in the evening, with a
profusion of flowers and lights, wreaths of ivy twining round the
mirrors, and an illumination of the _heroine’s_ initials! She was
greatly touched and delighted; Picciola recited some beautiful verses
written by Edouard, and we presented her with bouquets, carvings, and
paintings. A concert brought the entertainment to a close. Mme. de T——
will not hear of the departure of our dear friends. “Sisters ought not
to leave each other before they are compelled,” she says. Kind,
excellent mother! Yesterday we walked along the coast so often sung by
the poet Brizeux, whom René quotes with so much Breton fire and
fitness. “Look there,” Adrien whispered to me, “at all that pretty
little brood!” Under the shadow of an oak about a hundred paces from
us a dozen children were preparing a _dînette_.[205] How handsome they
looked in their tatters, with their healthy and intelligent faces!
Arthur had a bright thought: he proposed to Picciola, who was carrying
the _cake-basket_, to share theirs among the poor little children. All
the babies joined in the festivity, and bonbons and delicacies were
freely distributed. Margaret sketched this pretty picture in her
album. You see our walks are not without their charm.
On Monday, I visited a pious canoness who lives alone in a sumptuous
residence. I was delighted with the kind and cordial welcome she gave
me, and spent with her three of the most enjoyable hours I ever passed
in my life. Mme. de Saint A—— is fifty-three years of age, though she
appears older; she has been exquisitely beautiful. Now she is better
than that—she is a saint; and next to the deep joys of the Eucharistic
table, I do not think there is any greater enjoyment than to converse
with such as she. The old castle overlooking the ocean has an antique
and lordly aspect, with a certain character as of something religious,
like a cenobite whom death has forgotten, kneeling by the borders of a
lake. The sea in this place forms a sort of inland bay, or quiet lake,
in which the great trees of the park seem to take pleasure in
reflecting themselves. The dwelling has been visited by the dukes of
Brittany, and one wing of the castle still bears their name. We
ascended the steps of the staircase of honor, up which the noble
mail-clad warriors so often rode mounted on their chargers. The room
of Mme. de Saint A—— is entirely white, like the soul of the pious
lady. It opens into the chapel. On each side of the altar several
funeral epitaphs show this temple of prayer to be also the temple of
memories. Mme. de Saint A—— showed us some water-colors worthy of
Redouté, painted by her great-grandmother; and some wood-carving which
excited the liveliest admiration of the gentlemen. It was impossible
to quit this Eden; we admired the grottoes and plantations, and
remained for _déjeuner_. We seemed to be in another world in this
Thebaid of the coast. We kissed the trunk of an immense chestnut whose
protecting boughs had overshadowed many generations, and which has a
higher title to glory from having in ’93 preserved from revolutionary
fury the stone statue of the Madonna which now guards the chapel. I
shall never forget this visit—twenty leagues from our residence—nor
the expression of that saintly face, the look and words which
accompanied the kind pressure of my hand at the moment of departure.
Mme. de Saint A—— has lost all her dear ones by death. God and the
poor still remain to her, a heritage worthy of her heart. Her artistic
and literary tastes are a great resource for her in her solitude,
which is occasionally shared by some friends at a distance, who are
faithful to this “_fragment of the past_,” as she said in showing us
the castle.
One hall, that of “the libraries,” contains treasures. Adrien, who is
an enthusiastic and learned archæologist, eagerly examined its
contents. Several rare manuscripts have passed into his possession; we
came home laden with riches. My share is a beautiful water-color
drawing. Shall we ever see this hermitage again?
Dear Kate, René and Margaret have finished their letters before me.
Adieu and _á Dieu_!
Dreamed of Ireland, her emigrants, her martyrs. Oh! how dear our
sacred island is to me.
SEPTEMBER 20.
Kind, loving, and beloved sister, three letters in your welcome
handwriting are come to me at the same time. Thanks for what you have
done for Zoë; she has written to tell me about it, and of your zealous
endeavors to make her more courageous. I have no more anxiety about
our poor friend since you are in her neighborhood.
René has procured for me _Femmes Savantes et Femmes Studieuses_,[206]
by Mgr. Dupanloup.
It is an excellent book, elevated and at the same time practical, and
quite in accordance with the views of my dear husband. Our studies
together are truly profitable? The good _abbé_ is very alarming just
now. He says that blood will be shed in France, much blood; with other
sinister predictions. May God guard you, dearest Kate!
The village is in mourning: five deaths this week. One is that of the
father of seven children; Margaret is placing six of them with the
Sisters at P——. The rich English lady makes herself almost worshipped
by our Bretons.
Ellen has written to me; she is more calm, but wonders that she can
live.… Her mother, broken down by this last blow, sank three days
after Robert. To force her away from the sad associations of home her
husband is taking her to Scotland, where they will remain until the
spring. I wish they were with us; we would try to comfort them. Ah!
Kate, how I pity mothers.
Finished the full-length portrait of René for our mother. How I have
enjoyed working at it—dear, kind husband! At this moment he is playing
Thalberg’s _Moïse_, and I hasten to join him. I should not be Irish if
I did not love poetry and music.
Love me as I love you, dear sister.
SEPTEMBER 28.
I am in a state of transport, dearest! For eight days past we have
been almost constantly in the carriage, and have seen Solesmes and its
jewels of stone, the handiwork of artists full of faith such as our
times do not find in their successors. Only imagine, dear Kate: I saw
nothing at Solesmes but the church and Sainte Cécile! On coming out I
closed my eyes, the better to recall those visions of beauty before
which death would seem more sweet. Beneath an arched roof on the right
two personages are placing Our Lord in the sepulchre; these are
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, the former in a rich Oriental
costume and the latter in a dress of the time of Louis XI., which
looks singular enough at first sight. Sitting before the tomb, St.
Mary Magdalene, bending low, with her head resting on her hands,
abandons herself to grief. It is very beautiful Kate. Of all that I
have seen that looked _living_ in sculpture, nothing ever impressed me
so much. This Magdalene is the jewel of the whole. She seems to live
and breathe; nothing could render the expression of sorrow and of
prayer in her countenance, nor the naturalness of her posture; one
feels as if she might raise her arms, and that her mouth might utter
her lamentation; one _feels_ that her eyes are overflowing with
tears.… Follow me now into the chapel on the left. Here is the
swooning of the Blessed Virgin, in a deep niche over the altar. Again,
our Lady, kneeling in ecstasy, supported by St. Peter and St. John, is
about to receive communion from the hands of her risen Son. In this
mystic idea there is to my mind exquisite poetry. Almost all the
apostles and the holy women are there; the figures in this group are
very numerous, and there are among them heads of an ideal beauty. I
have looked so long at these more than artistic, almost heavenly,
works, that they will long remain in my mind. The entombment of the
Blessed Virgin faces that of Our Lord, and is strikingly effective.
The position of our Lady is admirable, and there is something heavenly
in her countenance, which love transfigures even in death. St. John,
St. James the Less, Dom Bougner, an abbot of Solesmes, who by a pious
anachronism had himself represented in this solemn scene, and another
saint, hold the corners of the shroud. All four are excellently
rendered. St. Peter is leaning over our Lady, and contemplates her
with an indescribable expression of love. This figure is one of the
most attractive of all. Behind are the holy women, whose looks betoken
the deepest grief, and some of the apostles, who are speaking to each
other. All these figures are admirably grouped; not one lessens the
effect of the rest, and the whole scene is of touching grandeur. It
was difficult to tear one’s self away from the contemplation of those
animated and speaking forms.… There are other groups: Jesus in the
midst of the doctors, the Assumption, the Coronation; wonderful works
by men who have remained almost unknown. Why were you not there, dear
Kate? This is always the cry of my heart, which wants you everywhere.
To see Dom Guéranger formed part of our plan. When one has read his
_Sainte Cécile_ and his admirable pages on the _Temporal Power of the
Popes_, it is a happiness to listen to him in his monastic humility.
What a fine head he has!—a countenance so expressive of both intellect
and sanctity, and such vivacity and genius in his look! We were
present at the Benedictine Office, but went first to Sainte-Cécile, a
monastery of Benedictine nuns which Dom Guéranger is building at some
distance from the abbey. It will be splendid: magnificent cloisters,
and in the middle of the great quadrangle one of those marvellous
fountains that we used to admire in the pictures of the cloisters in
Spain.
Benediction, in the abbey church, was very beautiful. At the moment
when the benediction is given a dove descends upon the altar; the
sight is striking when the heart is already predisposed to heavenly
emotions. When, at the conclusion, the monks stood up to chant the _Te
Deum_, that song of the eternal Jerusalem which I never hear without a
thrill of inward joy, I felt an indescribable impression of happiness
and peace. Oh! how sweet it must be to serve God thus, and spend one’s
life in study and in prayer.
Dearest Kate, may God bless you, may he bless us all, and may he
deliver Ireland!
OCTOBER 2.
To-day Sarah B—— takes a lord and master. God grant that she may be
happy; that her heart, so upright, delicate, and loving, may not be
disappointed! She is in communication with Margaret, to whom she has
related the causes of her _almost_ rupture with Mary. Both had
suffered greatly from the loss of that affection which for twenty
years had filled their life; this marriage draws them nearer together.
Mass has been said for her, in this sweet corner of our Brittany, this
oasis. Margaret is about to leave us. What bitterness is linked to
every separation! How often our heart is divided, our life cut in
twain, and our happiness destroyed! We went on Monday to C——, where we
have an aunt, superior of a convent of the Visitation. “Convents do
not change, like the world,” said René, when we came out from the
parlor; “it even seems to me that these ascetic faces do not grow old.
And I know men of forty years of age who appear to be sixty, so much
have passions worn them out. Why is not every Christian house a
monastery? Why do not all men love our good God?”… My aunt was very
affectionate; promises of prayers were mutually exchanged.… I am
prayed for in many sanctuaries, in many retreats, pious homes of
refuge for wounded souls and for timid doves, dwellings where lilies
bloom, and where the Holy of Holies makes his habitation. And
everywhere, on every coast on which a Catholic hand has planted the
Cross of Christ, I am prayed for, in virtue of this great communion of
saints, this dogma so divine and so full of comfort, the sweetest of
all, it seems to me, giving hope for those who do not yet pray for
themselves! Oh! can I wonder that the religious life, to which our
Saviour promised a hundred-fold in this world and paradise in the
next—this life of self-renunciation and of sacrifice—has stolen my
Kate from me? Madame de P——, Lucy’s mother, is seriously ill; and her
son the _abbé_, the _grand-vicaire_, the holy priest, the joy and
consolation of her heart, is with her. All the _Edwards_ have just
left us; Gaston has been ill, and is recovering slowly. His pale,
gentle face so little resembles that of the rosy boy who smiled so
gaily upon us only a few weeks ago, that we are all pained at the
change. I trust God will spare this pretty little angel to dear Lucy;
but were the hosts of heaven to open their ranks to receive this
little brother, who, however, pitying the mother, would think of
pitying the child? Oh! what have I said? In my desire for heaven I was
almost forgetting earth!
_Lady Sensible_, Marguérite, is gravely working in the embrasure of
the window at a set of baby-linen which she will have made entirely
herself. This child will be a remarkable woman; there is something
singularly attractive about her; she talks little, but thinks much,
and her words are full of solidity and good sense. She is charmingly
pretty; last winter, in her little dress of black velvet over a blue
silk skirt, she looked like the daughter of a king.
Dearest, here is your letter, in the white hands of Picciola, and a
letter from Hélène, triumphantly brought to me by Alix! Kind little
angels! who possess the understanding of the heart, and so read mine.
Thanks, dear sister; may our Mother in heaven repay to you all the
love you bear me!
Margaret leaves to-morrow; she is gone to say good-by to her poor
people. What a kind, sweet friend she is! and now the ocean is soon to
separate us.
Pray for the travellers, beloved Kate, and for your own Georgina.
SEPTEMBER 13.
This autumn set in icy cold; to-day the weather has been mild and the
sun splendid; it was like a resurrection; my spirit revived with
nature. How I miss Margaret! She has had a prosperous journey. “The
aspect of everything is changed.” God be praised!
A kind visit this morning from a neighbor, the Baroness de T——, mother
of three sweet children, whom she brings up herself. This charming
woman is in deep mourning for her brother; riches are no shield from
the unlooked-for strokes of death. In positions where people are in
possession of everything, it must be dreadful suffering to be helpless
to detain here below, at the price of all one’s gold, those who are
carried off by death. We are said to be on the point of a grievous and
terrible crisis; I can easily believe it; it is the general
expectation of minds. Everything suffers; all families are stricken in
those dearest to them, all is trouble and distress. M. V. R. is dead
at Dublin, without confession, without hope, without God! Is there no
angel for these poor wanderers, to make one ray of light shine before
their eyes? Nelly, the mourning Nelly, confides her grief to me: “What
a night of anguish! and what tears I shed! No priest beside this dying
bed; my mother in despair, I on my knees, my eyes dried up with
weeping, doubting if it were a dream or a reality, and wondering
whether so many ardent prayers must be in vain! The only religious
ornament in the room was a little picture I had drawn when a child,
and which my poor uncle had not observed, or else tolerated it on my
account; its subject was the conversion of a sinner. This seemed to me
providential. I could not believe that this life, so troublous, so
agitated, and so sinful, so far from God and from the practice of
religion, could go out without one spark of divine light to illuminate
it, or without some thought of penitence finding entrance, which might
obtain pardon before eternity.… Alas! I have but one hope, and I cling
to that in the fulness of my trouble like one who is shipwrecked to a
fragment of the vessel; it is that, in passing judgment on a soul, God
is mindful of all the prayers that will be offered for it!”
Poor Nelly! how well I understand her. I hope, I hope; who knows what
passes in that supreme moment, in that terrible grappling of death
with life, between divine mercy and the sinner, who may in one instant
make an act of perfect contrition and love?
Would you like to have a page out of Hélène’s journal, the receptacle
of her inmost and most secret confidences, which she left with her
mother, and which René and I read with enthusiasm? “‘Knowest thou the
land where the orange tree blossoms?’ was the vague question of the
melancholy Mignon to all around him; and I, for my part, ask
everywhere, ‘Knowest thou the land whither flows all my love? Knowest
thou the land to which mount my desires? Knowest thou Carmel, the
sacred mountain where I shall possess my God?’ I also could say,
“Knowest thou this beloved home, where I have so often sat with
gladness in my heart? Knowest thou this mother who loves me with so
true a love, this father so fond and tender, these kind, indulgent
brothers, this noble-hearted grandmother, all this charming family who
have made my life so sweet and golden?… O nature! and I am about to
leave all these! I communicated this morning, the Feast of St. Teresa,
the illustrious and seraphic lover of God, the fairest flower of
Carmel, the glory of the church, a soul so strong and lofty in her
perfection that she no longer desired any happiness in this world, and
repeated, ‘Lord, let me suffer or die!’ Edouard Turquety, the sweet
Catholic poet, has written some beautiful verses on this sublime
thought. O great St. Teresa, eagle of love! whose flight reached to
such heights, draw me after you; detach me from earth, gain for me
that I forget for God all which is not God!
“‘Emporte-moi, douce pensée,
Effusion d’un cœur jaloux,
Je suis la veuve délaissée
Emporte-moi vers mon Epoux.’”[207]
Dear Kate, do you not doubly
love our Hélène?
OCTOBER 21.
Do you know the _Meditations on the Way of the Cross_, by the Abbé
Perreyre? I find in this book a comprehension of suffering which can
only belong to a superior mind, and one which has drunk from one of
the bitterest cups of life. There are passages in it which seemed to
thrill me, especially this thought, that “trial breaks souls and
forces them to shed around them floods of love.” I like to pass before
your kind eyes all that I read and admire. René yesterday quoted me a
beautiful thought of Mgr. of Orleans on La Moricière: “A man is a
prism; the rays of God pass through him; it is not he who is
beautiful—it is the rays, it is God; but without him we should not see
them.” Read on Sunday, by the same genius, the postscript to the
letter of M. Rattazzi; it is admirable for its power, expression, and
lofty feeling. The Archbishop of Rennes has written a few lines to
Mgr. Dupanloup full of warmth and energy. It is said that our troops
are going to Rome. God grant that it may be so, for his own glory, for
the safety of Pius IX., and for the honor of our poor France! Oh! must
it be written on the page of our history that the eldest daughter of
the church has forfeited her mission, and that she has failed to say
to the abettors of the revolution, “You strike not my father with your
sacrilegious hand without first passing over my body”? I am indignant
and amazed at beholding the Catholic world remain as if stupefied when
it ought to rise as one man to defend the holy Pontiff. René and his
brothers have all served under the Breton hero in the cause of Pius
IX. Adrien’s two sons are gone to fight under his banner; they set out
of their own accord, after receiving the blessing of their father,
mother, and grandmother. Pray for them, my Kate! Gertrude is on her
Calvary. Our Brittany will be worthily represented at Rome. _Sursum
corda!_ God keep you, my well-beloved!
OCTOBER 31.
Splendid weather! the air full of warm, poetic odors. I have been
rather unwell, but am better again; do not be uneasy about me,
dearest. Good news from every quarter, but sadness at home, for
Gertrude and Adrien are leaving us, having heard that one of their
sons is ill at Rome; so they hasten thither with all speed. I should
like to accompany them, it is so delightful to travel. Mgr. of Orleans
has written to his clergy, requesting prayers for the Pope and the
army of Italy. There is just now a certain movement of religious
enthusiasm in France. Numerous volunteers are enrolling themselves in
the pontifical army, and there are among them those who leave their
children, their young wife, or their betrothed; and the bishop says
that if there are at the present time mothers weeping over a son who
has died a martyr in the holiest of causes, there are those who weep
still more bitterly because they have no son.… Is not this the highest
expression of Christian patriotism? Rome is the fatherland of the
Catholic universe; happy indeed are her defenders!
_Evening._—I have just come in from a long walk, alone, on the sands.
René is gone with his brother as far as Tours, whence he will not
return before to-morrow; my mother had to write, and to pray; the good
_abbé_ had undertaken the charge of all the children; the _grown-up
people_ were variously occupied; I wanted to enliven my solitude, and
have been to visit my poor people, and in the presence of immensity
have lifted up my soul. It was the hour of twilight, which had
therefore a double attraction. I love solitude in the evening; the
soul, disposed by the calm of nature for meditation and prayer, rises
without effort to God. I do not like to shorten these moments, and
willingly prolong them until it is dark. There is always a certain
solemnity which attaches to things that end. If we thought of it well,
how much we should be impressed by the close of a day! How many souls
there are who will not see another! How many sheep have this very day
quitted the green pastures of the Good Shepherd! How many tears have
the angels gathered up! Tears of the mother shed over the coffin of
her first-born, over a son who is fighting, over a youth who is going
astray; tears of sorrow, of repentance, of holy joy, tears of all,
alas! and for every cause. Is there a human eye that knows not tears?
Oh! how many things one day contains. It may be a prodigal child
brought back; an upright life sanctified by sacrifice, a martyrdom, a
consecration to God. It may be an overflowing of evil and impiety,
and, on the other hand, prayer poured out in floods before the altar.
A great church-festival, a first communion, a far-distant island
conquered to the Gospel, a battle gained over the enemies of the
faith—these, these are a day! Oh! the history of a day would be long.…
Whilst the glittering world, returned from its pleasures and
festivities, slumbers beneath its gilded ceilings, the world of
charity has already made the angels smile, the world of poverty has
already suffered, the world of industry is at work, the apostolic
world embarks on the vast ocean or sets foot on unknown shores, the
world of science studies and sounds the deep abyss of learning, the
world of prayer, the truly Catholic world, prays to God, sings his
praises, writes, speaks, teaches, lives for God! Everything revives,
and in this immense concert of humanity, wherein are heard so many
discordant notes, to which so many voices are daily wanting, the
Eternal Ear distinguishes the most imploring notes—the notes of
supplication and repentance. Evening comes, and the day ends; a
useless day for many of God’s creatures, a golden day for some. And
the angels of night spread the shadows over cities and solitudes,
while the angel of justice and the angel of mercy, two white-winged
seraphs, inscribe in the Book of Life the good and evil of this day;
while, in the splendor of eternal light, the heavenly concert
incessantly continues.… Oh! when shall we behold this day?… Pale dawns
of this world, fleeting hours, days without beauty, you are but a
point in a life, and this life has but one day; and this day, what is
it “in the ocean of ages,” what is it in Eternity?
Hélène speaks to me of heaven: “Oh! day of deliverance, cloudless day,
when I shall behold my God, when I shall drink of the torrent of
eternal delights, and mingle my feeble voice with the harmonies of the
heavenly Jerusalem, my soul sighs for thee!…”
Edward and Lucy return to us to-morrow, glad and happy; their mother
is recovered. Good-night, my Kate!
TO BE CONTINUED.
[205] A “little dinner,” in which everything is usually on a
small scale.
[206] “Learned and Studious Women.”
[207] Bear me away, sweet thought,
Fruit of a jealous heart;
From lonely widowhood,
Oh! bear me to my Spouse.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
It was the December of 1775. The British colonies in America were
agitated with wild excitement. News had been received of the
unsuccessful attack on Quebec by the Continental troops under
Montgomery and Arnold, and of the fall of the brave Montgomery.
The friends of the colonial cause had set great hopes on the success
of this enterprise, which would give them the command of the St.
Lawrence, and deprive the British of a most important arsenal for
their permanent supply of troops and munitions of war. They were
grieved and desponding over the disastrous result, while the
loyalists, rejoicing at the check thus given to the progress of the
rebellion, looked confidently for its speedy close, the restoration of
the royal governments, and the return of the several provincial
governors who had discreetly abdicated at the first outbreak, and
retired to safer quarters. No doubt their enthusiastic public
demonstrations of joy assisted in fanning to a flame the smouldering
elements of resistance among the colonists, who, exasperated at the
persistently oppressive measures devised and forced upon them by the
mother country, were even beginning to utter whispers of an entire
disruption, and a formal assertion of rights, in a declaration of
independence.
Near a pleasant village in the northern part of New Jersey there
stood—and may be standing yet, for the builders of those days had an
eye to permanency in the solid structures they reared—a farmhouse of
spacious dimensions, built in the favorite gambrel-roofed style then
customary in country dwellings. Mr. Foote, the owner of the mansion,
and of many broad acres around it, was a fine specimen of a country
gentleman after the old English pattern. Bigoted in his attachment to
everything English, he clung tenaciously to all the customs and
traditions which his father, in transplanting them to American soil,
had cultivated with an ardor all the more vehement for the difficulty
of assimilating them to an order of things so entirely different from
that in which they had formerly existed. These traditional treasures
he had bequeathed to his children as a sacred legacy of far more value
than the paltry lands, tenements, and appurtenances they would inherit
from him, and so his son continued religiously to regard them.
Early in life he married a lady from the neighboring village who had
been reared in the same sentiments of devotion to the mother country.
After a few years of happy domestic life in their retired home, she
died, leaving him with a family of five lovely daughters. Some years
later he married a widow from Philadelphia, whose only child by her
former marriage was the wife of a banker in that city, Mr. von
Francke.
Not far from the dwelling of Mr. Foote, and still nearer to the
village, was the residence of Mr. Thorpe, a handsome building
conformed to the fashion of European suburban mansions. He was also an
Englishman in his tastes and habits, but of a less tenacious cast than
his neighbor, whom he often annoyed by assailing some of his cherished
whims and humors. Nevertheless, they lived on terms of the most
cordial intimacy and friendship.
Mr. Thorpe married the only child of Mr. Earle, a banker in
Philadelphia, who was the senior partner of Mrs. Foote’s son-in-law.
She was a beautiful and highly accomplished lady. Endowed with rare
ability, discrimination, and firmness, no sophistry could mislead the
nice sense of justice which governed all her decisions. Her father’s
position and financial operations had opened a wide circle of
acquaintance in all the cities of the new world, and his fine social
qualities, combined with the fascinations of his gifted daughter—whose
mother had died when she was too young to realize the loss—attracted
crowds to his hospitable mansion. Great was the surprise in the
fashionable city circle among whom she moved when she chose from the
host of her admirers a plain country gentleman, of unquestionable
merit, it was true, but of very simple, not to say rustic, manners and
retiring habits.
She brought to her secluded home all the refined graces and elegant
embellishments of her former one, and sustained perfectly, in the
midst of her rural associations, the quiet dignity that had always
distinguished her; while she continued to exercise the generous
hospitality to which she had been accustomed in her father’s house.
Some years previous to the beginning of the war of independence, her
father retired from active business, left his affairs in the hands of
his partner, Mr. von Francke, and went to share his daughter’s home,
now adorned with seven fair sons, so tenderly beloved by their
grandfather that he could not bear to be separated from them. New
Jersey was then, as it is still, a thoroughfare between the States of
the Atlantic coast. From the first settlement it had been the most
turbulent of the provinces. Always violently agitated by territorial
and political questions, it was prepared to enter with vehemence into
the merits of those which had arisen between the colonies and the
mother country. In none of them were the exciting topics of the day
discussed more fiercely, _pro_ and _con_, than in this.
During the stirring events of the years immediately preceding and
following the memorable “’76” the house of Mr. Thorpe, much to the
chagrin of his intolerant neighbor, became the rendezvous of many
prominent men, most of them old friends of his father-in-law, of all
shades of political opinion, and of every religious and non-religious
party.
Through the holidays of Christmas and New Year’s the two families
always entertained a multitude of friends, and there was a round of
festivities between them, in which the neighboring villagers
participated. Mr. Foote, who, as might be expected, was a Tory of the
most malignant type, selected his guests from the class who were in
sympathy with him, and accused his more moderate neighbor of treason,
because he, his father-in-law, and his lovely wife tolerated persons
of different views, and acknowledged the force of their objections to
British rule.
Fifty years later it was my good fortune, among the felicitous chances
of a specially favored childhood, to pass the greater portion of three
years under the roof of a house built after the precise pattern of Mr.
Foote’s, though of somewhat smaller dimensions, in a little village on
the south bank of the St. Lawrence. Here his youngest daughter, Anna,
resided, and shared her home with her step-sister, Mrs. von Francke,
from Philadelphia, the widow of Mr. Earle’s partner, who occupied a
suite of rooms set apart for her use, and was always attended by her
waiting-woman, a smiling German matron somewhat advanced in years and
very fond of children.
It was my delight the moment school hours were over and the ceremony
of dinner despatched—for the habits of the stately old English home,
and the late dinners with their successive courses of fish, flesh, and
fowl, were as rigidly preserved through all the changes and chances of
founding a home in the wilderness as they had been under more
favorable circumstances—to mount the stairs with “Auntie Francke,” now
much past eighty, but as sprightly as myself, and while my companions,
the daughters of the house, were indulging in a wild game of romps
outside, draw my little arm-chair—she had a half-dozen of them
provided for the small members of the household—to her side in the
corner of the cheerful wood fireplace, and listen to her stories of
other times.
As I have said, she was then past eighty, but the certainties of a
position which placed her out of the reach of such cares and anxieties
as surround ordinary lives, united with a serene temperament alive to
all tender sympathies, had preserved the youth of her heart to atone
for the ravages of time and adorn the decaying shrine with undying
verdure and sweetness.
After the lapse of more than fifty years, how well do I remember the
graceful attitudes of the erect form, the carefully-adjusted drapery
of her rich, old-time costume, and, above all, the loving gleam of her
mild black eye as it rested upon me at such times! The maternal
instinct of her affectionate heart, never having found its proper
object in offspring of her own, overflowed towards all the young
within her reach, and her room was a perfect museum of winking and
crying dolls, strange puzzles, dissected pictures, flocks of
magnetized ducks and geese, with miniature ponds wherein to exercise
them by aid of a steel pencil—of all wonderful toys, in short, which
she procured on her annual trips to Philadelphia, and was wont to set
as traps to catch the little folk she so dearly loved. Her
waiting-woman was an apt assistant in pursuit of such small game; and
it has often been a wonder to me since how, with their precise,
methodical ways and exquisitely tidy, punctilious habits, they could
endure much less enjoy, the dire confusion and anarchy which resulted
from these captures.
For my own part, I was by nature a quiet, reserved child. Though I
could join tolerably well in a wild frolic, I preferred the
chimney-corner and a story, for which I was a most persistent beggar
when there was any chance of success. From my earliest childhood
stories relating to history, and especially to the history of our own
country, enthralled me beyond all others. This fancy had been fed by
constant association in my own home with grandparents who had borne an
active part in the scenes of the Revolution. They entertained many old
friends whose memories were also stored with incidents and anecdotes
of that period. Thus their interest was kept alive and their
conversation constantly directed to the political and social events of
those days, which opened the mind of their eager young listener,
almost prematurely, to subjects of grave import quite beyond what
would seem natural or appropriate for one of tender years.
What a treasure, then, was “Auntie Francke” to me when I was taken
from my quiet home in the woods, and left a trembling, homesick little
stranger—much less as to size, indeed, than in age—under the
hospitable roof of these dear friends of my mother in former years! On
the score of that friendship I was received there to attend the
village school with the daughters of the family, all older than
myself. Mrs. von Francke’s room became at once my solace and delight,
and even the _Tales of the Arabian Nights_ melted into utter
insipidity before the wondrous sketches she could give of “the times
that tried men’s souls.” For she had entertained daily at her home in
Philadelphia, as familiar friends, General Washington, Pulaski, De
Kalb, Rochambeau, La Fayette, De Grasse—all the foreign worthies, in
short, together with a host of our own countrymen whose names will be
household words as long as our nation exists. Her husband was brought
into constant intercourse with such men by virtue of his occupation,
and his inclination led him to extend to them most freely the
hospitalities of his home.
When my companions would break into my chosen hiding-place in search
of me, and find me the fascinated listener of their aged relative,
they would warn her to beware what yarns she spun for my amusement;
“for,” they said, “she will surely write them down and keep the
record. If you could see what she puts upon her slate in school that
has no relation to the horrors of arithmetic, you would believe she is
to be of the unhappy number who take such notes!”
Whether acting upon the hint or no, I did indeed, when pondering in my
own little nest of a room over what I had heard, jot down from time to
time many scraps in the words of my kind old friend, from portions of
which the following sketch is gathered.
* * * * *
On the 24th of December, 1775, a large assemblage met at the house of
Mr. Thorpe. The guests, many of them former friends and acquaintances
of Mr. Earle, were brought together from different cities of the
Atlantic States, with a sprinkling of the country friends of Mr. and
Mrs. Thorpe. At the same time an equally large party assembled at the
residence of my step-father, Mr. Foote, among them, of course, my
husband and myself. The object of both was to celebrate the festivals
of Christmas and the New Year according to old-time customs. It was
arranged that they should all join in Christmas festivities at Mr.
Foote’s, and open the New Year with Mr. Thorpe.
At that period, when the minds of the country were fermenting over
questions of vital importance, it was not to be hoped that such
leaders of the disaffected as were entertained under Mr. Thorpe’s
friendly roof—with whom it was half-believed that he and his family
were in perfect accord—would mingle very harmoniously with the guests
selected by Mr. Foote for their high-toned loyalty to king and church.
I confess to having watched the social results of intercourse between
such discordant elements with great trepidation. Thanks, however, to
the crystallizing power of courtly etiquette, now lamentably on the
decline, the mutual irritation was suppressed or kept within limits of
strict decorum, and the wonted hilarities of the joyous season were
undisturbed by anything more serious than certain heart-burnings
connected with questions of precedence on the line of march to the
dining-hall. These questions were decided according to the political
preferences of the respective hosts, quite irrespective of rank and
station. Of course the decision rankled none the less fiercely on that
account. I noticed, however, that at the table of Mr. Foote his
neighbor’s guests accepted their allotments, even when placed “below
the salt”—as the most prominent among them were sure to be—with a
graceful nonchalance which, if assumed, was a height of self-control
unattainable by the haughty friends of their host.
It was amusing to see how the “tables were turned” when it became the
part of Mr. Thorpe to play the host. I was placed near my step-father,
and listened carefully to his remarks addressed _sotto-voce_, as the
different courses were brought in and removed, to his particular
friend, the former private secretary of the ex-governor of New Jersey.
“To think,” he exclaimed indignantly, “of that young upstart Carroll,
an acknowledged papist and open promoter of disaffection and
disloyalty, being invited to take precedence of such as you in the
house of a friend of mine!”
“I yield the precedence with pleasure, I assure you,” was the reply.
“This young Carroll is a man of no ordinary mark. Of his political
errors, if errors they must be called, I can only say it is to be
deplored that British rule should have furnished him with the weapons
he wields so powerfully against it. He is likely to prove a weighty
and influential foe in politics and in his profession. I have been
present in court when he was unwinding webs cunningly woven by leaders
of the Maryland bar; and, analyzing them thread by thread, he would
expose their flimsiness with such convincing clearness and simplicity
that the most unlettered juryman could comprehend it as fully as the
learned jurists. He has wonderful command of language, and, with no
attempt at eloquence, astonishing power in swaying the judgments and
feelings of his audience.”
“The more shame for him!” exclaimed Mr. Foote; “when he might exert so
potent an influence for king and country, that he should stoop to
pervert his powers, and become the demagogue of a vile mob, for
purposes of paltry private ambition!”
“That could hardly be his object. The suggestions of private ambition
are all in the opposite direction. He has everything to lose in the
probabilities before him, and but little to gain from the bare
possibility of success in the future for the cause he has embraced.”
“Yes, thank God! there is scarcely the bare possibility of such a
result. With the whole power of Great Britain against them, the rebels
have little to hope for, and the punishment of this nefarious
rebellion will be speedy and sure! Already the first note of triumph
is sounded in the defeat of their troops before Quebec!”
“Perhaps you are right,” his friend replied; “but I have not been a
careless observer of what is passing, and, if I do not greatly mistake
the temper of this people, that disaster will only inspire them with
new energy and determination. I regard the selection of George
Washington to command their forces as a far more threatening token for
British interests than this defeat at Quebec is for theirs. With such
a leader, and the great mass of the people perfectly united through
the length and breadth of this immense country to sustain him—even
admitting that in the oldest settlements they are sparse, and those
settlements widely scattered, and that their chief strength for the
struggle lies in the very weakness and insufficiency of their
resources—I confess I have grave misgivings that the conflict will be
fearful and the victory dearly bought.”
“No doubt they will fight desperately, and will be sure of every
papist in the country to a man! We have been altogether too tolerant
with these seditious subjects of the pope. The rascals have crept in
silently, until the provinces are filled with them. Scarcely a place
of any size, except Boston, can be found that has not a popish
Mass-house in full operation. They are gaining influence rapidly, too,
with the American people. Observe, for instance, the company invited
by our host. Yonder, next to that arch-traitor from Boston, John
Hancock, and the plebeian philosopher, Ben. Franklin, sit a number of
printers, five of whom, from as many different cities, are rank
papists, kindred spirits of the guild, though not very polished. It is
surprising to notice how many of the pope’s emissaries are printers!
Convenient for disseminating error and sedition, you know; make good
fighters, too. Then, on the opposite side of the table, are those
fiery Irishmen, Fitzsimmons, Barry, and Moylan, with a long line of
their fellows—rebels and papists all! Moylan has three brothers, I am
told, of the same stamp. Near to us are French and Germans, of whom I
know nothing but that they too belong to the pope, so it is fair to
suppose they favor the rebellion. Then there is the Maryland
delegation, led by Carroll—a pretty strong showing for his Holiness at
the New Year’s banquet of a private Protestant gentleman! It is too
late to remedy the evil now, but it ought to have been taken in hand
long ago. If it had been dealt with effectually in the beginning, I
greatly doubt whether the colonies would now be in the condition we
deplore.”
“It is not easy to deal with it effectually. The province of
Massachusetts Bay was very vigilant and severe from the start to keep
them out, or to exterminate them when they crept in, but they are
there now in considerable force.”
“Yes, indeed; for I have been credibly informed that they not only
lent their aid in that villanous tea-riot, but that the Puritan ranks
at Lexington and Bunker Hill were largely increased by the pestilent
dogs, who fought like tigers, and could not be made to understand when
they were soundly whipped! Well, well! we shall see what is to come.
It looks dark enough now, and, if matters are to go on as they
threaten, I shall accept the invitation of the home government to
loyal subjects, and remove my family to Nova Scotia.”
Here he struck the key-note of the strain that thrilled my heart with
apprehension. I fell into a painful reverie, which so absorbed me that
I heard no more. I knew well that secret agents had been through the
country describing large and desirable tracts of land in Canada and
Nova Scotia, to be given to all who would withdraw from the sections
in revolt; and proclamations to that effect had also been recently
published.
Should he fulfil his threat, my beloved mother would be removed to a
great distance from me, and the difficulties of travelling in times of
such disturbance were so great that it must be long before I could see
her again, if ever. Then I grieved to think of a separation from my
dear Anna, the youngest and loveliest of the five sisters, many years
my junior, and my special darling. I had been permitted to take her
home with me after the holidays every year, and keep her through the
remainder of the winter. Now I was no longer to enjoy that privilege.
Besides all this, I knew that a strong attachment existed between her
and Charles Thorpe, which had been forming from their childhood with
the full approbation of their parents. What troubles might now be in
store for them also!
Indeed, as I meditated upon the public, social, and domestic aspect of
affairs, I could see nothing cheering or encouraging. Here was this
little rural village, whose inhabitants were entirely divided among
themselves—a type of the national condition: fathers against sons,
wives opposed to their husbands, sons and daughters-in-law against
their fathers-in-law. It seemed to form a present and dismal
realization of the description given by our Lord.
The minds of old and young, and of all classes in society, were so
pervaded with a sense of impending evil as to cast a dark shadow over
the festive season, and cause its gay assemblies to take the character
of political meetings, where matters of fearful import were discussed
with bated breath.
It was well known that Mr. Thorpe, his father-in-law, and their
distinguished guests, with other leaders of the disaffected who were
constantly arriving and departing, held conclaves every night that
extended far into the “wee sma’ hours,” many of which my husband was
summoned to attend, to the intense displeasure of my irascible
step-father, who denounced them all as a pack of infamous traitors,
for whose treasonable practices hanging was the only proper remedy.
Upon the whole, rankling irritation on the one part, and gloomy
forebodings on the other, took the place of the cheerfulness proper to
the season; and when the parties at the two houses dispersed to go
their several ways, the leave-taking was a sad one for all.
Another year passed, and the Christmas of 1776 arrived. What changes
those few months had wrought! Mr. Thorpe and his three oldest sons,
John, Nathan, and Charles, had joined the Continental army early in
the year. The father commanded the regiment of militia in which his
sons served as privates. In one of the first engagements John was
killed. Soon after Mr. Thorpe himself was brought home wounded and
dying. He survived long enough to bequeath the cause to his wife and
her father, and to receive the assurance that their lives and those of
his surviving sons, with all their earthly possessions, should be
devoted to its interests.
Mr. Foote had fulfilled his threat, and removed his family to Nova
Scotia about the time when his life-long friend joined the “rebel”
army. I had a brief and mournful interview with my mother before they
left, and a stormy parting with my surly step-father, who was too much
incensed against my husband and myself, for embracing the cause he so
cordially hated, to be even coolly civil. His indignation was
increased by the suspicion that we had influenced my mother’s
sympathies in the same direction, though she very carefully abstained
from manifesting any such tendency out of respect for his honest
though misguided prejudices.
With him went a multitude of Church-of-England folk who were greatly
regretted in that neighborhood; for they very generally acted from a
sincere conviction of duty, and did not meddle unpleasantly with the
opinions and decisions of their neighbors. A still greater number of
Methodists went from New Jersey and Maryland to Canada and Nova
Scotia, and their departure was the occasion for universal rejoicing
to the friends of the country. The only regret was that they left a
sufficient faction of their brethren to act as spies and informers in
every village and neighborhood, and to bring all who differed from
them in politics into serious trouble. We used to think we defined
their position and character when we said, “They are all hand and
glove with the _Hessians_!”
The Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July in that year had
placed the day high in the calendar of those which mark the most
glorious epochs in the world’s history. Meantime, discouragements had
accumulated along the track of our army, until they culminated in that
dreary autumnal retreat through New Jersey before the British forces
which dispersed the hopes of our people as the winds scatter the
leaves of the season. A little later the British took possession of
Rhode Island. In the despair which followed these disastrous events
society became utterly disorganized; and when Lord Howe and his
brother-commanders of the British land and marine forces issued
proclamations offering full indemnity and protection to all who would
“return to their allegiance,” multitudes, among whom were many who had
been accounted our most steadfast friends, accepted the offer from
alarm, even while their sympathies and best wishes were with the cause
they thus abandoned. Not one Catholic was of their number; they had no
faith in British promises.
Great was the revulsion when our troops rallied to such glorious
purpose at Trenton and Princeton! Those who had fallen away in the
hour of adversity, and found to their sorrow how utterly worthless
were Lord Howe’s paper “protections” to shield them from the vile
outrages of the plundering Hessians, now returned in crowds, offering
themselves and all they possessed to General Washington to further his
efforts. His headquarters were made that winter in a town near the
little village where Mrs. Thorpe resided. Mr. von Francke visited him
frequently at his quarters during the winter as the financial agent of
many friends of the cause in New England and the Southern States. I
improved those occasions to accompany him and visit my dear friend,
Mrs. Thorpe.
She was exerting all her energies, time, and money to prepare clothing
for the soldiers and necessary supplies for the army. The buzz of
spinning-wheels and the clack of domestic looms were heard in her
house from day-dawn until late at night. That house was a workshop of
tailors and shoemakers, and her agents ransacked the country for
leather wherewith to make shoes. Every friend who visited her was
pressed into the service, and during each precious moment the busy
needles were plied and the knitting-needles clicked while we were
visiting and chatting of the past, the present, and the prospects of
the future. Most religiously did she thus fulfil the promise made to
her dying husband, and seemed to find solace for her great sorrow in
occupying herself constantly to aid the struggle for which her beloved
ones had given their lives.
My heart ached for poor Charles, dejected and lonely in his separation
from Anna, and grieving over the stern refusal of her father to permit
any intercourse between them unless he would abandon the rebels and
join the standard of King George. To add to his distress, he had
heard, through a friend of Anna, that her father had determined she
should accept the suit of an influential officer of the government in
Nova Scotia, a very dissolute man, who was captivated by her beauty
upon their first meeting at a dance in the house of the governor.
Charles knew so well her father’s despotic rule over his family that
he feared she might be compelled to comply with his commands.
Deeply as I sympathized with the young people, I could not afford them
the aid they entreated for communicating with each other through my
letters to my mother. The principles of my religion forbade that I
should do any act to encourage disobedience to a father. Yet I could
not regret that the kindness of General Washington made amends for my
refusal, by furnishing better facilities for their purpose than I
could have furnished.
The three following years passed on, marked by fluctuating fortunes
and many hardships for our devoted troops and their dauntless leader.
The surrender of Burgoyne in the autumn of ’77, and the alliance with
France which followed, had awakened bright hopes of a speedy and
successful termination of the conflict, but crushing reverses and
bitter disappointments soon came.
The state of the currency baffled the strongest efforts and exhausted
the resources of wise and able financiers. My husband, who was
accounted extremely clever in affairs connected with the exchequer,
was often driven to his wits’ end to provide for fearful
contingencies, and then to confess his utter inability to meet further
demands.
Mr. Earle placed his large fortune at the disposal of his country, and
died soon after. His daughter gave better treasures when, with Spartan
firmness, she yielded all her noble sons, one after another, for its
defence.
In the terribly hard winter of 1779-80 General Washington again
established his headquarters in New Jersey, in Mrs. Thorpe’s immediate
neighborhood, and I went frequently to visit her when it was necessary
for Mr. von Francke to go on financial missions to that place. Upon
one of these occasions, early in the spring, what was my surprise to
be greeted on the threshold by my beloved Anna, and to find that she
was the happy bride of my desponding young friend of yore, Charles
Thorpe, now a dashing lieutenant and prime favorite with the
commander-in-chief. Their happiness was not unclouded, however; for
they had been married without her father’s knowledge or consent. He
had made every arrangement for her immediate marriage with the man
whom he had chosen and whom she despised, and sent her to Boston to
procure her _trousseau_. Very opportunely, General Washington made a
journey to Boston about that time, with Charles in company as one of
his _aides_. The wedding took place at the house of the friend with
whom she was stopping. Many of Mr. Earle’s distinguished friends were
present, and General Washington gave away the bride.
Her father was so enraged when he heard of it that he forbade her to
enter his house again, or to expect that he would ever own her as his
daughter.
* * * * *
When Mrs. von Francke reached this point in her story, she gave a
bunch of keys and spoke some words in German to her waiting-woman, who
soon brought forth from some hidden recess a small mother-of-pearl
casket, with silver binding and clasps, of exquisite workmanship, and
a package neatly folded and enclosed in an embroidered white linen
case. The casket was first opened, and displayed a superb set of pearl
jewelry, consisting of various ornaments for the coiffure, ear-rings,
necklace, bracelets, brooch, waist-clasp, and buckles for the
slippers. It was presented to Anna by Mr. von Francke when she
departed for Nova Scotia. From the other package, after undoing many
fastenings, designed to shield its contents from any possible contact
with the air and dust, she drew a magnificent white satin dress, made
in the old-time fashion, with an immensely wide skirt—for the
crinoline of those days attained an amplitude far beyond the most
extravagant expansion achieved a few years since by the leaders of
_ton_—and a very long train. Around the lower part of the skirt a
heavy pattern in leaves and flowers was embroidered with pure silver
spangles and bugles[208] drawn on with silver thread; a tiny pair of
white satin shoes which would rival in size the celebrated glass
slippers of the fairy tale, embroidered with material and pattern to
match the dress, with the toes pointed, and the points turned back
until they nearly reached the pearl buckle on the instep; a splendid
white thread-lace over-dress, much in the mode of the modern
_polonaise_; a very long veil of the same material, attached by the
inevitable orange-flowers—these completed the suit, and, with the
pearls, formed the bridal costume fifty years before of Anna Foote,
now Mrs. Charles Thorpe.
After showing me two miniatures, painted on ivory in the most finished
and delicate style, and mounted in elegant gold lockets—the one of
Anna in her bridal dress, and the other of Charles in the full
military costume of that day—the articles were all carefully returned
to their receptacle and Mrs. von Francke resumed her narrative.
* * * * *
During the long visit I paid Mrs. Thorpe at that time—the spring of
1780—the village where the army was quartered, and the town near by,
were the scenes of many parties, balls, and entertainments of every
kind.
The French minister, M. Luzerne, successor of the first minister from
France, M. Gerard, came to pass some weeks at the headquarters of the
commander-in-chief. He was accompanied by many distinguished
foreigners. Among them was Don Juan de Miralles, resident at
Philadelphia, from the Spanish court. He had visited us frequently in
that city with Count Pulaski and MM. Gerard and Luzerne. He was a most
affable and accomplished gentleman and an exemplary Christian.
Upon their arrival the gay festivities were kept up with renewed zeal
and brilliancy. But while in full activity they were brought to a sad
and sudden close by the death of this gentleman after an illness of
only two days. Mr. von Francke brought a Spanish priest to attend his
last hours and conduct the funeral solemnities, which were celebrated
in the most imposing and impressive manner. General Washington and his
staff, all the foreign officers and ministers in full costume, walked
as chief mourners. Many members of Congress came to pay this last
tribute of respect to one who had, by his shining virtues and gentle
manners, endeared himself to all who knew him.
When Charleston, S. C., was taken by the British in May, 1780, Nathan
Thorpe was severely wounded. He was carried to the house of a German
Catholic in that city to whom Mr. von Francke had given him letters of
introduction. There he lingered between life and death, as it were,
for many weeks. He was faithfully attended night and day by a disabled
Irish Catholic soldier, who brought an Irish priest to instruct him
and administer the last consoling rites of the church to him in his
extremity. His youth and a robust constitution prevailed, however, and
he recovered. During this interval an attachment had been formed
between him and a lovely daughter of his kind host, to whom he was
married the ensuing autumn. As his health was not sufficiently
reinstated to permit his return to the army, he entered upon the
practice of his profession as a lawyer in Charleston, and finally
achieved brilliant success and a large fortune therein.
In June of that year Knyphausen, with his Hessians, made a destructive
raid through New Jersey, sparing neither friend nor foe; not even
their Methodist cronies and instigators escaped rough treatment and
severe losses, for which they received but slight commiseration from
their fellow-sufferers, whose interests they had done all they could
to injure and betray. Mrs. Thorpe’s property was seriously damaged and
many valuable animals slaughtered by the merciless ruffians.
In July of the same year the French fleet under Count de Grasse
arrived, and was welcomed with great joy by the whole country. The
French troops commanded by Count Rochambeau were transported on these
vessels. Soon after their arrival we became acquainted with that
illustrious commander. I saw him for the first time at the celebration
of Mass in our humble chapel. He was accompanied by Marquis La Fayette
and Count de Grasse. After Mass Mr. von Francke, who had been in
correspondence with them before, introduced me to them, and invited
them to dine with us in our home, which invitation they accepted, and
from that time they never failed to visit us when they were in
Philadelphia.
In August the Continental forces, under General Gates, fought the
bloody battle of Camden, S. C., and were defeated chiefly through the
shameful failure of the militia to do their duty. The Maryland
regiments, however—many of whom were Catholics—under their brave
Catholic commander, Baron de Kalb, fought with unyielding firmness and
desperation, atoning as far as possible for the poltroonery of their
Protestant comrades of Virginia and North Carolina.
When even General Gates fled from the field, the Catholic soldiers
advanced steadily and firmly to fight or die with the glorious De
Kalb, who, when he saw others flying, drew his sword, and, shouting to
his dauntless soldiers of the Maryland and Pennsylvania lines, “Stand
firm, my boys, for I am too old to fly!” fell soon after, covered with
wounds. The whole nation was in mourning when the news of his death
was received. Demonstrations of sorrow were made in every city, and
requiem Masses offered in the Catholic churches for the repose of his
soul. Congress voted that the country should rear a fitting monument
to his memory. It is still cherished by every true American heart, and
will be as long as our people are faithful to themselves and to their
country. He was one of Mr. von Francke’s dearest friends for many
years, and we mourned for him as for a brother.
Through the remainder of that year, and during the spring and summer
of 1781, discouragements in every form, and disasters that would have
utterly dismayed a less determined people, surrounded our hapless
country. The baseless currency became so depreciated as to be almost
worthless. The iniquity of speculators, and the flood of counterfeits
poured upon the colonies by Lord Howe, greatly increased difficulties
sufficient in themselves to overwhelm the nation. Yet the courage and
resolution of the people never faltered, and were fully responded to
and sustained by the firmness of their representatives in the
legislative assemblies of the different States and in Congress.
The heavy clouds began to break and our national prospects to brighten
in the early autumn of 1781. We had so often seen our fairest hopes
suddenly blighted that we hardly dared to accept such promising tokens
as seemed to be given from time to time only to save us from utter
despair. Now, however, we were destined to witness a consummation,
sudden, unlooked-for, and beyond the wildest expectations of the most
sanguine, in the entire defeat and surrender of the British troops
under Cornwallis, on the 19th of October in that year—an event which
virtually closed the war and secured our independence.
Intelligence of this astounding event was conveyed through the whole
country, with the speed of the wind, by special couriers despatched in
every direction. It was said that the fine horses of Methodist
Tories—which had been spared by the British troops when they captured
all that were of any value belonging to our people—performed splendid
exploits of speed in disseminating the glorious news, to the
unutterable indignation of their crestfallen owners!
Our nation, so long accustomed to desolating evils, now burst forth
into frantic demonstrations of joy. Bonfires blazed on every hill.
Public parades, and processions with banners, crowded the streets of
every town. Illuminations and fireworks turned the darkness of night
into noonday splendor. The rural populations, old and young, flocked
to the villages and cities to join in the universal expressions of
jubilant patriotism. Services of thanksgiving were held by
Protestants. High Masses were offered in Catholic churches, and the
_Te Deum_ was chanted there by Catholics marching in procession under
the floating colors of the triumphant “Stars and Stripes.”
The members of Congress, of the Supreme Executive Council, and the
Assembly of Pennsylvania, by special invitation of the French
minister, attended in our church in Philadelphia during the
celebration of divine service and thanksgiving for the capture of Lord
Cornwallis. Our French pastor, Abbé Baudole, delivered an eloquent
address upon the occasion.
New Jersey was more noisy than all the other States in her public
manifestations of triumph. Nor was it unfit that she should be, since
none had suffered so much in furnishing a common battle-ground and
thoroughfare for the conflicting forces. Neither was it strange that
she showed little toleration for the Tories at whose hands she had
received persecutions, injuries, and insults of untold numbers and
magnitude. Here, as elsewhere, the Catholic voice, the first that was
raised in support of the conflict for independence, was also the first
to plead, through both clergy and laity, for toleration and leniency
toward these relentless foes of our country in her darkest hours.
Early in November we entertained a large and joyful party at our
house. At our request General Washington and his lady presided at the
reception of the guests. All the French and German officers with their
attendants, the foreign ministers, and many of our own distinguished
countrymen, military and civic, were present. Charles and Anna Thorpe
were of my household at that time.
A succession of splendid private entertainments and public banquets
was given in Philadelphia.
The joyful excitement was kept up by the nation through the following
winter, and Mr. von Francke was absent frequently as the invited guest
at public festivals which would not excuse him from attendance,
although his health was rapidly declining.
In May, 1782, my rejoicing was quenched for ever by the painful event
which left me a widow. The long-sustained strain and mental anxiety to
which my husband was subjected during all those years of national
embarrassment had so worn upon his frame that, when final success was
assured and the strain no longer required, he sank into a decline, for
the arrest of which all remedies proved unavailing, and survived only
a few weeks. No hero that gave his life on any of those bloody
battle-fields was, more truly than he, a martyr for his country.
Mrs. Thorpe, Charles, and Anna were with me during the distressing
scene and until I had consigned my beloved to his final resting-place.
He had for so many years belonged to the public that it claimed the
right to conduct the ceremonial, outside of the church; and it was
celebrated with most impressive solemnity, both as a religious and
civic rite.
From that time Philadelphia became intolerable to me. I closed my
house and accompanied my kind and gentle friend to the home in New
Jersey which was always open to the afflicted. Here I remained until
Charles removed to St. Lawrence County, N. Y.—then a dense
wilderness—with his family. He had received a grant of lands from the
government, which he exchanged for an extensive territory in that
vicinity.
To that wilderness I came with my dear Anna to share the hardships and
privations inseparable from the attempt to found a home in such a
region. With these trials, wholly new to us, we have also received and
enjoyed many blessings. She is surrounded by a blooming group of sons
and daughters, and blessed with smiling, prattling grandchildren. We
have seen a fine village grow up around us, and our country has been
crowned with unexampled prosperity.
The one sole cloud over Anna’s happiness has been the stern refusal of
my obstinate step-father, who still lives at a very advanced age, to
forgive the daughter he so cruelly banished from his heart and home. I
have often thought that, if the colonies had been subdued, he would
have welcomed her back long ago. She has written many letters to him,
but they are always returned unopened. My own dear mother died the
year following Anna’s marriage. I saw her but once after her removal
to Nova Scotia. The separation from her was one of the greatest trials
of my life. Few indeed who have lived so long have suffered less from
severe afflictions than I, and my heart swells with gratitude daily
when I recall the varied blessings which the beneficent hand of
Providence has poured upon my lengthened pilgrimage.
* * * * *
Some years later, when Mrs. von Francke was past ninety, I was on a
visit to the dear friends of whom I have discoursed in this rambling
sketch, when they received a message from Nova Scotia that the aged
Mr. Foote was dying, and could not leave the world in peace until he
had seen and been reconciled with his long-banished daughter. He
requested that Charles should go with her.
There was bustling and packing in great haste. In a few hours after
the message arrived they were on board a steamer, bound for Quebec,
_en route_ for Nova Scotia. Mr. Foote lived some weeks after their
arrival, and would not allow them to leave him for an hour. They
remained until after the funeral.
Mrs. von Francke survived her step-father but a few months. All the
elder members of the family have long since passed away.
It is many years since I have seen the lovely home of my childhood, or
that other one, on the bank of the dear old St. Lawrence, where I
passed so large a portion of childhood’s happy hours; but the memories
connected with both, and with the dear friends who made those hours so
happy, will never pass away.
[208] Elongated beads.
CONSUELO.
When, from the countless stars
That gem the azure vault above,
One flames and dies
Across our skies,
We mourn so bright a light
Is lost to sight;
And then—one brighter comes in view.
In trackless wastes
Our stars point true,
And, dying,
Ever thus renew.
When, from the countless _homes_
That deck this earth of ours,
One altar fire
Flames but to expire,
We mourn a loved hearth
So lost to earth;
And then—we build a new.
Wandering the world,
Our hearth-fires woo,
And, dying,
Ever thus renew.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._ FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
XIII.
In the meantime Sir Thomas More had returned to his home at Chelsea.
He felt at first a slight decree of uneasiness on account of the
indiscretions of the Holy Maid of Kent, the evident malice with which
Cromwell had drawn them out, and the eagerness with which he had
interpreted them.
But as he was accustomed to resign into the hands of God the entire
care of his future, and as there appeared to be nothing with which he
could reproach himself in the short and accidental relations he had
had with that woman, he soon recovered his former tranquillity, and
thought no more but of how he might be able to render some new service
to the queen. He knew she had set out for Leicester Abbey, and he had
already found means of writing to the abbot, whom he remembered having
received at the chancelry on some particular business concerning the
rights of the abbey, and the father abbot had appeared, as well as he
could remember, to be an honest and intelligent man.
Feeling satisfied that the queen had, ere that time, received his
communications, he had gone towards evening to take a walk with his
children in the country.
They were all seated on the green slope at Chelsea. The Thames flowed
at their feet; the freshness of the verdure, the perfumed breeze that
arose from the meadow, the balmy sweetness of the air, all united to
render the moment a delicious one.
“See, dear father,” said Margaret, who was sitting at his feet (she
always kept as near him as possible), “see how beautiful the river is!
How it comes with its silver waves to kiss the rich and verdant meadow
which extends so far before us! Look at those flocks of sheep,
following the shepherds to the fold; how docile they are and obedient
to their voices! And those dogs, how active and intelligent! Oh! how I
love the evening, when the horizon yet burns with the red glow of the
sun as he descends to light up other skies.” And Margaret paused to
admire in silence the pure and inspiring beauties of nature by which
she was surrounded, while her eyes sought those of her father, as if
to interrogate him.
More smiled as he regarded her.
“Well, my dear daughter,” he said, “why not speak thy whole thought?”
For he loved to listen to the forcible sentiments she sometimes
expressed, so characteristic of her melancholy and enthusiastic
temperament.
“Why ask that, father?” she replied; “for my thought is sad—sad as all
things that end. The day has gone, never more to return! It is like a
precious pearl that has been unstrung from a necklace where all are
carefully numbered.”
“Thou art right, my daughter, and may be the happiness I have enjoyed
this day in the midst of you will never more return!”
“What sayest thou, my father?” cried Margaret, alarmed. “Nay, wouldst
thou leave us, then, and couldst thou live without thy children?”
“No, my child, no; but observe you not how the days of man are like
the swift shuttle that flies to and fro in the hands of the weaver,
and which he uses to trace, one after another, divers designs?”
“This one pleases me much,” said Margaret, smiling, “and I would like
it to stop here.”
As she said this, she extended her hand toward Roper, who brought her
a large bouquet of daisies[209] he had gathered for her in the fields.
“Here is my name written on my forehead by the hand of Roper,” she
continued; and she placed the pretty white flowers amid the dark
tresses of her lovely hair.
The father admired his beautiful young daughter, in whom, indeed,
youth and beauty were united in all their brilliancy. Her small hands
rested one upon the other; her white robe hung in graceful folds
around, defining her perfectly-moulded form; her eyes, calm and serene
in expression, yet shone with a thousand fires; one could read in
their depths the strength and vigor of this young soul just entering
upon life. Those features so calm and lovely, that union of charms and
perfections, brought joy and happiness to the depths of the devoted
father’s soul. He gazed at her in silence.
“A ray of eternal beauty lights up this beautiful countenance,” he
said to himself. “This flower is born of my blood; it is being of my
being, soul of my soul. Oh! blessed, blessed for ever be this child
whom the Lord hath given to me! Margaret, my daughter,” he said after
a moment’s silence, “tell me, I pray you, what is beauty?”
“Beauty?” replied Margaret, smiling at the unexpected question; and
she raised towards him her eyes, whose lovely expression anticipated
her answer.… “Well, … beauty is an undefinable thing,” she continued.
“We recognize it in everything. Our souls are made to see it, to
admire and love it; but I cannot, I believe, define it. It is there,
and immediately we are enraptured with it. It is a ray of the glory of
God; it is his power which flashes before our eyes, and our hearts are
at once transported. The beautiful animal, full of life, strength, and
agility, whose light and rapid steps seem scarcely to bend the
delicate herbage of the field, his glossy coat permitting you to count
his veins and admire the graceful and elegant proportions of his form;
the plants rich with flowers and weighty with fruits; the birds with
variegated plumage and tints of a thousand colors; the pure, azure
skies of summer, the stars of night—such is beauty, my father; I feel
it, but I cannot describe it to you otherwise.”
“Then, my dear child, what think you of the Being who has drawn all
these things out of nothing, and who, by his powerful word, has given
them everything, and preserves and watches over them all?”
“That he is,” replied Margaret earnestly, “the source and the
veritable plenitude of all beauty; and that if we could see him either
with the eyes of the body or those of the soul, we should be perfectly
happy, since he must be, and is necessarily, the sovereign perfection
of all that delights in this world. And if you speak to me of
eloquence, that moral beauty of soul which subdues and carries
everything before it, I find in it but a new expression of that
Sovereign Intelligence who has placed in our hearts the faculty of
feeling and loving beauty, the strength and elevation of thought,
which an Intelligence superior to our own is charged by it to
communicate to us.”
“Then, my dear child, what think you of the unbeliever?”
“What do I think of him?” said Margaret, intently regarding Sir
Thomas. “I will tell you: I do not think he exists.”
“How say you! that he exists not?”
“No, he does not exist, because he cannot. God has created us free,
but that freedom has bounds. We cannot uncreate or make ourselves
cease to be, and in the same way we cannot destroy our reason beyond a
certain point; we may deny the truth with our lips, but we cannot
prevent our hearts from believing it; we may arrange, assert, relate,
or invent a falsehood, but we cannot convince ourselves that it is
true. The sad science of the atheist compels him to remove God as far
as possible from himself; to call him by a name formed of several
strange syllables which do not represent him under any form to his
mind; then when he has come to drive him beyond the bounds of his
narrow intelligence, he denies his Creator with that tongue, with that
life, and in the name of that reason which he received from him. Such
a man must be a liar, although he would not be willing to walk proudly
in the public ways with the tablet of liar attached to his shoulders.”
More smiled at the strong comparison of Margaret; and as he derived an
extreme pleasure from these philosophical conversations, he continued
thus:
“You believe, then, there are no atheists?”
“No,” replied Margaret, “there is not one in good faith, because the
most ordinary reason is enough to prevent all doubt that the admirable
chain of all being, over whom man is established master and king, has
not been created by itself, and that it is the work of a Sovereign
Intelligence who has foreseen and established all things by a science
of prevision and of power far beyond all that we are able to see, all
that we can feel, and all that we possess.”
“Nevertheless, Margaret, they will tell you that there is a force, a
blind power, who has created all that.”
“Then,” replied Margaret ironically, “I will ask them what they
understand by a ‘blind power’; for power means, it seems to me, that
which _can_; but that which is blind can do, can will naught. Those,
then, who by a happy chance see, wish, and know something, I would ask
to add to the stature of a man the height of one cubit; to organize a
head that understands how to solve mathematical problems, to compose
music, poetry, to learn, remember, and speak. What think you, my
father: would it not be very convenient to have in your cabinet some
of those thinking heads, arranged on a shelf, as are pitchers and
pipkins? Miserable creatures!” she continued, indignantly, “how they
degrade and dishonor mankind! And how do they dispose of their
consciences? Why have they a conscience which commands them to do
right and reproaches them for doing wrong, if it is not that man, born
immortal, must one day render an account of all his deeds, and receive
from God either a reward or punishment? No, it is not in weakness of
the intellect that we must search for the origin of atheism, but in
the corruption of the heart. If, then, the atheist denies God, he
thereby testifies to his justice and power, even as the faithful bear
witness to his goodness and mercy in acknowledging and honoring him.
The one fears him because of the crimes he has committed; the other
hopes in him because of the virtues he practises: behold the sole and
only difference between the two men.”
“Well, my dear daughter,” replied More; “but the greater number of men
who call themselves atheists follow only their own reasoning, as do
you this moment, being almost always most profoundly ignorant of
themselves and of their own nature, and entirely indifferent about the
means of being instructed. Occupied solely with the present life, they
attach themselves to mere sensual enjoyments, and, feeling that it
would be necessary to abandon these in order to deliver their souls
from the yoke of matter, they prefer thus to vegetate in forgetfulness
of themselves and of all their duties.”
“Then, my father, you see that you agree with me on the point from
whence I started out, which was that there are really no atheists,
that the word is false, that it is taken in a false acceptation, and
that it can only be properly defined in this way: ‘_One who in his own
heart is a liar._’”
While Margaret was conversing thus with her father, and the rest of
the family were enjoying the repose of innocence and freedom, a man
silently turned around the foot of the hill and followed slowly the
path leading through the meadow. His face was darkly clouded with
care; envy and malice were hidden in the depths of his heart. He
reflected within himself in what manner he should approach the host
whom he came to visit, and whom he perceived sitting on top of the
hill. Thus in an immortal poem we find the fallen angel thrice making
the circuit of the terrestrial paradise, seeking where he should enter
in order to attack the man favored of God.
“Father, here is some one coming!” cried the youngest of More’s
daughters.
And she ran, followed by the house dog, with which she had been very
busy fixing on its neck a collar of leaves.
“It is a gentleman dressed all in black, who has a beautiful chain
hanging round his neck.”
As she finished speaking Cromwell appeared.
“Ah! it is you, Master Cromwell,” said More, rising graciously. “Let
me welcome you among us. How fares it with you?”
For the more Sir Thomas thought he had to complain of any one, the
more he exerted himself by his kind and polite manner to assure him
that he felt no bitterness in his heart; this was the cause of the
cordial reception he gave Cromwell, whom he would otherwise have
avoided.
“Well, I thank you,” replied Cromwell, casting, as was his custom, a
furtive glance on all around him.
He at once encountered the eyes of Margaret, which were fixed upon him
with an expression of anger and scorn; for she could not endure him,
having learned from the Bishop of Rochester how he had conducted
himself in the hall of convocation, with what impudence he had sat
himself in the midst of the assembly, and the manœuvres he had used to
extort from the bishops an oath which must be followed by such fatal
consequences.
He laughed to himself at the young girl’s displeasure, and made her a
profound salutation. But she did not return it; and passing from the
other side, she went and seated herself near her stepmother, who was
knitting the leg of a stocking—the only employment in which she was
passably skilled.
Cromwell remarked this movement; and if he was indifferent to it, he
at least drew from it an inference as to the feeling of the family
with regard to present affairs.
“Sir Thomas,” he said in a tone tinged with raillery, “I come, on the
part of the king, to announce great news to you; it depends on
yourself whether you find it good or bad. The king, our most gracious
sovereign, is married, and he has espoused my lady Anne Boleyn.”
“The king married!” said Sir Thomas. “The king married!” he repeated.
But he felt that Cromwell, who was aware of his great attachment to
the queen, had only come to enjoy his discomfiture, or to watch him
with some malicious design. He at once put himself on his guard, but
turned visibly pale.
“He is married,” continued Cromwell. “The clergy laughed at him; but,
by my troth, he has in his turn laughed at them! It was necessary that
all this should come to an end. Yesterday his majesty advised the
lords of his Privy Council of the decision he has taken of having the
new queen publicly acknowledged. The communication should be made
to-day in Parliament, and they will proceed immediately after to
receive the oaths of all the members touching the succession to the
throne, the supremacy of the king, and the separation from the Church
of Rome.”
“Cromwell, can it be?” said Sir Thomas More, struck with
consternation. “How rapidly all this has been brought about! And the
queen, where is she?”
“Which one?” replied Cromwell, already affecting the tone of the
court.
“Queen Catherine!” added More with a profound sigh.
“Ah! I understand. More obstinate than ever,” replied Cromwell in a
tone of badinage. “She has retired to Easthampstead. We are occupied
with her case now in council; she will be summoned to Dunstable, where
an ecclesiastical commission will cut short all of her demands. Oh!
all is over so far as she is concerned.”
More felt pierced to the heart, and each new expression of Cromwell
wounded him afresh. He could not doubt but this cruel man had been
sent to take an exact account of his slightest gesture and most
insignificant word; he therefore vainly endeavored to restrain his
feelings, but sorrow and the honest frankness of his nature carried
him beyond the limits of prudence.
“Master Cromwell,” he said with dignity, “I know not why the king has
sent you to me; but I think you know me so well that it would be
useless for me, standing face to face with you, to disguise my
sentiments; I therefore candidly acknowledge that what you have told
me penetrates me with a mortal sorrow. My heart is deeply attached to
Queen Catherine, but I am, by my duty, still more devoted to the king.
It is with the deepest grief that I see those who surround him, far
from telling him the truth, think only of flattering him, that they
may obtain new favors from his hands. And you, who are his adviser, I
exhort and conjure you never to tell him what he _can_ do, but what he
ought to do; because, if the lion knew his strength, who would be able
to subdue him? Until this time, as you know, we have not walked in the
same road, nor have our eyes been turned to the same end; but now that
I have entirely withdrawn from public life, when I can no longer cause
you suspicion, when my sole and only desire is to live in obscurity,
surrounded by my children, occupying myself with naught but the
affairs of my eternal salvation, it seems to me I can disclose to you
my inmost thoughts. I esteem you too highly to fear that you would
abuse my confidence. Use your influence, then, with the king, if there
yet be time, and try to arrest the disasters with which church and
state are threatened!”
Cromwell felt confounded; come as a master, a triumphant enemy, he
endeavored, but was unable, to recover himself in the presence of the
calm and magnanimous virtue of a great man who seemed to place with
confidence his destiny in his hands, and to esteem him sufficiently to
exhort him still to fulfil his duty to his king and country. He
experienced a momentary inspiration of good; but corrupt souls stifle
such inspirations with the same facility that they are followed by the
pure in heart. An instant’s reflection sufficed for him to recover his
accustomed arrogance.
“That is an easy thing for you to say,” he replied, “having now, as
you have just remarked, retired from public life. But for me it is
very different; every day convinces me how dangerous it would be to
resist the king, and I confess that I am by no means tired of life,
and do not desire to lose my head on the scaffold, nor to die in
poverty like that poor cardinal of defunct memory. That is why I must
continue to act as I have done in Parliament, and I advise you to do
the same; for, hearken, Sir Thomas: I have not come here of my own
accord, but on the part of the king, to announce to you his
intentions, and at the same time say to you that he has learned with
great indignation of the correspondence you have kept up with that nun
called the Holy Maid of Kent; that, notwithstanding, he will exercise
toward you the utmost clemency, that he will strike your name from the
bill of high treason which is entered against her, if he has reason
hereafter to be satisfied with your conduct, and if you will publicly
abjure the prejudices you have until this time manifested against
Queen Anne, his spouse.”
“What say you, Master Cromwell?” cried Sir Thomas More. “I am
implicated in the proceedings they have instituted against that
woman?”
And the unhappy father looked round upon his children, who had
gathered around him, and whom terror and alarm had rendered
motionless.
“Master Cromwell,” he continued after a moment’s silence, “your visit
is a cruel one; my children, at least, were not guilty, if any one
else here is.” And his eyes rested on Margaret, who stood pale and
trembling with horror and surprise.
But Cromwell knew very well what he had come to do; it was part of his
design that the grief and solicitations of More’s children should
break down his resolution, and induce him to yield to all they wished
to demand of him.
“Margaret! my beloved child,” said More, especially concerned for her,
“grieve not. I fully hope to prove, as clearly as the light of day,
that I have nothing with which to reproach myself toward my king, and
that I am an entire stranger to the follies of that woman. Listen,
Master Cromwell,” he continued, turning towards him, without
manifesting the least emotion, “I pray you say to the king, my
sovereign, that nothing could afflict me more than to know I had
incurred his displeasure. Nevertheless, I hope to prove that he is
mistaken with regard to the acquaintance I have had with that woman. I
have seen her but once, in the Sion Convent, in a chapel, and then
because the fathers urged me to converse with her a few moments, and
tell them what I thought of her virtue. She appeared to me simple and
true in her conversation. The replies she made to the few questions I
addressed her seemed to proceed from an humble heart and a pious soul.
Since that day 1 have not seen her. This winter some one spoke to me
about her, and told me she had made some predictions about the king,
and asked me if I wanted to hear them. To which I replied—and I
remember it perfectly—that I wanted to hear nothing about it, and, if
it was true she had anything to reveal to the king, it seemed to me at
least entirely superfluous for any other man to inquire into it. This
is the whole truth, and I beg you, Master Cromwell, to say to the king
I hope to prove it in the most undeniable manner.”
“This woman is only an instrument,” replied Cromwell, affecting not to
reply to what Sir Thomas had said; “they have only used her and her
pretended revelations in order to cause the conduct of the king to be
censured by his people. I very much fear they will be severely
punished—those, at least, who have employed her for that purpose.”
“I know not what will come of it,” replied Sir Thomas in a cold and
quiet manner. “If it is true that there is a criminal impostor
disguised under the appearance of virtue, they would do well to expose
and punish her rigorously.”
And there the conversation ended. However much Cromwell desired that
it should be prolonged, he neither knew how to renew nor to continue
it. He concluded, therefore, to affect a degree of zeal and
friendship, and summoned all his hypocrisy to his assistance.
“Dear Sir Thomas,” he said, “as you said but now, we have not always
been of the same way of thinking. Some day I may change my opinions;
but at this time I cannot begin to tell you how much anxiety I feel on
account of the king’s anger in your regard. It appears that they have
excited him most terribly against you. You must have some secret enemy
who is using these means for the purpose of lessening you in his
estimation and making you lose his favor.”
More listened, thinking if indeed it could be Cromwell who spoke in
this manner.
“Verily,” he answered, “I must fain think as you do, for I have naught
on my conscience touching that woman; and would to God I was in his
sight as free from sin as I feel myself free from any thought of wrong
or any transgression against our sovereign lord and king!”
“Sir Thomas, you have let your attachment to Queen Catherine show too
plainly, and it is right well known that you are against the spiritual
supremacy of the king.”
More made no reply. Tears arose in his eyes. He looked at Margaret.
The young girl held one of her stepmother’s long iron
knitting-needles, and seemed mechanically trying to sharpen the point
with the end of her finger, which she turned rapidly around it. If
Margaret had held a poignard, it was evident that she would have
wished to plunge it into the heart of the traitor who stood before
her. She said nothing, but her flashing eyes followed every movement
he made. The others sat motionless, and Cromwell felt oppressed by the
attention of all these souls weighing upon his own. He no longer knew
what to say; he looked around, he hesitated, he tried to resume the
conversation, and again broke down.
Sir Thomas, always kind, always considerate, wished to relieve him
from this painfully embarrassing situation.
“Master Cromwell,” he said, “I see that you find it somewhat painful
to tell me all you have learned that would be disagreeable to me;
therefore let us retire from here. If it please you to sup with us, we
will return to the house.”
“I do not think Master Cromwell is hungry,” said Margaret, changing
color. “He is one of those men who subsist on evil as well as bread;
it is a stronger and more bitter nourishment, the savor of which
agrees better with their ferocious natures.”
“You are charming, charming, damsel!” replied Cromwell, turning toward
her with that trifling manner, coarse and familiar, which he
considered suitable to adopt in his intercourse with women farthest
above himself.
“Margaret does not like compliments,” replied Sir Thomas More, who
endeavored to repair, without seeming to have noticed them, the
expressions of anger and scorn Margaret had permitted to escape her.
“She is very sensitive,” he added.
“And very frank, it seems to me,” answered Cromwell quickly, in a tone
insolent and easy.
“A little too much so, perhaps,” replied Sir Thomas gently; “but that
is better than to be deceitful.”
“Are all these fields yours?” asked Cromwell.
“No, indeed, sir. I own very little land around my dwelling; besides,
I gave a portion of it to Margaret, my daughter, when she became
affianced to young Roper.”
Saying this, Sir Thomas turned and walked with Cromwell and his family
towards the house. On their arrival Sir Thomas conducted Cromwell into
his private cabinet.
“Listen, sir,” he said, after he had closed the door: “I would not
wish to conceal from you that you have deeply wounded me by declaring
in presence of my children that I had been accused of high treason. I
have not been chief-justice so long without learning that this is the
weight they will let fall on my head, and I know perfectly well that
this accusation of high treason is like a glove, which they can make
to fit any hand. As to what I think about the supremacy of the king,
that I shall reveal to no man living. But, at least, be so good as to
tell me how this action against me began, and who are my accomplices.”
“The nun,” replied Cromwell (perfectly well instructed in the
particulars of an affair he had invented and intended to direct)—“the
nun is accused of high treason toward the king. Her accomplices are
Master Richard, Dr. Baking, Richard Risby, Biering, Gold, Lawrence
Thwaites, John Adisson, and Thomas Abel. As to yourself and the Bishop
of Rochester, you are accused of connivance; but, after what you have
told me, I doubt not you will be able to prove your innocence easily,
and your name will be stricken out at the commencement of the
prosecution.”
“The Bishop of Rochester!” exclaimed Sir Thomas, his hands resting on
the table, and entirely absorbed in reflection. He recalled the night
when Fisher, seated in the same chair now occupied by Cromwell, had
implored him not to accept the seal of state, and, upon his refusing
to take his advice, prayed God never to permit them to be separated,
but that their lives might terminate in the same manner and at the
same moment. Lost in the recollection of his tender friendship, More
forgot the frightful character of Cromwell, which no one, however,
better understood than himself. He took him affectionately by the
hand.
“Dear Cromwell,” he exclaimed, “how is this? The Bishop of Rochester?
Ah! I implore you have his name removed. Let them be revenged on me,
but not on him. Mercy for my friend!”
Sir Thomas was on the point of telling Cromwell that he had heard them
both accused on that fatal night at Westminster; but on reflection he
forebore, supposing him to be entirely ignorant of their presence in
the church.
“Alas!” continued Sir Thomas, “if I have offended the king, let them
punish me; but Rochester, what has he done? Devoid of ambition,
occupied entirely with the duties of his bishopric, devoted to the
king, at whose birth he attended, loved, esteemed by him, how can they
suspect him of wishing to injure his beloved sovereign? Master
Cromwell, I beseech you intercede for him!”
That prayer was very well understood by Cromwell, but he feigned not
to hear it. He had not come to sympathize with, but rather to enjoy
the sufferings of a just man, one whom he still feared, although he
had entirely supplanted him.
“Sir Thomas,” he replied, “I cannot see why you supplicate me in
behalf of the Bishop of Rochester, as though I were able to do
anything in the matter. Justice is there, to be rendered to him, and
to you also, if you prove that you are entirely innocent of this
charge.”
“In sooth,” said Sir Thomas, “I swear to you that I know nothing about
it. I have never considered it of sufficient importance to investigate
the character and veracity of that woman. I believe, and am very well
convinced, that being the creatures and the children of God, in whom
we exist and from whom we have received all things, he will sometimes,
in his goodness, manifest his will to us by some extraordinary means
and supernatural ways, and also that he can change or interrupt in a
moment events of which he has himself marked out the course; but, at
the same time, I believe that this truth can be abused either by
weakness of the mind, by error, or by folly. That woman, then, is
perhaps guilty of no other crime than of having mistaken dreams for
revelations; and if it is thus, I find that the more importance we
give to trivial things, the more dangerous we make them, if in the
beginning they were the cause of any inconvenience.”
“That is true,” said Cromwell; “but the king is very much wroth, and
intends that this woman and all those who have believed in her shall
be punished.”
“That alters the case,” replied Sir Thomas; and he paused
thoughtfully.
“However,” said Cromwell, “there is a very sure way of conciliating
his majesty, which is by praying my lady Anne to be your intercessor.
If you wish it, I will request her, in your name, to intercede with
the king for the Bishop of Rochester.”
“Ah!” said Sir Thomas.
He felt as though Cromwell had thrust a dagger into his heart. He
bowed his head and was unable to utter a word. To save his friend by
condescending to a base action—he had not courage to accept the
condition.
“That is an assured way,” said Cromwell (and the vile wretch
secretly applauded himself on the astute and skilful means he
employed)—“infallible; a word from her will suffice.”
“No,” cried More, “no! The honor of my friend is as dear as my own. He
would not will it.”
“He would not will it!” replied Cromwell, in an ironical tone. “What!
would you, then, consider yourselves dishonored because she had
interceded for him?”
“Ah! Cromwell,” cried Sir Thomas, regretting what he had said, “I
implore you do not betray my situation!”
“I am far from betraying you, sir, since I offer you a very sure and
very simple means of removing all that is dangerous in that situation.
I can promise you that if you satisfy the king on this point, and if
you testify that you accept and recognize him without any repugnance
as supreme head of the church, not only will he pardon your fault, but
he will overwhelm you with new favors.”
On hearing this proposal Sir Thomas looked steadily at him.
“Sir,” he said, “I thank you. I now understand what they ask of me,
and why they have placed my name and that of my friend on the list of
the accused, which, in reality, would not be able to reach or injure
us. Now I have no longer any doubt. When will the trial begin?”
“What do you say?” interrupted Cromwell. “What! you refuse?”
“I refuse nothing,” said Sir Thomas modestly; “I only ask when the
trial will take place, and when I must present myself at the bar.”
“But reflect on the wrong you do!” replied Cromwell.
“I have considered everything,” responded Sir Thomas.
“Ah! well, then, do as you please.… To-morrow the commission will
assemble in the Tower, and I very much fear, from your obstinacy, that
you will remain there.”
“In that event I will make my preparations to-night,” replied Sir
Thomas.
At that moment Margaret hurriedly entered and announced supper,
Cromwell took advantage of the occasion. He saw with great vexation
the firmness of Sir Thomas, and, having promised the king that he
would make him yield, he supposed the young girl would assist him in
renewing the conference.
“Damsel,” he said, inclining toward her,” I am glad you have come;
for, although you have treated me but ill, I am here to render an
important service to your father. Persuade him, then, to listen to me,
and not consent to separate himself from you, perhaps for ever!”
“My God!” cried Margaret, “my father separate himself from us? What do
you mean? Speak! what do you mean? With how many maledictions, then,
do you come prepared to strike our house?”
“To-morrow Sir Thomas is summoned to appear before the council. Let
him promise to take the oath the king requires, and his life will be
spared!”
“Stop, sir!” cried Sir Thomas. “My children are not in the habit of
judging my conduct nor of designating the path I should follow! Your
pity is of the cruellest, sir! May God grant you a more sincere friend
and a more genuine compassion than that you have offered me to-day!
Go, Margaret; go tell your mother I wait for her.”
To this formal and decided expression of her father’s will Margaret
dared not reply; she left the room, but felt that a fearful calamity
had befallen her, of which she knew not yet the entire extent, and she
descended slowly, pausing on each step of the stairway, wrapped in
painful reflection.
Sir Thomas soon entered the hall with Cromwell, to whom he gave the
first place at table, and who accepted without remorse such cordial
hospitality on the part of a man whom he had resolved to corrupt or
ruin entirely.
* * * * *
When night was far advanced, and Cromwell had departed from the abode
into which he had entered only to bring sorrow and desolation, Sir
Thomas returned to his cabinet, which he loved like an old servant
whom we never regret so much as when it becomes necessary to part with
him. He entered, with anxiety and sadness in his soul, and took his
accustomed seat; he put the light he carried in the same place where
he had placed it for so many years, and from whence it had shone on so
many vigils and so many good actions, and he looked around him.
“To-morrow,” he exclaimed, “to-morrow I shall have to leave this abode
where I have so long tended and seen my father die, where I have
welcomed my first dear wife, where my children have been born!… When
the swallow leaves her nest, she has a hope of returning to it again;
but I, can I indulge in that sweet delusion? Is it not certain that my
ruin is resolved on, and that the king’s indignation means death?
To-morrow, when the day shall have dawned, I must assume a cheerful
countenance, a serene composure, and say to them: ‘Adieu, my cherished
children! I will return very soon.’ I will return very soon! Shall I
be able to utter words that are so foreign to my heart? And
Margaret—Margaret will weep for me all the days of her life. I shall
never behold her young children, nor bless them when for the first
time their eyes are opened to the light of day, and I shall never hear
them try to repeat my name. Alas! why must it be that the king is
annoyed at my breathing the air?—a man, too, confounded among a
million of his subjects! Of what importance to him are the thoughts
that lie hidden in the bottom of my heart? Why, Lord,” he cried,
raising his hands toward heaven, “hast thou not stricken me from his
memory, and why hast thou suffered this prince of the earth to
remember my name? Grant me an asylum where I may be able to finish out
the days thou hast allotted me; the birds of the air find a shelter,
the bears and ferocious beasts of the earth possess their dens, and no
one comes to force them away! However, let thy will be done, and not
mine.”
More remained for a long time leaning on the table. He then arose and
walked the floor to and fro. He moved from place to place in the room;
for he would be there no more, if they should summon and compel him to
cave for ever his modest and beloved abode.
“They are all asleep,” he said. “I have consoled them. They have seen
Cromwell with me, but they have not suspected that he brought the
death-warrant of their father. A few hours of peace still remain for
them, and to-morrow—to-morrow they will weep and feel that I am no
longer with them! My eyes will no more behold my beloved ones; I shall
no more hear their voices. They will seek me, but they will find me no
more on earth.”
Here Sir Thomas was unable longer to contemplate with calmness the
picture his imagination presented of the desolation and abandonment of
his children. Looking around to be assured that he was entirely alone,
he sank into a chair, and, bursting into tears, abandoned himself to
the most bitter grief.
For a long time he remained thus. At length he arose; seeing that the
clock in his cabinet was about to strike the hour of midnight, he
returned to his table.
Taking up an enormous portfolio, he opened all the drawers. He took
out a great number of papers and divers packages of letters; some of
the latter were letters written by Margaret when a child, and he had
preserved them as souvenirs of the progress of her youthful intellect;
others were from the Bishop of Rochester; the greater number concerned
a multitude of persons who had claimed or still sought his counsel and
advice, his good offices, to reconcile their families, terminate their
disputes, save them from dishonor, prevent their ruin by means of his
credit and his money, and still more by the confidence and respect
inspired in all by his virtues.
He untied the letters and threw them into the fire, where they were
immediately consumed; for he knew with whom he had to deal, and how
the most innocent things, the most trivial acts, would be brought up
and construed into crimes against those who had held any intercourse
with him. Those which concerned these persons he destroyed without
regret; but when they had been entirely devoured by the flames, he
turned with sadness to those of Margaret and the Bishop of Rochester,
and could not summon sufficient resolution to cast them into the fire.
He looked at them and turned them over in his hands; they had given
him so much pleasure! Those of his daughter had been dictated by the
tenderest love; the virtues of his friend shone in every page of his,
and proofs of attachment were inscribed upon every line, recalling the
joys, the sorrows, and different events that had occurred during his
entire life!
“Come!” he said with bitterness, “when Margaret shall no longer have a
father, who will then have any use for these letters? Who will
treasure them up? And thou, O my friend! No, we shall not remain
separated; for, O my God! thou hast declared that he who giveth up
that which he loves for thy sake shall find it again; and if man, thy
creature, gives thee an atom, thou wilt return him an entire world.
Have we not received all things from thee? And what thou takest from
us for a moment, is it not to return it to us again in eternity?”
He cast the letters into the fire, but turned away that he might not
see them consumed. He then examined his book of accounts, and saw that
they were correct. Besides, his estate was so small he found but
little difficulty in administering it. After retiring from office he
had divided his lands between his children, and each one of them knew
the lot assigned her.
When he had finished all that, he again began to walk the room, and
went toward the window; the night was intensely dark and the heavens
obscured by a mass of black clouds.
“Well! I have some time yet,” he said, and turned to sit down.
“Everything is arranged; Margaret will send my books. Now I am
prepared to depart. It would seem that I am dead, and they come
already to blot all traces of my existence from this place. Ah! how
harrowing is the thought. My God! my courage fails. Help me, Lord!
Animate by a breath of thy strength the weakness of thy servant; for I
am the work of thy hands! Have mercy on me and succor me; for sorrow
hath fallen upon me and I am utterly cast down!”
As he pronounced these words he thought he heard a sigh; he paused to
listen, but heard nothing more, and came to the conclusion that his
troubled imagination had deceived him. Again, however, he heard a
slight noise; he then arose and proceeded to listen at the door
opening into the library. Opening it very softly, what was his
surprise on seeing Margaret! Her back was turned towards him, and a
lamp burned beside her. He perceived that she had taken a number of
books from the shelves, as she had a pile of them around her, and was
leaning earnestly over the one she was reading. So intently was she
absorbed that she did not hear her father enter. He advanced slowly
until he stood behind her chair, and saw that she was reading a book
of jurisprudence written in Latin according to the general custom of
the times, and which contained detailed reports of all the trials for
high treason; her handkerchief was lying beside her, and it was
saturated with her tears. Sir Thomas turned pale; he was obliged to
rest his hand on the table, which groaned under his weight.
Margaret turned around in alarm.
“My father!” she cried, “here at this hour!” And she ran to him and
folded her arms around him, while her tears began to flow afresh.
“Margaret, what do you here?” he asked as he sank into a chair.
“My father, my father!” She burst into a torrent of tears, and could
say no more.
“I thought you slept,” she added.
“Margaret, you should be in bed!” said Sir Thomas, endeavoring to
control his feelings.
She fell on her knees before him, and, burying her face in her hands,
sobbed aloud; her hair, loosened from its fastening, hung in
dishevelled masses down to her feet.
“Margaret, you are weak!” said More in an altered voice. “Is this the
fruit of the lessons I have given you?”
“Dare you, then, say that I am weak, and reproach me because I weep
for my father?” she replied, raising her head haughtily. “Do you no
longer remember that I have never known a mother’s love, and that,
since the day I left my cradle, you alone have directed all my
movements, that in you alone have been centred all my affections, and
to you have I always confided the most secret thoughts of my heart?
You say that I am weak, when not a word of complaint has escaped my
lips, when I have concealed my tears, weeping in the darkness of
night, and when I have sat at table face to face with your
executioner!”
“Margaret, my Margaret!” cried Sir Thomas; and he bowed his head on
the shoulder of the child he so cherished, and pressed her to his
bosom.
“Have I asked you,” she continued, turning away from him, “what you
would do to escape from these tigers thirsting for blood? Have I
advised you to recoil before them and lick the prints of their feet?
No; I have come in silence to take counsel of the dead, some advice as
to the crimes of the human race, because I have thought you would
conceal your secret in your heart, and I would not be admitted to
share it; that you would tell me what you did not believe, and I would
not receive the truth from you. The truth!” she cried vehemently, and
with a strength only lent her by excitement and suffering. “I know it
now! I know, I feel, I have found out that very soon I shall see you
no more; that I shall be alone upon the earth where I have found such
joy and happiness in existing; that nothing will remain to me, and the
future will be to me without a hope, and darkened for ever!”
“Margaret,” said Sir Thomas, “have compassion on your father!”
She then said no more, and they sat in silence, she with her arms
clasped around his neck. She wept, and the tears continued to course
slowly down her cheeks, whilst the lamp she had brought cast a feeble
glimmer of light throughout the lengthy apartment, and over the rows
of books arranged on the shelves; and thus the hours fled rapidly
toward the fatal moment which she saw advancing with an agony
indescribable.
O wicked and voluptuous prince! raise your head from your bed of down,
draw aside the triple draperies of silk and gold that surround you;
for your crimes keep vigil around your couch, and the justice of God
numbers every tear you have caused to be shed! Far better would it be
for you to sleep on an infected dunghill, in some obscure retreat;
that your limbs, weary with toil and the heat of the mid-day sun,
should tremble beneath the frosts of night, and that your hands were
pure and free from iniquity in the presence of the most high God; for
we cannot believe that man oppresses man without justice being meted
out to him, or that the weak shall remain the prey of the strong. The
day will come when a terrible vengeance shall fall upon the head of
the impious, and he will see arrayed before him all the crimes he has
committed. Then shall he cry aloud: “Why have I ever lived, and why
has my mother ever borne me in her womb?” But light then will no
longer be measured, night will have disappeared, century will no more
follow century, and time shall be no more.
TO BE CONTINUED
[209] _Margarita_, _Anglicè_ Margaret, is the Latin word
for daisy.—TRANSL.
A PROTESTANT BISHOP ON CONFESSION.
BY A CATHOLIC LAYMAN.
Bishop Atkinson, of North Carolina, in a “Charge” to the clergy of his
diocese, took occasion to inveigh against auricular confession. To
this Bishop Gibbons replied. The Protestant prelate now appears in “A
Defence,” the purport of which we propose here to examine. Omitting
any comment on the personal retort, we make our first quotation from
the eighth page of this pamphlet:
“To object to the power of the priest to forgive sins is, according to
this [the Roman Catholic] view, equivalent to objecting to the power
of Christ to forgive sins. Is this to be maintained? Is this true?”
Since to doubt Christ’s declaration is to call his power in question,
we affirm that this _is_ true and is to be maintained. If the words of
Christ are fallible, it must follow that he who spoke them is also
fallible. “Whose sins ye shall forgive they are forgiven,” and
“Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”:
Falsify these statements, and we make God a liar. Of the exercise of
this power St. Paul says to the Corinthians: “If I forgave any, for
your sakes forgave I it, in the _person_ of Christ”; and in condemning
the incestuous Corinthian he judges him “with the power of our Lord
Jesus Christ.” Now, if St. Paul was indeed acting with the power of
our Lord Jesus Christ, and in his _person_, his absolution and
condemnation were identical with Christ’s. If not, his arrogations
were blasphemous and vain. But Bishop Atkinson asserts that “priestly
absolution and the absolution of Christ are two entirely distinct
things,” because the priest cannot have God’s infallible knowledge of
the state of the soul, on which condition forgiveness depends.
Here is a confounding of things wholly different—the power of
absolution, and knowledge infallible. Forgiveness _does_ depend upon
the state of the soul, and, whether it be Christ or one of his
ambassadors pronouncing absolution, the conditions requisite are
absolutely one. Nor Christ nor his priest can pardon the impenitent;
but infallible _knowledge_ of the state of the soul affects in no way
the power of absolution. God reveals to any man his own soul’s
condition, but to no man is given the power of self-absolution. So,
also, he grants the power of absolution apart from the gift of
infallible knowledge. The things are distinct and separate from each
other. The latter of these powers our Lord alone possesses, but he
seems not unfrequently, in the exercise of his ministry, to have
purposely excluded all its influence over the former, to teach us that
the two have no necessary dependence. Thus, he invests St. Peter with
the power of the keys a short time before the fall of that apostle,
and administers to Judas the clean Bread of Angels when he knows him
to be a devil. Could a priest’s want of insight have results more
appalling? But Bishop Atkinson here proposes a method most ingenious
for testing priestly power, a “practical test” to be applied as
follows: “When the power of Christ to forgive sins was doubted, he
wrought a miracle to prove it, and thereby silenced the gainsayers.
When the power of the priest to forgive sins is doubted, as it very
frequently and very seriously is, can he work a miracle to demonstrate
it?”
To demand a miracle in the sacrament of penance as a “practical test”
of sacerdotal power is also to require it in every other sacrament and
sacerdotal function. Has Bishop Atkinson tested by this rule _his_
baptisms, confirmations, communions, and, first of all, his orders? A
“practical test” is of general application. When a child is baptized,
the Episcopal clergyman thus speaks to the sponsors: “Seeing now,
dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate and grafted
into Christ’s church, let us give thanks unto Almighty God for these
benefits.” Here, should his “practical test” be demanded to verify
this statement, could the bishop produce it? Again, at the end of a
marriage he says: “_I_ pronounce you man and wife,” and “Whom God hath
joined together let no man put asunder.” Is the clergyman then God?
Else whence this change from first to third person?
How far, we are asked, in the judgment of a “thorough-going Roman
Catholic”—one who is blind enough to take God at his word, while all
the world smiles at his childish credulity—does the priest’s power of
absolution actually extend? In the ordination service of the
Episcopalian Prayer-Book stands this Catholic formula:
“Receive the Holy Ghost for the office
and work of a priest in the church of God, now committed unto
thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost
forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they
are retained. And be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God
and of his holy sacraments; in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
* * * * *
Now, the Catholic believes the church means what she affirms; that the
literal declaration is the literal truth, since God himself spake it.
He therefore receives the priest in Christ’s person, believing that
the sins which he remits are remitted. But he knows the conditions
upon which depends his cure when he seeks divine remedies. He knows
that Christ himself cannot pardon the impenitent, and that the humble
priest is not greater than his Master; but, upon the _same conditions_
that the Son of God required, he believes the priest’s decision _must_
be ratified in heaven. He remembers, too, the promises vouchsafed to
those receiving, and the overwhelming curse pronounced on those
rejecting, the messenger of Christ—a judgment more dread than that on
Tyre and Sidon.
Though Bishop Atkinson denounces _auricular_ confession, we are not to
understand that he opposes all confession. Nay, he deems it sometimes
salutary, “sometimes even obligatory, from the ignorance and doubts of
the penitent, from the enormity of his crime, from his consequent
tendency to despair. But it is a _drastic_ medicine, not to be taken
regularly, for thus taken it enfeebles the patient.” Does Bishop
Atkinson really mean to tell us that a state of too great sanctity is
one to be discouraged? that some _bile_ of imperfection is essential
to the health of the moral constitution? and that this the drastic
medicine would too thoroughly remove? If not, what does he mean? Did
he look upon confession as a wicked imposition, we could readily
comprehend his aversion to its practice; but this he denies, directing
his attacks against _auricular confession_, which by the Council of
Trent is thus defined: “A confession of all mortal sins, _however
secret, with all their circumstances_, to a priest, in secret.” Here
the bishop shudders—that secret mortal sins, with their attendant
circumstances, should be matter of confession, and to a _priest_, in
_secret_! To commit them in broad daylight would not be half so
terrible! Confessing them in _secret_ is that which most appalls him.
Such, he gravely tells us, is not the rightful mode. The proper
thing to use is a very mild dilution of this potent, drastic
medicine—something that will soothe and lull the troubled conscience,
not purge it of its guilt. To support his strong assertions, he
appeals to Holy Scripture and to the early fathers. Here we have a
long quotation from a work of Bishop Hopkins. From this we learn that
“the apostles exercised their office of remitting or retaining sins;
for the sins of those _whom they thought fit_ (mark well the
restriction) were remitted in baptism, while the sins of those whom
_they judged unfit_ were retained.” Again: “These inspired men
required repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus
Christ, and then administered baptism for the remission of sins to
those _whom they judged_ to be truly penitent.” In a word, they acted
always in accordance with _their judgment_. Now, the basis of sound
judgment is a thorough understanding of the cause to be adjudged, and
without this understanding there can be no prudent judgment. Were our
Lord’s apostles gods who could read man’s secret conscience? And if
not, how could they know the matter they were judging, or give a
righteous judgment until they knew the matter? And just here we would
ask, What constitutes matter, if not mortal sins? Not venial sins,
surely; for these no Roman Catholic is called upon to mention.
But why, some one may ask, must particulars be stated in making a
confession? and what is your authority for the secrecy observed? To
this we ask in turn, If a sin be stripped of its aggravating
circumstances, will any man maintain that it is honestly confessed?
and since _God_ does not require us to confess our sins in public,
should his faithful representative demand more of the penitent? Yet it
is to these conditions that the bishop makes objection, and thus his
“drastic medicine” is a talent in a napkin, a useless, dormant power
not intended to be exercised. But what says the Church of England on
this subject of confession? According to the bishop, she has left it
“strictly voluntary”; but in her Visitation of the Sick we find this
rubric: “Here shall the sick man be moved to make a special confession
of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty
matter. After which confession the priest shall absolve him (if he
humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort:
“‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his church to absolve
all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy
forgive thee thine offences; and by his authority committed to me I
absolve thee from thy sins.’” “Here _shall_ the sick man be moved to
make confession.” Is it left so “_strictly_ voluntary” as the bishop
has declared it? And why now to the sick man does the church propose
confession, when in the time of health she never urged it on him? Is
he now in a condition for this strange and stern requirement? But
Bishop Atkinson would say: “It is only _weighty_ matter he is called
upon to tell.” Are not _secret mortal sins_ the weights that now
oppress him? And why is he exhorted to a _special_ declaration? Is it
not that death is near? But who is he that reckons the number of his
days, and can certify unerringly how long he has to live? The thief in
the night does not warn us of his coming. Behoves it not, therefore,
that we live as dying men, lest, in an hour we think not, the Son of
Man should come? If so, the rubric cited is appropriate to all. Thus,
in his own communion, Bishop Atkinson will find that _special_
confession to a priest is recommended, and that this confession has
all that constitutes _auricular_, except the bond of secrecy which
silences the priest. This is left to his honor or personal discretion,
untrammelled by all vows. But the bishop further tells us he himself
has heard confessions “which, if divulged, would not only have caused
shame and anguish, but very probably have caused
bloodshed—confessions,” he continues, “_which I keep as sacredly as
any Roman Catholic can those made to him_.” This, in our humble
judgment, seems to border on _auricular_.
We come now to the question of doctrinal development—a process, as the
bishop thinks, for hatching any novelty that priestcraft may devise.
To this system he attributes auricular confession, which, according to
his reckoning, was first imposed upon the church by Innocent III. at
the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215. “And that this,” says he, “to the
extent to which it was then carried, was a novelty in the church, is
apparent from the tenor of the canon itself; for it requires _that it
shall be often read_ publicly in the church, so that none may plead
ignorant of the case.” In the _Book of Common Prayer_, at the
baptismal office, appears the following rubric: “The minister of every
parish _shall often admonish the people_ that they defer not the
baptism of their children,” etc. Here, instructed by Bishop Atkinson,
we learn, to our amazement, that the baptism of infants at a very
tender age was first known in England after the Reformation, when this
rubric was inserted. By his own line of argument we are forced to this
conclusion: Had it not been a novelty, what need of this injunction?
But, returning to our subject, does Bishop Atkinson forget that there
existed heresies _before_ the thirteenth century, and that their
watchword, like his own, was “Purity of Faith”? All remnants of these
sects, of however ancient origin, are in unity with us upon this point
of doctrine. To the Protestants alone belongs the honor of rejecting
it, and hence they stand at variance, not only with the Pope, but with
the rest of Christendom.
With regard to the new dogmas that have lately been defined, as
Moehler well expresses it, our unity of doctrine is in _substance_,
not in _form_. As the Infant in the manger and the Victim on the
cross, identical in _substance_, were yet unlike in _form_, so also
truth, in broader light, assumes more striking aspect. Calculus is but
a _form_ of primary arithmetic. As in the natural order, so in the
order spiritual, development is but the pulse of vigor and vitality.
Even in the life of heaven itself they go “from strength to strength.”
The loftiest branches of the oak were once within the acorn; nor could
they have developed save as they there existed.
Thus, to a grain of mustard-seed our Lord compared the church, and to
the mite of leaven that leavened the whole lump. She is “the pillar
and the ground of truth,” which if once shaken, truth itself must
fall. To her alone is man responsible, since God commissioned her to
teach the world and bring all men to knowledge of his truth. To her
St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine bowed; to her St. Ambrose and St.
Bernard yielded entire submission. Like Bossuet and Fénelon, the
doctors of all ages—whatever their contentions and discussions,
however wide their difference of opinion—have ever looked to Rome, and
sought her final judgment as the decree of God.
Bishop Gibbons, in reply to the “Charge” of Bishop Atkinson, remarked
the contradictory doctrines that prevail in the Anglican communion
with regard to confession; some execrating it as a Romish innovation,
while others, holding tenets identical with ours, preach and practise
its observance as a sacrament of Christ. Bishop Atkinson professes to
discover a parallel to this in the various opinions of the Catholic
theologians with respect to the limits of the Pope’s infallibility.
Let us see upon what grounds he establishes comparison, and how far
the comparison is supported. Papal Infallibility is a dogma of the
church, an article of faith, to be by all accepted under the last
penalty of excommunication. With the Protestant the force of this
dogma is experienced, not, indeed, as to the Pope, but with regard to
Holy Scripture, which, as the word of God, he _must_ hold to be
infallible. Now, the general truth that the Bible is infallible the
Catholic and Protestant both equally maintain. To doubt it would be
heresy. But admitting, as we do, the general proposition, how many
minor differences remain to be adjusted! The Catholic believes that
the church alone is able to interpret Holy Scripture, and that without
her guidance men may wrest God’s very word unto their own destruction;
that the written Word requires some infallible interpreter before we
can rely upon its meaning as infallible, since the Scriptures, though
infallible, inspire not every reader with their own infallibility. But
the common run of Protestants receive their Holy Bible as if it had
been printed and handed down from heaven in the language, form, and
binding with which they are familiar. They forget that, after all, it
is a mere translation and as liable to corruption as any other text in
the hands of a translator. The Pope they think presumptuous; the
printer and translator infallible. But even here believers may hold
diverse opinions with integrity of faith. “How far,” one may ask,
“extends infallibility? Is it only in the spirit, or in the letter
also? ‘Unless a man _hate_ his father and his mother he cannot be my
disciple.’ ‘If ye shall ask _anything_ in my name, I will do it.’ With
what exact restriction are these words to be received? Can errors
typographical, misrenderings, etc., affect in any way the truth of the
infallible? Are all the dates and numbers, in their common
acceptation, infallibly correct? Does inspiration equally pervade the
whole Bible, the Old and New Testaments? How must we understand St.
Paul’s teaching by command and teaching by permission? Was he in each
infallible?” All these questions might arise among sincere believers
holding the general truth that the Scriptures are infallible. As we
have before observed, Papal Infallibility is an established dogma, an
article of faith, and the questions now at issue among Catholic
theologians are precisely of the nature of those among all Protestants
with regard to Holy Scripture. When a definition of a dogma of faith
has been promulgated to the universal church, it is acknowledged as
infallible by all; but the Pope sometimes teaches in a less determined
species, and _then only_ can even the most lax theologians raise the
question how far his teaching binds. Are disputes among the Anglicans
analogous to these? Bishop Atkinson would stickle for his sacerdotal
character; Bishop Whittle, of Virginia, would hoot the very notion. At
Mount Calvary, in Baltimore, a child becomes regenerate in the
sacrament of baptism; at St. Peter’s, five squares distant, no such
change can be effected. At the former Mass is said and the Sacred Host
is worshipped; at the latter the Host is bread, and to worship it is
idolatry. For whether it be bread or the golden calf adored, such
worship is idolatrous. And if the Host be Christ, _not_ to worship is
denial of our Blessed Lord’s Divinity.
Are the Quaker and the Mormon more at variance in faith? But Bishop
Atkinson interrupts us. “I am not the church,” he says, “nor is Bishop
Whittle, nor the pastors of the churches to which you have referred.”
Be it granted; but we ask, then, What _is_ your church’s teaching?
Surely, one of you is wrong, and has the church no voice to decide the
question for us? Can idolatry be taught in her communion with
impunity? For, in Dr. Gramnici’s judgment, this is Mr. Richie’s crime:
the worship of the creature instead of the Creator. It is too true.
All that the Church of England boasts is _latitude_ of doctrine. She
has no power of utterance to define or to condemn. The wranglings of
her children have silenced her for ever. The enormities of Darwin, if
they threatened, could not rouse her; nor, roused, has she the unity
to utter an anathema.
Having noticed many points on which we differ from Bishop Atkinson, in
conclusion we remark one on which we quite agree. This is when,
speaking of St. Bernard, he styles him “the great saint.” But the
question upon which he appeals to this great father is hardly one on
which we hoped to find the bishop laudatory. Having chosen him,
however, to plead his cause against _us_, we needs must think that he
supports his advocate, and holds him orthodox, at least, upon the
point at issue—the Immaculate Conception. Let us hear what St. Bernard
has to offer on this point. “Thou art that chosen Lady,” says he, “in
whom our Lord found repose, and in whom he has deposited all his
treasures without measure. Hence the whole world, O my most holy Lady!
honors thy chaste womb as the temple of God, in which the salvation of
the world began. Thou, O great Mother of God! art the enclosed garden
into which the hand of a sinner never entered to gather its flowers.
Thou art the paradise of God; from thee issued forth the fountain of
living water that irrigates the whole world. The day on which thou
camest into the world can indeed be called a day of salvation, a day
of grace. Thou art fair as the moon; the moon illumines the night with
the light it receives from the sun, and thou enlightenest our darkness
with the splendor of thy virtues. But thou art fairer than the moon;
for in thee there is neither spot nor shadow. Thou art bright as the
sun—I mean as that Sun which created the world. He was chosen amongst
all men, and thou wast chosen amongst all women. O sweet, O great, O
all-amiable Mary! no tongue can pronounce thy name but thou inflamest
it with love.”
A DAY AMONG THE KIOWAS AND COMANCHES.
It was rather cold and frosty in the early January morning as we rode
eastward from Otter Creek to the Kiowa and Comanche reservation, in
the Indian Territory. Toward noon, however, the sun came out,
brilliant and warm. The effect on the transparent covering of the
trees and shrubs was dazzlingly beautiful. Some were encased in a
bright armor, cunningly linked in chains of crescents. I detached a
perfect “ice-plant,” with every curve of the stem, every nerve of the
leaves, taken in ice. The humblest weeds on the prairie sparkled with
frosty diamonds. But as the sun grew warmer they began to bend under
their gorgeous burdens, as if wearied by their splendor, like tired
beauties after a ball.
In the afternoon the weather was as clear and balmy as on a day in
June. Our way lay through the most beautiful part of the Indian
Territory. We skirted the southern slopes of the Wichita Mountains.
These, as if in honor of our coming, exhibited all their jewelry in
its brightest lustre. Down their dark slopes ran shining streams, like
chains of silver adorning their broad breasts. Stones of gray and
yellow and green and purple were heaped together in distracting
profusion, the whole seen through the most surpassingly tender of
violet tints, too delicate to be compared to the filmiest
marriage-morning lace. As we proceeded the country became more and
more diversified. Upland and vale succeeded each other in delightful
variety. Beautiful glens, wooded slopes, bold mountain-crests, filled
the landscape. The day had become warm enough to free the babble of
the scores of pretty little streams that flow into the Cache. We rode
through groves of mesquite and forests of oaks. The long, straight
paths through the oak-woods made one think of the long alleys of
Versailles. We pass along the Main Cache; the scenery is ravishing. To
the right flows the stream. It is thickly wooded; and through the
English effect, produced by the smoke of a prairie fire in the far
distance, it brings back the memory of a railroad glimpse of the line
of Windsor Forest. Occasional circles of oaks in the midst of noble
stretches of upland render more striking the likeness to the park
scenery of old England. To the left are the mountains. They actually
furnish the luxury of rocks, covered with moss and mould as green as
you could see upon Irish ruins. What a joy was the spectacle of so
lovely a region to our eyes, that had been starved for months on
sand-hills and treeless deserts!
We passed hundreds of lovely sites for cottages, in pleasant nooks,
sheltered from all cold winds by wooded slopes that opened towards the
south and bounded semi-circular vales of marvellous fertility. Indeed,
in beauty of scenery and in richness of soil I think this portion of
the Indian Territory may be considered the garden of the western
world.
But, alas! nothing earthly is perfect. The brightest prospect has its
shadow. Over this seeming paradise, where you can see in a day’s
journey the loveliest characteristics of the most favored climes,
malaria spreads its black and baleful wings.
I visited the reservation of the Kiowas and Comanches soon after it
was entered by one of the expeditions that operated against the
hostile bands of these Indians and of the Cheyennes in the winter of
187-. This force had driven in a number of Kiowas and Comanches. It
was a close race between the troops and the Indians. But the latter,
having the great advantage of the start, throwing away all
_impedimenta_, leaving their line of flight marked by abandoned
lodges, lodge-poles, ponies, cooking utensils, etc., had won the race
by a few hours only, and surrendered not a moment too soon. I wanted
to see all I could see of Indians while opportunity offered. I visited
the commanding officer of the adjoining military post, and made known
to him my wishes. He received me with great courtesy and kindness,
placed a vehicle at my disposal, and instructed his interpreter to
accompany me through the Indian camps. The Indians had pitched their
_tepies_ in the timbered bottoms along the streams for several miles
around the fort.
The interpreter was an “old Indian man.” I found him intelligent and
polite. He had evidently been well brought up and fairly educated. His
language was generally good; and when he indulged, occasionally, in a
graphic, frontier mode of expression, it was easy to see that this was
an after-graft, though not the less apt and piquant on that account.
The Indians on the reservation were divided into two great classes,
those under civil and those under military control. The former were
under charge of the agent; the latter under that of the commander of
the fort. These were again subdivided into the incarcerated, the
enrolled, and the paroled (pronounced by the employees of the post and
reservation, _pay-rolled_).
The imprisoned were again subdivided into two classes: the more guilty
and dangerous, who were placed in irons and confined under strict
surveillance in the post guard-house; and the Indians of less note and
guilt, who were in confinement, but not in irons. Of the first the
principal was White Horse, a Kiowa chief, a murderer, ravisher, and as
great a general scoundrel as could be found in any tribe. These really
“bad Indians” did not number more than half a dozen. The Comanches and
Kiowas belonging to the second subdivision were confined within the
walls of an extensive but unfinished stone building, intended for an
ice-house, one hundred and fifty feet by forty. They numbered about a
hundred and twenty.
I told the interpreter I should like to begin by a visit to White
Horse.
“Then,” said he, “we shall have to see the officer of the day; for the
sergeant of the guard has orders to let no one visit White Horse
without special instructions.”
Two old squaws, evidently in great distress, now came up to the
interpreter, and, having shaken hands with him, began to talk to him
with great eagerness.
“You’re in luck,” said the interpreter to me. “These are two of his
mothers who want permission to see him.”
“Two of his mothers!” I exclaimed. “How many mothers has he, for
heaven’s sake?”
“Only one regular one,” he replied, laughing. “The other is his aunt;
but among these Indians the aunts also call themselves mothers.”
Accompanied by the two squaws, we went to seek the officer of the day.
We soon found him. He was a tall, fine-looking, genial, impulsive
Kentuckian, a cavalry officer. He went with us to the guard-house. He
first took the interpreter and myself into the prison-room where White
Horse’s five companions were confined. They looked greatly dispirited.
They all shook hands with us with great warmth. I noticed the
eagerness of the last hand-shaker, who seemed to fear that we might
leave the cell before he had gone through the ceremony with each of
us. Poor wretches! I presume they thought their hour was nearly come,
and, like drowning men, they grasped even at the semblance of straws.
They evidently had some rough idea of “making interest” with the
victor “pale-faces” in a forlorn hope for pardon. They were effusive
in their manifestations of friendship for the officer, who, with his
revolver in his belt and his long cavalry sabre clanking at his heels,
represented Force to them. Force is something Indians understand, and
they respect its emblems. Indeed, most of them have been afforded but
poor opportunities to understand anything else.
The officer then conducted us to a private room, into which he ordered
White Horse to be brought. A clanking of chains was heard along the
corridor, and White Horse, doubly ironed, stood in the door-way. He
entered, not without a certain untutored majesty of gait, maugre his
irons. He put out his manacled hands, and energetically went through
the ceremony of hand-shaking, beginning with the officer of the day,
and giving him an extra shake at the end.
White Horse was a large, powerful Indian. He wore a dark-colored
blanket which covered his entire person. I could discern no
indications of ferocity in his countenance. His face, on the contrary,
had rather what I should call a Chadband cast. His flesh seemed soft,
oily, and “puffy.”
White Horse’s mother and aunt were now permitted to enter. The mother
rushed to her son, threw her arms around him, kissed him on both
cheeks, while the tears rolled down her face; but she uttered not a
word. The aunt kissed him in like manner. White Horse submitted to
their embraces, but made no motion of responding affection. He seemed
a little nervous under their caresses, and probably under our
observation. The mother took hold of his chain, looked at it for a
moment, and then came another paroxysm of silent grief, revealing
itself in tears alone. They sat on a rough wooden bench, White Horse
in the centre, his mother on his right, his aunt on the left, each
holding one of his hands in both of hers. White Horse uttered no
sound; no gesture betrayed any emotion, yet I thought I could detect a
moistening of the eye. This made me feel that I had no business there,
gazing on his grief and that of the poor Indian women. I suppose I
ought to be ashamed to say it; but the truth must be told, and I must
confess that, villain as he was, I could not help feeling for him. Of
course it was a weakness, but I am miserably weak in such matters. I
believe I should have pleaded for mercy towards him, though he showed
little mercy to others. There are few human beings who do not, at some
time in their lives, need mercy shown them; and when they themselves
cry out for it, it must be a great consolation to them to reflect, as
they look back, that they, in their time, have not been deaf to the
cries of others.
I signified a wish to withdraw, and left, accompanied by the officer
and the interpreter. Before we were permitted to depart, however, we
had to shake hands with White Horse and the two squaws. The women
looked at us with an appealing expression, as if, in their poor,
simple minds, they thought it possible that, in some way or other, we
might have an influence on the fate of the son.
We next visited the unfinished building in which the one hundred and
twenty lesser Indian criminals were confined. They were bestowed in a
sufficiently comfortable manner. Common tents were ranged along the
walls, and there were fires burning at proper distances down the
centre of the building. The occupants of the tents were mostly engaged
in gambling with monte cards and in various other ways. Your Indian is
unfortunately “a born gambler.” They quitted their play, however, and
crowded around us, eager to shake hands with us, and uttering the
Indian monosyllabic expression of satisfaction, which sounds as if
written “how.” This hand-shaking took some time, as every Indian
insisted on going through the ceremony. When I supposed I had shaken
my way through the crowd, I was touched on the arm, and, turning, met
a face which was evidently not that of an Indian, though its owner was
garbed in Indian guise. He put out his hand, saying “how” in the usual
way. I said to him in rather “Brummagem” Spanish that he was not an
“Indio.”
He shook his head and replied: “No.”
“Mejicano?” I asked.
“Si,” he replied with a broad grin.
The other Indians crowded around us, laughing and nodding their heads,
ejaculating: “Mejicano! How! how!” and turning towards each other with
gestures of wonder or admiration (exactly as I have seen the chorus do
at the Italian opera). This was no doubt done with a rude idea of
flattering me on my perspicacity. There are worse judges of human
nature than the untutored Indian. I suppose there is very little doubt
that, had I any power over their fate, the compliment would not have
been thrown away on me, or on most men for that matter.
Of course they wanted tobacco, and we gave them what we had about us.
They had a good deal to say to the interpreter. Every one had some
little grievance to complain of or want to be satisfied. At length,
after some more hand-shaking, we escaped from them.
On leaving the prison-house we learned that we should not find the
principal Indians in their camps until later in the day, as they were
then collecting in the commanding officer’s office to talk about
sending a party to find some of the Cheyennes, who, having been driven
from the brakes of the Staked Plains, were supposed to have gone to
southern New Mexico. The interpreter said I should have a good
opportunity to see the “head men” there; we could visit the camps
afterwards. To the office we went, and found there about fifteen or
twenty chiefs, among them Little Crow and Kicking Bird, the head chief
of the Kiowas. If ever there were a good Indian—and there are many
very honest people west of the Mississippi who think that no live
Indian can be good—I think Kicking Bird was a good Indian. During the
recent troubles he never left his reservation, was constant in using
his influence in favor of the whites, and never wavered in his
fidelity to the government.
He was a fine-looking Indian, and had as winning a countenance as I
have looked upon anywhere. The expression of his eyes was remarkably
soft and pleasing. There was a quiet, natural dignity in his manners,
tempered by great natural grace. I was taken by his appearance from
the first, and shook hands with him with pleasure and sincerity, which
was not the case on every occasion of hand-shaking that morning.
Kicking Bird, as nearly as one can judge an Indian’s age (an Indian is
generally as great a chronological difficulty as a negro), was then
about thirty-five years old. He was somewhat above the middle height,
richly but not gaudily dressed. Hanging by a loop from his left breast
were a pair of silver tweezers.
After the “talk” was over and the arrangements for sending out the
party agreed upon, every chief except Kicking Bird had some private
“axe to grind”—something to ask for. As the presentation of these
“private bills” was likely to take much time, we withdrew, mounted our
wagon, and drove to the Kiowa camp.
The camps of the three tribes, Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches, were
pitched in the fringe of timber that borders Medicine Bluff Creek and
the Main Cache. The day was bright and warm for the season. The
scarlet and white blankets of the Indians, seen here and there among
the trees, gave life and color to the landscape. Crowds of children
gambolled and shouted, and seemed to enjoy themselves intensely. They
had no idea they were the children of a doomed and dying race. There
was no trace among them of the stoicism of the Indian of maturer
years. No crowd of French urchins playing around the Tour Saint
Jacques in the grounds of the Palais Royal, or the gardens of the
Tuileries, was ever more full of gayety and _espièglerie_ than these
little savages. They threw their arms about and “kicked loose legs” as
naturally and with as much _abandon_ as any white children could have
done. Some, more industriously inclined, built little _tepies_, or
lodges; others made tiny camp-fires, playing “war-party”; others, with
miniature bows and arrows, skipped along, shooting at the small birds
that crossed their path. Now an urchin, more bold than the rest, would
hop alongside our wagon and return our “how, how” with compound
interest. Emboldened by his example, others would follow, until we had
a crowd of little red-skins of both sexes about us, hopping, laughing,
and “how-how”-ing. Occasionally they indulged in a general shout of
good-natured merriment, which may very probably have been caused by
some more than usually good joke at our expense.
Our first visit was to Kicking Bird’s lodge. It was quite roomy, being
a _tepie_ of twenty-four poles. In rear of the lodge, and carefully
covered by a paulin, like the carriage of any civilized gentleman,
stood our friend Kicking Bird’s “buggy.”
Kicking Bird had not yet returned from the talk at the post. His wife,
a buxom young squaw, profusely beaded, brightly blanketed,
vermilion-cheeked, but not over-washed, did the honors. She had a
child about ten months old—a lively, stout little red rascal, whose
flesh was as firm as vulcanized rubber. The little wretch was just
beginning to walk. He was _in puris_, of course. He took wonderfully
to us. He would try to walk across the lodge to each of us in turn,
falling at every other step, and getting up again with a loud crow of
determination. Then he would toddle from one to the other, holding by
our boot-tops as we stood in a circle around him, and being jumped as
high as arms would admit of by each in turn, to his intense delight
and the great enjoyment of his mother.
We walked through the camp and watched the squaws tanning
buffalo-hides and preparing antelope-skins. I was very anxious to get
a papoose-board, as a telegram from a medical friend had just informed
me that there was an opportunity of utilizing such a piece of
furniture in the family of a very particular friend. But I could not
beg or buy one, even with the help of my friend the interpreter. We
asked several squaws, but not one of them would sell. I heard
afterwards that an extravagantly high price, backed by the Indian
agent’s influence, failed to procure one. The squaws no doubt consider
it “bad medicine” to sell a papoose-board.
A gaudily-dressed Indian, whose cheeks were streaked with paint of all
the colors of the rainbow, approached us. In my civilized simplicity I
supposed that this glaring individual was some very big chief indeed.
I asked the interpreter what great chief he was.
“Some Indian _plug_,” responded that gentleman; “no chief at all.”
“How comes he to be so extravagantly adorned?”
“They can wear anything they can beg, buy, or steal.”
My mistake reminds me of a similar one made by Indians with regard to
some white visitors. Col. —— visited an Indian camp, accompanied by
some officers and a cavalry escort. The colonel and the officers were
dressed in fatigue uniform, with merely gold enough about them to
indicate their rank to a close observer on close inspection. The
observed of all the Indian observers, however, was a “fancy” Dutch
bugler, with his double yellow stripe and his bars of yellow braid
across his breast. To him the most respectful homage and the greatest
consideration were paid.
As we passed one of the Kiowa lodges, a young man, seemingly about
twenty-five or twenty-eight years old, came out to meet us with
outstretched arms. With the exception of Kicking Bird, he was the most
pleasing Indian I met. He was very fair-skinned for an Indian, bright,
intelligent-looking, with a frankness of manner rare among Indians. He
was presented to me as Big Tree, a paroled Indian.
The interpreter told me that, up to the time Big Tree was taken with
Satanta, the former was an Indian of no note. He was innocent of
crime, and achieved a reputation merely by his accidental associations
with Satanta.
Notwithstanding the lesson I had received, when we met some
gaudily-bedizened Indian I could not refrain from asking who he was.
The interpreter’s answer was invariably: “Only some Indian _plug_.”
We drove to the Comanche camp, and visited the lodge of Quirz-Quip, or
“Antelope-Chewer.” I had met him at the “talk” in the morning. He
recognized me and shook hands in a very friendly manner. Quirz-Quip’s
countenance was not an attractive one. It was at its best then,
however, for he was in high glee at his good fortune in reaching the
reservation, even with the loss of almost everything he had, and the
troops close at his heels. He only got in a few hours ahead of them,
and they had been gaining on him hourly. As his dinner was ready,
Antelope-Chewer invited us in to join him in the repast, and I
accepted the invitation eagerly.
The lodge was a large and comfortable one. No doubt it had been kept
standing on the reservation for the use of the squaws and children
while Antelope-Chewer was on the war-path, and for a pleasant and safe
resting-place for that gentleman when the troops made the war-path too
hot for him. Mats were placed around the lodge. On these we sat
tailor-fashion. Valises, made of buffalo-hide, scraped and painted in
the usual Indian fashion, were placed at intervals around the _tepie_.
The fire was in the centre, in a hole eighteen inches or two feet
deep. The lodge was pleasantly warmed, and there was not the least
smoke. Two young bucks occupied about four yards of the lodge. They
lay stretched at full length on their backs. Each had a bow and arrow,
with which he amused himself by toying. The arrow was in its place,
ready to be sped. Ever and anon they would draw the arrows back to the
head, and then relax the strings again. I felt that the rascals would
have sent the barbs through us with pleasure, if they could only do so
with safety. We were unarmed, it is true; but there were thirteen
companies of cavalry and five of infantry within a mile and a half,
and the chances of ultimate escape were more than doubtful. I should
not wish to meet even my worthy friend Quirz-Quip off the reservation,
if I were unarmed and no help near.
The young men merely nodded to us as we entered, without changing
their positions or intermitting their bow-play. They gave us a
half-careless, half-supercilious smile, and glanced at each other, as
if they should say:
“Buffalo-Heart, my boy! what _does_ the governor mean by bringing
these fellows here?”
They seemed to look upon us as a pair of young scions of the old
French _noblesse_ might have looked upon a republican guard detail
entering their private apartments in their ancestral château.
We shook hands and exchanged grunts with the squaws and children. The
interpreter joked Quirz-Quip about his race with the troops. The
Indian laughed, indulged in several “how-hows” and _buenos_ (the
Comanches use a good many Spanish words), and shook hands with me
again with great seeming cordiality. He was evidently very much elated
by his good fortune in getting to a place of safety, and showed it by
repeated chuckles.
Dinner being ready, we drew closer to the festive fire-hole in which
the viands were cooking. As a not very comely old squaw put forth a
not very clean hand and arm to serve the first course, a young
gentleman who had joined our party made a precipitate retreat. The
young fellow was troubled with a delicate stomach. Another gentleman,
having tasted of the first course, said he found the _tepie_ rather
close and withdrew. There remained of our party, then, only the
interpreter and my unworthy self to do honor to Antelope-Chewer’s
hospitality.
The party assembled around the hospitable stew-pan consisted of the
old squaw who did the honors of the camp-kettle; a younger squaw,
plump and dirty, evidently the latest favorite; Antelope-Chewer and
several little Chewers, ranging from six months to twelve years old;
the aristocratic young bucks (whose food was handed to them by the old
squaw), the interpreter, and the writer. The repast consisted of
stewed buffalo meat served in the vessel in which it was cooked. Each
_convive_ takes his clasp-knife in his right hand, seizes one end of
the piece of meat with the thumb and forefinger of his left, and cuts
off a piece of the required size. It is “bad medicine,” as well as
_mauvais goût_, to take more than you can consume. The manner in which
salt was used struck me as being an improvement on our civilized mode
of using it. It was served dissolved in water in a shallow vessel, and
each guest dipped his piece of meat in the fluid. Of course if this
method were adopted in our hotels or boarding-houses, I should wish to
have my salt and water served in an “individual” salt-vessel.
There was no bread. The Indians on the reservation had received no
flour for weeks. We had the Indian substitute for bread—the fat of the
meat cut off in strips, pressed, and served separately, cold. There
are worse substitutes. A cup of coffee (without milk, of course)
concluded the repast. It was by no means bad. It was hot and strong,
though not quite sweet enough, as the ration of sugar issued to the
Indians was insufficient. I enjoyed it, however. It is only justice to
say that Quirz-Quip’s coffee was much better than some I have tasted
in railroad eating-houses and “end of the track” towns.
Dinner being over, we left the lodge to walk through the camp, and
especially to visit and view a bridge made by the Indians themselves
across the Medicine Bluff. It was a structure of mud and logs quite
creditable to Indian ingenuity and industry. It showed that the
lessons of their teacher—the beaver—had not been thrown away upon
them.
We invited Antelope-Chewer to come with us to the fort bakery, and we
would make him a present of a dozen loaves of bread. He consented, but
said he wanted his squaw to go too.
“He wants her to carry back the bread,” said the interpreter.
We agreed, and got into the wagon. Quirz-Quip desired that the plump
and dirty squaw should ride inside with us. To this we would not
submit, and insisted that she should take the seat beside the driver.
Indeed, I felt already an itching sensation all over me—no doubt the
effect of imagination; for the interpreter assured me there was no
danger of anything of the kind, unless I should spend a night in a
lodge. I assured him that such a thing was not at all probable.
Nevertheless, and notwithstanding two or three baths, it was some days
before my epidermis regained its accustomed tranquillity.
We drove to the Apache camp for our young friends who had fled from
Quirz-Quip’s hospitality, and returned by the Comanche chief’s lodge
to pick up the plump and dirty squaw. She had become tired of waiting,
and had gone away, much to her lord’s disgust and our satisfaction.
We drove to the bakery and bought a dozen loaves of bread for
Quirz-Quip. He wished us to drive him back to his camp with the bread.
The interpreter told him we could not do it. Then the modest Comanche
asked us to lend him the wagon to take the bread. The interpreter
shook his head, and assured him that it was impossible.
“Then,” said Quirz-Quip, “how am I to get the bread to camp?”
“If you are too lazy to pack it,” said the interpreter, “you can
leave, and be confounded.”
As we drove away, we saw him, with a rueful countenance, spreading out
his blanket on the floor to receive the coveted bread but hated load.
On our return from the camps we passed by the agency. I asked what
kind of a man the agent was. I was answered that he was “a good sort
of man,” but “he knows nothing about Indians or their ways.”
“He is a Quaker, I suppose.”
“A kind of a _made-up_ Quaker, like a good many of ‘em.”
We stopped at the agency door, and I was introduced to the agent. He
was a gentleman in his manners, and looked to me like an honest man.
There was to be an issue of blankets on the following day. The agent
kindly said he would be glad to have me present, and if I would come
he would send a wagon for me. I accepted at once.
The Indian agent was as good as his word. He sent a carriage for us
about half-past eight next morning. The issue was to take place about
half-past nine. It was nearly half-past eleven, however, before the
Indians began to arrive. Your Indian is invariably unpunctual. You may
set what hour you please, but you cannot make him come until he is
quite ready. By half-past twelve they began coming in considerable
numbers and the issue commenced. The women and children were out in
great force, and were in high good-humor, chatting and laughing in the
gayest manner possible. Each family ranges itself in a semi-circle;
the chief, or male head thereof, stood about the centre of the chord.
Each chief, after receiving the number of blankets to which he was
entitled, tore in two a double blanket of each color; there were only
black and white blankets to be issued that day, no scarlet ones,
greatly to the disappointment of the squaws and children. Beginning at
one end of the semi-circle, the chief threw a piece of each color at
the head of the person for whom it was intended. It was caught with a
shout of glee and many remarks, evidently of a humorous nature,
judging by the laughter with which they were hailed. Sometimes the
dignified chief, with as near an approach to a smile as his dignity
would allow, threw a joke with the blanket at the head of a dependant.
His jokes, like those of all persons in power, were always greeted
with applause. When the blanket was so thrown as to strike the
recipient full in the face, the merriment was uproarious. Our friend
Quirz-Quip was present, of course. He was very busy, getting all he
could, and dividing what he got among his interesting family. He was
harder to please than if he had always been a good Indian and had
never left the reservation to go on the war-path.
The blankets were of very good quality. They were marked with the
letters U. S. I. D. It was found necessary to stamp the blankets to
prevent the Indians from gambling or trading them away to Mexicans in
the summer.
Here and there some wretched squaws stood apart from the general
throng, as if they were Pariahs among their sisters. They seemed
utterly forlorn and miserable. They took no interest in the busy scene
before them. Their faces wore an expression of blank hopelessness. The
world had nothing for them in the present, nothing in the future. They
came to the issue as mere drudges, to carry back the blankets to the
camps. They had each an angular piece cut out of the nostril. This is
the Scarlet Letter of the Comanches.
When the issue was over I visited the Indian hospital and had quite an
interesting chat with the doctor. The Indians were then suffering a
good deal from colds, influenza, etc., brought on by exposure at
night, “making medicine”—_i.e._, performing incantations. As we went
from the hospital to the carpenter’s shop, I met young Satanta, a
paroled prisoner, son of the notorious Satanta who was delivered by
the War Department to the civil authorities in Texas to be tried for
murders and robberies committed by him within the boundaries of that
State. Satanta, Jr., was a bright-eyed young man of twenty. He wore a
long, straight red feather in his hat, and carried in his hand a bow,
from which ever and anon he discharged an arrow as he went, and picked
it up again.
An Indian, who evidently thought he was suffering under a very great
grievance, now met us and talked very earnestly and excitedly to the
interpreter.
“That Indian is smarting under the sense of some great wrong, real or
fancied,” I said.
“Yes,” said the interpreter, smiling; “he has trouble with another
Indian about a greyhound pup. I promised this fellow and another a pup
each (I have the finest greyhounds in the Territory). The other
fellow, while I was away, took both the pups, and won’t give this
fellow his. They are just like children in many things.”
There was little doing in the carpenter’s shop. I was shown some work
done by a young Indian which was fair, for an Indian. There were no
Indians at work, but I was told that Kicking Bird’s son was to begin
his apprenticeship the following week.
Nor was there anything doing at the school. There were hopes of
opening it the following month, with twenty Apaches, twenty Kiowas,
and the same number of Comanches.
The trader at the military post was also the trader for the Indians.
The store was thronged from morning to sunset by Indians of both
sexes. Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches, hung around in groups, standing in
the doorways, blocking up the windows, when they were closed, with
their faces against the panes, or their heads and the upper part of
their bodies thrust in when they were open. The majority of the
trader’s store-idlers are women, young girls, and children. They are
by no means backward in begging. The clerks told me it was not wise to
leave anything on the counter even for a moment when the red brethren
and sisters were in the store; they had to be watched as narrowly as
fashionable white kleptomaniacs.
I was rather pleased with the appearance of the Indian agent. He
seemed honest and frank. Of his ignorance or knowledge of Indians and
their ways I can say nothing. “Old Indian men” are apt to think that,
in the way of knowledge of Indians, they have pulled the ladder up
after them.
I thanked the agent for his politeness, and said that, if he did not
think it impertinent, I should like to ask a question or two for my
own information and satisfaction. He replied that he would be very
happy to give me any information in his power.
“Well,” said I, “not to mince matters, you know they say a great many
hard things about Indian agents.”
“Of course I do. When I received this appointment, one of my most
intimate friends wrote to me not to accept it, warning me that, were I
as pure as snow, I should be denounced by everybody as a swindler and
a thief before six months.”
“It is said that for several weeks the Indians on this reservation
have been without bread. Is this true?”
“It is. The freight contractors have failed to deliver the flour. I
cannot issue what I have not. To make up for the lack of flour, I
issue four pounds of beef to each Indian daily.”
“It is charged that the beef is poor. Is this charge true?”
“It is. What can I do? Like a quartermaster or commissary, I can only
issue what I have on hand. If I had not this beef, the Indians would
have nothing to eat. I cannot throw it back on the contractor’s hands,
and wait for a better quality of meat; for while I was waiting the
Indians would starve or leave the reservation to find subsistence
where they could.”
“What is the allowance of coffee and sugar?”
“Four pounds of the former and eight of the latter to one hundred
rations.”
I now took a friendly farewell of the Indian agent, and went away with
a vague impression that it is not the poor, subordinate official who
makes most money out of the Indians, but freighters and “big
contractors,” and perhaps more especially their financial “backers,”
the speculators of the great Eastern cities.
On our way back to the post we met Kicking Bird returning to his camp.
He was mounted on a large cream-colored mule. We stopped, shook hands
with him, and chatted a little. The interpreter joked him about riding
a mule. Kicking Bird laughed, and said that as he was going to live
hereafter like a white man, like a white man he should ride a mule.
It was the last time I saw Kicking Bird. Shortly afterwards he
delivered up to the military authorities a number of the revolted
Indians. Among them was a brother of one of his squaws. In revenge she
poisoned the faithful chief.
Poor Kicking Bird! He had given his gorgeous war-bonnet to a veteran
officer of the army as a token that he had left the war-path for ever.
He proposed to teach his children the white man’s language and the
white man’s peaceful arts. He fell a martyr to his fidelity to the
government.
DE VERE’S “THOMAS À BECKET.”[210]
It is doubtful whether two years ago even the admirers of Aubrey de
Vere looked for anything strikingly new or startling from his pen. His
measure seemed filled. He was known and read as a poet whose melodious
verse was the expression of thoughts lofty as well as tender, of
profound meditations and large aspirations, of purity without fleck,
yet cold almost as it was chaste. This were an enviable fame at any
time, infinitely more so just now, when the ambition of our poets
seems to be that of the prodigal, to waste their divine birthright on
worthless objects, to live riotously, and finally, when all else is
gone, to feed themselves and their readers on the husks of swine.
Suddenly _Alexander the Great_ appeared, and in the author we beheld a
new man. At once his fame took wings, while he, with the unconscious
ease of one who took his place by right, strode beyond the men of
to-day, and entered into that narrower circle of larger minds whose
names are written in brass, whose works live after them and become
part and parcel of the English tongue. One sign of Mr. de Vere’s
undisputed success was significant. It is only such a transcendent
genius as that of Dr. Newman that can overleap the barriers which
prejudice has set around the Catholic name. It is still true, though
less so than formerly, that the grand old name of “Catholic” blazoned
on a literary scutcheon is regarded as a bar sinister by the
non-Catholic press. Yet even this difficulty of caste was overcome by
Mr. de Vere, and his _Alexander the Great_ was hailed by critics of
every class and kind of thought to be a return to the palmy days of
English drama, and a welcome addition to English literature.
Two years have passed, and a new drama is presented to us by the same
author. From Alexander the Great to Thomas à Becket is a long stride
and a trying one. It is a passage from the height of paganism to the
height of Christianity. The hero of the one is the personification of
the pride and the pomp, the glory and shame, the greatness and
essential littleness, of paganism. The hero of the other is one of
those men who throughout the Christian era, even up to our own times,
have been found to stand up in the face of the princes of this world,
and, if need be, pour out their hearts’ blood in confessing Christ and
upholding his kingdom on earth.
We may as well say at once that in the new drama we miss many things
which in _Alexander the Great_ won our admiration. We miss the
sustained magic of those lines, almost every one of which is poetry of
the highest order, yet so skilfully adapted that whosoever speaks them
speaks naturally and in keeping with his character. In no place in
_Alexander the Great_ could one say, “Here speaks the poet,” “Here the
rhetorician,” “Here the dramatist.” This much, indeed, is true of
_Thomas à Becket_. We miss, too, the brilliant epigrams, the
proverbial wisdom of the brief sayings thrown so liberally into the
mouths of this character and that. We miss the sharp contact and
contrast of character so perfectly worked out among the different
types of Greeks. There is no place in the later drama for such a
conception as Alexander himself, the slow growth and development under
our eyes of his many-sided character, with his strong resolve, his
dreams, his daring hopes, his insane ambition, his thorough, practical
manner of dealing with things as they pass, his slow-coming doubts,
his wonder at the world, at his own mission in it, and at the unseen
power that rules them both from somewhere. Indeed, we cannot call to
mind a like conception to this in any drama.
The reason for the absence of such features as these is plain. In the
one case the poet was freer to follow the workings of his own
imagination; in the other he is more closely bound down to history, to
facts, to the very words often spoken by his characters. And how
thoroughly he has studied his subject may be seen in the preface to
the drama, which is an admirable, though condensed, history of the
whole struggle between St. Thomas and Henry II. But in compensation
for what we miss we find a robustness, an off-hand freedom betokening
real strength, a truth and naturalness of coloring, a noble manner of
dealing with noble things, a straightforward honesty that winks at no
faults, on whichever side they lie, a boldness and vigor that never
flag from the first line to the last. There is less art than in the
other, but much more of nature’s happy freedom. Moreover, the interest
of the drama is none the less really of to-day because it represents
men who lived and events which occurred seven centuries ago. Has this
century seen no Henries or his like? Who shall say that we have no
Beckets? Are there no men to-day ready to stand up in the face of
princes calling themselves Christian, to risk land and life and all
they have in the cause of Christ, at the same time that they obey
their princes, be they Catholic or non-Catholic, “saving their order”
and “saving God’s honor”?
The whole world makes sad reply. And though in these scientific days
it is not the fashion to dash the brains of God’s priests out in the
sanctuary, a method equally effectual is adopted to quench, if
possible, the spirit within them. They are drained of such means as
belong to their offices by fine upon fine; every effort is made to
compel them, as was the case with St. Thomas, to betray their trust,
to recognize rebellious, apostate, and recreant priests. And at
length, when there is not a penny left, they are either driven into
exile, as was St. Thomas, or cast into prisons where their martyrdom
consists of a thousand petty insults and deprivations, and where, to
take up recent examples, they are regaled on soup which is
scientifically bad. After all, does there not seem something more
magnanimous in the fierce brutality of the Plantagenet and his men?
The whole drama of _Thomas à Becket_ turns on the struggle between the
archbishop and the king, and there is no hesitation on the author’s
part in deciding which side to take in the contest. Mr. de Vere has
certainly the courage of his convictions, and he is bold in their
expression in days when St. Thomas is still regarded by the great
majority of English readers as a mischievous and meddlesome prelate
who courted, if he did not richly deserve, his fate. Let us, with Mr.
de Vere’s permission, picture to ourselves a moment his lost
opportunity of making himself infamously famous. Had he, with his
great gifts and acknowledged place in the ranks of _literati_, only
taken the other side; had he painted St. Thomas according to the
orthodox Protestant reading, how his book would have been devoured,
and what reviews written of it down all the line of the anti-Catholic
army of writers! What comfort Mr. Gladstone would have found in such a
convert in his next tilt with the Rock! Were it not a thing simply
natural in any honorable man to adhere to the side of truth, and,
more, to satisfy himself of the truth where doubts were raised, we
should call it noble in Mr. de Vere thus to spurn the example of so
many gifted writers of his time whose great ambition seems to be to
pander to the vices around them. Indeed, not the least interest
attached to this drama lies in the treatment, by a calm, poetic, yet
deeply philosophic mind, of the momentous struggle which it
portrays—the struggle ever old yet ever new between church and state.
The drama is in five acts. The first opens at Westminster with the
election of Thomas to the primacy, embraces his resignation of the
chancellorship and first rupture with the king, and ends beautifully
and solemnly with his consecration as Archbishop of Canterbury. This
act is very interesting. It plunges at once _in medias res_. Not a
line is wasted, and so natural is the coloring that one lives and
moves among the men of long ago as completely as in Shakspere.
Becket’s friends and foes come and go, and have their say about the
new prelate and his appointment to the “Rome of the North.” Naturally,
the appointment to such a see still filled men’s minds while the
memory of Anselm lived,
“Stretching from exile a lean, threatening arm”
against the first Henry. It is plain from the start that Becket’s
mitre is not to be wreathed with roses. Even were the king a tamer
soul, the new archbishop leaves enemies behind him—time-serving
prelates who hate an honest man, others who envy him his place,
nobles, knights, and rascals who have felt his strong hand while
chancellor. The scene shifts to Normandy and shows us Henry’s court at
Rouen, presided over by his perfidious and vicious queen, Eleanor,
whose bitter tongue ever fans the flames that threaten Becket, whom
she hates. Here we see Henry at his best, when, as he thinks, all is
going well with his scheme.
“Thomas, Archbishop—
That hand which holds the seal, wielding the staff—
The feud of Crown and Church henceforth is past.
… Henceforth I rule!
None shares with me my realms.”
Here we have, too, a thrilling picture of his wrath when this pleasant
scheme is at once knocked to pieces by Becket’s resignation of the
chancellorship. And now the fight begins.
In the second act come up the memorable scenes at Northampton with the
question of the “Royal Customs.” In these trying scenes, where king
and prelate enter the lists against each other, the dramatist has
exhibited a power worthy the occasion, and, to our thinking, they are
the finest in the drama. We can only glance at them and pass on. The
forces are marshalled: on the one side the power of the king with the
bandit nobles—for most of them were little else—and the craven
prelates; on the other Becket, his oath, and his conscience. The scene
between Becket and the bishops, where they strive to break down his
resolution, is admirable, as showing the inner character of the man,
the steadfast churchman, military half, who has not yet quite lost
that outspoken scorn he used so freely while still in and of the
world. His brief replies are full of negative meaning, and, when he
does break forth, the scorn of the king is puny beside his words.
“My lords, have you said all? Then hear me speak.
I might be large to tell you, courtier prelates,
That if the Conqueror’s was an iron hand,
Not less ‘twas just. Oftenest it used aright
Its power usurped. _It decked no idiot brow
With casual mitre: neither lodged in grasp
That, ague-stricken, scarce could hold its bribe,
The sceptres of the shepherds of Christ’s flock._”
And never were there nobler words than these:
“Bishops of England!
For many truths by you this day enforced,
Hear ye in turn but one. The church is God’s:
Lords, were it ours, then might we traffic with it;
At will make large its functions, or contract;
Serve it or sell; worship or crucify.
I say the church is God’s; for he beheld it,
His thought, ere time began; counted its bones,
Which in his book were writ. I say that he
From his own side in water and in blood
Gave birth to it on Calvary, and caught it,
Despite the nails, his bride, in his own arms.
I say that he, a Spirit of clear heat,
Lives in its frame, and cleanses with pure pain
His sacrificial precinct, but consumes
The chaff with other ardors. Lords, I know you.
* * * * *
To-day the heathen rage—I fear them not;
If fall I must, this hand, ere yet I fall,
Stretched from the bosom of a peaceful gown,
Above a troubled king and darkening realm,
Shall send God’s sentence forth. My lords, farewell.”
And surely Becket might have spoken this:
“My king I honor—honoring more my God;
My lords, they lie who brand mine honest fame
With fealty halved. With doubly-linked allegiance
He serves his king who serves him for God’s sake;
But who serves thus must serve his God o’er all.
I served him thus, and serve.”
But we could quote all this magnificent scene.
In the third act Becket escapes to France, visits the exiled pontiff
at Sens, and finally takes refuge at Pontigny. The calm of this holy
and peaceful abode seems to permeate this portion of the drama,
offering a happy relief after the late fierce storms. There he abides,
“musing on war with heart at peace,” and his spirit, without
slackening in its strong purpose, grows insensibly calmer, milder, and
more humble. From this dwelling he is driven forth by order of the
king, only, as the king himself bitterly says, to “stand stronger than
before.” The persecution is turning against the persecutor, who
confesses in words Shakspere might have written:
“I have lit my camp-fires on a frozen flood,
Methinks the ice wears thin.”
But he is a man as full of device as resolution, and at his back are
men still fuller of device. The plot thickens, and at last even Rome
seems to fall from the archbishop, and give him over to the power of
his enemies. Something of the old fierce spirit leaps up, and Rome
itself is not spared, until he is reminded by John of Salisbury, his
tried and faithful friend, of the Pope that
“Who sits there
Sits on God’s tower, and further sees than we.”
Whereupon Becket breaks out into a speech full of beauty and of truth,
which we regret our limited space forbids us to quote. At the end of
it the two cardinals enter to endeavor to find a way for patching up a
peace between the archbishop and the king. It must be borne in mind
that in those days the church was in sore straits: the pope in exile
at Sens; an anti-pope backed by all the power of the German emperor.
As Cardinal Otho truly says:
“A mutinous world uplifts this day its front
Against Christ’s Vicar! Save this France and England,
I know not kingdom sound.”
And here was Becket, the champion of the church, doing, in the eyes of
many, what best he could to drive England also into the enemy’s camp.
All these circumstances render the intellectual and spiritual duel
between the archbishop and the cardinals one of intense interest,
which again confirms what we noted in _Alexander the Great_, that Mr.
de Vere has the true dramatic instinct of bringing together at the
right place and right time opposing elements. It is the clash of
contraries that imparts greatest interest to a drama, and the right
working of the conflict that shows the dramatist’s skill. The contrast
between the plausible, keen, politic, Italian nature, as it would be
called by some, of Cardinal William, and the straight, unbending,
single-minded nature of Becket, who is so rooted in his position that
nothing but death could tear him from it, is perfect. The cardinal
builds up a very strong case in a negative manner against the
archbishop. He hints at mistakes on the latter’s part; he counsels
yielding here and there, or rather puts it to Becket why such and such
might not be instead of such and such. In fact, his Eminence shows
himself a thorough diplomat in cases where the issue was not a duel to
the death. It would be amusing, were it not something of a far higher
order, to see how Becket, with a strong, straight sentence or two,
cuts mercilessly, half scornfully, through the cardinal’s fine-spun
webs one after the other as they appear, scarcely giving them time to
rise. Cardinal William is at length nettled into breaking quite
through the diplomatic ice, and bids the archbishop resign. Becket
refuses to listen to any voice but that which proceeds from the chair
of Peter, and with this the act closes.
The fourth act opens with a beautiful scene between the nun Idonea and
the aged Empress Matilda, whose character, small part as it plays in
the drama, seems to us one of the most finished of all. Henry is back
in England, only to find
“All’s well; and then all’s ill: who wars on Becket
Hath January posting hard on May,
And night at ten o’ the morn.”
On the other hand, Becket, with half-prophetic eye, seems to see the
beginning of the end. After each new struggle, each new humiliation,
he rises greater because humbler, leaving the dross behind him. Here
is his own estimate of himself:
“Once I was unjust.
The Holy Father sees as from a height;
I fight but on the plain: my time is short,
And in it much to expiate. I must act.
(_After a pause._)
I strove for justice, and my mother’s honor;
For these at first. Now know I that God’s truth
Is linked with these as close as body and soul.”
How true is this we all know. It only required a Luther to make of
Henry II. a Henry VIII., and he had not stood so long in doubt as did
the latter. The plot deepens. What an admirable touch it is that shows
him, when the gravest news arrives from England, falling back a moment
on his happier days at hearing of a smart retort given by his old
pupil, the youthful prince! At last the king and Becket are brought
together, and again in this long, historic meeting Mr. de Vere rises
fully and easily to the level of the event. The inner vein of deceit
for which he was marked shows through the monarch’s speech, and once a
lurid burst of passion flashes forth like lightning and as quickly
disappears. This prolonged scene, at the end of which the mask is
almost openly thrown off by the king, ends the act, and is a fitting
preparation for the consummation which is to follow.
The fifth act opens with preparations for the return of the archbishop
to England. His heart and those of his friends are filled with the
gloomiest forebodings. Ill-rumors thicken around them. Becket himself,
in a speech of wonderful beauty and pathos, describes the “sinking
strange” at his heart as, standing still on the French coast, he looks
towards England. It is the flesh asserting itself and gaining a
momentary victory over the spirit. He sails at length, and history
tells us how he was received. It was a matter of life or death to his
foes. There was only one end to a contest with a man of his
stamp—either submission on their part or death to him. The drama
hurries on towards the catastrophe. The queen fans the flame. As
Lisieux says:
“Year by year
She urged his highness ‘gainst my lord the primate;
Of late she whets him with more complicate craft:
She knows that all she likes the king dislikes,
And feigns a laughing, new-born zeal for Becket,
To sting the royal spleen.”
The short scene in which the barbed words of the queen draw a contrast
between Becket’s triumph and the king’s humiliation is one of the many
dramatic gems set in this drama. So graphic is the scene as she rises
on the throne, cup in hand, and cries:
“A toast, my lords! The London merchant’s son:
Once England’s primate—henceforth King of England!”
that we scarcely need Leicester to tell us:
“Behold her, Lisieux!
_That smile is baleful as a winter beam
Streaking some cliff wreck-gorged; her hair and eyes
Send forth a glare half sunshine and half lightning._”
At last falls that memorable feast of St. Stephen, and the end comes.
“The man is changed. Seldom he speaks; his smile
Is like that smile upon a dead man’s face,
A mystery of sweetness.”
The saint is already looking beyond this world. Standing at the
window, as we are told he stood, he looks out and beholds the ground
robed in snow. Here is how his poet makes him speak of it:
“How fair, how still, that snowy world! The earth
Lies like a white rose under eyes of God;
May it send up a sweetness!”
What other poet in these days could give us so pure and perfect an
image as that—a flower plucked, surely, from the paradise of poets?
The sweetness is sent up. It rises from the martyr’s blood.
Such is an outline of this drama. The character, of course, on which
the attention fastens chiefly is that of Thomas à Becket, and we think
that in the portrayal of this great character Mr. de Vere is as happy
as in his Alexander. Becket is a very easy man to write about, but a
most difficult one to set living and real before us. In him for a long
time the layman and the clerk struggled for mastery. There is no
possible doubt that up to the time of his elevation to the primacy he
was a man who lived in, and to a very great extent of, the world. He
rejoiced in pomp and pride, in large retinues, in splendid
appointments, in ostentatious display. He was not at all averse to
showing that the arm of the cleric could tilt a lance with the bravest
knight. Yet through all the temptations of such a life as his he
undoubtedly retained his purity of heart, a right sense of his true
vocation, and an honesty of purpose that never swerved. Certain it is
that, in procuring his appointment as primate, Henry thought he had,
if not exactly a tool, a devoted friend and a sensible man, who would
not forget the favors his monarch had showered on him, and would be
troubled by no such nice scruples as vexed his predecessor, Anselm.
Becket had shown himself to be a keen-eyed, resolute, active, honest
minister, with no sordid touch in his nature, with an intense sense of
duty to his king and country. Indeed, had he not been a Catholic
cleric, in days when clerics lawfully assumed many a civil office,
there can be little doubt that he would have been pronounced, even by
Protestant historians, to be one of the best and truest English
chancellors that ever held the seals.
At a day’s notice this man, by the express command and desire of the
king, is sent back to his real duty—the tending of Christ’s fold. He
obeyed against his will, foreseeing already something of the issue.
But the fashion of the world is not brushed off in a day, however
changed may be the heart and conduct. To-day he is the gay and
brilliant chancellor of England, highest in the favor of his king;
to-morrow, primate of England, and appointed to that post, as he knew,
to betray it. The man is not yet a saint—very far from it; and in his
seizing of this character just as the robes of the world were falling
from him and he had donned the livery of heaven; in his awakening to
the new and tremendous responsibility that had fallen upon him; in the
gradual taming of his fiery and impetuous spirit; in the struggle
between personal love for his royal master, pity for the disasters
necessarily brought upon the kingdom by his action, and his clear
conception of duty throughout all; in the slow braying of this spirit
in the mortar of affliction until speck by speck all the dross was
shaken and cast out, and the whole man left clean and pure for the
sacrifice—in all this Mr. de Vere has shown the skill of a great
artist. The obvious temptation for a Catholic in treating such a theme
was to make Becket a saint too soon. Mr. de Vere has not fallen into
this mistake, and the result adds largely to the effect of the drama.
Not till the very last scene do we feel that Becket lives already
above this world, and only awaits his translation. The night before
his death the flesh still urged flight when he knew that death was
coming surely and swiftly. And when the curtain drops for the last
time on that terrible scene of the outraged sanctuary and the murdered
archbishop, then do we surely feel that the spirit of a saint and
martyr has flown to heaven.
The conception of Henry is almost equally good. The following picture
of him will be remembered:
“Your king is sudden:
The tidings of his march and victory reach us
Like runners matched. That slender, sinewy frame,
That ardent eye, that swift, onstriding step,
Yet graceful as a tiger’s, foot descending
Silent but sure on the predestinate spot—
From signs like these looks forth the inward man.
Expect grave news ere long.”
Excellent foils to Becket and to each other are Becket’s two fast
friends, John of Salisbury and Herbert of Bosham. The contrast between
the two is well drawn by themselves:
“JOHN OF SALISBURY. Herbert, you jar me with your ceaseless triumphs,
And hope ‘gainst hope. You are like a gold leaf dropped
From grove immortal of the church triumphant
To mock our church in storm! For manners’ sake,
I pray you, chafe at times. The floods are out!
I say the floods are out! This way and that
They come a-sweeping.
“HERBERT. Wheresoe’er they sweep
The eye of God pursues them and controls:
That which they are to him, that only _are_ they;
The rest is pictured storm.”
A mightier hand than Mr. de Vere’s might own so graphic a picture as
this:
“Go where I might, except among the poor,
‘Twas all one huge conspiracy of error,
Conspiracy, and yet unconscious half;
For, though, beneath, there worked one plastic mind,
The surface seemed fortuitous concurrence,
One man the hook supplying, one the eye,
Here the false maxim, there the fact suborned,
This the mad hope, and that the grudge forgotten.
The lawyer wrote the falsehood in the dust
Of mouldering scrolls; with sighs the court-priest owned it;
The minstrel tossed it gaily from his strings;
The witling lisped it, and the soldier mouthed it.
These lies are thick as dust in March.”
And the “reptile press” had not yet come into being!
There is not a weak line in this drama. It will be welcomed by all
Catholics as a glorious illumination of the history which it pictures.
Our boys should dwell on it in the schools. From no book can they
gather a better idea of one of the most marked epochs in English
history. It will, like _Alexander the Great_, bear reading and
rereading, disclosing each time new beauties of thought and
expression. Many of the speeches set one’s veins a-tingling, so vivid
and real are they. The pictures of churchmen are a study. There is the
prelate courtier, the prelate politician, the false ascetic, the
blasphemous apostate, the timid prelate, who trembles between his
conscience and his king. In striking contrast to these stand out
Becket and his true men, while to and fro among the cleric gowns stalk
the stalwart nobles, half-bandits, most of them, sick in turn of
prelate and king. Mr. de Vere makes masterly use of these many
opposite elements, groups, parts, and rearranges them with the highest
dramatic effect.
The general tendency of English poetry in these days is downwards. It
has gained nothing; it has lost much. It is least strong in its
highest, the dramatic form. Without pretending to be at all dogmatic
in mere literary criticism, we take this last statement to be
indisputable. The failure, however, is not from lack of effort. There
is surely some strange fascination about the drama. It would not be at
all hazardous to say that nine out of every ten men with any literary
pretensions, if they have not actually written dramas, have at least
had the ambition and intention at some time or another to write them.
What may be the precise reason for this general tendency towards that
peculiar form of literature, unless it is that so very few succeed in
it, we do not know, and do not care to inquire just now. The
unattainable, however, always possesses a strong fascination for
aspiring minds; and as the dramatic literature of all countries is
that which, though the least in quantity, has fastened itself most
upon the hearts of the people, it is at least a worthy ambition which
aims at this royal road to fame. The discovery of the North-west
Passage has not been a more fatal lure to mariners than the drama to
literary adventurers. Even men of approved position in other branches
of literature, poets of fame, novelists whose names were household
words, statesmen and philosophers, have failed at this last fortress
that fame seems to hold only for her most favored sons. Here no art
can win an entrance; the sweetest strains cannot charm the locks
asunder, the profoundest thoughts cannot melt them. Nature and nature
only holds the key.
A glance at a few of the writers of the century will reveal how true
is this. Even Byron with his passionate soul, his strangely mixed
nature, his bitterness and sweetness, his loftiness of thought and
expression combined, his marvellous power over words, has written
dramas which as poems are splendid, but as dramas wretched. Shelley
was the only poet of his day who produced a really dramatic work, but
its revolting subject unhappily removes it from clean hands. The
lesser lights of our own day have each in turn attempted a like flight
only to meet with disaster. Who thinks of Browning’s _Strafford_ now?
Who has cast a second glance at Swinburne’s _Chastelard_ or
_Bothwell_? Notwithstanding the “gush” with which it was at first
hailed by some English critics, Tennyson’s _Mary Tudor_ has fallen
flat, both on the stage and off it, and honest men have come to the
conclusion that it rather detracts from than adds to the well-earned
and well-worn fame of the author. The only good purpose it has served
was to bring to light a real drama on the same subject by the father
of the author whose latest work now claims our attention. Of that we
shall have something to say at another time. Even that proverbial
philosopher, Mr. Tupper, was seized with the inspiration in this
centennial year of ours, and we heard something of a drama wherein
George Washington was to figure as the hero, but it faded out of sight
before it had well appeared. Sad to say, our own Longfellow’s _Spanish
Student_, the only drama he ever published, happens to be about the
worst of his productions. Mr. Disraeli even, in his wild youth,
perpetrated a drama which was presented some years since at a second
or third class London theatre, and, we believe, almost ruined the
management. At all events it failed. And Bulwer Lytton’s best known
drama is not one-fiftieth part as good as his poorest novel.
Bold then is the man who would tread this royal road which is strewn
with so many a brave wreck. Rash the man who, with name and fame
established, with the well-won laurels of a lifetime on his brow,
would add a final and a crowning leaf plucked from this garden of
death. Happy the man who, in face of the thousand dangers that beset
his path, goes on his way boldly, grasps and holds the prize that a
thousand of his fellows have missed. Mr. de Vere has won this prize.
His dramas are dramas and nothing else. They are not verses stitched
together without a purpose and a plan. They are not mere description;
they are instinct with _act_. We hope and believe that one who has
accomplished so much and so well in so short a time may, as we do not
doubt he can, do much more. The prizes to be won in this, to Mr. de
Vere, new field are as many as the aspirants; but the winners are few.
As Catholics we are proud of such a poet. As readers and observers we
rejoice in these degenerate days at seeing so resolute a return to
loftier thoughts and purer, to great conceptions, to real English,
which is free at once from the affectation of the archaic and from the
flimsy jingle that tries honest ears, to a right depicting of scenes
and events that have stirred the world.
[210] _St. Thomas of Canterbury._ A Dramatic Poem. By Aubrey
de Vere, author of _Alexander the Great_. London: Henry S.
King & Co. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication
Society.)
THE PRISONER OF CHILLON.
It has been the lot of more than one disreputable character to be
glorified by great poets. From Spenser to Tennyson have the praises of
“Gloriana” been sung, to the no small detriment of truth, and of far
worthier personages than she who, although in some respects a great
queen, was guilty of ferocities almost beyond the capabilities of man,
and of prolonged and calculating cruelties contrary to the very nature
bestowed by God on woman. Again, Satan himself is portrayed in
Milton’s stately poem as a being more magnificent than malignant. He
“hates well” certainly, but his own utter hatefulness, and the base
ingratitude to his Creator of which he is the first example, is
sufficiently veiled to incline one to feel something akin to
admiration or pity for the arch-rebel against God, the crafty seducer
and pitiless destroyer of the souls of men.
Passing over other instances of false renown, and undazzled by the
halo of romance cast around the “Prisoner of Chillon” by Lord Byron’s
melodious lines (it would be more plain-spoken than polite to write
this word, as here it ought to be written, _i.e._, without the _n_),
let us examine, by the sober light of history, into the merits of this
more-than-doubtful hero, rendered by his captivity a person of
interest, although there is every proof that the story of his arrest,
in violation of a safe-conduct granted him by the duke of Savoy, is an
invention.[211] Still more, however, does Bonivard owe his celebrity
to Lord Byron, who apparently knew nothing of the “Prisoner” whose
imaginary sufferings he sang, beyond his name, his Protestantism, and
the fact of his imprisonment. The poem opens with a string of
fictions, among which it is amusing to read that Bonivard was loaded
with chains for the religion of his father, and that the said father
had died on the rack, a martyr to a creed he refused to abjure, etc.
But imagination has had the upper hand long enough. Certain of our
contemporaries abroad having recently referred to the “Prisoner of
Chillon” as a martyr for liberty of conscience, it is time to bring
down from his pedestal this Calvinist apostate, pointed to by
Protestants as one of their models of virtue, and who, we readily
allow, turns out to be a fitting companion to similar “models” even
more famous in their annals.
The Bonivards were an old _bourgeois_ family of Chambéry, who from the
thirteenth century had possessed a certain extent of feudal property.
Thus they were subjects of the princes of Savoy, whose worst enemies
were then the Genevese and Swiss. Now, it was under the protection of
these latter that Bonivard, himself a Savoyard, came, in the vain hope
of preserving the rich revenues of his priory of Saint Victor, to
plant his batteries against his native country. At Geneva, he took his
place among the first promoters of the freedom of the future republic,
but no sooner did the Reformation become a movement of importance,
from the standing of some of its leaders, than Bonivard disappears
from the front, and falls into a lower rank; since, although a writer
of some power and possessed of real talents, he was utterly lacking in
energy and dignity of character, as also in firmness and consistency
of purpose. In proof of this, it is enough to observe the continual
applications for money with which he harassed the council of Geneva,
while he was at the same time playing fast and loose between Savoy and
Geneva, in the first place, and afterwards between Geneva and Berne,
according to the advancement of his own interests, self being
apparently the sole object of his worship. This “vain and versatile
beggar”[212] was called by one of the chiefs of the republic, the
“_Stultus_ M. de Sans-Saint-Victor.”
Dr. Chapponnière, a Protestant, says that “Bonivard, exalted by some
as a hero and a martyr for liberty, and by others charged with every
vice, merited neither the excess of honor he received on the one hand,
nor of condemnation on the other.” With regard, however, to this
verdict, which would represent Bonivard as a man of simple mediocrity,
we put the following questions: Was not François de Bonivard a traitor
to his religion, which he abandoned? to his ecclesiastical character,
which he violated? to his country, which he injured to the utmost of
his power? to history, which he falsified? and lastly, to his _wives_,
whom he deceived, and one of whom he abandoned to torture?
The “Prisoner of Chillon” had earned his detention in that fortress by
fifteen years of open revolt against his lawful sovereign; and if, by
reason of his six years of imprisonment he is to be accounted a great
man, it is but just to allow his fourth wife, Catherine de
Courtaronel, to share his greatness. Like him, she apostatized; like
him, she quitted her convent and broke all her vows; like him, she was
driven out of Geneva because of her evil life; like him, she was
allowed to return thither on promising amendment; with him she lived,
for some time unmarried, until the two were compelled by the Genevese
authorities to submit to a marriage ceremony; like him, she was
accused of adultery, and, more unfortunate than he, was made, by the
application of frightful tortures, to avow herself guilty of the crime
(which, however, has not been proved), her husband making no attempt
whatever to save her from the torture. In consequence of the
confessions thus extorted, she was condemned to be drowned; the
sentence being duly executed.
We have here a terrible pendant to the six years of prison, and one
which, this time, can neither be imputed (to quote M. Fazg) to “an
infamous duke of Savoy,” nor yet (to quote Bonivard himself) to “a
rascally pope.”
This brief sketch, notwithstanding its incompleteness as to details,
which would, however, only darkly shade the outline here given, is
sufficient to portray the real Bonivard, the avaricious and
time-serving apostate, stripped of the interesting fiction which
envelopes the Prisoner of Chillon, and to prove his worthiness of a
niche by the side of Cranmer, Luther, Calvin, Beza, John of Leyden,
and the rest of the reforming race.
[211] See, especially, Spon, _Histoire de Genève_, tom. 1.
pp. 203, 204.
[212] See notice in the _Revue Catholique_ for June, 1876,
by M. Leyret, to whom the present paper is largely
indebted. Those who wish for full information on the
subject will find it in the _Notice sur François de
Bonivard, Prieur de St. Victor et sur ses Ecrits, par
M. le Dr. Chapponniere_ (_Mémoires de la Société
d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Genève_, tome iv.),
also in the _Matériaux Historiques_ and the _Notices
Généalogiques_ of Galiffe (tome iii.), but above all
in the remarkable work by Canon Magnin, now Bishop of
Annecy, on Bonivard and the Chronicles of Geneva
(_Mémoires de l’Académie de Savoie, 2ème Séries_, tome
iii.) who by even his moderation, as well as the
pitiless logic of facts, crushes the pseudo-confessor.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
SANCTA SOPHIA, OR DIRECTIONS FOR THE PRAYER OF
CONTEMPLATION, ETC. Extracted out of more than Forty
Treatises written by the late Ven. Father F. Augustin Baker,
a monk of the English Congregation of the Holy Order of S.
Benedict; and methodically digested by the R. F. Serenus
Cressy, of the same Order and Congregation. Now edited by
the Very Rev. Dom Norbert Sweeny, D.D., of the same Order
and Congregation. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by
The Catholic Publication Society.)
Next in importance to the choice of a spiritual director comes, no
doubt, the selection of the kind and quality of spiritual reading
proper for individual souls. Ordinarily they go together, and,
granting the first choice to have been well made, the second should be
left to be determined by it. One advantage, however, a suitable book
presents even when compared with a suitable director. It is always
accessible, a consideration of some importance, when one remembers how
urgently spiritual writers seek to persuade the soul that in case wise
direction can be had at no less cost, she should travel “a thousand
German miles” to find it. It is true that with certain classes of
religious reading, and especially with that class to which the _Sancta
Sophia_ belongs, there is danger that indiscreet readers may mistake
their own needs, and nourish pride on what is proper food for humility
only. Another peculiarity belonging to them is one which we hardly
know whether to class as an advantage or a disadvantage. Put into the
hands of mature readers for whom they have been esteemed suitable on
account of some natural tendency to introversion, and possibly of
converts, to which class, by the way, the author of the _Sancta
Sophia_ himself belonged, we have observed these charts of the more
interior ways of spiritual life to create a temporary difficulty
almost as serious as those they were intended to remove. The clearness
and certainty with which the road is pointed out, and the obstacles to
be surmounted described, fill the mind at first with such a sense of
security as one feels who places himself in charge of an experienced
guide to travel to regions by report well known but as yet unvisited.
The objects of faith assume a new vividness, and the soul, beholding
its own struggles and its own weariness reflected in the page before
it, takes up its line of march with new vigor and readiness to endure
what its predecessors also have endured. But it will be strange if its
enemy do not avail himself of the very weapons used against him to
raise the contrary difficulty, and to suggest that the very accuracy
with which the internal conflict is described shows that nothing has
been really achieved by the spiritual writers except the dissection of
the soul itself, and that, considered as evidence for the existence of
anything beyond its own struggles, their works are simply worthless.
However, to “well-minded souls,” as Father Baker would say, such
temptations against faith are not in reality more dangerous than any
other, and may, with the help of prayer and prudent counsel, be fled
from even while their immediate occasion is retained and put to its
uses. For such souls, once firmly grounded in Catholic faith and with
a natural predisposition for “the internal ways of the Spirit,” we
know no better guide than the _Sancta Sophia_, now so happily
reprinted. No doubt it is not adapted to general reading; the caution
of the Benedictine father, Leander à St. Martino, is as necessary
to-day as when it was prefixed to the earliest editions of the work.
These instructions, he said, “are written precisely, and only for such
souls as by God’s holy grace do effectually and constantly dedicate
themselves to as pure an abstraction from creatures as may with
discretion be practised; … consequently, for such as abstain from all
manner of levity, loss of time, notable and known defects, vain talk,
needless familiarity, and in a word do take as much care as they can
to avoid all venial sins and occasions of them, and all things which
they shall perceive or be warned of, to be impediments to the divine
union of their souls with God.”
Let us hope that even the strict application of this rule would not
too greatly narrow the circle of readers likely to be profited by the
reissue of a volume which those well qualified to judge rate as the
most solid and valuable work on prayer ever written in the English
tongue. A more effectual barrier, perhaps, against indiscriminate
readers, is raised by the style of the work itself than by cautions
such as these. For while the quaint, sweet sobriety of its manner most
happily matches the gravity of its matter, it is marked by an utter
absence of all things likely to gratify curiosity simply, and makes no
effort to do more than guide souls called to contemplative prayer
along the secure road of abnegation and self-denial. Certain blemishes
which pertained to the work in its original state are sufficiently
guarded against in this edition by notes; and in its present form the
_Sancta Sophia_ is undoubtedly better fitted than before both to the
needs of the contemplative orders for whom it was originally written,
and to those of devout souls living in the world.
MITCHELL’S GEOGRAPHICAL TEXT-BOOKS. Philadelphia: Published
by J. H. Butler & Co.
One of the best proofs of the excellence of these text-books is the
continual popularity which they have enjoyed, in spite of the
publication of so many competing works by other authors. Of course
they have been kept up to the times by additions, and improvements
corresponding to the increase of geographical knowledge.
The series consists of eight books, two being occupied with ancient
geography, and is progressive, so as to suit every age and capacity.
For Catholic schools it is, so far as we can see, not open to any
objection, and as good as any set of books not expressly written for
them can be.
We are particularly pleased with Prof. Brocklesby’s _Physical
Geography_, which forms part of the series. It is full of information
for grown persons as well as for the young, is profusely and finely
illustrated, as is the rest of the series, and will be found to be a
most readable and instructive book.
The maps and charts are throughout the series executed with that
clearness and beauty which have always characterized Mitchell’s
atlases.
THE LIFE, LETTERS, AND TABLE-TALK OF BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.
MEN AND MANNERS IN AMERICA ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. New York.
Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1876.
These two volumes are the first instalments of the “Sans-Souci
Series,” intended as a companion to the “Bric-à-Brac Series.” The life
of Haydon the artist is full of painful interest. The present volume
is a condensation by Mr. R. H. Stoddard of the larger Engglish life.
_Men and Manners in America One Hundred Years Ago_, edited by H. G.
Scudder, tells pleasantly enough how men and women lived and moved and
had their being in this country a century ago.
Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious printing errors, such as upside down or backwards letters and
accent marks, mismatched open and closed quote marks, duplicate words,
and incorrect spacing between words, were corrected. Unprinted letters
and final stops were added. Alternate and obsolete spellings were left
unchanged.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_.
Footnotes in the text were numbered in order and moved to the end of
the article in which the anchor occurs. Footnote anchors in tables
were changed to letters. Many table footnotes have multiple anchors.
Added missing footnote anchor to [190].
Noted, but left unchanged: Some listings in the Contents are not in
alphabetical order.
Spaces were used instead of decimal points to separate dollars from
cents and pounds from shillings in “Labor in Europe and America.”
Hyphens occasionally used inconsistently, e.g. text contains both
churchyard and church-yard. ‘Home Rule’ when used as a noun has no
hyphen; otherwise, it appears as Home-Rule or Home-Ruler.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Catholic World, Volume 23, April, 1876-September, 1876. - A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science" ***
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